MTA names Hylife’s Bulacso as Driver of the Year

The Manitoba Trucking Association (MTA) hosted its annual driver awards banquet, celebrating outstanding achievements within the trucking community and recognizing drivers for their dedication and safe driving records.

Top honors went to Jasvinder Brar of Bison Transport, who was crowned the MTA-MPI Grand Champion, and Mario Bulacso of Hylife, the MTA-Volvo Trucks Canada Driver of the Year for Manitoba.

Professional Truck Driving Championship

Brar took home top honors from the day’s Professional Truck Driving Championship (PTDC) with a score of 97 points above average in the tandem-tandem category.  His colleagues from Bison also took first and second place in the team award category. Meanwhile, Bison’s Sergeii Linkevych took top honors in the tandem-day cab category and was the Hal Bjornson Memorial Award recipient, with a top score overall.

2024 PTDC First Place Winners
2024 PTDC first place winners, from left, Jim Devlin, Jasvinder Brar, Sergeii Linkevych, Dave Mikkola, Darcy Olson. (Photo: MTA)

Other PTDC winners included Gurinder Singh (XPO Logistics) as the top rookie and  Dave Mikkola (By’s Transport) in the super-B category.

Second-place recipients:

  • Tandem-tandem: Prabhjot Randhawa (Bison Transport)
  • Tandem-day cab: Gord Unger (Searcy Trucking)
  • Super-B: Bruce McKechnie (Bison Transport)
  • Team: Bison 2

Third-place recipients:

  • Tandem-tandem: Brian Chandler (XPO Logistics)
  • Tandem-day cab: Gurinder Singh (XPO Logistics)
  • Super-B: Murray Manuliak (Bison Transport)
  • Team: Thunder (XPO Logistics)

MTA-Inland Group Industry Excellence Awards

Among other notable awards, the MTA-Inland Group Industry Excellence Awards were given to 10 veteran drivers, who, all combined, boast over three hundred years of driving experience and over 37 million miles.

2024 MTA-Inland Group Industry Excellence Award recipients
2024 MTA-Inland Group Industry Excellence Award recipients (Photo: MTA)

The winners

  • Herb Martin (Arnold Bros. Transport)
  • Don Taylor (Big Freight Systems)
  • Donald Simonson (Payne Transportation)
  • John Cooper (Searcy Trucking)
  • Leonard Swedick (Penner International)
  • Mario Bulacso (Hylife)
  • Marshall Timmer (Arnold Bros Transport)
  • Randy Bielik (Gardewine)
  • Tatiana Kulish (Penner International)
  • Timothy Loughrin (Penner International)


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  • Congratulations good job done. When I was in a trucking industry, I was in the truck Rodeo mini times with atomic transport. You get to know some good drivers and it was fun.