How a retired fire Lt.’s ‘Memorial Run’ truck honors the fallen
Although four names are emblazoned on the back of Randall Rogers’ semi-truck, the rig honors all firefighters who have died in the line of duty
Aug 22, 2018
By Shelbie Watts, FireRescue1 Editorial Assistant
Not many truck drivers are used to vehicles following their rigs to try and get a look, but for a retired fire lieutenant and his wife, it’s something that’s happened more than once.
That’s because the “Memorial Run” is one of a kind.
Although the semi is emblazoned with the names of a few fallen firefighters, retired fire Lt. Randall Rogers said the goal is to honor every firefighter who has given his or her life in the line of duty.
Honoring the fallen Firefighters
As Rogers and his wife Elizabeth drive across the country in the bright red Certified Express, Inc. semi-truck, passerby will first notice a giant gold Maltese cross emblazoned on the side of the rig.
The Memorial Run truck sits in front of Yarnell Hill. (Photo/Randall Rogers)
“How they lived made them heroes” the cross reads, with “Memorial Run” proudly displayed in the middle.
Things get a little more personal on the back, with the names of firefighters that Rogers personally knew. Tim Hardy, Tyler Casey, Steve Fierro and William Brinza are memorialized, with their names on gold ribbons. Below their names, the Granite Mountain Hotshots who died at Yarnell Hill are honored alongside the Prineville Hotshots who died while fighting the 1994 South Canyon fire in Colorado. A bagpiper is also shown walking away, referencing the traditional backdrop of firefighter funerals.
The names of fallen firefighters are emblazoned on the back of the Memorial Run truck. (Photo/Randall Rogers)
The front of the truck honors all firefighters and features a custom grill dedicated to the fallen firefighters of 9/11 and the FDNY.
The semi is equipped with QR codes that take viewers to several websites, such as the National Fallen Firefighters Memorial site and a Facebook page dedicated to the rig.
Rogers said he was not quite aware what he was getting into when he designed the truck. “We put it in service on April 1 of this year, and it became a lot more than I ever expected,” Rogers said.
An emotional reception
The first stop the Memorial Run made was to pay a visit to the Neosho Fire Department in Missouri, where Hardy worked when he was killed in the line of duty.
“We took it down there and the first of the big, emotional experiences came about,” Rogers said. “All of the current firefighters, past chief, past firefighters, media, city council, everyone showed up … and I hadn’t told any media.” Rogers said he and Elizabeth stood back as the firefighters showed “absolute reverence” to the mobile memorial.
“They walked around and looked, and walked around some more, and nobody spoke,” he said. “And I thought, ‘wow, this is what we needed. ’”
Prescott firefighters stand with the Memorial Run truck. (Photo/Randall Rogers)
The moment became one of many as the truck made its way to other departments, including the Carthage Fire Department, where Fierro was a member. His mother was there to greet them. “Linda, Steve’s mom, said ‘don’t misunderstand my question, but why did you do this?’” Rogers recalled. “And I said, ‘if I forget my guys that I’ve lost, what is the world doing for the rest of them? I don’t want these guys forgotten.’”
Remembering Tyler Casey
“The whole purpose was to have this truck ready for Tyler’s 10th anniversary, and we went out to shoot pictures with the truck at the gravesite.” Rogers said. “We later discovered we had lost another firefighter (Brinza) in a neighboring community while we were at Tyler’s service.”
The Memorial Run truck sits by the gravesite of Tyler Casey. (Photo/Kyla Hinz)
The couple attended Brinza’s funeral, and while they were worried the truck might be distracting, the fire chief assured them they were a welcome addition.
Rogers said the hardest part of showing the truck is “separating the shows from honoring the guys.”
“We don’t go to the truck shows to say, ‘hey look at our truck,’ we go to the show because I’m going to see 20,000 people, and those 20,000 people are going to leave and say ‘wow, we didn’t realize that these guys go to work every day and sometimes they don’t come home.’ And that’s what we love.”
