by Ed Miller
The truck parking lot at this terminal must have been at least ten acres, which left me plenty of room to hit golf balls. It didn’t matter how far I hit the balls, or where they went, because Sheba located and returned each one. The yard was also great for hitting tennis balls to Sheba with a baseball bat. Inside, there was a long, four-foot wide hallway separating the two offices, which provided an excellent venue for Sheba to play her game, “See if you can get the ball past me.” There was one driver who especially enjoyed playing her game, and did so each time he came to the terminal. He played with her for a long time one afternoon while he was waiting for his loading appointment at a steel mill. When it was time for him to leave, he stuck his head into my doorway and declared, “That dog is a four-legged Willie Mays!” This was Sheba’s best-fitting description and one of her finest compliments.
I was working out of town when my wife called to inform me that Sheba was “down.” She couldn’t stand up, eat, or drink. Circumstances made it impossible for me to return home for a few days, so my wife and I agreed that she would take Sheba to the vet for him to put her to sleep. She lived just one month shy of eighteen years. I had never thought of what to do when she passed away, but her ashes still rest in our family room.
Most everyone who’s owned a dog thinks they’ve owned the smartest and most well-trained dog. Just mention how smart your dog is and you will soon learn all the amazing things other folks’ dogs can do—we’re talking about smart animals here, not cats. We love our pets. We take them with us when we go for a drive. We take them with us when we go on vacation. We act silly over our pets—doting on them, spoiling them, hell, even dressing them up—because they are part of our family, our best friends. Did you hear the one about the guy who asked, “Why are dogs better than a wife?” His answer was, “Because your wife gives you hell when you come home at 2:00 a.m., but your dog licks your face and is terribly excited to see you!”
Animals bring joy, laughter, and comfort to a great many people. I met Sheba as an energetic ten-week-old pup and the gal grew into a beautiful, pure white, fifty-pound best friend. She was so special to me that I cried my eyes out when she died. Over twenty years later, I still think of the things she used to do.
I’ve also seen a few cats find their way to the trucking yard over the years. When I was still driving for my dad, a black-and-white mixed breed cat found our furniture warehouse, and whether she found some mice, or more likely due to the fact that we started feeding her, she decided to stay close for a while. When the weather turned cooler, she must have enjoyed the warmer climate of the local pick-up tractor, which was a big, red, gas-guzzling, two-axle Chevrolet. We aren’t sure where she came from, but she was very friendly and always came meowing when we arrived to start work.
One time, I returned from picking up some LTL (less than truckload) furniture at a plant in Shelby, North Carolina, and when I shut off the motor, I heard a soft commotion under the tractor’s bench seat. Damn! That cat had somehow got into the tractor and delivered four or five kittens, and every one of them was crying for their mama. I gathered them up and put them in a small box lined with some clean rags. A few minutes later, I received a call from someone at the furniture plant I had previously left, who told me there had not been another driver at the location since I was there, so did I know anything about a cat which was running around their warehouse? Well, I loaded those kitties in my car and away we headed the fifty miles back to Shelby to get their mama. Once there, I parked the car, picked up the box, and started for the shipping office, but hadn’t even made it to the door before the mama cat came running to the sound of her babies.
They kittens didn’t cry at all on their way back home. They just ate and slept. Afterward, mama cat and her kittens stayed around the warehouse for six to eight weeks, but when we went to work one morning, they were all gone. I supposed the mama cat had just wanted a good, warm shelter in which to deliver her kittens, and then they found another home.
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3The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration regulates the number of hours commercial vehicle drivers can operate, which, simply put, presently allows a trucker to drive no more than eleven hours before taking a ten hour break.
Part Seven
Knights of the Highway
In years past, truckers have had the distinction of being known as the Knights of the Highway, because they could be counted on to stop and help stranded four-wheelers. Through the years, these knights changed thousands of tires, extinguished numerous camper tire fires, added water to countless dry radiators, pushed vehicles out of the snow, saved many lives by pulling motorists from burning vehicles, and even delivered babies. Truck drivers have never expected to be paid for helping, and most refused offers of payment. They stopped to help because it was the right thing to do.
These days, some truckers still stop to help, and all stop in the case of emergencies, but the practice seems to have diminished. I suppose there are some obvious reasons for not stopping, such as the threat of being mugged or having your vehicle jacked. For these same reasons, most car drivers don’t stand outside their vehicles and wave down help. They stay put in their locked cars and use their cell phones to call for help. High interstate speeds also make it impractical for trucks to stop because by the time truck drivers notice a breakdown, they are too far past the breakdown site to stop.
A Knight of the Highway once saved me from a costly tow-bill, not to mention possible admonishment from Pennsylvania law enforcement. It happened around eleven o’clock on a cold, snowy evening in Pittsburgh, when I was on my way home from a business dinner (one that either started late or, more likely, ran late because we shared a few after-dinner cocktails in the restaurant’s bar). I’d left downtown through the Fort Pitt Tunnel and was headed up Greentree Hill. Although there were only a few inches of falling snow, plows had pushed it out of the road and into berms on the shoulders.
