Photo Credit: Mike Harmon Racing
When Mike Harmon takes to the track at Dover International Speedway, he’ll have a special decal on the hood of his car as he shows support to the Truckers Final Mile Organization – http://www.trucksfinalmile.org.
Founded by Robert Palm, the organization is focused on paying the funding required to get truckers home that passed away while on their run.
“There are a lot of families out there who are living paycheck to paycheck and the wives at home are, basically, single parents when the husband is out on the road for weeks at a time, or vice versa,” he said. “I have personally experienced the need for this kind of help. When I lost my step brother, I knew that this kind of help was needed and it sort of festered through the years. He died in 1996 and I crashed the following year. I witnessed a lady trucker roll her truck several times in front of me. I cradled her in my arms waiting for Life Flight to arrive. All she could talk about was her 2 boys and I wondered how she was going to get back to her sons. That was the breaking point.. After she was air lifted I knew I had to do something, that something had to be done but I didn’t know how to go about it.
“When I got home I told my wife that this has got to be done and that now I’m going to do this. There are people out there that need help and I think I’ve got a way to do this. Frankly I believe the Lord led me on this path and we followed his lead. I’m a trucker like anyone else and we focused on what it takes to do this, focused on the regulations and establishing the corporation. We now have a good Board Of Directors behind us and we did the ground work and the paper work and got it going. This the end result.”
Palm filled out the paperwork that he was required to in September of 2013, getting his designation as an official charity in August 2014.
“We helped our first case in June of 2015. To date we’ve helped 33 people,” he said. “Like any other charity we rely on donations only. Donations are important to allow us to operate and they are coming from people on social media. The $5 and $10 add up so we can spend $1400 or $1500 on a case. None of us take any salary, any renumeration in any form for doing this. Our focus is helping the families of truck drivers. Many companies of the drivers don’t help because of the status they have.
“There are some well known companies who rate charities and we are the highest rated charity serving the trucking industry. We’ve built up a good reputation and a good rapport with those that rate charities. Now we need to focus on obtaining sponsors and more money so we can fulfill this mission and do so in a more timely fashion.”
Harmon says he can see the need for a charity of this nature, and didn’t know it existed till a friend’s family was faced with this difficulty.
“I saw, first hand, how much relief this gives families facing these problems,” he commented. “When I heard about it I wanted to help. In times like this money becomes an issue and that can make it all so much more difficult on the family. Whether your family member is injured or deceased you still need to get them home. Traveling across country to get them home makes the situation more difficult and impossible in many cases. I do want to help make people aware that help is available and hope that this organization can receive more donations that will make it easier for them to help more people. Racing and truck driving go hand in hand in many ways and hopefully this will help get the word out.”
