Career Leadership Award: On the go--with FedEx' Sid Gooch.

From a horseback-riding, motorcrossing, drag-racing youth in Georgia, to a highly respected managing director at FedEx, Sid Gooch has displayed a lifelong love of mobility, and a fervent dedication to keeping machines moving in the most cost-effective manner possible. Read on, and see why Sid is this year's recipient of CCJ's Fleet Maintenance Executive Career Leadership Award.

Young Sid knew his friend's bone-stock 327 Chevelle would be no match for the other guy's primer-gray, 383 Plymouth Roadrunner. So, before the big street race, Sid and friends secretly shoehorned a slightly tweaked 396 into the Chevelle. It handily outran the Plymouth, then was quickly spirited back to the garage to drop the 327 back in--just in case there were any questions from the bewildered Plymouth owner.

Even long before those days, Sid would go for daily rides on a horse his father had given him for Christmas. He was on the move, and it was a passion that was to shape his career.

Early years, early wheels

After hours, during high school in Jefferson, Ga., Sid worked as a mechanic at a local garage for 50 cents an hour. He pieced together his first car, a '57 Ford, from two donors--one with a decent body, and one with a running engine. The result was reliable transportation but, "Stock just wasn't cool back then," he recalls.

Not wanting to risk being branded "un-cool" he figured that, "The car had to be jacked up in the back and have wire-spoke hubcaps, so I took care of that pretty quickly"

Sid's mechanical proficiency led him to compete in Plymouth-sponsored auto troubleshooting competitions, where a car would be rigged with faults, and it was the job of competitors to diagnose and correct the problems. Sid's two-man team won the regional title, and placed third in the state.