A Trucker's Tale – Bored In Baltimore

Mar 18, 2026 - 3 months ago

Each morning, Joe, the terminal manager, and me, his assistant, would both go out on our lot to wake the drivers.

A Trucker's Tale - Bored In Baltimore — *Haunted trucks still drive pretty fast.*

A food wagon came onto the premises each morning, and most of the drivers wanted to be awakened so they could get something to eat for breakfast. Although Joe had knocked several times on the driver’s side door of Willie’s truck, the driver had not responded. Joe pounded loudly on the door for the third time and hollered, “Goddam, Willie, if you can’t hear me, you must be dead!”

After waking the last driver on the back of the lot, I headed back up front when I saw Joe frantically waving to me. Although his hands were wildly pointing at the truck, Joe couldn’t even talk when I reached him, so I climbed-up into the tractor. Separating the privacy curtain, I found that Willie had died. His autopsy found that he had died in his sleep from a heart attack. Poor Joe was terribly ashamed of himself by saying Willie must have been dead if he could not hear him and it took Joe quite a while to get over Willie’s passing.

The previous evening, Willie had joined several other drivers in the drivers’ lounge for a low-stakes poker game. These frequent gatherings provided some entertainment for the fellows who didn’t want to go out on the town. The drivers who had played cards with Willie said that he had his usual $150 to $200 in his pocket. Hoping to return this money to Willie’s family, I contacted the coroner’s office to inquire when I could retrieve his belongings. According to the two coroner’s office employees who removed Willie’s body from his truck, the driver’s wallet had various items in it, but no cash was found.

For some strange reason, I never received a reply to the nasty letter I sent to the coroner’s office, and I never could learn the names of those two worthless scoundrels. I’m afraid it was Willie’s bad luck to have died within the Baltimore City limits. I also hope the coroner’s office now employs a better class of workers. Sorry, Willie. You were one of the really good guys who didn’t deserve to be treated this way.

A week after Willie’s death, we asked a driver to drive Willie’s truck back to our home office, some 300 miles away. Davonne answered, “Oh, hell no! Willie done died in that truck and his ghost might still be in there!” Well, it took an awfully lot of negotiating, including what could have been best described as hazardous duty pay, but Davonne eventually agreed to the assignment. As he left the terminal, his parting words were, “Now I’m gonna do this for y’all, but I ain’t stopping for nothing after I leave here!”

He kept his word, and I’m sure Davonne must have broken every speed limit along the route, because he made the trip in record time. Upon arrival at the home office, he was observed jumping out of the tractor and literally running away from it. Davonne later told someone he had pulled the privacy curtain closed, and that he hadn’t even looked back into the bunk during his whole trip. Yep, I chuckle every time I think of Davonne.

As I previously mentioned, many WMTS drivers spent at least one night each week in Baltimore while waiting to load early the next morning. It sometimes happened that a few drivers would have to layover twice in one week. When they laid-over, most drivers played cards or watched television, but some drivers enjoyed Baltimore’s night life.

TC was one driver who did not mind staying in Baltimore, which was mostly due to his fondness for a couple of ladies at one of the clubs close to the terminal. (Truth be known, TC probably planned most of his twice-per-week layovers.) Although I never observed him in his element, I heard that he had a “way with the women,” because evidently, they loved his muscular 6’3”, 220 pounds physique. And yes, I know he was a smooth talker, since he always tried to sweet-talk the dispatchers into giving him better loads than he had been assigned. After he had spent a night out, it wasn’t uncommon to see JT brought to work early the next morning in a car driven by one of his lady friends.

TC was accompanied to the club one evening by a newly hired driver named Henry. Henry was young, and he was completely TC’s opposite, as he only stood 5’5”, weighed about 125 soaking-wet, and he was so naïve that it seemed to drip from him. Poor Henry also had a speech impediment each time he began a sentence. It was something between tsk-tsk and t-t-t. I’ll just call it tk-tk-tk-tk-tk-tk.

Henry evidently liked what he found during his first visit to the club with TC, because he couldn’t wait to go again the following week. The morning after his second visit, he had this great-big, wide grin on his face when he came into the office to get his pick-up slip for his load. I don’t know why none of us asked about his “big time” last evening. Maybe we were too polite? I’m not really sure. Anyway, Henry picked up his load of steel and headed south.

The president of WMTS possessed a mischievous sense of humor. One of his best examples happened the next afternoon, when he informed the home office dispatchers that he needed to speak with Henry when he made his “empty” call. Henry called sometime later and his call was transferred to the president, who became very serious and said, “Henry, some woman called here around lunch today, and she said that she would have called you directly, but she didn’t know how to get in touch with you. She said she was terribly sorry, but she had gone to the doctor today because she hadn’t been feeling very good. The doctor told her she has a fatal disease and that she doesn’t have but about six months to live. Henry, she said she was afraid that she had passed it to on to you. She said there is not a cure at this time, but she wanted you to know about it because you are such a nice boy. She said she wanted you to know while you still had some time left.”

When the officer finished telling Henry about his fatal disease, the president said that Henry did not miss a beat, as he replied, “tk-tk-tk-tk-tk-tk Well, sir, tk,-tk-tk-tk-tk-tk, TC gonna die too!”

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

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