A Trucker's Tale

by Ed Miller

  It’s also never a good idea for a trucker to terrorize a four-wheeler, whether we like them or not. As a veteran truck driver, it embarrasses the hell out of me when I see truckers ride a four-wheeler’s bumper while traveling seventy miles per hour. It embarrasses me even more to see the trucker travel in an unauthorized lane while they ride someone’s bumper. I call this “arrogant driving.” These truckers seem to think that they’re somehow entitled to drive illegally in lane one or two of a four-lane road even though highway signs read: NO TRUCKS IN LEFT TWO LANES.

  To America’s truck drivers, let’s return to the days when big rigs don’t tailgate four-wheelers, and the motoring public isn’t scared to be on the same highway as truckers. Let’s return to the days when those same car drivers once again refer to you as the true Knights of the Highway. I would like to advise that the next time you play the game of ride-that-four-wheeler’s-bumper, you need to become aware that you—not that car driver—but you, and only you, are the professional in this match. Remember that the car driver is an amateur. Act like a professional truck driver and move back, and away, from his bumper. Pretend the car ahead of you is carrying your children, and back off!

  And for safety purposes, please also don’t follow another truck too closely. We’ve all seen or heard about incidents where two trucks or buses (usually belonging to the same company) have both gone off the highway because the driver in front made a horrific mistake and the driver behind had been mindlessly assuming that the guy in front of him was driving properly, and followed him, without realizing the mistake, until it was too late. Some large trucking companies enforce a half-mile, or even one-mile, minimum distance between each truck, but sometimes we drivers enjoy drafting another truck, so we end up driving precariously.

  One time, I was on I-75 South, driving through Kentucky with a sister truck, and the other driver was following within just a few feet of the rear of my closed van. I kept glancing at the guy from my side-view mirror and the fact that he was on my ass suddenly started affecting my driving reactions. We were traveling around sixty-five or seventy miles per hour and had just driven onto a newly paved section of the highway when I heard a loud hissing sound. I figured it was due to the new pavement, but then my tractor started pulling hard to the right. My right steering tire was going flat, and the other driver was right on my ass.

  My hands were so busy trying to control the steering wheel that I couldn’t grab the CB radio to tell the other driver what was happening. But I really didn’t want him to hit my trailer, so I did my best to warn him by blinking my marker lights and turning on my four-ways, and I gradually began braking—all while my tractor was drifting off the right shoulder of the highway, and I couldn’t seem to do a damned thing about it.

  Eventually, I guess he figured something was wrong because through my driver’s side mirror, I finally caught sight of him slowing down. With this assurance, I braked as hard as I could without wrecking myself. Lady Luck must have been riding shotgun because thanks to the repaving, the guardrail had been removed and I was able to drive into a flat and level field. By the time my van slowed down, its tire was completely flat and I had traveled over one hundred feet into the field. Somehow in that moment, I had the sense to realize how hard it was going to be for someone to change the tire while my truck was in the hayfield, so while the truck was still slowly rolling, I wrestled the steering wheel back and turned it to the left just enough that I was able to park the front axle of the tractor on the shoulder of the highway.

  Afterward, the other driver took me to a nearby truck stop, and we went inside and had coffee while waiting for the tire man to get his stuff together. While sitting in our booth, we overheard two drivers talking in the booth behind me, and one of them said, “Did you see that goddamn truck back up the road a few miles? Wonder how he ever got into that position . . . .”

  Well, I kept quiet and let him just keep wondering why I parked that way. I learned an extremely important lesson that afternoon, and not only did I keep my distance from other trucks in the future, I was also adamant that other truckers never stayed that close to my ass again.

  Just a few years ago, I finished a seven-year run working at the Maryland Department of Transportation’s Office of Freight Logistics. My position allowed me the opportunity to work with the federal and state agencies responsible for motor carrier regulations and safety, and with research organizations, trucking industry groups and associations, and many private trucking-related companies. The agencies and groups were involved in all aspects related to commercial vehicles, including safety, equipment, hours of service, and truck parking, and the lack of truck parking spaces was, and still is, a very high-priority issue for them. One of the most important projects our state motor carrier office worked on was identifying the overall truck parking availability in the United States. We also undertook a study in Maryland to assess the in-state availability and sufficiency of truck parking spaces.

