Ken Croteau has been a company driver at Jeff Foster Trucking in Superior, Wis., for the past 14 years. Personable, neat, dependable and a hard worker, Croteau is the kind of driver every fleet owner wishes he could clone.
 
In 1997, having proven his merit to the company, Croteau was rewarded with an almost new Kenworth W900 with only 100,000 miles on it. That was 10 years ago. Since then, Croteau has added more than 1.2 million miles to the speedometer and said there’s plenty of miles left in his W900.
 
“It just shows how strongly drivers feel about their trucks, and the quality of Kenworth trucks,” said company owner Jeff Foster, who has often tried coaxing Croteau out of the truck. On at least two occasions, Foster has offered to put his valued driver into a brand new Kenworth W900 – once in 2001, when the company purchased a large number of W900s, and again in 2007. Both times, Croteau turned him down, arguing, “There’s no reason to get out of a truck that has been so good to me,” he said.
 
In 2007, Foster went so far as to purchase a new Kenworth W900 spec’d specially for Croteau. “We ordered a refrigerator, a couch instead of a bed, everything just like in his 10-year-old truck, thinking that is what he would want,” said Foster. “When I told him I had this new W900 coming for him, he said, ‘There’s really nothing wrong with my old truck. It doesn’t even rattle. Can’t we just repaint it?’”
 
Foster did one better for his driver. He had the truck taken apart, the frame sandblasted, the whole truck repainted and put back together with new fuel tanks, grille, stacks and steps.
 
Croteau’s brother Jim, who also works at Jeff Foster Trucking, offers a possible explanation for Ken’s strong attachment to the Kenworth W900. “Kenny’s driven this one so long and has taken such good care of it, he can’t see giving the truck to someone else who might not take such good care of it,” said Jim Croteau.
 
Another explanation could be that maybe there’s something extra special about this driver and his 1997 Kenworth W900 with 72-inch AeroCab®. Croteau said the transmission has never needed repair and shifts as smoothly today as it did 1.2 million miles ago. And he swears he gets 7 to 7.5 mpg. “Unbelievable fuel mileage, and I don’t know why,” Ken Croteau said. “A couple years ago, we checked it real good in wintertime. Even with idle time, even with a 3.70 rear axle ratio, it was getting 6.75 mpg. Nobody could believe it.”
 
Over the past 10 years, Croteau and his W900 have been inseparable except when his truck was repainted. At that time, Croteau was forced to drive a back-up truck. “That was a nice truck, too,” Ken Croteau said. “But I couldn’t wait to get back into my W900. I wouldn’t want anything else. A dressed up W900 is the best looking truck on the road. I’d just as soon keep mine.”
 
This kind of customer satisfaction, combined with Kenworth’s quality products such as the W900, contributed to Kenworth’s reception of three 2007 J.D. Power and Associates awards for “Highest in Customer Satisfaction for Over the Road Segment, Pickup and Delivery and Vocational Segment Class 8 Trucks.”*
 
Kenworth Truck Company, a division of PACCAR Inc, is a leading manufacturer of heavy and medium duty trucks. Kenworth’s Internet home page is at www.kenworth.com. Kenworth. The World’s Best.

*Kenworth received the highest numerical score among pickup and delivery, vocational, and over the road Class 8 trucks in the proprietary J.D. Power and Associates 2007 Heavy-Duty Truck Customer Satisfaction Study(SM). Study based on 2,677 U.S. responses and measures opinions of principal maintainers. Proprietary study results are based on experiences and perceptions of those surveyed in March-June 2007. Your experiences may vary. Visit jdpower.com.

CONTACT:                                                           
Jeff Parietti, (425) 828-5196