It hasn't been too long since you heard from Pennsylvania-based trucker Steve Bixler. Regular readers will recall the scale model of his long-running "Lady in Red" cabover I wrote about last year:
Following my look at family matters in trucking for Overdrive's 60th anniversary celebration series last week, Bixler reminded me of the occasion on which I first met the owner-operator -- back in the days of my work with Truckers News as a print magazine when the Bixlers won the annual Great American Trucking Family title. The award, meant to celebrate the very generational aspects of so much of trucking in America that I was highlighting last week, was a central part of Truckers News' events around the Great American Trucking Show for years before the magazine closed up shop for a time in 2012, though it's since returned under the staff at TruckersNews.com.
The Bixlers and Updegraves (the latter the family from which Steve's wife, Doris, descends) in 2011 had accumulated a combined 1,200 years' worth of experience trucking among more than 60 family members past and then-present. "While I can't tell you how many years of experience the families have accumulated since 2011," Bixler said, "I can tell you that my brother and I together have 96 years and counting," most of that behind the wheel.
"While I don't know if that fits the profile of what you were looking for in this story," he joked, "it is quite an achievement, if I do say so myself!"
Steve and Doris Bixler, pictured with the Lady in Red 1989 Freightliner in 2012.
How the economics of that business has changed since that time is evident in then-Truckers News Editor Randy Grider's story about the Bixlers and Updegraves. Revenues in frack sand hauling are up substantially in recent times for owner-operators over what was then considered quite good indeed.
