Blue Bird facility wins safety award

FORT VALLEY, Ga. — Blue Bird Corp.’s manufacturing facility here recently completed one year without a lost-time incident.

As a result, the company was honored with the Traxis President Safety Award for 2008 to recognize the plant’s employees for safely working more than 3.4 million hours during the fiscal year.

“We are very proud of this important safety milestone,” said Bill Cooper, Blue Bird’s senior vice president and general manager. “Our employees are our greatest asset, and their safety is our top priority. Our plant motto is ‘Safety First, Safety Always.’”

The award was presented to Ed Lyghtel, Blue Bird's vice president of school bus operations, by Herb Clark, The Traxis Group’s senior vice president of human resources.

The annual honor is awarded among plants within The Traxis Group, based on a scoring of metrics including hours, incident rates, lost-time rates and restricted-duty rates.