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Todd Dills
Todd Dills | August 22, 2018
Former Seneca, Mo., firefighter Randy Rogers drives team with his wife Elizabeth in this Kenworth T680 for Certified Express, Inc. (CEI). The rig, christened Memorial Run, was designed with a central mission in mind — to honor the memory of fallen firefighters everywhere.
When Neosho, Mo.-based Certified Express Inc. (CEI) President and CEO Scott Wade asked trucker Randy Rogers what he’d like in a new truck in its round of orders updating the fleet of around 150 units last year, Wade had been thinking about a U.S. Army-themed wrap. Rogers “had been in the army about four years” in his past, but he’d spent much more time serving as a firefighter for the majority of his working career, before finally retiring from service to the Seneca, Mo. Fire Protection Area in 2008.
“Nothing against the military wraps,” Rogers says, but he’d seen plenty of them on his hauls and other travels around the country.
What he’d never seen: A rolling “memorial to firefighters. I’ve lost a diversity of them with different departments” over his career. Serving as a public information officer in his latter years as a firefighter, “part of my job was going around to area departments and attending funerals.”
It took him all of “14 seconds,” he says, to convince Wade that it was the way to go, and Rogers used another element of his background — utility with graphic arts — to design a variety of the vinyl accents that now cover the 2019 Kenworth T680, Memorial Run.
Memorial Run is pictured here with the site of one of the deadliest wildland fire disasters in American history in the background, Yarnell Hill in Arizona. Among events the Rogers have attended with the truck since it was put into service April 1 was the June opening of the Granite Mountain Interagency Hotshot Crew Learning and Tribute Center in nearby Prescott, Ariz. This photo adorns a poster Randy Rogers is quick to give to anyone along the road he interacts with about the truck and the history of firefighting.
Memorial Run comes with a singular mission: “to honor and memorialize all of our fallen firefighters in this country,” Rogers says.
As noted, over his 16 years in the fire service, he’d experienced no shortage of line-of-duty deaths himself. Three friends and fellow firefighters are specifically memorialized on the back of the sleeper’s cab: Tim S. Hardy of Neosho, Mo.; Steve Fierro of Carthage; and Tyler H. Casey of Seneca. Casey’s death in 2008 precipitated Rogers’ retirement from the service, after which he took up trucking more full-time.
Some time after Casey’s passing, he says he realized he seldom thought of the men he’d lost but for on their death’s anniversaries or “when I would pass the location of their loss,” he says. If he was forgetting them, he knew, so was everyone else.
Thus Memorial Run was born, to function as a constant reminder to anyone in its presence. It serves an educational purpose, too, as all graphics are accompanied by QR codes that can be scanned to take viewers to online resources related to firefighting history.
With the exception of the bagpiper on the back of the sleeper, all graphics are skinned in 3M high-reflective vinyl. The truck is very limited on accent lighting, Rogers says, to prevent from distracting from the story.
The large Maltese cross represent all fallen firefighters and its QR code will take viewers to the National Fallen Firefighters Memorial website. Other codes explain the origin of the bagpiper in the fire service and the dalmatian. One will take you to a nonprofit foundation for the Granite Mountain 19 who died on Yarnell Hill in 2013. There is also a link to the Storm King Mountain tragedy that took the lives of 14 firefighters from Prineville, Oregon, in 1993 in the South Canyon Fire.
The top center of the sleeper, pictured, “is dedicated to the memory of my guys,” Rogers says.
The KW grille’s logo was custom-wrapped to honor FDNY, and the bagpiper shown above references the bagpiping tradition at firemen’s funerals, which dates back to the 1800s in the United States.
The truck, Rogers says, “has brought tears to the biggest of men and their families.”
It’s a special unit, no doubt. I’m excited to experience it in person next month at the Guilty by Association Truck Show in Joplin, Mo., at 4 State Trucks (Sept. 27-29), where you can see it yourself as well.
