Truckers Against Trafficking award pays $5,000 for one call that saves a life
Nominations for the 2026 Harriet Tubman Award close August 15. Any driver, dispatcher, or travel plaza worker who helped a trafficking victim can be nominated. The training is free.
A driver who makes one call to 911 or the National Human Trafficking Hotline after spotting something wrong at a truck stop can win $5,000, a trophy, and national recognition through the Harriet Tubman Award. Nominations for the 2026 award close August 15, 2026.
Truckers Against Trafficking (TAT) created the award in 2013 to honor transportation professionals whose direct actions helped save or improve the life of someone being exploited, or prevented human trafficking from taking place. The award is now sponsored by WEX through a three-year commitment announced in March 2026. The winner gets the $5,000 check, a paid trip to the award ceremony at the WEX OTR Summit, and recognition across TAT's publications.
What does it take to win the Harriet Tubman Award?
The person nominated must be TAT-trained, work in trucking, bus, or energy, and have taken action to aid a potential victim. The incident must have happened in the United States or Canada, and the nominee must live in one of those two countries.
Winners have included professional drivers, travel plaza employees, and bus industry workers. WinCo Foods driver Joe Aguayo won the 2023 award after he saw a woman standing near the fog line on a dark rural road, head shaved, wearing only a beach towel, no other car or person in sight. He called it in. She turned out to be a human trafficking victim.
Kevin Kimmel, a professional driver, made a call from a truck stop that led law enforcement to a young woman being held, tortured, and prostituted in an RV parked nearby. Charles Bernsen, general manager of the Petro travel plaza in Florence, South Carolina, noticed a distressed young woman lingering in his store and acted on it, earning the 2024 award. 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 their bus.
None of these people were investigators. They had been through TAT's training, saw something that did not add up, and made a call.
How do you nominate someone for the award?
Nominations are submitted through TAT's website. The nominator needs to provide the details of the incident, what happened, what action the person took, and when and where it occurred.
Once submitted, the nomination is vetted and then goes to TAT's award selection committee. 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. Through the WEX sponsorship, the 2026 award will be presented at the WEX OTR Summit, with travel covered for the winner and a guest.
You do not need to be certain the person you are nominating single-handedly cracked a case. TAT's 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.
Why the award exists in trucking
Professional drivers, travel plaza workers, and bus operators 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.
A trafficking victim being moved along the interstate system passes through the professional space of truck and bus drivers constantly. 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 what to do about it: call the National Human Trafficking Hotline or 911 rather than intervening directly.
What this means for your operation
For a small carrier or an owner-operator, this award is a reminder that TAT's free training exists and that it works. 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.
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.
