A Trucker's Tale – Autocars and The Missing M16

Jan 22, 2025 - 7 months ago

After a sweaty day of hauling gravel-laden trucks and dodging mopeds, will some beer-fueled detective work recover the missing M16?

A Trucker's Tale - Autocars & The Missing M16 — *Autocars, similar to the vintage of the one pictured, played a role in some jungle shenanigans in Vietnam. Photo courtesy* *McKay/Wikimedia Commons.*

While on our two-week deployment before we left Vietnam, two of our tractors were Autocars. They were the most powerful trucks in our battalion. These machines were not much to look at, especially painted olive green, but their (approximately) 600 horsepower would damn-surely “haul the mail.”

Both of our Autocars were used for hauling crusher-run gravel from our Hue barge location, which was about 60 miles south of our worksite, and for transporting heavy equipment. I’m not sure how much weight a fully loaded belly dump carried when hauling gravel, but each trailer was overflowing when it left the loading site, so the payload probably weighed between 70,000 to 80,000 pounds. Each tractor was equipped with a two-stick 5 X 4 transmission. With these heavy loads, you could shift 10 to 12 gears before attaining 25 miles per hour. By the time you got to 25 mph, either a fully-loaded-people-hanging-onto-the-sides bus, or a moped carrying two or three passengers would pull out, or stop, in front of you. After either having to slow down to nothing, or sometimes completely stopping, you would have to start changing gears all over again, just to have a similar incident happen, requiring the need to begin changing all those gears again. Yes, each 60-mile trip took quite a while to complete, and the 5 X 4 transmission gave a whole new meaning to “cog- swapping.”

The fun part of each run, if there was a fun part, took place upon our arrival at the destination, which was a road-bed construction site. The roadway had been completed to the point that dirt had been packed down and graded smooth. The next step was the application of several inches of crusher-run gravel, which would also need to be graded smoothly, so the final step, the asphalt pavement, could be laid on top of the crusher-run.

Anyway, without slowing from our 25 to 30 mph, after an engineer’s high sign, we would hit both switches, and both hoppers would open. (Oh, yes. This process was sometimes waved-off due to some local moped driver stopping in the middle of the road to observe what we were doing.) When that happened, we would find a wide place to turn around, and then head back in the opposite direction to finish what we had started. Most of us became quite proficient at spreading the gravel so smoothly and level, that the graders did not have much to do, because it looked as though a motor grader had already been at work. All that needed to be done now was to pack it and pave on top of it. I certainly am glad I was able to drive an Autocar while they were still around.

Our small detachment was assigned several tractors and lowboys, including the two Autocars, which we used each morning to haul our equipment to the job site. We were working in gleaming white sand, and the temperature was over 100 degrees each day. Throughout the day, rain would fall; the sun would come out and cause steam to rise from the sand; it would rain some more; then more sun and steam. We didn’t have teak benches to sit upon, but we felt like we were in the middle of a gigantic sauna!

Oh yes, do you remember the little girls with the ice-cold beer at the convoy point 60 miles away? They must have had sisters outside of Quang Tri who also knew the habits of the American soldiers. The temperature required us to stay hydrated in these awful conditions, and by the time lunch rolled around each day, “feeling no pain” would best describe us after drinking these wonderfully cold and soothing beverages for six or seven hours.

We were required to always keep our weapons with us, but one of the guys, Bob, (the friend we had pulled-out of his locker during the mortar attack) figured his M16 would stay much cleaner if he left it in his parked Autocar, rather than riding-it-around on his bulldozer all day. This worked okay for him until we returned to our trucks for lunch one day, and he noticed that his M16 had vanished. What a fix he was in—high-as-a-Georgia pine and his M16 was gone.

Earlier that morning, one of our guys had observed the usual number of kids around the site, including our beer servers. Now, at lunch, all the boys had high-tailed it and were nowhere to be seen. (Thankfully, our beer girls were still on duty!)

Bob asked for my help, so we composed ourselves enough to act like bad-asses, although two shirtless and extremely suntanned dudes with Colt 45s resembled armed surfers more than bad-asses. We decided our best course of action was to just pretend we knew what we were doing by marching right into the middle of the closest village. We knew maybe five Vietnamese words, but we hoped we would be able to make them understand us. Bob and I walked about two miles down a path and found a small welcoming committee waiting for us. Somehow, we communicated our need to speak with the village elder, and sure enough, we were led to his hut.

By this point, what we really needed were a few more beers, but we accepted his (repeated) offers for hot tea, hoping we weren’t about to be poisoned. The tea was poured into regular drinking glasses, and Bob and I watched strange things swirling throughout the liquid. (These may have been tea leaves, but are tea leaves different colors?) Realizing we had to die someday anyway, we sipped the surprisingly tasty glasses of tea, although we declined his offer of refills.

We painstakingly explained Bob’s missing M16 predicament, including the fact of the young boy’s presence at our job site. The village father figure scared the daylights out of us when, quite unexpectedly, he loudly screamed something at another Vietnamese man sitting barely three feet from us. That man jumped up, ran outside, and started yelling himself. Others started yelling and all Bob and I could do was wonder what the hell was going on, and what we had done to cause their strange behavior. For some reason, probably alcohol, these outbursts struck us as hilarious, and we damned-near choked trying to keep from laughing in the old man’s face, not to mention spitting-out the excellent mouthfuls of tea.

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The old man informed us he would do all he could to find the gun, or at least we think that is what he said. We offered our thanks by bowing and shaking hands, and then we walked back to where the trucks were parked. Fifteen minutes later, he walked up to us, accompanied by a not-too-happy-to-be-along kid, and (we think) he asked if Bob’s truck had been parked in the same location all day. We assured him that it had not been moved.

The old guy then walked over to the truck and stood by the passenger-side running board. He then took four or five steps directly away from the truck, and then turned left 90 degrees and took a few more steps. He bent down, dug down in the sand a few inches and voila—he produced the M16! The kid was looking down like he was staring another hole in the sand, and he wouldn’t make eye contact with anyone. He must have been thinking of his punishment upon his return to the village.

Without a doubt, Bob and I were certain of the fact that beer helped us recover his M16, so we thanked the old guy by giving him a six-pack of cold ones, plus all the C-rations we had left. I’ll bet the little culprit’s arms were sore by the time he carried those heavy items back to his village, because Pops loaded his ass down! Thank you, Lord, you helped us through another one!

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.