"Rooster cruiser" & "chicken lights"

Is this where they got the UFO sightings from?

 

Loaded from enterprise and also Marshall Durbin in Jasper Al. to Rogers poultry in LA. load Friday noon and unload 5am Monday.

 

Lol

 

That whine in the big hole Lol. Got a 14613 OO in the 93 and 3.91s

 

Some of the thought behind the lights was so you could see things up close at night. Especially mounting the lights down low.


You could recognize where a hand was from by the porch light that hung under his visor, everyone calls the marquee sign on the front of a cow wagon a porch light.....including dumb ### cow haulers these days.


I was raised near Batesville Arkansas, our bunch loaded out of Peco every week. Left Sunday’s for a Monday West coast delivery. Then run down to Salinas for multiple pics and run back East. Catch an hour nap in the Texas pan handle maybe 2 hours North of St. Louis.



cow haulers have always been from poor beginnings....didn’t take long to figure out the easiest way to a fast truck was buy one from a chicken hauler that was getting a new one. Kill 2 birds with one stone looks and power all in 1 deal.

 

Late 80's -early 90's,in my experience, every freshly processed load of chicken that I hauled to Cali was frozen in transit.Sleep was aquired during the loading process that usually took several hours or more. My reefer unit would be running during the "live"load ordeal,generally set to around freezing I'm thinking, and upon receiving paperwork, I'd set the unit at some setting below zero for the first 24 hours and after that point, the unit would be turned up to 10 degrees or close, for the remainder of the journey out to some grocery chain in the LA area. I would roll the big tubs to the inside of the warehouse, THAT WAS SOME GROSS looking stuff, and some of the tubs had turned over or freshly killed and frozen chicken would be on the floor of the trailer or hanging off the sides of the tubs due to the sheer numbers put into the trailer. These loads HAD to be there within 48 hours or so. Alabama to LA. Typically El Paso in 24 hours for fuel and shower and maybe short nap. While parked,the chicken lights sans the headlights,kept other drivers from backing into your truck.

My favorite part of the whole chicken hauling experience was when 4wheelers or even other big trucks would try and tailgate or keep a close distance ( my truck did a fine job chicken hauling) and as the ice melted before the unit could freeze everything, the run-off would get all over the windshield and vehicle of the want to be tailgater and I could see the streaks of blood and whatever as the windshield wipers would spread the concoction all over making it hard to see for the driver. I enjoy thinking about it as I type. People that were scared to run their own front door did not use me for very long-

Original chicken lights started as Honda motorcycle blinkers/turn signals (amber lens) mounted on driver's door mirror bracket, slightly turned towards the left to cast light on the seat covers of the vehicle next to the truck and the same type lights mounted as far to the out side of the chrome front bumper (both sides obviously) to make the truck look much wider than it was as it was coming up to pass you, and to assist in illuminating the sides of the road. It didn't take much longer for the l.e.d lights to come on the scene.

I did not drive a slow truck by any stretch of the imagination but there were many that were extremely fast and to watch a chicken hauler and/or a bullhauler,lit up, and coming from miles back, catch up and then pass me was absolutely mesmerizing. Most trucks only registered 85 mph, and to be pegged out and then some AND get passed was as experience. The chicken lights just enhanced that experience.

I am no longer impressed with lots of lights nor chicken hauling as most any slow truck has them and the reefers they pull are practically automatic. Alternators on the old units went out frequently it seemed so to be able to quickly run a decent gauged wire from truck batteries to the reefer battery is a lost art and using the fold out steps by the unit on the nose of the trailer to climb up and physically change broken lights/ lens or burned out bulbs doesn't happen as the l.e.d has been ushered in. Slow trucks run beside each other and can't run front doors for whomever desire to get somewhere so chicken lights no longer are indicative of a large car or rooster cruiser.

I digress it seems and I apologize. It was fun reminiscing and I appreciate the topic.

 

Once I got west of Fort Worth I would set the cruiseamatic at 74 and let the CAT eat!
I would make Cabazon Ca. Around 6 pm Sunday and enjoy a prime rib special at the old cabazon diner(dinosaur statues) get a few hours sleep and get across the Banning scales before they opened. Be downtown LA at 4am for the unload.

 

I might add, I would hand one of the dock hands a 20 and he would hose out the chicken juice and hose down the pallets. I would throw down some coffee grounds to make the wagon smell nice and head up to the valley to get a load of produce back east!
Just another week in the chicken hauler world!