At
the recent Mid-America Trucking Show I was given a very prestigious honor,
something like a lifetime achievement award – at least that’s the way I see it.
I think they got the wrong guy, but I’ll take it. This was an individual award,
but it never could have been without my wife Geri by my side.
Whatever
success I’ve had in a long career of trucking, I owe half the credit to her, whether
she was on the road with me or at home.
I
never tried to get rich trucking by running like a wild man or owning more than
one truck at time. All I ever wanted to do since that first day is drive a
truck. My first time with a wheel and a stick in my hands, I thought “Hey! This
is fun and I get paid, too.”
I
(we) were owner-operators the last 25 years. During that time we bought and
paid for four trucks and never paid a late payment charge. That’s the downfall
of many: Get behind a payment or two, and the penalties and interest make it
nearly impossible to catch up. We were fortunate and never had serious downtime,
health issues or accidents that can put you out of business.
We
dodged all that stuff and – here’s where Geri comes in – got that payment in
the mail no matter if I wanted to put it off or not. And
I did a lot, thinking let’s do this or that and let it go till next week. No
dice. Same with the house, on the road or home. She stayed on top of whatever
needed attention.
Geri
went on the truck when she wanted, we traveled all 48 plus, mostly at our own
pace. She is a certified driver and did some of the driving although we never
bought into the “team driver” concept. We always liked to be parked by early
evening. On the other hand, we didn’t run hard enough for two people to even
bother recapping logs. We always had plenty of hours available, and if we
wanted could trailer truck 10 or 12 hours every day as long as we wanted
without running out of hours.
When
she was on the truck, I could count on a spotless cab and sleeper with clean comfy
made up bunk every night.
When
I went out by myself, in two days it was a disaster area … newspapers, pop cans
and chicken bones all over and the bunk just like I left it in the morning.
When
we came in together off the road, she wouldn’t chill out even a little. She’d dive
right into it, clean out the truck, do the washing, pay the bills, clean house
and do the yard work and what ever else needed doing while I mostly kicked back
and took it easy. She told me several times she enjoyed going on the truck
because there wasn’t as much work to do.
There
have been many articles written about truckers’ wives who keep the home fires
going, being the handy man, soccer mom and everything else it takes to run a
home. I had the best of both worlds. When Geri was on the road with me, we
shared many good times going places and seeing things, visiting friends around
the country. Well, there was one time when we were in Florida in January and I
accepted a load to Montana. That didn’t go too well for me, but all in all the
good outweighed the bad a thousand times.
And
when I was out there by myself, I knew I had a nice home to come home to and
the work would all be done so we would have time to do whatever we wanted. The
late Red Sovine, famous for his trucking songs pretty much said it all with his
song “The Woman Behind the Man Behind the Wheel.”
