47 years ago------ My first load hauled.

I'd driven 10 wheel water trucks and off-road logging trucks for a while but my first actual highway load was in 1965. I knew just enough to know that I really didn't know much. I was nineteen years old, trying to raise a family, put a wife through college, and I'd take on just about anything if there was a dollar attached to it.
Cave Junction Oregon to Willets, Ca. The truck was a single axle LT Mack with a 220 Cummins and a 5X3 set of sticks. The truck was probably an early 50s model and it was fairly well thrashed. The oil pressure gauge, water temp gauge, and tachometer worked. None of the others did anything but take up space in the dash.
As you can imagine, there were no fancies. No power steering, no muffler, no a/c, no radio, no heated mirrors, no inside cab lights, no air ride seat, no windshield wiper on the passenger side, no seat on the passenger side, a driver's seat that adjusted for height with a round nob and cam assembly that never stayed where you set it, and a solid iron suspension with absolutely no give to it.
The trailers were a set of doubles, what we called lumber rails, and they were older than the truck. Most of the lights worked.
All the boss told me was "Get 6000 feet of 2x6 doug fir and bring it back to the yard. Make sure you get 6000 feet. Don't bother to weigh it. Don't worry about the scales, they'll be closed".
The loader at Cave Junction, knowing an inexperienced kid when he saw one, took pity on me and showed me how to tie down. We used cables in those days and the ends were all rat nested and the cables themselves were full of jaggers. I ruined a pair of gloves and one sleeve of a good shirt. My arms looked like I'd been attacked by woodpeckers.
I got the load to Willets late that night with no problem except for having to snap the brownie linkage loose a couple of times when I didn't shift it square. Okay, it was more than a couple of times but I got really good at it.
If I remember right the round trip took me eighteen hours. The load paid me 35 dollars.
Driving that road today I marvel that I made it at all.
I didn't know enough to be scared and I was truckin !

 

Tough? Not really. Young. Young and hungry. What we drove in those days and the things we did were normal for that time. We didn't think we were some kind of pioneer, or a tough guy. It was just a guy making a living.
I've watched in amazement all these years as trucks became nicer and nicer and full of creature comforts.
I doubt that you could get a young guy today that would drive the trucks we drove and work like we worked. But, then again, they don't have to.