How much better was it back in the day

Ha ha ha!

 

Why were they bleak??

 

Another lame attempt to close a thread

 

And I can remember (barely) some of the weekend party’s at a few TX truck stops .....

Barbecue, beer ,show and shine.....those were the days......

 

That ain't your theory. That's been said time time again on multiple threads. Regurgitating at its finest.

 

No.

Razorback gave me out of Searcy a non AC mack mixer.

Call it 108 on the thermometer and then with the hard sky bright sun, no wind and high humidity driving the apparent actual heat index closer to 135 inside that cab sitting still. I went through a awful lot of fluids. I think a gallon per hour sweated out. Then faced heatstroke twice when the body quit sweating and then started gaining fever and dizzy before passing out pending.

I thought I understand heat from past heatstrokes in life. But that was something I endured. It was obvious I was not welcome any longer than I am willing to broil for them in that particular POS mixer. Everyone else had AC.

Its all moot. One very bad day I am sitting tilted on a shale rock face at 30 degrees at 138ish according to cab temperature gauge and it was just too hot. The storm line came over the mountain I was on near Heber Springs and blasted the place with 65 degree rain sideways and artillery lightning.

I had a 100 gallon tank of water behind cab under secondary brake pressure and ran out of it pretty much waiting to unload that concrete into a house foundation mould. And I was sitting there cursing the sun and no water. What are we going to do? String a garden hose?

And heaven opened up. See if I ever get any favors from our blessed redeemer.

So you go from burning up to lightning terror while shivering in the cold. Crazy.

I almost quit that day. As luck would have it the bolt hit 10 feet from me, passed up and down the legs of my contractor boss and lit me up a little bit with the rest of the leftover inside a garage. It was not a full hit. But put him down for two hours and took me out for 10 minutes. A third person took care of both of us. They needed captian hook to tow that loaded ruined load of cement mixer back off the mountain when she sunk axle deep in that unstable shale wet flooded rock.

12 yards of concrete at 70 dollars a yard wasted. A total loss, included maintaince to jackhammer out the drum for two days. Company had a 2 hour job policy, at 2:01 and beyond it's 60 dollars every 30 minutes detention against the contractor hiring that rig. We were there over 5 some hours trapped.

They fired me that week when they finished talking. And that was that.

And for what? Sheesh. Just as well. They did me a favor. I was onwards to bigger and better things.

 

I don’t know how far back we’re going but in may of 1980 I had a/c and power steering!
Was driving a 1980 Pete with 290 Cummings and 9 speed.

 

Lots of o/o large cars had a/c back then. Company trucks not so much. Kaiser built roof mounts starting in late ‘50’s.
Red Dot still makes them.

 

Started out driving a truck with just power steering. The guy said he never had it before,

A/C?

Two fans with windows rolled down.


I think if 95% of today's drivers had to drive back then, they would fold within a week.