Whenever you get a group of people together who drive for a living be it carrying out transport contracts, couriering parcels, or delivering people in a mini cab – the talk is going to turn to the weird and wonderful stories that evolve from spending so much time on the road. Many tales are about the characters they’ve met at truck stops and cafes and many more are about near misses and disasters (always the other guy’s fault of course!). Then there are the ‘strange but true’ (honest!) tales; the unexplained phenomenons, the ghostly encounters or the spooky UFO brushes with aliens. These are perhaps the most entertaining tales from the road but definitely to be digested with a large pinch of salt! A lot of these seem to involve the scourge of the trucker’s life – sleep deprivation. Here’s just a few read on and you decide...
Jack and his Lumber
Here is the story about a guy who had regular transport contracts to deliver timber from one end of the country to the other. Jack had been working non stop for a week and was seriously tired, but he decided to push on in order to get back home for his wife’s birthday. About half an hour away from home his blinks started to get longer and longer. He turned up the radio full blast and opened all the windows but still he was struggling to stay awake. Then, as he opened his eyes from one dangerously extended blink Jack saw, clear as day, a man in a red and black check shirt sitting in the passenger seat. The guy leant towards him and whispered, “Wake up Boyo.” The massive shock suddenly jerked Jack wide awake. There was no further sign of the man, but Jack made it home more alert than he had ever been. A couple of weeks later he was recounting the story to his Mum. Without a word, she went to her box of old photos and brought out a tatty faded black and white photo of man in a check shirt. Jack went pale – it was his mystery man. Turns out it was Jack’s grandfather who had died before Jack was born, and because of a family rift was never mentioned. (Jack had never seen the photo) It was the description of the shirt that twigged the mother’s memory because apparently he had worked as a timber cutter and he never wore anything else except a red and black check lumber shirt... Jack never saw him again, but he never drove his transport contracts tired again.
A Guiding Golden Arch
There’s another story of a young rookie truck driver who had got himself a fantastic transport contract and had a lot to prove. A few of his colleagues had told him he was taking on too much for a new guy, but he stubbornly pushed on. About 70 miles from his final destination late at night he saw, in the far distance over a 20 mile winding range, the famous golden arches of a fast food truck stop. Perilously close to sleep, he thought how nice it would be to be able to stop there for a reviving coffee. The next thing he remembered was waking up and feeling a strange pressure on his arm turning the wheel to the left. The truck was turning off the road straight underneath the golden arches. The young rookie had no memory of the drive over the range and to this day believes an unseen hand guided him to safety. And guess what’s his favourite food.....
Radio GaGa
Our last sleepy tale is of the elderly farmer who was delivering livestock in the country. He had a rickety old rig but it was all he could afford and he had managed to get a few small transport contracts in his local area. One particularly nasty winter afternoon he had popped home for lunch mid job. As the cows shivered out in his truck, his wife plied him with a big meaty pie and mash and two steaming mugs of milky hot chocolate. After lunch he set off to deliver the livestock all warm and snug from the inside out, but the combination of food, a warm cabin and the hot chocolate caused him to become dangerously sleepy. Suddenly, there was a screeching rendition of “Wake Up Little Suzie” blaring out of the radio. The farmer came to with a shock with barely a split second to swerve out of the path of an oncoming tractor. Shaking, he thanked his lucky stars for the blare of the music until he remembered... his old truck never had a radio...
Author Resource:
Lyall Cresswell is the Managing Director of Haulage Exchange, the leading online trade network for the road transport industry across the UK and Europe. It provides services and transport contracts (http://www.haulageexchange.co.uk/ ) to buy and sell road transport and freight exchange in the domesti
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