I thought I was driving carefully, but my Datsun (now Nissan) 240Z 2+2 somehow straddled one of the two-feet high snow berms. When the car came to a stop, I put it in reverse and let out the clutch, but absolutely nothing happened. I got out of the car and saw that I had perfectly balanced it on top the berm, and all four wheels were off the ground.
I was not dressed properly for slogging several miles through the snowy slush in order to find a pay phone, so I used my CB radio to beg some trucker to come to my aid. Using the trucker’s channel 19, I broadcast, “Are any of you eighteen-wheelers heading up Greentree Hill? Could someone with a chain come help me?” I continued repeating the transmission as though it was my SOS, or Mayday call, throwing in things like, “Come on guys, have a heart,” or “Help another trucker and pull me out of this snow.”
Twenty minutes after I began my plea, a Knight of the Highway, in the form of an owner-operator, pulled up behind my perfectly balanced vehicle. He’d noticed me while he was heading up Greentree Hill and then heard me begging for help on the CB radio. He said he’d chuckled a couple of times while listening to my broadcasts.
I knew this section of highway very well, so I was aware that this fine fellow had to have driven several miles, and upon reaching an exit at the top of the hill, done a flip and driven back down the hill to come help me. He then had to go around two different cloverleafs, so he could get back to me. With the power of his chain, it took all of ten seconds to pull my car off the berm.
I tried my damnedest to pay him for his trouble. I asked him for his name and address, so I could send him a check. When that didn’t work, I asked if I could buy him breakfast. He declined it all and calmly explained that it just looked like I needed help, and he was glad to be able to assist.
Personally, I think another reason that truckers don’t stop to help nowadays, especially younger drivers, is because they are unaware of their former status as Knights of the Highway, and some think like the Baltimore dispatcher who said, “No baby, that ain’t my de-
PART-ment!” Perhaps if they understood the storied past of their forbearers, and the honor that inheres being one of the last great American cowboys, younger drivers would be more inclined to take on the role. Maybe truck driving schools should teach a course titled Knights of the Highway 101.
It’s also true that the revised federally mandated hours of service limit drivers being able to “waste time” by stopping to help, contributing to the decline in the number of truckers observed pulling over to help four-wheelers. Some people may think I’m full of shit for saying this, but quite candidly, I do feel that truckers need the better image that could be brought about by helping others more often. The sight of a big rig helping a four-wheeler is a very powerful message to the motoring public. It’s not that there aren’t truckers who’ll help, it’s just that there aren’t enough.
One thing, though, has never changed. The Knights of the Highway can always be counted on to offer their help to a woman who’s standing on the shoulder alongside her car. Especially in hot weather, and especially if the woman is partial to short shorts and halter tops. These breakdowns have even been known to cause traffic problems due to the high number of tractor trailers pulling over to help just one young lady.
A Note on Safety
Trucking is one of the most hazardous professions. Many drivers have been injured or killed while conscientiously performing the multitude of tasks required of truck drivers. Most drivers remember climbing up onto the catwalk to hook their air hoses and pigtail for trailer lights, only to slip and bust their asses on the wet, or snow-covered, or iced-over diamond plate steel. And what about the joy of opening the right trailer door, just before backing into the dock, only to have product fall on their heads? We have all suffered the pain, and even worse, the embarrassment, of falling out of a trailer because we lost our footing on a wet floor. Even Obie had his troubles—though he said that he never fell, the pavement always jumped up and hit him.
Numerous drivers, myself included, have also been cut by the sharp edge of the end of the Signode strap found on thousands of products, which keep shipment boxes tightly secured. These injuries used to be even more frequent because some receivers required truck drivers to cut the steel bands of each bundle. Those suckers acted like they had homing devices, because the taut straps would take off upon being cut. I have a scar on my left arm to show for it.
Flatbed and lowboy trucking offers truck drivers even more chances than closed vans to bust their asses. It just stands to reason that if you climb onto a trailer often enough, you will eventually fall. Until the past few years, there wasn’t anything for a driver to hold onto, much less ladders to use. One way to climb up was by placing your fingers in the tie-down pockets at the rear of the trailer—which were actually steel holes used to insert steel poles for hauling pipes, but also used to insert wooden extensions on trailer side boards, similar to the side boards I used to keep the Vietnamese kids from stealing beer—and then stepping onto the bumper guard required by the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), and pulling yourself up. (In 1953, ICC required all trailers to have rear bumper guards to prevent cars from running underneath a trailer.) Another method, if you were young and agile, was to stand on the tractor’s catwalk and hold onto the headboard as you glided around it. I used to be young and agile, but one time my hands slipped, and I busted my ass anyway while trying this maneuver. I did, however, once see a chiseled, muscular, young truck driver, whose physique would have allowed him to pose as the mythical Atlas, stand flat-footed beside a flatbed trailer, squat down, and jump the fifty-five inches up onto the trailer. It was a sight to behold.
