Trucking Urban Legends

I like the local lore, pickup driving slowly up the middle of the NJ turnpike truck lanes with a couple going at it on a mattress in the back...often told by the most gregarious guy in the barn who goes on to describe it happened while he was training the guy who claimed to be a preacher so he matched speed for a good bit so the preacher would get a real eye full...

 

Well, there is that picture floating around of a nekkid lady riding on the top of a sleeper cab. Yes, the very top....

 

I can't remember the exact location or state. My pop used to talk about a lady that was murdered somewhere along US 80 in either Alabama or Mississippi way back in the late 50s. I think she was a hitchhiker. According to my pop Truckers could sometimes see her thumbing for rides along that stretch of road. Pop said he never did see her and I have not either and going back to when I was a small boy I remember riding on US 80 even across the old now closed to traffic US 80 bridge that crosses the Mississippi River! Legend?? Most likely!

 

I am deeply ashamed to admit it, but so have I. In of all places on I 95 in DC. I was bobtail and actually went to sleep. Thankfully I was bobtail because some bumps in the road shook me awake. It was painful, but I finally go up to a TS in Maryland! Never again!

 

There's plenty of 'em. They usually start out like "there I was, going down Donner in the snow when I lost my brakes as my trailer started coming 'round..."

 

I can’t recall buying fuel 1 time I went to bed and woke up I swear 300 mi down the road and bought fuel with my credit card at the time and to this day 15 years later have and recollection of doing it

 

Driving a surplus 'deuce and a half' Westward through Tennessee back around 2004. It was night with driving rain, and I was doing about 40 with the hazards on. I'd just passed the Grinder's Switch exit. The wipers are about useless on those trucks and it was hard to see very far. There is something big and dark colored around there that's not afraid to fly in the pouring rain at night. It just appeared as if swooping down at the truck and smashed into the laminated passenger windshield so hard it broke the wiper arm off, and was gone that quick -I guess off to the side. It was miles before I could pull off in a lighted area and I assure you I was still very wide awake and shook up after that. When I pulled into a tiny little 24 hour truck stop, I found a dent in the hood just in front of the windshield and both inner and outer panes of the glass smashed up almost from edge to edge, with just the laminate holding it together. If it had not been a military truck, whatever it was would have come right through. The wiper arm and blade, miraculously, had landed on the passenger fender and remained there. The thing that creeped me out the most was a chunk of of torn flesh and scaly looking rough skin like a reptile has. It didn't help that one of the local folk at the truck stop said 'There's all kinds of strange things up in those hills'. To this day I don't know what it was and I don't want to know.

 

Maybe it was the Mothman.

 

I have never seen the black dog or mothman or the likes. I met a Western Express driver once. Does that count?

 

When I lived in England, not as a truck driver of course, I would take my Border Collie out (smart little ##### by the way) late at night and enjoy the night sky. Several times i saw a shooting red light zoom across the sky. Did the eye test, look back and forth to make sure it wasn't floaties or some crap in my eye. It was still there. Pretty cool. I made up a sign welcome to Earth and stuff. But for real, I still can't figure it.