A driver rounds a curve on a dark rural road and sees a woman standing near the fog line, head shaved, wearing nothing but a beach towel, no other car or person anywhere in sight. Something is wrong. He acts. That woman turns out to be a human trafficking victim, and because a truck driver trusted his gut and made a call instead of driving past, her story does not end on that road.
That is not a hypothetical. It is close to what happened to WinCo Foods driver Joe Aguayo, whose actions earned him the 2023 Harriet Tubman Award from Truckers Against Trafficking. And it is the kind of moment this award exists to recognize, the split-second decision by an ordinary transportation professional that changes, or saves, a life. Nominations for the 2026 award are open now through August 15, and if you know someone whose actions fit, this is your window to make sure they are recognized.
What the Award Is
Truckers Against Trafficking, now known as TAT, created the Harriet Tubman Award in 2013 as its highest honor. It goes each year to a member of the trucking, bus, or energy industry whose direct actions either helped save or improve the life of someone being exploited, or prevented human trafficking from taking place. The award carries a $5,000 check, a trophy, and national recognition, and this year it is presented in partnership with WEX, which signed on as the award’s sponsor in a new three-year commitment announced at the Truckload Carriers Association trade show in March 2026.
The name is deliberate and it carries weight. Harriet Tubman, born into slavery in 1820, escaped and then returned again and again to lead others to freedom through the Underground Railroad. TAT points to a detail about her that captures why the award bears her name: she was never caught and never lost a passenger. The award honors people who, like Tubman, used their position on the transportation network to move someone from danger toward safety.
The first Harriet Tubman Award went to a travel plaza general manager in Washington in 2014. Since then the winners have included truck drivers, other travel plaza employees, and bus industry professionals, a reflection of how many different roles in transportation put a person in a position to notice something wrong and do something about it.
The People Who Have Won It
The award comes to life in the stories of the people who have received it, and those stories are worth telling because they show how ordinary the starting point usually is.
Kevin Kimmel, a professional driver, made a call from a truck stop that led law enforcement to a young woman who was being held, tortured, and prostituted in an RV parked nearby. His decision to report what looked wrong set off the response that freed her. Charles Bernsen, general manager of the Petro travel plaza in Florence, South Carolina, and one of thousands of travel center employees who receive TAT training, noticed a distressed young woman lingering in his store and acted on it, earning the 2024 award. In the bus world, Lakefront Lines driver Larren Tarver and District Safety Director Lauren Gnall received the award after responding to signs that a male passenger was trafficking a woman on board, moving quickly and calmly enough that law enforcement was notified, the suspect was arrested, and the victim was recovered.
What ties these people together is not that they were trained investigators or that they went looking for trouble. They were doing their jobs, they had been through TAT’s training, and when something in front of them did not add up, they trusted it and acted. Tarver put it simply after the fact, saying the training helped him stay aware and alert, and that he felt empowered thinking of the victim’s family and the danger she would still be in if he had not acted.
Why Drivers Are Positioned to See What Others Miss
There is a reason this award lives in the transportation industry rather than anywhere else. Professional drivers, travel plaza workers, and bus operators occupy a vantage point almost no one else has. They are at the truck stops at 3 a.m. They are on the rural highways and at the fuel islands and in the parking lots where trafficking victims are moved, held, and sold. They see the whole country pass in front of them, and they see it at the hours and in the places where exploitation happens away from public view.
That is exactly why TAT built its entire model around training these industries. A trafficking victim being moved along the interstate system passes through the professional space of truck and bus drivers constantly, and a driver who knows the signs becomes a set of eyes that traffickers cannot easily avoid. TAT’s training teaches people what those signs look like and, just as important, what to do about them: the specific action of calling the National Human Trafficking Hotline or 911 rather than intervening directly. The Harriet Tubman Award is the recognition end of that model, the acknowledgment that the training works because real people act on it.
How to Nominate Someone
If you know a driver, a dispatcher, a travel plaza worker, a technician, or a safety manager whose direct action helped a trafficking victim or prevented trafficking, you can nominate them, and the process is straightforward.
Nominations for the 2026 award are open through August 15, 2026. The nomination is submitted through TAT’s website, and the nominator needs to be able to provide the details of the incident, what happened, what action the person took, and when and where it occurred. The incident must have taken place in the United States or Canada, and the nominee must reside in one of those two countries. To qualify, the person nominated needs to have been TAT-trained, be a member of one of the industries TAT works with, and have taken action to aid a potential victim.
Once submitted, the nomination is vetted and then goes to TAT’s award selection committee for consideration. The winner receives the $5,000 prize, a paid trip to the award ceremony, recognition at an industry event, and features across TAT’s publications and website, with the award presented to both the individual and their company. Through the WEX sponsorship, the 2026 award will be presented at the WEX OTR Summit, with travel covered for the winner and a guest.
One point worth underscoring, because it stops people from nominating: you do not need to be certain the person you are nominating single-handedly cracked a case. TAT’s own message to the industry is to share the story of any action taken to help someone who might be a trafficking victim, even a potential one. The point of the award is to encourage vigilance across the whole industry by honoring the people who practiced it, which means the stories matter even when the person telling them is modest about their role.
Why This Belongs on Every Carrier’s Radar
For a small carrier or an owner-operator, this award is worth paying attention to for reasons beyond the recognition itself. It is a reminder that TAT’s free training exists and that it works, and that any driver can complete it and be equipped to recognize and respond to trafficking. The drivers who have won this award were not special agents. They were people who had taken a training that costs nothing, kept their eyes open, and made a call. That is available to every driver in your operation right now.
There is also something worth saying plainly about what this represents for the industry’s reputation and its people. Trucking absorbs a lot of criticism and a lot of hard headlines. The Harriet Tubman Award is a piece of the other truth, that the same drivers who are too often treated as a problem to be managed are, over and over, the people who see a victim on the side of a road or in a parking lot and refuse to drive past. Nominating one of them, or getting your drivers trained so they are ready if the moment ever comes, is a way of standing on that side of the story.
The nomination window closes August 15. If someone you know has already lived one of these moments, put their name forward. And if no one you know has yet, the training that prepares a driver for it is free, and the next Harriet Tubman Award winner is, right now, just someone who paid attention.
The post A Truck Driver Made One Phone Call and Saved a Life. There Is an Award for That, and Nominations Close August 15. appeared first on FreightWaves.