Working with chains, binders, and nylon straps provides even more opportunities for injuries. If you’re using a binder pipe to tighten your chains and a chain breaks, you almost always fall. You get up, most of the time, but sometimes you require a doctor’s immediate attention. Many drivers have had their teeth knocked out when a binder has snapped open and hit them in the face. Quite a few drivers brag scarred faces, thanks to all the stitches that the binder wounds require. I know some drivers who consider their scars to be badges of honor, or even “badges of courage,” and the scars provide what they claim to be visual evidence of the experiences they recount in tall tales about how they got injured.
Pulling older trailers could also knock a driver’s teeth out. At times, when a driver was driving an old trailer, he would be cranking a handle whose bolts and nuts had rusted from years of exposure to rain, snow, dirt, and road salt, and one of the rusted bolts on the handle or a rod would break. The result was hardly ever pretty if the handle snapped and hit his face: teeth gone, face cut, and sometimes, if he’d been using great effort, arm or back sprained, and knee cap busted open upon hitting the ground.
Working around equipment is also always hazardous, and most of us have the scars to prove it. I suffer a ringing in my ears, tinnitus, as many other guys do, developed from regular exposure to extremely loud noises, whether from driving very loud trucks, operating heavy equipment, listening to Obie beating the hell out of something on an anvil, dropping dock plates onto concrete, or forcing together three-piece rims using a sledgehammer, or a combination of all of these. Truckers today are damn sure to make our kids and grandkids wear eye and ear protection. I would be a hell of a lot better off if I had known to use ear protection.
But not all drivers’ injuries are caused by the inherent dangers associated with trucking. Some, I’m sad to say, are due to a driver’s desire to show off his agility and strength, and I admit I’ve made some brash choices myself.
One memorable time occurred when I worked in the office at WMTS. From time to time I was required to drive if we did not have a road driver available. On one occasion, the trip was to pick up a load of steel at Bethlehem Steel in Sparrows Point, Maryland, which no longer exists. So I pulled on my overalls, pre-tripped a tractor and flatbed, and then drove about eight miles to the facility, and backed into Bethlehem’s Dock 48. I set up the trailer for a load of steel coils, using 4x4s and coil racks. Coil racks are twenty-four-inch-long pieces of two-inch-wide steel strips with four-inch, ninety degree steel angles welded onto the ends of the strips. The racks are laid perpendicular on the middle of the trailer and two eight-foot-long 4x4s are laid inside the racks. The racks provide a cradle in which to set steel coils.
The steel mill prohibited drivers from standing on their trailers, or sitting in their tractors, while the trailer was being crane-loaded, so I moseyed off to the men’s room to kill some time. When I returned, I retrieved something from my tractor, and noticed that the trailer was already loaded. I closed the tractor’s passenger-side door, and looked down the side of the trailer at the loading dock. The dock was the perfect height for me to showcase my physical abilities by jumping up on it, so I lit out running alongside my trailer. Using my last step to push up onto the dock, I saw myself as Superman: Leaping tall buildings in a single bound.
Goddamn, the pain was excruciating. My push step did not go as planned, as my foot planted in the middle of a puddle of steel coil oil. I’d only made it about halfway through the jump when my leg crashed into the steel-covered corner of the concrete dock. The material from my blue jeans and my blue overalls was driven into my dented shinbone and skin.
The steelworkers and truck drivers in the vicinity all witnessed my acrobatics. Even though my leg hurt so badly that I wanted to cry, I got up, brushed myself off, and walked onto my trailer as if nothing had happened. I felt as though I would pass out at any moment as I began the unbelievably painful task of chaining and tarping the coils.
I did not have stitches because there was not enough skin on my shin to stitch. Actually, what I really needed was a bone graft. To this day, I quietly wear both my badge of stupidity and my badge of embarrassment—it’s Wrangler blue and fixed on my right shin.
I don’t drive trucks anymore, but I still think like a truck driver when I drive my car. And given that I became intoxic
ated by the smell of diesel fuel at a very young age, it may come as no surprise to know that I now drive a diesel-powered school bus. Every time another four-wheeler acts in a way I consider stupid, or irresponsible, I try my very best not to lose my temper. Try being the operative word. But since I can do absolutely nothing about that bad driver, why should I get upset? While it’s clear to me that many car drivers should be riding in taxis rather than driving themselves, the reality is that these drivers typically don’t have a clue-in-hell that they are driving improperly. They cannot drive worth a damn and yet, in most cases, are totally unaware of it. But if they’re not upset about their stupidity on the road, why should I get that way? I have a much more enjoyable drive when I don’t get worked up every time a four-wheeler does something stupid. And clueless four-wheelers don’t just piss off truckers—they are equal opportunity pisser-offers. They do it to the rest of us four-wheelers just as thoughtlessly as they do it to the truckers.
