Keep on truckin'

"If memories were all I sang, I'd rather drive a truck"
                                   Rick Nelson, "Garden Party"

Fig. A

It's not easy, pushing a big truck across the nation's highways.  I see guys wheeling 40' tractor-trailers through city traffic and around suburban roundabouts, and I marvel.  Some people have a hard enough time getting their Kia Rio from home to work without riding up over a curb or plowing over a fire hydrant (figure A).

Fig. B.

But lately we have seen a spate of truck driver problems in which the driver does fine out on the road and all hell breaks loose at the end of the trip.  Consider this one:  earlier this month in Hermitage, PA, Thomas Young, 58, of Cass County, IN, was steering a milk tanker truck that he drives for Neimeyer Milk Transfer.  He was almost finished his run, and was taking the last pull on a can of Dr Pepper when he began to choke on the soda, and ran off the road into the parking lot of a car dealer.  

He wrecked 23 cars in the process, which had to be a new record for destruction done by Dr Pepper, eclipsing the old record of destroying my appetite with its odd cherry-cola-root beer flavor. 

Imagine how Mr Young felt, choking on the official soft drink of Texas as his milk tanker careered 600 feet through a grassy area, eventually smashing into a building (see Figure B) at Montrose Buick-GMC-Cadillac.  22 cars were wrecked outside, and one was pushed into the showroom.

I've always wondered how they get those cars into the showrooms!

And then...

Fig. C

A firefighter with the Weirton WV Fire Department was driving the engine out of their Station 3 on Pennsylvania Avenue the other night, and a compartment door was left open. He was only pulling up to do a little maintenance on the engine, but that flapping door caught the support beam between the bay doors, and, well, look at figure C.

Firefighters call moments like this "Dear Chief" moments, as the driver involved writes a memo to the boss about a) What Happened (I smashed up Engine 3 and Station 3) and b) How This Could Have Been Prevented (I could have taken the day off.)

 Accidents will happen, just not always out on the road!