I spent most of one fall, winter and spring hauling hay for a friend – who lived roughly 850 miles away. This was the same guy I helped move down there – about 100 miles due north of the fabled “Area 51.”
He explained his dilemma to me. He’d sold most of his hay to a California hay dealer. The California hay dealer had many trucks that hauled for him, mostly delivering to end users, dairies or feedlots. The problem was that the state of Nevada and the state of California were miles apart in terms of the definition of a “legal” hay truck.
Between the two, the use of a stackyard close to the California border was arranged. A pair of my Nevada-sized loads took about three California-sized trucks to haul to the Golden State end users. My friend had long ago figured out that you can’t send just anybody out of sight with a loaded hay truck.
He could drive himself, but that usually resulted in nothing being done correctly on the ranch. When he put any of his ranch crew in a loaded hay truck, there were usually issues before the said truck was out of sight of the ranch.
I survived that one without needing a medic. However, there was something in the road dust that drove my sinuses crazy, and I made sure I had a roll and a half of paper towels in the truck.
There were two incidents needing a mechanic away from the ranch. A U-joint on the short driveline between the two driving axles saw fit to “discomboomerate” in the hinterlands. A mobile mechanic had been checked out for capability before and was summoned. By dark (well past dark, actually) the truck and I were home with it all in working order.
The other incident involved the gear in the transmission behind the 550-horsepower Cat motor that was dragging the 129,000-pound (and over) combination up several grades to the unloading spot. On a hard pull, it seemed to just slip out of gear. I was able to tiptoe back to the ranch.
My friend was home, and when I woke him up in the still dark of early morning, he asked, “Are you sick?” He’d noticed the loaded truck back in the yard.
“Me no sick. Truck sick!” There was not a rebuilt 18-speed transmission in the state of Nevada. Close to three weeks later, we were back on the road.
Decades earlier, my own truck failed to make it home under its own power only once, leaving me stranded between Portland, Oregon, and Tillamook, Oregon, with a busted crankshaft.
Back together, the fellow brokering freight loads heading east from Portland set me up with a lucrative multidrop load of plastic pipe. That was the trip where a shortcut turned into a bumpy road that caused my load to shift. When I stopped to secure it, my carcass and a unit of plastic pipe ended up at the bottom of the bank beside the road. None of the pipes were broken, but one of my ankles was defunct.
That’s the load where my magician talents stood out. I hailed a passing car for help, and they came back with two carloads of fellows who got out of an AA meeting to come and help me. (I wasn’t aware of the AA meeting until I offered them a case of beer for their help!)
Reloaded and tied down, I made it to the load’s final destination and hobbled around to get it untied. I finally made it to a motel and got my boot off. I decided it wasn’t broken and iced it overnight – with much effort. I scrounged an ugly piece of two-by-four for a cane and got back to the truck in the morning. I had a spare pair of pull-on boots in the truck and some duct tape. I slit the almost-retired boot from just behind the toe all the way to the top. I could get my swollen ankle in it. Then I wrapped duct tape around it, making an improvised walking cast.
After that episode, I made sure I had a disposable pair of boots and a walking cane in the truck. Duct tape was already on the “don’t leave home without it” list.
After another event that left me diesel-soaked and without a change of clothes, I carried a bag with fresh clothes, many Band-Aids and vet-wraps, plus Kaopectate, lots of aspirin and sinus meds.
My worst was stepping on a nail and not getting in to have it cleaned for several hours. Usually, my knee or wrist injuries got me shouted at by the doctor, with a disclaimer that if I’d made it this long, obviously nothing was broken – so carry on!
