To make it to 100 years old is amazing, but to be 100 and still able to get out and occasionally drive a truck is incredible. Wayne Dein from Omaha, Nebraska, has done both, and the stories he has to share about his experiences are captivating. How this story came to be told is because things really do happen for a reason. Our mutual friend Cathy Sherman recently called us excited about reconnecting with her old friend Wayne and getting the chance to stop by and see him on her way home from Arizona this year. Wayne’s friend Mike said Cathy’s visit made Wayne’s year – he was so excited to see her after 30 years.
The two met in the mid-1980s when they were both driving cabover Peterbilts. Over the years, life happened, and they lost touch, but Wayne talked often about Cathy with his friend Mike Schnuelle, and wondered what happened to her. It was in a Trucker Talk column I had mentioned her and that started Mike’s search to find Wayne’s old friend. Thinking about it, I’m sure it was the time when I quoted Cathy as saying “our neighborhood is 3,000 miles wide” in reference to us truckers. How true that is, and this is proof! Mike met Wayne in 1984, and this friendship has only grown stronger over the years. We would like to thank Mike and his wife Tiffany for all their help getting us the information and pictures for this story.
Born into a family of farmers in Nebraska, Wayne was only 14 years old when his trucking career began. Art Clausen was a cattle feeder who asked Wayne’s dad if Wayne could drive a truck – it was an emergency to get a load hauled. Wayne learned as he went, with his first load being 85 bushels of shelled corn. And, as they say, the rest is history, along with a lot of great trucker stories.
Joining the Merchant Marines in 1944 during WW-II, when the Germans were sinking ships and submarines, Wayne’s fear of dying and being 1,000’ below the surface of the ocean was real. But thankfully that didn’t happen. The war ended on Wayne’s 21st birthday, and on September 2, 1945, he got to come home to Nebraska. Thank you for your military service, Wayne!
Once home, Wayne worked on the farm, hauled grain, and trucked part time. Back in the 1930s and 40s, cars and trucks didn’t have heaters. They tried putting gas heaters in cars, but that never really worked. Wayne can remember hauling eggs he loaded near the Minnesota/Iowa border, going either west to California or east in the winter, and they had to put an upright gas heater in the trailer to keep the eggs from freezing. He bought a flight suit, shoes, and helmet to stay warm in the truck. The boots didn’t fit down by the pedals very well, but he made it work. The flight suits were designed to keep pilots warm in brutally cold temperatures up in the air, and they worked just as well in those cold truck cabs back then, too.
In the heat of summer, they had ice bunkers in the front of the trailers, and you could stop in most little towns and have 300-pound blocks of ice blown into the bunkers. Fans helped to keep the load cold in the dog days of summer. I told Wayne that they still shred and blow blocks of ice over certain refrigerated loads today – things like carrots, green onions, and broccoli, to name a few. He was surprised to hear that. Back in those days, many trucks had “coffin” bunks. The driver would crawl out of what would have been a window in the back of the cab into a bunk that was pretty much about the size of a coffin. When I learned to drive in 1978, the truck I was driving had a small coffin bunk.
Back in 1949, Wayne hauled three loads of dynamite from north of Reno south into Mexico, we’re guessing into Tijuana or somewhere near there. He ran over Donner Pass when it was still a 2-lane road (there was a 9% grade back then, too). They had single axle tractors with tandem axle trailers with four-inch brakes. You had to be a real driver to get over those mountains on the roads they had back then, especially when you consider the limited resources they had holding them back when going down those steep grades. Sometimes you had to do like the old song says, and go through Feather River Canyon, because Donner Summit was closed.
In 1955, Wayne bought a brand new International Emeryville cabover and went trucking full time. He was hauling meat for Armour out of South Omaha, NE, to Los Angeles and San Francisco, and then brought produce back to Omaha, Kansas City, or Sioux City. In the winter, when the produce was down south in Yuma, AZ, they would pay him $300 to come home empty. He ran that truck full time for two years, until he told his wife Cathrine he would be back in three days, after taking a load to Minnesota. But, when he got there, his dispatcher asked him if he would take a load of swinging meat to California, and it went on from there. When he got home three weeks later – not three days later – he was told he was done trucking and that she had bought a farm (but he never truly got out of trucking).
Buying a farm outside Blair, NE in the early 1960s, it is still in the family today. When he was younger, Wayne had to help milk cows by hand on his family’s farm. His farm had beef cattle, which was still a lot of work. They built their herd up to about 2,000 head before getting out of the cattle business, but trucking was always part of the farm work for Wayne. In the late 1990s, Wayne’s son Tom and his family moved to the farm and Wayne sort of retired. I think “slowed down” might be a better description. At that time, Wayne moved to a place along Highway 75 outside of Ft. Calhoun, NE, just north of Omaha.
Wayne remembers the people who started Little Audrey Transportation out of Fremont, NE. He told us the company was named after the founder’s daughter, Audrey. At one time, this company had six terminals and over 100 trucks. It was later bought by Emery Transportation Company in 1959. These companies, along with several others like Pirkle Transportation and Monfort of Colorado, were early refrigerated carriers that now have their own place in history.
Turning 100 years young this fall (September 2, 2024), Wayne was still out there hauling grain from the field to the elevator in a Ford Louisville with a 20’ grain box! Although he no longer has a CDL he can still do this kind of trucking, being ag exempt, and is still able to help out on the farm a little.
Over the years, Wayne has only owned one truck with a hood – a 1991 Peterbilt 379 – all his other trucks were cabovers (his favorite was a yellow 1979 Peterbilt). A friend asked if he could paint it one weekend, and then he went on and transformed it into the “Sugar Shack” you see in one of the photos. This is the one truck Wayne regrets selling, and his friend Mike regrets not buying. Back in the day, when I ran west nearly every week, I’m sure I saw this truck when Wayne was running it.
Mike has owned Big Truck Sales in Blair, NE since 2018, and Wayne kept his toes in trucking by going and picking up trucks Mike would buy from the early 2000s until about five years ago. Now, Wayne will hop in and go with Mike when he has to pick up a truck. Mike said that Wayne is still the first one out of the truck, ready to help, with chains and binders, when he goes along.
When I asked Wayne which one he liked better – farming or trucking – I had to chuckle a little at his answer. He said, “Personally, I don’t care for either one, but I had to make a living.” He has a work ethic that would be matched by few today, and at 100 years young, that is saying a lot. Thank you, Wayne, for letting us tell your amazing story and sharing the old pictures. With today’s modern trucks and conveniences, it’s hard to even imagine what trucking was like back then, but people like you help to keep that history alive.
