10.30.2012
My early trucking moved quickly from reefers and perishables to dry vans. While the freight was not subject to fluctuations in temperature, some of it was highly valuable, a target for thieves. Furs traveled in innocuous trailers, with one feature noticeable to those in the know. Furs must travel on hangers, suspended from poles built into the van, spanning the width, the round plugs running along the length of the trailer high up near the roof. These plugs identify the cargo as hanger goods. Other garments travel packed in boxes, with rare exceptions. Add to the appeal of high-priced merchandise a leased power unit and one petite blonde behind the wheel, and, well, you don't stop for anything between New York and Chicago. Period.
Traveling at night, only the "serious" drivers are out - truckers, shift workers, bears hunting DUI's and the like. So it's easier to spot a tail. Unnerving, but pick up a couple fellow travelers along the route (you need a few, so when one stops to answer the call of nature, you still have a few spares), kept awake by mildly suggestive jokes and can-you-top-this story-telling over the CB radio, and you are less likely to get run off the road, or forced off a remote offramp.
809 miles, according to the road atlases in use at the time. Pennsylvania was the roughest, applying sorely-needed federal funds to erecting a state-of-the-art scale house one year rather than do something about the concrete Interstate which was surely awarded to some out-of-work brother-in-law who poured 30-foot driveways for a living. Exiting onto Ohio's toll-road was such relief that one's stomach muscles would noticeably relax, and the danger of dozing off rose.
After running two, occasionally three of these rounds a week for about 6 months, I took a few days off. Compelled, according to the boss. Chatting with the driver who would be taking over my rig, I decided to leave my radio installed rather than bother ripping it out. He would appreciate the stereo and I would save a bit of time and trouble. I was ridden hard and put up wet after maintaining this grueling schedule, including some local work around Jersey City between runs. Burned out.
On my return to work about a week later, I discovered my radio and a few other items gone, and a detective keenly interested in my route under such valuable loads. Seems the truck had disappeared shortly after picking up a load in New York, found a few days later with the hubodometers smashed, and no trailer. Gone was the radio, and the driver's tale of attack at gunpoint was disbelieved despite numerous cuts and bruises - essentially because it beggared the imagination to think someone would stop to grab a cheap radio when they already had several million dollars worth of negotiable furs.
Evidently the detective decided I really had nothing to do with this adventure, only clean laundry and a thin bank book testimony to my meager vacation holed up at a local motel. Who knows if that driver was involved? Perhaps I really dodged a bullet. The possibilities for misadventure on the road abound. Proof I live a charmed life, if you will.
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