10-4 Magazine - For Today's Trucker

SEPTEMBER 2007 TRUCKER TALK
HAPPY BIRTHDAY JACK!
By Writers and Owner Operators Rod & Kim Grimm

On September 14, 2007, Jack McClain of Charles City, Iowa will celebrate his birthday for the 80th time – and he’s still out here driving! This month, we thought we would look back at this man’s incredible trucking career that has spanned six decades and over eight million miles of highway. We’ll also look at how trucks and trucking have changed during his long tenure behind the wheel. We had such a great time getting to know Jack and talking about the “old days” of trucking. And before you decide that he’s too old to be out here driving, you should talk with him and listen to all of the things he remembers – specific dates, people’s names, places – it’s amazing. I only wish my memory was as good as his. This guy is sharp as a tack!

You might think an old-timer like Jack would drive an old beat up classic rig, but he goes down the road in a really good looking 1999 Peterbilt that pulls a matching 48-foot Utility spread axle reefer (see photo). Jack’s rig features a long 290-inch wheelbase, a big 600 horsepower Cat, an 18-speed transmission, a 102-inch ICT bunk and a classy paint job. The truck also has single round headlights on Double JJ brackets, painted (black) fuel tanks and plenty of chrome and stainless steel. It’s a combination that many drivers would love to own.

Jack started his trucking career 61 years and 1 month ago to the day when his birthday rolls around on September 14th. The very next day after getting discharged from the Navy on August 13th, 1946, Jack went over to see his friend that had taught him how to drive a car and a farm tractor. This friend then also, at Jack’s request, taught him how to drive a truck. Shortly after that, he bought his first truck and began hauling livestock, grain, lime and many other agricultural products. He had gone into the Navy because, as he put it, “They could give me three meals a day and a dry place to sleep, and if the ship went down, I wouldn’t need those anyway.” That is just the way he looked at it back then.

A few years ago we visited the USS Hornet in Alameda, California and some of the guides on the tour of the aircraft carrier were men who had actually landed planes on her deck years ago. They can display the planes and ships, but when the men are gone, so are their stories – and it’s the same way with the drivers out there who lived and can still remember the “good old days” of trucking – like the beginning of the interstate system, the era when drivers helped drivers, and the days of trucks without more conveniences than some people have in their houses. We can display the old trucks at shows, but when we lose these men, we lose the stories and history.

Years ago, reefer trailers had putt putt gas motors that kept fans blowing over ice to cool the box, and you had to stop at ice houses when it melted. Now, we pull up to the pump, fill up the reefer tank, flip a switch and almost instantly cool or freeze our cargo. Jack’s first tandem axle trailer was 32-feet long. Back then, the length law in many places was 55-feet and the weight limit was 48,000 lbs. Now, trailers are 53-feet long and some drivers can put up to 46,000 lbs. in the box. Oh, how things do change.

The trucks pulling these old trailers didn’t have power steering, air conditioning, air ride, powerful engines, great heaters, big walk in bunks, refrigerators, microwaves or satellite TV. Many of these early trucks were cabovers with small engines, no Jake brakes, “arm strong” steering, spring ride suspension (rough), and bunks called “coffins” because they were just large enough to lay down in. And before the super highways and interstates we now take for granted, truckers drove on bumpy, narrow, two lane roads. If you were really good, you could turn a round in seven days from Iowa to California and back as a team. But if it was summer and you got behind the combines moving from the south to the north or the tourists, you could lose a lot of time going across Nebraska and Wyoming.

Some of the old trucks Jack remembers running include a 1951 International L190 gas powered conventional, assorted models of Macks (LS, LJ, HQ, V61 & V71) and several different Freightliners, which he drove from 1963 to 1973. In 1973 he got in a cabover Peterbilt, and then in 1978 he got his first conventional Peterbilt and has had nothing else since. After that first truck with a Double Eagle bunk, his next three had ICT bunks (they would install the Peterbilt-style door that he wanted). If he wants customization on his truck, he says that it goes to Joplin Peterbilt in Joplin, Missouri and that Corey Stuefen in the shop there is the one he wants to do the work. Jack’s been a loyal customer of Joplin Peterbilt for years and swears by the work they do, as does many others we know.

In the “old” days, the truck coming down the mountain had the right of way on the bridges too narrow for two trucks to meet on. We can remember some narrow old roads when we first started driving dump trucks years ago, but that was in the wide open countryside of Iowa, not coming down a mountain in California like Donner! Jack told me something I heard a lot when we first started, about how you go down a mountain in the same gear you went up it. If you topped it in 3rd gear, you started down it in 3rd gear as well. But that didn’t mean the backside of the hill you just climbed, it meant when you turned around and went back down the same mountain grade in the opposite direction. No mountain has the exact same grades going both ways. Look how short and steep it is pulling out of Laramie, Wyoming, but going east down off that hill is pretty easy. Cabbage, just outside of Pendleton, Oregon, going east, is the big pull, while going west is the big steep drop off. We were told when we first got on the road, “You can go down a mountain a hundred times too slow, but only once too fast.” Words to live by out on the road – and especially when running in the mountains.

