Offseason Spotlight: Burnie Allen & Allen Lumber Recognized with Ken Squier Award

Barre, VT – For more than 30 years, the Allen Lumber Company has been a fixture at Thunder Road. As the entitlement sponsor of the Street Stock division, they have overseen hundreds of drivers either on their way through the ranks or who have found a home in the entry-level class. Thunder Road recognized their role in the track’s history this off-season by awarding Allen Lumber and Burnie Allen with the Ken Squier Award.

The award has been bestowed every year since 1987 to a person, business, or organization that has made significant contributions to the “Nation’s Site of Excitement”. Squier’s vision was what led to the founding of Thunder Road in 1960 and to its rebirth in 1982, and his involvement helped propel the track to great heights.

Squier is also a member of the NASCAR Hall of Fame and has brought many things to life in the racing world, including the Motor Racing Network and the first live flag-to-flag broadcast of the Daytona 500. But local racing is what he lived for, and Allen Lumber has lived for it in much the same way.

The same year the Ken Squier Award was first presented was also the year that Squier and Tom Curley created a new Street Stock division. While the Flying Tiger class had been very popular the previous five years, it was also the only weekly class at Thunder Road. Squier and Curley saw the need for an outlet where people new to racing could try it out and have fun without spending a lot of money.

Two years and many thrills later, Allen Lumber came into the picture. The class now affectionately known as the “Crunch Bunch” was soaring in popularity among drivers and fans. The locally-based lumber company – which had just celebrated its 100th anniversary – saw the potential to benefit everyone and decided to attach their name to the division as its entitlement sponsor.

Thirty-one years later, both the division and the company are still at Thunder Road. In fact, they’re practically joined at the hip – you can’t have one without the other. The Street Stocks have evolved in that time, going from the boat-size 8-cylinder cars of the 1980s to the 4-cylinder racers of today. But for decades, it has been the favorite division of countless drivers and fans at Thunder Road. And the support of the Allen Lumber Company has helped make it possible.

One man has been a key to the successful partnership. Burnie Allen, along with his four brothers, have run Allen Lumber since 1984. Burnie currently serves as company treasurer and secretary, along with overseeing building materials and specialties at the Barre location, and he has been there through anything and everything the racing life can offer.

Allen was a racing fan long before Allen Lumber got involved as a sponsor. He was a kid when the track opened and would go to the races with his friends – often taking the “back way” into the track.

“I was eight years old when Thunder Road started,” Allen recalled at the Thunder Road Banquet of Champions. “As a very young man, with all my buddies, going up the back road to Thunder Road. A lot of you don’t know that there were two roads in and out of Thunder Road out of the back pits. It went down onto Batchelder Street. And that was one of the best races there was going up there. We all used to go up as 10- and 12-year-olds with our bikes, and we’d have one person up over the top of the track on the backstretch that would be watching for the police while we all snuck in.”

More recently, his son Lance was a weekly competitor for many years in the Flying Tigers and Late Models. He still runs select events at the speedway, which allowed the entire family – Burnie included – to see the racing from another side.

“I truly enjoyed that experience to get an idea of what you all go through in racing,” Allen noted in his acceptance speech. “We’ve been a sponsor for a lot of years, and we’ve appreciated all your business. Allen Lumber surely enjoys being at Thunder Road, and I’m sure we’ll be there for a much longer time.”

To this day, Burnie Allen and his family are at the track nearly every week, talking with drivers and fans and seeing “their” cars put on a show. At this point, it’s impossible to imagine anyone else associated with the division, and both Allen and his company certainly deserve to have their name on the Ken Squier Award.

“I’m truly honored,” Allen said. “Ken is a great friend. I’m known him for a lot of years.  I’ve been to Daytona with him. I’ve been in a hospital room with him also. He’s just a really great guy, and we all owe him a debt for what he has done for racing in Vermont and all over the nation.”