Truck driving can be a little too exciting

This is a story to go along with my Wolf Creek Pass adventures. For the most part, cross-country semi driving is boring. Then there are the exciting times. Like during the union driver strike of ‘79.

They went on strike in ’77, and we independents supported and parked our rigs. They got most of what they wanted, and when we independents went on strike the following year, they blew us off and kept driving.

In ‘79, they went on strike again, but this time, we didn’t support them and the fun began. There were so many reports of independent drivers being shot, something had to be done. 

I was bringing a load from Kentucky to Ohio when a pickup truck pulled alongside me. A loud noise and then suddenly, the locking rim flies off my front tire. It nearly hit their pick em up, and they took off. The steering wheel was shaking like crazy and trying to pull me off the road, which would have had my semi and I driving down a steep embankment off road and probably with a bad ending. But I was able to land the truck and trailer and pulled into the nearest exit.

I checked my truck and yep, the front tire had been shot out. I loaded my rifle and called in. I had to walk a mile to find a phone. The rest of the night was spent listening to the CB radio as other truckers were being shot, and at one point, the place was covered in police and an ambulance as one trucker had been shot in the head.

Then one day an independent driver, father of six, was called on his CB radio that his tires were full of nails. He pulled over, and while checking his rig, a pick em up drove by and he was hit full force from shotgun blasts and killed. The last straw.

A week later, somehow, at a large union company, 35 of their tractors caught fire one night and the union drivers were warned that it was only the beginning if the shootings continued. Fortunately, the shootings stopped, and life went back to boring.

Not long after, I quit cross-country driving and went to work for a local hospital. The driving allowed me to see much of America, but sometimes the price was too high.