September 21st, 2024 by WCBC Radio

Equipment operators for the West Virginia Division of Highways (WVDOH) took home first and second place wins and came in fourth overall among 12 teams competing at the 2024 Southeast Regional ROADeo, held this year in Raleigh, North Carolina. “The safest place in the world to work is the West Virginia Department of Transportation,” said state Transportation Secretary Jimmy Wriston, P.E., who braved wet weather with Mountain State equipment operators to cheer them on during the competition. “We have undoubtedly the best operators in the entire country.

“Last year, as we hosted the Regional ROADeo, we proved the best operators,” Wriston said. “Best of the best.”

West Virginia won Best Overall DOH in the 2023 Southeast Regional ROADeo, winning in more categories than any other state. The event, held last year in Beckley, was the first WVDOH overall victory in 20 years. This year, Carlous Bailey took home a second-place win in the tandem axle truck event, while James Soles took first place in the grader division.

The equipment operators ROADeo is a training and safety conference in which leading equipment operators from each state compete on a course designed to test their skills. Workers from around the region moved golf balls as carefully as they would work around utility lines in the field and completed other complex and delicate tasks showing their mastery of heavy equipment. “This ROADeo competition is something our Division of Higwhays has participated in for years, but used to hide the light under a bushel basket, as the saying goes," said Jennifer Dooley, West Virginia Department of Transportation (WVDOT) Public Relations Director.  "Now we let it shine.  With the influx in new equipment, increased training opportunities, and with Secretary Wriston working hand in hand with our operators on the ground; this has grown into something our operators can use to inspire those they train, and it's working."

States take turns hosting the conference, with judges from each state participating in scoring each year. Competition takes place in seven events: single axle truck, tandem axle truck, lowboy trailer, motor grader, backhoe, skid steer, and tractor mower. Truck events involve running an obstacle course, parallel parking, and seeing how close drivers can back up to a bay.

In the backhoe event, operators must use a tiny spoon attached to the backhoe to pick up a golf ball and drop it into a cup. The grader event involves knocking tennis balls off a tube with the grader blade without knocking over the tube. The mower event involves driving a tractor towing a mower through an obstacle course – both forward and backward.

The point of the precision events is to demonstrate equipment mastery; if a backhoe operator is deft enough to drop a golf ball in a cup, he or she is deft enough to dig at work sites without hitting buried power lines or other utilities. "Last year, West Virginia won first place," said Dooley.  "This year, we placed fourth in the region overall. That's a far cry from the DOT we used to be, where we didn't want to talk about the Training and Equipment Operators ROADeo at all. The handful of operators who participated in the competition are on their way back to West Virginia, to the work zones you're seeing all around the state, so be aware and help them get home safely to their families."

With work continuing in all 55 counties across the state, the West Virginia Division of Highways and the West Virginia Department of Transportation remind the public of the importance of keeping everyone safe in work zones by keeping “Heads up; phones down!”