Alaska West Express wins top ATA safety honor for Prudhoe Bay freight

Alaska West Express has taken home the American Trucking Associations’ President’s Trophy, the group’s highest safety honor for a motor carrier in the under-25-million-miles category. For North Slope shippers and contractors, the award lands in a place where reliability is measured in fuel deliveries, bulk cargo, and whether freight reaches Prudhoe Bay on schedule despite the weather, ice, and distance.

The Fairbanks- and Prudhoe Bay-based carrier specializes in trucking to and from Alaska and handles liquid and dry bulk products, along with hazardous and non-hazardous chemicals and petroleum products. Lynden also says the company operates out of Tacoma, Washington, with its Fairbanks service center serving as an intermodal transfer point where oilfield tubulars, bulk products, and liquid freight are moved north. In practical terms, that puts Alaska West Express in the middle of the supply chain for energy, mining, and construction customers tied to the North Slope.

That work depends on the Dalton Highway, a 414-mile route from Livengood to Deadhorse that was built to serve the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and North Slope oil fields. Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities says commercial truck traffic carrying supplies and fuel to the oil fields makes up most of the road’s traffic. Conditions are difficult year-round, winter can stretch from early August through June, and Atigun Pass remains a frequent avalanche trouble spot. On a road where drivers can be stranded for days, a safety award is more than corporate polish. It is a signal that matters to anyone depending on steady freight into one of Alaska’s harshest corridors.

Alaska West Express has built a track record around that reality. Lynden says the company ran 4.6 million miles accident free in 2021, then won the 2021 Alaska Safe Truck Fleet of the Year Award in the Highway Division. In 2023, it earned the National Tank Truck Carriers Association’s Grand Award in the For-Hire Carrier Class 8 category, with judges weighing nine areas including driver training, worker safety, accident and incident response, and vehicle and tank inspection. Tyler Bones, the company’s training director and director of HSSE, has been with Alaska West Express since at least February 2012 and brings emergency response experience dating back to 1992.

The newest honor also comes as North Slope trucking demand stays elevated. Matt Jolly, the company president, said in 2024 that volumes were nearing their 2015 peak as new North Slope projects advanced, including ConocoPhillips’ Willow Project and Santos’ Pikka project. For a region where groceries, fuel, industrial supplies, and project materials all ride the same rough highway north, a safety win for one of the key carriers is also a vote of confidence in the freight system that keeps the North Slope moving.