  Anyone who has ever driven through the nighttime hours, whether by car, truck, or motorcycle, would have to have been blind if they didn’t see trucks parked, mostly illegally, on the highway shoulders, on- and off-ramps, and basically any wide spot on a major highway. If a trucker is falling asleep behind the wheel, he certainly needs to pull over, but he needs more legal spots to do so—they’re simply too limited today. The shoulder is a terrible place for a trucker to park and the sad statistics show that numerous four-wheel drivers have crashed into them, and sadly, often lost their lives in the crash. In reaction to this, I’ve heard some members of the enforcement community make comments such as, “Well, the car shouldn’t have been driving on the shoulder of the road.”

  Sometimes the four-wheelers hit the trucks because their intoxicated drivers veer off onto the shoulder. Other times, the rear-end crashes happen because of the “moth effect,” named for the insects who are mindlessly drawn to any light source. This is when a four-wheeler mimics the behavior of a truck. Many four-wheel drivers respect the fact that most truckers really do know how to drive safely, so they follow trucks down the highway, especially during adverse weather conditions, by watching the rear lights on the back of the trailers, and following them. Unfortunately, because they’re focused on following the truck’s lights, drowsy four-wheel drivers often don’t pay enough attention and don’t realize when a truck has left the highway and parked on a shoulder. Instead, they follow the truck onto the shoulder and barrel into it.

  I implore truck drivers to not park on the shoulders of highways but to go to the next exit and use one of the ramps. If I were driving, I would try to find an on-ramp, because even though a car might run into the back of your trailer, the chances are much higher that his lower speed will make it so the collision is not fatal. Begging truckers to use ramps might bother various state highway administrators, but people die when they’re going seventy miles per hour and hit trucks parked on the shoulder—and people usually don’t die when they’re going the speed you’d use on an on-ramp and—at that speed—hit a truck parked on the shoulder.

  To get truckers to avoid parking on the shoulder when they need to rest, there needs to be enough parking spaces for them to easily access. Truck parking shortages usually happen at night or during severe weather events, because too many trucks are vying for too few spaces. Some truck stop chains would love to build additional parking spaces, but local communities have been very successful in lobbying their elected officials to deny the truck stop’s building permits, relying on the old standby NIMBY (not in my back yard) talking points, and citing noise, pollution, increased traffic, and the belief that truck stops are sinful lairs of vice and prostitution.

  On the other hand, some truck stop chains do not want more parking, because they do not see parking as a revenue generator. They should be ashamed of this—truckers are their customers, and they ought to support them. They should also recognize that if they don’t have enough parking, trucks entering to purchase the t
ruck stop’s low-priced fuel will have no place to park and be forced to get back onto the highway and go to a different truck rest stop.

  But chin up, truckers, help is on the way. Numerous government agencies, research organizations, and private companies are working to find solutions for the truck parking shortage. Several forward-thinking states are adding parking spaces at some of their rest areas, and work is also underway for truckers to be able to find available parking spaces through personal, hands-free mobile electronic devices, or even reserve a spot at a low cost.

  All drivers, truckers and four-wheelers alike, should reach out to their city’s or state’s elected officials by phone, email, or snail mail to let them know there is a shortage of available nighttime truck parking and that this creates precarious driving conditions for all motorists and all constituents. When enough elected folks hear about the gravity of a problem—and worry about their reelection—they may begin considering it, and eventually, work to get things done.

  In South Carolina in 2009, thirty-five-year-old truck driver Jason Rivenburg was robbed and killed while he slept in his truck at a closed-down gas station. Before he went to sleep, he phoned his wife and told her that he’d parked in the abandoned lot because all the rest areas and truck stops were full. At the time of his death, Rivenburg had a young child and twins on the way. After the devastating crime, Jason’s Law was drafted, and when it finally passed in late 2012, it was included in a transportation reauthorization bill titled the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act. The law provided more than six million dollars in federal funding toward the construction and restoration of safe roadside parking lots where truck drivers can rest. Its projects included:

  Creating new dedicated parking areas for commercial truck drivers

  Creating parking spots for CMVs (commercial motor vehicles) adjacent to truck stops and plazas

  Opening existing facilities to CMV parking

  Making capital improvements to public CMV facilities that are currently closed on a seasonal basis, so that they can operate year-round

  Making it easier to access existing parking facilities

  Unfortunately, it took a horrific act of violence to spur the creation of this bill. We can thank Jason’s wife, who worked with her New York State representative to honor her husband and make something good come out of the tragedy. Someday, maybe the big-box retailers, such as Target, Walmart, and Home Depot, can solve the truck parking shortage by allowing trucks to park in their empty parking lots during specific nighttime hours.

