Sometimes, being an experienced driver means more than getting from point A to point B safely. The Missouri National Guard’s 548th Transportation Company has returned home after serving a year in Afghanistan, and boasts a safety record that’s impeccable.

While walking in a first grade classroom of boys and girls in Afghanistan, Sgt. 1st Class Christine Chaney (behind) visits with the children and hands out school supplies and small gifts to the students. Chaney was on a year-long mission with the Missouri Army National Guard in Shindand with the 548th Transportation Company out of Trenton. (Click photo to see more photos from the mission.)

Guard spokeswoman Jnnifer Archdekin says transporting goods and personnel isn’t as easy as it sounds. She says in addition to American soldiers, Missouri’s Transportation Company was also helping soldiers from Italy, Africa, Spain and elsewhere in the harshest conditions imaginable.

Missouri’s Transportation Company ran more than 300 convoy missions, transported more than 20 million pounds of equipment, and logged nearly 400 thousand miles during the year it spent in Afghanistan … about 390 thousand mile. That’s an equivalent to 15 trips around the equator. And they did it all without a single injury.

“The teams delivered critical supplies to hard-to-reach locations traveling across the desert for up to 18 hours a day,” she says. “Soldiers was centrally located at Shindand, with teams also positioned at Forward Operating Base Pasab, Camp Stone, Camp Leatherneck and Kandahar Air Field.”

“They participated in a wide variety of missions, both as base support at Shindand, as well as theater support outside the base. The 548th was key in the rebuilding of the Afghanistan economy by providing armed escorts for over 600 host nation transport vehicles as they were contracted to move Coalition equipment throughout the theater of operations.”

She says the work will be continued by another company from another state.