KEN'S KORNER - DECEMBER 2008
TRUCKERS STILL OFFER HELP
BY AUTHOR, EDUCATOR & DRIVER KEN SKAGGS
How many times have you heard that truckers just don’t help each other like they used to? If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard it, I’d park my truck and use it as a yard ornament. I’d get a step-deck trailer, bury it up to the doors and the lower deck, use the cab as a clubhouse for the kids, use the deck as a patio and maybe put some flowers on the top deck (I digress, but that would be cool). Seriously though, truckers do still help each other. I had an adventurous night a few weeks ago that proved it over and over again. When the going gets tough, truckers pool their resources and offer help to each other, often without even being asked.
It all started when I was dispatched an oversize load going from Oklahoma City to Killdeer, North Dakota. They were moving a huge oil rig, which took about thirty or forty trucks to move. I had a really cool piece that looked like a train station. It was a pump building, but it had a deck, a canopy, pillars, signs, lights and hoses hanging on it that made me think of a small town train station. The canopy was the widest point and it was high enough off the ground that cars could go right under it while we drove down the road (and they often did).
The job site was way back in the Badlands, about thirty miles from the nearest blacktop. The gravel roads were mostly dirt and barely wide enough for two normal trucks to pass each other. But, since we were mostly oversized loads, passing was very difficult. My six-axle rig was stretched out to eighty-eight feet long and I was fourteen feet wide. The nine axle truck ahead of me probably weighed 150,000 pounds and was just as wide as mine. It was a steady stream of loaded trucks going in and empty trucks coming out, as the two cranes at the job site unloaded everyone just as fast as any of us could hope for. Every empty truck I passed (except one) displayed courtesy, pulling off the road just a little to allow the loaded truck to stay on the gravel. It was slow going as we followed the narrow, winding road up, down and around, and it got tighter as we went along.
About halfway in, at about 2:00 PM, I heard a broken down trucker somewhere behind me explain on the CB that something major blew and he would definitely need a wrecker. One of his fellow employees offered to pull his load up to the crane after he got his own load off (which wasn’t going to happen today, but we didn’t know that yet). It was only about six degrees outside, so we were all a little worried about him, but thought this shouldn’t take long. At this point, most of us thought we were going to get unloaded and get out in just a couple of hours. Of course, nothing in trucking ever goes according to plan, but we were still hopeful when suddenly an impatient empty truck came barreling out of the job site, not aware yet that the road was too narrow to pass a wide load without moving over or slowing down.
When the exiting hot rod truck approached the nine-axle truck ahead of me he was going too fast for the conditions. The road slanted down sharply on both sides and, since it was icy, both drivers were fearful of getting too close to the edge. The empty truck could have gone a little off-road, but didn’t think so, and he passed so closely to the oversized truck that the driver had to weave off the gravel just a bit. Luckily, he was traveling slowly, because as soon as his trailer tires hit the dirt his whole load slid right down into the ditch. His tractor was still on the road, but all five trailer axles were eight feet off to the right and about six feet down in the ditch. He began yelling on the CB for someone to get the name of that truck (and several of us did). Conveniently, the culprit had his CB off and got away, but a few of the other drivers knew who he was so they called his company and then passed the information on to the victim.
We radioed ahead to the truck nearest the cranes to have him tell the operators what had happened. Surprisingly, the two crane operators decided to bring their big cranes down the road and pull the stuck rig out of the ditch. I watched this whole ordeal for several hours, as the talented crane operators gently pulled the loaded trailer out of the ditch and set it back on the gravel. As we sat and watched, I mentioned the broken down trucker to someone, who we figured must be freezing by now. One driver dropped his trailer and bobtailed back to him to let him warm up in his truck while we all prepared for a long night. Someone else offered food to anyone who didn’t have any and several hungry drivers went to the truck with food and got plenty to eat.
I awoke in the morning to a voice on the CB offering coffee to everyone. Most of us met at that truck and enjoyed a warm cup on a very chilly morning as we recounted the trials and tribulations of the night before and patted ourselves (and the crane operators) on the backs for helping each other out. The broken down truck was now gone and the driver was safely in a motel somewhere. The one that got pulled out of the ditch was glad nothing broke. The drivers that had no food were smiling and bragging about what they ate. And I almost forgot – another driver almost ran out of fuel that night, too. Someone offered him some fuel if someone else could provide a siphoning hose, which they did, and everything worked out for everybody. The crane operators even came in early that morning, so we were out of there in no time.
Yes, truckers do still help each other. Please do not listen to the naysayers. If you see a fellow driver having problems out there, stop and help if you can or call someone else to help if you can’t. Someday, that act of kindness just might come back to you – but if it doesn’t, so what – at least you know that you did the right thing. And if everybody out there does “the right thing” more often, we can begin to restore this battered image that truckers, quite frankly, have given themselves.