Jack shared with us some of the old hand signals that drivers used to communicate with each other before CB radios. Back then, there were hand motions to tell other drivers about a cop in front of them, an accident ahead or to say thank you. And, back then, you could always count on another driver to stop and help you when you needed it. Drivers looked out for each other. The American public had a different view of truck drivers – they were the Knights of the Highway – and they were admired, not feared. Wouldn’t it be nice to go back to a time when there was no road rage? Jack is very proud of the fact that out of all the people he’s helped over the years in cars and trucks, that he’s never accepted one penny. He has always just said, “Don’t insult me, just go and help someone else.” I’m sure that these people he helped weren’t meaning to insult him, but instead just wanted to show their appreciation. Another fact that he’s very proud of is that he’s never taken one drink of alcohol – ever – not even one sip of beer.

In 1951 Jack started driving for Stan & Forest Huer in Waterloo, Iowa. In 1958, this company became known as Kroblin Refrigerated Express. He was leased to them for ten years, and then drove for them for another seventeen years. Leaving in April of 1978, he waited until his first Peterbilt with a Double Eagle bunk came in, and then he went to haul for a company called Little Audrey out of Fremont, Nebraska for eight months before going out on his own. He has been on his own ever since. Now he just hauls meat west and produce east, back to Chicago.

Not only a driver, Jack also has a pilot’s license, and bought his first plane in 1952 – a 1946 Aronica Chief. After learning how to fly, Jack went on to also earn his instrument rating certification and get a commercial endorsement. He has flown into every state in the union and once flew a couple from Chariton, Iowa to Alaska to see their son. When he was home for time off from the road, he would fly charter trips in other people’s planes and get to fly without using his own gas. Over the years, he owned seven different planes, selling the last one in 1970 when he had his first heart attack.

Once, while driving through Washington, Jack got stopped by an officer who said, “You are the fastest thing I’ve stopped all night – where is your pilot’s license?” Jack sat quietly while the officer wrote the ticket and when he handed it to him, Jack got his pilot’s license out and handed it to the officer. It was okay then, but things might not have gone so well had he started out with that bit of humor. Really, he would’ve only been giving the officer what he’d asked for in the first place though. You never have to renew your pilot’s license, just the medical certificate. Now that he can pass his DOT physical, Jack can pass his pilots physical, but after having heart surgery, he can’t get the commercial endorsement to fly passengers for hire anymore. Racking up over 6,000 hours of flying over the years, he’s yet to see the Museum of Flight in Seattle. We think he would really love that place!

Along with the trucks and airplanes, Jack has had a few motorcycles along the way, too. Starting out with dirt bikes, Jack has owned a variety of bikes over the years. Carl Carstens, owner of Rockwood Products in Manitowac, Wisconsin, told us a story he remembers about Jack from 1997 when he got a Heritage Softtail with a Springer front end. The salesman told Jack that there was over a year wait for the bike he wanted, but Jack persisted and told the salesman that he would be in next week to get it saying, “I don’t have that much time to wait.” The following week, Jack was the proud owner of the bike.

Talking to Jack’s wife Sheilah, she told us that the most amazing part of this story is that Jack has had three open heart surgeries, and in 2001 he had total kidney failure for 31 months. During this time, she ran the truck. She told us that places where she would load and unload would ask how Jack was doing and would put him on their prayer lists. People that only knew them slightly would include them in their nightly prayers and then, with no reasonable explanation the doctors could give them, his kidneys started working again. So after almost three years of being home, he got off of dialysis and was able to pass his DOT physical and get back on the road. The doctors said that the odds of that happening were astronomical. I’d say that he was meant to be back in his truck.

Today, Jack runs with his beloved poodle Sammy, whom he rescued three years ago. He is fanatical about this little guy! At ten months old, he was the last puppy in the pen after all of the others had been shipped to a puppy farm. When he saw Jack, he barked and jumped and made him fall in love with him. While holding him and getting some of those wet puppy kisses, Jack could feel that one of his legs was deformed, which was probably why this little guy was not sent to the puppy farm. And now, when he’s home, Sammy loves to tease “the girls” (Jack’s other dogs – Sally, who is a 13 year old poodle and Suzie, a 9 year old Yorkie). Sally and Suzie no longer go out on the road with Jack – they stay home with Jack’s wife Sheilah now that she no longer drives. Sammy knows when Jack is going toward home, and he just goes crazy.

If you see Jack heading east or west this month, tell him happy birthday and pass on good wishes for many more. Some other folks who wanted to wish him happy birthday included the guys at Altorfer Cat in Cedar Rapids, Iowa (they keep both of our big yellow motors purring) and everyone in the shop at Bosselman’s in Grand Island, Nebraska. And all of the drivers that we talk to that know Jack also wanted to wish him a very happy birthday as well.

Rod and I want to send out very special birthday wishes, too, and to also thank Jack for sharing his stories with us. He was so gracious to talk with us and let us share some of his stories with our readers out there, and for trusting that we wouldn’t share everything he told us. Have a terrific and safe 80th birthday, Jack. We hope that you and Sammy enjoy many more years behind the wheel of that beautiful Peterbilt.