How much better was it back in the day

My Dad drove during that time, as did my Grandpa. Sounded like a lot more fun.

Hauling a load and a half, dodging scales, covering 100+ miles in an hour or less, shooting at signs in the desert, blowing someone’s doors off while you had your lights off on a full moon night and scaring the crap outta them, if someone was thirsty and had a rider, get up alongside and hand a coke over, things like that. Sure there were drugs if a guy wanted them, but I’ve never heard of it being forced. It was mostly to make more money or had to do with your lifestyle. 2 or 3 log books were the norm but cops also didn’t care that much long as you were awake enough to hand them the correct one. A lot less traffic and better but smaller roads.

I don’t know that those things were the norm since my Dad Is very much an outlaw type of person. But those are all things that happened on a regular basis. My Mom would pay 2 speeding tickets per trip to the west coast and back but it was just thought as a cost of doing business. None of the states spoke to each other.

The trucks were way cooler, but not in the sense of air conditioning! You also cold freeze your ### off. For many, no power steering and of course the spring ride caused many people to have kidney problems after a career of driving. They also used torsion bar suspension.

My Dad got 3 to 3.5 mpg and didn’t give a ####. Fuel was cheap. Haul heavy and haul fast. That extra half load meant you only needed to make 2 turns to the coast per month if you wanted. Not the standard 3, or 4 if you were jacked up.

I remember as a little kid my parents talking about drivers who would get in too deep with the dope and get paranoid and think the cb was talking to them. They would tell the driver to throw it out the window and get their #### together. Sometimes firing them when they got back, sometimes having them park the truck and send a team to recover.

I also remember my parents cutting 4 checks for the driver to take with them to pay expenses, normally a couple thousand dollars. Some of the guys, by the time they got back they had paid expenses but also advanced themselves equal to their paycheck. Their paycheck would end up being literally 55 cents. They lived to drive, and drove to live.

Just a different time.

 

I miss the pinball machines.

 

Kelly’s million dollar Terminal at Shreveport had some good pinball machines and cute waitresses.

 

Man that's some funny stuff, the CB is talking to me and the shadow people are following me LOL

 

Load it like a freight train drive it like an airplane!

 

I have to admit not having A/C can be pretty intolerable in the summer heat. And of course the LAST thing you'd want to do is try to run at night and sleep in it during the day. No idea how they put up with that all day.

 

Different places sold blocks of ice. Set the block of ice on the doghouse, have a water jug to fill up Dixie cups to pour down your back, and turn the defrost fans on and point your way. That’s what my Grandpa said. He started trucking in 1946.

Also remember when vehicles had wing vents where you could ram the air in? That’s not needed nowadays. Less people smoke too, to exhaust the smoke.

 

Don't get me wrong I'd rather put up with heat and bugs than 10*F with subzero wind chills and ice covering everything.

 

I always tell people I ran ILLEGAL a lot back in the day but I ran SAFE. I slept when I wanted or needed to, avoided known rush hours/jams, and adjusted driving hours to accommodate weather issues. The log book was there to make it look legal.