Originally published on Liberty Mutual branded experience site, “Passion to Protect.”

Tom Fowler’s morning begins at Ketchikan International Airport, where he picks up packages that have arrived by air and brings them across the channel that separates the city of Ketchikan, Alaska, from the airport on the 8:00 ferry. 

On a hazy morning, Fowler arrives at the UPS distribution center in Ketchikan, honks twice, and backs his truck expertly into the bay, pulling up within an inch of the loading platform, which is flush with the back of the truck to help drivers load and unload more safely.

Then Fowler and his two colleagues unload and sort some 450 packages for delivery, moving safely between the loading platform and their trucks while Motown tunes play in the background. Before he heads out on the road, Fowler runs through his daily pretrip checklist to confirm the safety and condition of his delivery vehicle.

Once Fowler gets going, he doesn’t stop till he’s done; his days usually begin at 5:30 in the morning and end between 3:30 and 4:00 in the afternoon. Fortunately, he’s always been an early riser, a habit that also comes in handy on fishing trips with his brother when the two have to take turns staying awake on the boat.

The roads only extend 16 miles in either direction from Ketchikan — beyond those edges, waterways intervene — so Fowler and his fellow drivers know their routes intimately. Fowler’s route takes him past the house he designed and helped build for himself, set up on a hill overlooking the channel where cruise ships arrive each day.

Similarly steep inclines throughout the city add to the challenges of Ketchikan’s infamous weather: it averages 12.5 feet of rain each year, with a notch for each inch marked on the “Liquid Sunshine Gauge” in front of the Ketchikan Visitors Center.

That weather is no obstacle for a man who has lived in the city for more than 45 years. Driving around town each day, he’s well-known to the community’s 15,000 residents. He even finds himself meeting some of the hundreds of thousands of tourists who arrive on the cruise ships each summer — including visiting UPS drivers who pass through and want to meet their local colleagues. Being in a small town “makes you focus on customer service, on being polite, being safe,” said Fowler.

Fowler started driving for UPS during its first holiday season in Ketchikan in 1986, and became a full-time driver not long after. As in his previous professions as a pilot, logger, and commercial fisherman, he learned early on to be self-sufficient as a driver. Because the city is difficult to travel to — it can take five hours by plane on the “milk run” that makes stops between Anchorage and Ketchikan — managers’ visits are less frequent than in more accessible areas.

In 2014 he became the first Circle of Honor inductee in Alaska, an honor UPS bestows on drivers with a 25-year accident-free driving record. Like his colleagues who share the honor, he is proud of the achievement and recognizes how difficult it is to attain.

“It suddenly struck me that, you know, all the stuff I’d done, the extra effort I’d made, the paying attention to the methods and all that stuff actually added up to 25 years’ safe driving,” he observed. “You don’t get to be the best by looking for the easy route and the easy way out. You get to be the best by having a passion for doing it right and a passion for doing it safely.”

Many of Fowler’s behaviors at work also bleed into his personal life, which keeps him busy as president of the local running club and acting in community theater productions. “UPS expects certain things out of you, and so I take that home. I like working for a company that has high standards. I like working for a company that expects you to do the right thing. And I like to do that in my own life,” Fowler said.

When Fowler’s day finally ends, he lies in bed late each night reviewing the workday he’s just completed. Day after day, the work still satisfies him.

“The reason I keep at it is I like getting up in the morning. I like having a job to do. This job impacts humanity. We are the veins that move the blood of the nation. I can’t think of anything else I’d rather do at this point.”