A Trucker's Tale – Slick Nick

Feb 18, 2026 - 3 months ago

As I wrote in the last two articles, Frank was a very good man. On the opposite end of the human spectrum, let me tell you about a worthless little weasel named Nick.

A Trucker's Tale - Slick Nick - Sheba the dog — *Even Sheba the dog distrusted Nick. Ed Miller photo.*

Nick was our evening dispatcher, and one of his duties was to reimburse company drivers for their road and truck expenses. Drivers would be able to replenish their funds by “cashing-in” receipts for tolls, tire repairs, motor oil, etc.

Nick was employed by WMTS before I was transferred to this terminal, but it didn’t take me too long to notice how he “slinked around” (he did, actually), how he operated, and how he looked like he was always scheming to be one-step-ahead of everyone else. (You know the feeling when you meet a person who makes you think that something about them is just not right? Well, this was Nick.)

Anyone who has ever been responsible for a petty cash box knows that it is not a fun task, and try as you may, you cannot always get the son-of-bitch to balance. Nick’s petty cash box always balanced. Maybe this was one of the reasons I started noticing that the amounts of toll reimbursements were higher than usual, especially at the first of each week. This was odd because most of the company drivers began each week with all their $100.00 expense money, so they would not have had the need to use much of it.

I was responsible for the petty cash duties during the day, prior to Nick coming on duty at 1600, and one day a driver came into the office and asked if I could give him change for a 20-dollar bill? I opened the box, counted out $20 in various denominations, and then handed it to him, noticing a grin on his face. As he stood in front of my desk after handing me the bill, I started to place the $20 in the box when I noticed something peculiar. Further inspection showed this to be a humorously counterfeited 20-dollar bill, and one which would not pass serious scrutiny. Laughing, the driver handed me back the change and he told me to keep the fake bill, as he had plenty more.

Nick went about his routine when he got to work that afternoon. He always began his shift by going into the driver’s lounge to see which drivers were available, or to note who was laying over. As he walked out of the office, I informed the other office folks what I was doing, as I folded the $20 and placed it under a bathroom door, leaving only one corner visible of the fake bill. We watched as “Slick Nick” (as we unaffectionately referred to him) smoothly pretended to drop some paperwork, pick up and palm the bill, just knowing no one had seen what he had just done.

(I will write about my dog, Sheba, later, but she went to work with me most every day for seven years. A lot of folks believe that dogs seem to sense when a human is sneaky and dishonest, and Sheba had Nick pegged perfectly. As he got out of his car each day, Sheba would look out the front door and start growling. As he walked in, Sheba would come sit beside my desk and just stare at Nick).

I think most people are honest, and I hope that most folks, when faced with a similar situation, might have said, “Damn! Look what I just found!” or “Wonder who dropped this $20?” or even, “Look at this shit!” Nope, not Nick! (I wish I could have seen his face when he finally got a good look at the $20.)

Close to a week later, this petty cash thing was worrying-the-hell out of me, so I began comparing toll ticket time stamps with the tractor numbers. Each driver was required to write his tractor’s number on the top of all his receipts. Eureka! The time and place of some of these tickets did not correspond to the (indicated) trucks. For instance, one toll ticket showed a certain tractor going through one of Richmond’s toll facilities early one morning. When I went through company dispatch records, I found that this tractor had been delivering south of Atlanta the morning of that same date.

Finally putting it together, we realized that Nick had an “arrangement” with several of our owner-operators (O/O). (For you non-truckers, O/Os are independent businessmen and women, who are responsible for their own road expenses. WMTS only reimbursed company truck expenses, and not O/O’s expenses. Some trucking companies now reimburse their O/Os for their toll expenses, but this was not the case in the 1970’s.) Nick would buy the O/O’s receipts for half the face value of each one, and then he would reimburse himself from the petty cash box for the full receipt amount.

Upon Nick’s arrival for work that afternoon, I told him to sit down. He said to let him first get a cup of coffee, but he sat down immediately when I informed him there was no sense in pouring a cupful since he was not going to have time to drink it. I do not remember my exact words, but they had something to do with him being a lying, stealing, sneaking piece-of-shit. He began protesting and swearing his innocence, but I told him to shut up and to keep quiet because I was not finished. I made him aware that after he was fired, he would be arrested and charged with theft of company petty cash funds. Nick allowed this was BS and he began babbling about suing WMTS for unlawful termination, blah, blah, blah. We did not want this scumbag to receive unemployment benefits upon his termination. Therefore, I informed him that the company would act graciously by allowing him to voluntarily resign, although this offer was only good if he accepted the offer by immediately hand-writing his resignation letter. Nick yelled that he couldn’t be railroaded into quitting. He changed his mind when I picked up the phone and informed him I was calling 911.

Slick Nick wrote the resignation letter, probably thinking he would still receive unemployment compensation (UC), since the state (where we lived and worked) had the reputation of awarding UC to damned-nearly everyone who applied for it, with not much inquiry into the reason(s) for termination.

True to form, Nick did not prove us wrong. We learned Nick had left the terminal the day he was fired, and he had straight-away proceeded to the local UC office. We were also delightfully surprised by the fact-finding phone call from the UC office several weeks later. Nick told the UC folks that he had been fired for no cause. We supported our version of the story by faxing the OC office a copy of Nick’s signed resignation letter.

There is a happy ending to the Slick, Sneaky, and Stealing Nick story because the unemployment office denied his request for benefits. Not that anyone cared, but we never heard another word about the son-of-a-bitch.

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.