A Trucker's Tale – It Was What It Was

Oct 23, 2024 - 10 months ago

My grandad, Obie, employed quite a few truck drivers through the years, but three of them made a lasting impression on me.

A Trucker's Tale - It Was What It Was - by Ed Miller — *Obie’s H Model Mack*

The very first truck driver I remember was Walter. He was a tall, lanky, handsome fellow who always smiled, and the word was that all the truck stop waitresses just loved him. I remember him always getting to work on time, and he usually arrived at Obie’s early enough to wash his tractor before he left on his trip, if we brothers had not had time to wash it.

I spent most of my summer nights at my grandparents’ house, and I was awakened one morning around 0400 by an extremely loud noise, which kept getting louder and louder. Looking out the open window, I watched and listened to Walter’s dark green H-67 Mack turn into Obie’s driveway. Obie was also rousted by the noise, and he soon learned that Walter had found a “torch man,” who cut the top off the muffler, removed the baffles, and then braised the top back into place. Yes, the gutted-muffler Mack was very, very loud!

Walter grinned like a Cheshire cat when Obie agreed the truck, “sounded like a truck ought to sound!” The grin disappeared when Obie informed him the muffler would have to be replaced, but to our amazement, especially Walter’s, Obie did not take the new muffler cost out of Walter’s pay, although Walter was warned not to gut any more mufflers.

Another reason I remember Walter was because he returned from a trip with the front of his trailer roof peeled-back several feet. Walter’s story, and he stuck to it, was that a highway (which he said that he previously traveled) had evidently been repaved, and the extra pavement had raised the trailer high enough that it bounced-up and the corner of the trailer hit a bridge.

Well, Walter was not the only driver who destroyed the tops of their trailers, especially since the drivers had many weekly deliveries in downtown Chicago, but none of the other drivers ever offered an excuse any better than Walter’s. When I received my chauffeur’s license, the damaged roofs provided me with ample driving time because the trailer repair shop was about 80 miles away.

One of the other drivers was Clarence, who was a bean-pole-skinny country fellow with a really high-pitched voice. Clarence was a decent driver during warm weather months, but I remember him mostly because of his fear of driving in snow. If he knew it was going to snow during his trip, he would call in sick, rather than take a chance getting caught driving in it. Once, he was on a trip from Western NC to Illinois, and he ran into snow flurries when he reached Cincinnati. He spent the night at a Cincinnati truck stop, hoping to find clear weather the next morning, but upon finding several inches of snow, he hopped a Greyhound and went home to North Carolina. Obie had to send another driver, who took the rig on to deliver in Illinois.

When Clarence begged Obie to give him another chance, Obie told him to come in the next Sunday and he could go back to work. On Sunday, Clarence came to work, performed his pre-trip inspection on his tractor and trailer, and was ready to leave the yard when it began blowing snow. He grabbed his belongings, got out of the truck, and then informed Obie he could not leave because it was snowing. I don’t remember all the cuss words Obie flung at Clarence, but basically, he informed him he was firing him because he could not rely on him.

As soon as spring arrived, Clarence called Obie and asked him, “Are you looking for any good truck drivers?” Obie’s reply was, “Yes, I am, but I don’t know where in the damned-hell I could find any!” Although we heard he was hauling sticks (furniture) somewhere else, we never saw him again.

And then there was Tom, a local, mild mannered, middle-aged man, who had worked quite a few jobs over the years, so I suppose his stint as one of Obie’s drivers just added to his “How many jobs have you had?” persona.

Tom’s son, Tommy, with whom I played Little League baseball, happened to be one of our small town’s heroes. After an extremely deep snow one winter, many of the town’s kids were sledding down a long steep hill on a road which, when not snow covered, was a busy stretch of highway. Tommy must have had greased lightning on his sled that day, because he went flying past the point where everyone else’s sleds had stopped, and his sled even picked-up more speed as it went down another small hill. He was going so fast that he was unable to stop for a red light, and his sled zoomed underneath, and through, the underside of a tractor-trailer which crossed through the intersection at the same time. We all cheered, whooped, and hollered when he passed all the way under the trailer, because we were sure he was going to get squished under the tires. I am sure the truck driver did not have a clue what had just taken place. Tommy certainly beat the devil that snowy day.

Tom returned from one trip in his Emeryville with the entire right front of the tractor demolished. Since some of the metal parts (yes, metal, not plastic) still had remnants of deer hide and hair embedded in them, Obie believed Tom’s tale that he watched a deer loping across an open field beside the highway, and just at the perfect moment, the deer jumped the fence and landed on the highway in front of the truck running 60 miles per hour. That would not be the last time a tractor came home with deer damage, and times really haven’t changed that much, because deer strikes are still damaging scores of trucks each year. I suppose that is one way to help reduce the deer population.

The fact that Tom had many different types of employment probably had a lot to do with his frequent alcohol consumption. When I was 17 years old, Tom asked if I wanted to ride with him to pick-up a load of furniture in Asheville, which was about 35 miles away. Since I had nothing better do to, I hopped into the passenger side and we left the yard. As soon as we got out-of-sight of Obie’s house, Tom pulled over at a wide spot and asked me if I wanted to drive. Well, although I had driven a truck some over the past several years, I still did not possess my chauffeur’s license. That being the case, I crawled behind the wheel and we headed up the mountain to Asheville.

By the time I had gone through all the gears, Tom had already opened his pint of Hiram Walker 10 High Bourbon. As we inched along in the traffic of Asheville’s Tunnel Road, Tom flirted with every woman we passed. By the time I picked-up the load, drove back down the mountain, and then dropped the trailer at our warehouse, Tom was pretty drunk.

It wasn’t too long before Obie had to make the right decision of letting Tom go. Obie realized Tom would eventually hurt someone if he continued to drink and drive and I suppose he knew Tom wasn’t going to put the bottle down anytime soon.

As I think back of those times, Tom certainly wasn’t the only driver I remember as having a strong relationship with “the bottle.” Having had a father that enjoyed his bourbon, it didn’t take long for me to detect a man’s alcohol level by his breath, and there were many times I knew a fellow had been drinking before he uttered his first word.

Far be it from me to know why this was tolerated, but the fact that truck drivers were needed—TRUCK DRIVERS ARE STILL NEEDED—meant that a good interview with the owner could usually guarantee a man a trucking job. Since there were no drug or alcohol tests required at that time, if a man showed-up sober for his initial interview, at least that meant that he wasn’t drinking at that moment. Past employer verification only happened if the owner knew the owner the driver used to work for. Phone calls to someone you didn’t know were not of much use, because if the driver (in question) was drunk on his last job, then that owner wouldn’t admit it because he was glad to get rid of him.

After a driver began working, his alcohol content could, most often, be measured by how he performed his job. If he didn’t call to let Obie know he would not be in, then he was drunk. When he came in to leave on Sunday, if he staggered from his personal vehicle to his tractor, then he was drunk. When he returned from a trip with a damaged tractor or trailer (or both) and he didn’t have a good excuse of the damage, then he was probably drunk.

Yes, I know some of you are thinking, “WTF?” but back then, wrecks and damaged vehicles caused by a driver’s alcohol consumption were considered as accidents. I agree that it shouldn’t have taken decades for drunk driving laws to end these views, but to retroactively paraphrase today’s saying, “It Was What It Was!” p

Ed Miller ([email protected]) has more than 40 years of management and ownership experience in the trucking industry. Today, he is a part-time tour bus driver, published author of “A Trucker’s Tale”, and regular contributor to Supply Post. He is a father of three and a grandfather of two, and lives with his wife in Rising Sun, Maryland.