  Photos

  Me at a convoy point in Vietnam.

  A haul in Vietnam. As equipment operators, we tried to go everywhere “fully loaded.”

  The International and Chevrolet tractors of one of the fine trucking companies I had the pleasure of working for.

  Me and a dog named Bubba standing beside a gas-guzzling Chevrolet tractor. The kittens were born under its bench seat.

  Sheba dispatching truckers on a busy day.

  The photo that made Don, the mechanic, ask, “Does that dog really mow your lawn?”

  Epilogue

  I began this book by writing about some of the ways that people trucked nearly sixty years ago, or at least how my family got the job done. The job required long hours and maintaining the trucks was hard work, but trucking provided money to live on for my grandparents, parents, and us four kids. Trucking today, thank goodness, is quite different from what it was when I was growing up. Marvelous progress has been made, due in part to technological improvements in equipment and petroleum, which have helped the industry become a better steward of the environment. Some of us aren’t spreading our used oil on dirt roads to keep the dust down anymore. And unless you observe an older Mack dump truck, you hardly ever notice black smoke coming from a tractor’s exhaust stacks.

  Drivers today ride very comfortably in powerful tractors as they pull trailers equipped with wind-efficient skirting and trailer-tails. Not too many years ago, drivers had to climb Town Hill, on I-70 in Pennsylvania, in third or fourth gear. Now, most trucks climb the mountain without ever gearing down. They also either don’t get to cheat or don’t have to worry about making mistakes while filling out their logbook, as they ride in tractors equipped with electronic logs. The tractors also have lane departure, forward, and side collision avoidance technologies. And cab interiors are very quiet, which means that drivers don’t have to turn their CD or radio volume way up. And it’s not necessary to deal with the pain of locating and stopping at phone booths, or the danger of this, and no one overhears you when you speak with your family.

  When I began writing A Trucker’s Tale, all I really had in mind was the notion that I wanted to put some of my funniest trucking memories on paper. After writing the first story, I thought of another, and then another. One story bled into the next. One stretch of highway led to the next. There were stops, digressions, accidents, wrong turns, early arrivals, late arrivals, and incidental destinations. How else to write about a life spent trucking? These tales were written in diesel, and some passed from one trucker’s CB radio to the next.

  To my fellow truckers, friends, and acquaintances: I have tried to listen as each of you expressed your truly uninhibited feelings over the years. Thank you for letting me remember your voices as I’ve attempted to respectfully commit these stories to the page. Doing so has most assuredly made me recall the joy and fortitude of your friendship. Even in the event that no one ever reads the book (except my family members whom I have threatened with bodily harm if they don’t read it), my time spent writing has been worth the effort, as it’s allowed me to relive so many good times.

  Acknowledgments

  Never in my wildest imagination did I think I would ever write a book. So, imagine being confronted with the situation of thanking the many folks who have helped A Trucker’s Tale become published.

  To Lucinda Coulter, PhD, for advising, “Get it published!”

  To Todd Dills for publishing parts of the book in Over­drive magazine.

  To my fellow Navy veteran friend Les Taylor. If not for you, A Trucker’s Tale would still be languishing within my computer. Your mastery of the English language is so damned enviable.

  To my siblings, Betty Sue, Earl, and Yates, for a lifetime of memories. I am so thankful that we are as close today as we were as kids.

  To my wife, Diana, for putting up with this trucker for all these years, and you actually like the book, too!

  To my kids for suffering through the repeated telling of the book’s stories over and over and over.

  To my dad, Hugh, and my granddad, Obie, for teaching me how to become a trucker—and to cuss like one.

  To my buddy Jeannie Fazio. You have always been my biggest supporter.

  Thanks to the publishers and editors at Apollo Publishers, Julia Abramoff and Alex Merrill, for believing A Trucker’s Tale was worth publishing. Julia has helped make this journey fun, educational, and sometimes frustrating, but never dull or boring. Her support has exceeded any I could have imagined. I am humbly honored to have Julia as my editor.