A Trucker's Tale – Trucking Is Dangerous

Jul 15, 2026 - 13 hours ago

Readers: When I wrote A Truckers Tale, I penned it as though I was talking from one truck driver to another.

A Trucker's Tale: Trucking Is Dangerous

My publisher didn’t think the non-trucking reader would understand most of the truck specific references, so the editors removed many of them. I cannot fault them, since the book was published and has sold pretty well. Therefore, I hope you truckers, and like-minded truck folks, enjoy this article.

How many drivers do you know, including yourselves, who have been injured, or killed (obviously, not yourselves) while conscientiously performing the multitude of tasks required of truck drivers? Do you remember how much fun it was, while climbing up onto the catwalk to hook your hoses and pigtail, to slip and bust your ass on the wet, or snow-covered, or iced-over diamond plate steel? What of the joy of opening the right trailer door, just before backing into the dock, to have product fall on your head? Haven’t you felt just wonderful suffering the pain, and even worse, the embarrassment, after you have fallen out of a trailer because you lost your footing on the wet floor? (My grandad, Obie, said he never fell—the pavement always jumped-up and hit him.)

Raise your hand if you have ever been cut by the sharpness of the bent-up end of the Signode strap found on thousands of products? These injuries used to be even more frequent because some receivers required truck drivers to cut the steel bands of each bundle. Those suckers acted like they had homing devices, because the taut straps would “take-off” upon being cut. Maybe I just wasn’t careful when I received the (still-evident) scar on my left arm.

Flatbed and lowboy trucking offers truck drivers even more chances than vans to bust their own asses. It just stands to reason that if you climb onto a trailer often enough, you will eventually fall. Until the past few years, there were not even handholds, much less ladders to help a driver climb onto the trailer beds, so they had to do so one of several ways. The first was by placing your fingers in the tie-down pockets at the rear of the trailer, stepping onto the ICC bumper, and then pulling yourself up. Another method, if you were young and agile, was to stand on the tractor’s catwalk and hold onto the headboard as you glided around it. (I used to be young and agile, but one time my hands slipped, and I busted my ass anyway while trying this maneuver.) I also saw a young man, who resembled a shorter version of The Rock (Dwayne Johnson), stand flatfooted beside a flatbed, and then he squatted-down and jumped the 55 inches up onto the trailer. (Very impressive, and he was the only person I ever saw do that trick.)

Ass-busting possibilities increase exponentially when Mother Nature offers wind, rain, snow, or any form of precipitation, and traction pretty-much becomes negligible. Aggravating hardly describes the effort required to secure and tarp a flatbed load when your hands are as cold as ice. Working with chains and binders and nylon straps provides even more opportunity for driver injury. While using a binder pipe to tighten your chains, what usually happens when the chain breaks? Exactly, you fall! You get up most of the time, but sometimes these events require a doctor’s immediate attention.

Many drivers have had teeth knocked out when a chain binder has snapped open and hit them in the face. These binders have caused many drivers to carry facial scars, thanks to the stitches they have received. I know some drivers who consider their scars as “badges of honor”, or even “badges of courage,” and the scars provide visual proof for the telling of the their tall-tales regarding how the injuries occurred.

Drivers had to be extra-careful when they pulled older trailers. Sometimes, as you were rolling down the dollies far enough that you had to push in the handle to engage low gear, one of the bolts would break on either the handle or the rod. Here was another opportunity for you to get your teeth knocked out.

Not all drivers’ injuries are caused by the inherent dangers associated with trucking. Some, I am sad to relate, are due to a driver’s desire to prove his agility and physical condition. As an example, although, at the time, I was an office worker at a trucking terminal, there were times when I needed to, or was required, to drive a truck. Once, by not having a road driver available to pick up a load of steel, I pulled-on my overalls, pre-tripped a tractor and flatbed, and then drove about eight miles to Bethlehem Steel, Sparrows Point, MD, which, of course, is now closed and torn-down.

After backing into Dock 48, I set up the trailer for a load of steel coils, using 4 X 4s and coil racks. The mill prohibited drivers from standing on their trailers, and from sitting in their tractors, while the trailer was being crane-loaded, so I moseyed-off to the men’s room to kill some time. When I returned, I retrieved something from my tractor, and then I noticed that the trailer was already loaded. I closed the tractor’s passenger-side door, and I looked down the side of the trailer at the loading dock. The dock was the perfect height for me to showcase my physical abilities by jumping-up on it, so I lit-out running alongside my trailer. Using my last step as the “push” step up onto the dock, I saw myself “Leaping tall buildings in a single bound!”

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Have you guessed that my “push” step did not go as planned? Well, that last step was planted in the middle of a puddle of steel coil oil. Pain! god dam, the pain was excruciating! The material from both my blue jeans and my blue overalls were impaled into my dented shin bone and skin. The steel-covered corner of the concrete dock held up very well despite my leg’s withering onslaught.

My acrobatics were witnessed by numerous steel workers and truck drivers. Even though my leg hurt so badly that I wanted to cry, I got up, brushed myself off, and then walked onto my trailer as if nothing had happened. I felt as like I was going to pass out at any moment as I began the unbelievably painful task of chaining and tarping these coils.

I did not have stitches because there was not enough skin on my shin to stitch. Actually, what I really needed was a bone-graft! I quietly wear both my “badge of stupidity” and my “badge of embarrassment,” as the dent in my left shin proudly advertises the color of Wrangler Blue. Please don’t tell me there might be another life lesson here!

Working around equipment is always hazardous, and most of us have the scars to prove it. The ringing in our ears, or tinnitus, developed as we were subjected to those extremely loud noises, whether from operating the equipment, beating the hell out of something on an anvil, dropping dock-plates onto concrete, or by forcing-together those three-piece rims using sledgehammers. Is it any wonder we make sure our kids and grandkids wear eye and ear protection? I know I would be a helluva lot better off if I had known to use them!

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