A Trucker's Tale – Hot Load!

Sep 24, 2025 - 8 months ago

I had run through the night to make my delivery in Eastern North Carolina. After unloading, I drove to the WMTS home office and arrived around lunch. I could not wait to crawl into the bunk to catch up on my sleep, but before I did, I walked into the office to turn in my paperwork.

A Trucker's Tale - Hot Load - by Ed Miller

I was informed of an extremely “hot” load of paper, which absolutely, and without fail, had to be delivered to Jonestown, PA the next morning. The printing plant was out of paper, and the shipper had made the urgency very clear. I was told that I would be hauling the load, and to get better rest than in my truck’s sleeper bunk, the company checked me into a local motel, gave me a car, and told me they would call me when the shipper finished making the product later that afternoon. Another driver would bring it to the terminal, and then I would drive like hell to get it to PA by 0700 the next morning.

Murphy’s Law came into play when the relay load did not even arrive at the home office until close to 2300 that night. I had already fueled the truck, so all I had to do was to hook-up and haul-ass.

Murphy must have also hitched a ride in my passenger seat, because I had driven less than 60 miles before I noticed the first snowflake. Each additional mile brought more snowflakes. I was very glad my close to 77,000 pounds helped my traction as it snowed, and snowed, and snowed. I had driven many times through snow, but never anything like this, and not for this duration.

Just after daylight, the heavy snowfall had finally eased-up, and I was slowly proceeding up US 15 N, just south of Gettysburg, while driving in the well packed-down right lane. I noticed a truck coming up behind me in the left lane, the one which was still covered in over 12 inches of snow. This produce hauling owner-operator was driving a late model black Marmon, and he was lugging along at 50 to 55 miles per hour. Damn, I was impressed! How could he be running this fast, when my lane was one slick piece of highway? Well, hoping to learn from watching him, I moved several feet left from my lane, which had deep, and unpacked snow, and by God, I got educated on the proper way of running in snow! I now had traction, so I got to pick up my speed enough that I stayed with him for quite a few miles. I had just learned another good lesson.

At 0745 that morning, I was just a couple of miles from the consignee. I sorely needed a cup of coffee, so I pulled over on the side of the road, and stopped beside a large mound of plowed snow, and then I walked into a McDonald’s. When I opened the door, everyone in the store, including the employees behind the counter, were staring out the windows. I turned around to see what had captured their attention, only to see that it was my rig that had mesmerized them. The tractor and trailer looked like a solid block of ice and snow. The deep snow, including salt, through which I had traveled all night, had been thrown up and caked underneath the trailer, behind the tractor, and all openings had been filled with snow. The rig resembled a big, white locomotive, like the Coors Light locomotive. You could hardly tell either tractor make or color. It was one of the strangest sights I had ever seen.

The snow caused me to miss the 0700-delivery time by an hour. When I handed the bills of lading to the receiver, I commented something like, “Sorry I am late, but here’s that hot load of paper everyone has been screaming about.” He looked over the listing of the load’s contents and proclaimed, “We don’t need this s__t! We have a whole warehouse full of it. The damned paper mill didn’t even send what we needed.”

Every older truck driver has had similar shipper snafus happen to him, or her, and although we wish we had known those facts before we began our “hot runs,” there isn’t much we could have done about them. About the only thing we could do was to pat ourselves on the backs that we got our part of the job done!

When I crossed a railroad track in Eastern North Carolina the following morning, the uneven roadway broke-loose several big chunks of the caked-on snow from under my trailer. I wonder what some of those farmers thought when they observed those icebergs before they melted in the 75-to-80-degree weather.

One Friday afternoon, I had loaded a full load of wooden pallets from a manufacturer in Warrenton, NC. There were so many stacks of pallets that I had to use eight nylon straps, in addition to several chains and binders, to hold the load in place. (I had now been with WMTS long enough that I was able to have my own nylon straps.) As with the finished lumber, I also learned that you couldn’t ‘tighten-the-daylights’ out of this commodity—just tighten snugly.

I was taking the rig to the home office yard for the weekend, so I travelled down U S 401 for several miles until I reached N C 58 S, which happened to be a left-hand turn right in the very middle of the Town of Warrenton.

I had a green light, so I pulled into the intersection as far as I could, which would allow enough room for the trailer to make the left-hand turn. Opposing traffic was still traveling through the light as I caught the eye of an extremely beautiful young woman as she crossed the street. She smiled at me, and of course I returned her smile.

As the stoplight was changing to red, a car, from the opposing traffic lane, passed by my tractor. The young lady had reached the sidewalk by the time I began my turn, and since she was still smiling at me, you know that I had to keep smiling back at her as I made my turn onto N C 58. Suddenly, my rig started slowing, so I looked back from the driver’s window to notice my trailer wheels trying to climb over the trunk of that last vehicle to go through the light. Traffic had backed up in front of the car, and with nowhere to go, the car was sitting in the middle of the intersection.

I am damned-sure I was responsible for tons of cuss words that Friday afternoon, because I had tied-up Warrenton’s Main Street at quitting time. Thankfully, no one was hurt. Sadly, my ego was hurting like hell, thanks to the young lady’s actions. After watching the accident, as it was happening, she stayed on the scene long enough to look at me, look at my trailer, look at me again, and then shake her head. If I could have read her mind, I’m sure I would have heard her thinking, “You dumbass!”

Warrenton’s weekly rag probably read, “Local beauty queen distracts dumbass truck driver causing accident on Main Street during rush-hour.” (Well, she was beautiful!)

I have also wondered many, many times, how many accidents truckers have had while “appreciating” the sights presented by the combination of hot weather and women’s shorts. Yes, some things are important! 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 school 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.