Appreciation of elders

Bet he has a lot of good stories to tell. I wish I could of met my grandpa but he passed before I was born. If it weren't for him me or my dad probably wouldn't be driving today

 

When I was a kid, I loaded with an old hand that drove for the same company. We were in Miami, got a load going somewheres in Wisconsin. We're running up the bigroad...Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky...we're trucking. I was bound and determined not to let that old driver out-truck me.

Man, fatigue set in...

"How much longer can this old guy go? I am so tired that I'm in pain."

We went through Louisville.

"Oh God! That's the most truckingest Hole I've ever seen! I give up!"

Six: Hey Red, got it on?

Lady: Red's sleep. You need him?

Six: .....

 

Haha how long did you beat him by

 

The only person that was beat was me.

You know, it's funny...we used to do some crazy stuff back in the day. I was a kid driving a triple digit truck, and the guys that I ran with were 30 years older. Florida wouldn't bother you at night, and so everyone would hammer down. It's funny because Prime trucks were governed to 77mph and they were the slowest of the reefer trucks. I started in reefer.

Kenworth W900 Aerodyne with a 500 Detroit and a Super10. The 500 Detroit was brand new and it would absolutely scream! That thing would run like there was no tomorrow. Let the sun go down, and run from Chattanooga to Miami in 10.5 hours. Nowadays that would be insane. Empty in Miami, run up to VeroBeach and take a nap and wait for the sun to go back down.

The thing is, even being a kid (I was 22 when I started), if you could do the job, the old hands might pick on you a little bit, but they would do everything in their power to help you if you ever needed help. You didn't have to ask for help, they were going to help. We always stopped in Sheffields "where Jesus is Lord" (I vaguely remember a Jesus statue like they have in Rio de Janeiro,Brazil.) and the old hands would grab a table and save me a spot. The owner was this guy, pure thumper with this Armageddon T Thunderbird hairdo, but he was really nice to drivers and always made it a point to come out and hang with the regulars.

I ran with drivers that I never knew their real names. Even their wives called them by their handles. There was this driver called Jesse James. Had a Freightliner hood (before Freightliner came out with the FLD, they used to make this big hood truck that eventually became the Freightliner Classic) with a Lighted GT wing on the hood, bad fast. Met Uncle Jesse once, wouldn't be able to pick him out of a crowd, but I knew his truck. There was a driver and his son that drove a 359 Pete, never knew his name...got busted at the yard doing their crank. There was Cat, big black guy that women would line up to throw their panties at. Cat was younger than the rest but at least 10 yrs older than me, my first friend OTR. There was Chopper, who had to be a contender for the 'Most P Whipped Husband in America' award (I told a story about Chopper in another thread), 107, who drove a insanely fast International Eagle...good hand, but you could look in his eyes and tell he was psycho....looked like he wanted to go out like Butch and Sundance in a blaze of bullets. never knew 107's name. I called him Seven and he called me Six. There was Ricochet. Had a red flat top FLD with a real lethal to eardrums for 5 mile train horn. And there was Red. He looked to be the oldest of the group. Cat, Chopper and I were company drivers, but the company trucks were triple digit W9s. 25% off the top. Home every weekend.

There were other company drivers,but they normally didn't do too well or stick around too long. Once, we were leaving town, with a new company driver, called himself 'DollarBill', he was my age. It was Dollar Bill, Ricochet and myself, Ricochet out front. DollarBill would refer to himself in 3rdperson, and you would have thought that he was hardcore. But we soon found out that olDollar Bill was all talk.

Six: hey DollarBill, what's wrong? Why can't you keep up?
DB: You guys are going too fast. I don't want to get a ticket!
Six: Ricochet is out front with his ears on, eyes open and bird dog watching. Come on driver!

Well, he decided to run with us. We were heading to Tampa. Would you believe that DollarBill had to pull over and rest in Atlanta? From chattanooga? Yeah, real hardcore. We left him. Ricochet and I stopped in Sheffields, got some groceries, shot a couple games of pool and let the food digest,and hammered downs Tampa. I never saw DollarBill again.

 

Forgot to mention.

We ran the same stretch of roads all the time, always at night. You couldn't recognize a driver in person, but you knew the truck by the chicken lights and the radio. Those R&L trucks used to run pretty good for fleet trucks, and you would meet those guys, BusterBrown, RPS trucks along the way.
You also knew the cops. Lowndes County,Georgia was legendary. Lined up either side of the bigroad, with army fatigues and machine guns. Old "Afterburner"used to sit onI75 around Forsythe,Georgia, waiting for 'drug dealers in 4wheelers.' Tap your brakes, let them see your brake lights as a sign of respect and they wouldn't bother you.

 

I knew a Dollar Bill once just like you described he was from Senitobia Miss.

The crew I ran with was a ramshackle bunch. Horsefly, No Name, Big Chief, and Hillbilly. I'm the only one still truckin to live an livin to truck. I guess reading that made me remember what I missing today. I still say nothing like a stretched out large car covering real estate at a high rate of fuel consumption, no matter what kinda wagon he is pulling