When Loren Lowry got his CDL in 1990 to take work hauling for Washington, D.C.-area beer distributors, he couldn’t have predicted his ultimate destiny in trucking lay on the long-haul highway. What could have been more predictable, however, was that that long-haul work would be of a piece with one of the now 46-year-old’s passions from an early age. Lowry has raced off-road motorcycles “since I was 11 years old,” he says, on the East Coast circuit through the year 2001, when he began a transition off the bike seat and into a more comfortable, fitting one behind the wheel of a race team transporter.
Today, he hauls in the 2007 Peterbilt 387 and UltraComp custom trailer pictured as the transporter driver for the Jeff Ward Racing team, headed up and named for a seven-time race season champion. “He was the man for a long time,” says Lowry of Ward. “I used to watch him a lot.”
In 2001, leading up to what would be his last pro race in Toledo, Ohio, Lowry was at a qualifier in New York when he had the opportunity to meet the KTM factory team manager, to whom he expressed interest in becoming a transporter driver. He was with that team for four years, then moving to Fairmont, West Virginia, in 2006 (where’s he’s also today the owner and manager of a Line-X protective coatings franchise) when he took the hauling job for then L&M Racing, which merged with Jeff Ward’s and several other outfits just last year.
Lowry’s gotten a front-of-the-house seat for spectacular national success with L&M, which claimed Supercross championships in both 2008 and 2009. This year, he’s hauling two Supercross racers’ gear — Josh Grant and Kyle Chisholm, both new to the young team this year.
Overall, though, personally, Lowry says he’s gotten no small dose of satisfaction from the day-to-day of trucking the team’s equipment cross-country as a transporter. “Truck driving is one of the best jobs I’ve had,” says Lowry. “You’re directly involved in what you’re doing. It feels like the best thing for me: all of us take pride in what we’re driving no matter what it is — we polish the wheels, wash the truck every week. There’s a lot of nice trucks in the circuit.”
Look for his rig at the truck stop, he says. “We’re normal just like any over-the-road guys at the truck stops. We know all the good restaurants.”
Finally, enjoy the handlebar-cam-view vid of a Josh Grant qualifying round at Anaheim earlier this year below:
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