WORKING THROUGH a million man-hours with absolutely no lost-time accidents was no small achievement for the team at Tucker Paving, Inc. — no, the achievement was and remains HUGE — so a celebration was in order. It was held the evening of Friday, June 9, at the Lake Eva Events Center in Haines City.

The Thanks a Million Dinner, for all Tucker Paving employees and their immediate family members, featured great food, great fun, great fellowship, a very nice assortment of prizes for some lucky people in attendance, and a few words of congratulations and thanks from Larry “Chip” Tucker, our president. (See the event photo gallery on our Facebook page at https://bit.ly/2x4Nmb8.)

The theme of the dinner, co-sponsored by WorkComp Solutions and Summit Loss Control Services, was “WE ALL DID IT!” Going a million man-hours truly was a team milestone, with management staying consistently focused on its primary safety-first message and employees in the field and in the offices consistently — and with a great attitude — buying into that message.

Consider the enormity of this milestone, which was reached and then surpassed this past spring. One million safe man-hours is the equivalent of one employee — in the arena of mostly heavy outdoor construction, no less — working 2,080 hours per year (40 hours per week for 52 weeks, with no holidays or vacations included) for more than 480 years without being involved in a lost-time accident. The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration defines a loss-time accident as an OSHA-recordable incident in which an employee is not able to return to work or is assigned restricted work on the day or shift following the incident.

Our safety milestone was achieved, of course, in a much shorter time frame with many more employees involved in construction and other work activities.

You can read more about how this safety milestone was achieved in a nice Ledger newspaper online article at https://bit.ly/2t57iVO. The article features a couple of nice photos, one that includes Terry Tucker, our safety director; Patrick Braisted, our executive vice president; and pipe superintendent Jose Lopez.

Oh, there’s one other thing about the June 9 Thanks a Million Dinner. It, too, was a safe employee-involved endeavor, with no loss-time incident reported, we’re pleased to share.