Momma Bears put out cab fires, slap tornadoes…

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Updated Mar 6, 2018

We have a Facebook page I spend a lot of time messing around on when we’re out. It’s actually part of my contract to maintain social media in some form, and y’all can just go ahead and point and giggle all you want, but you can get a college degree in Facebook these days, so get it out of your system.

I love the comments and information we get from the page. I try to post at least one question a day about driving — how you got started, your first run, stuff like that. I’ve gotten some of the most incredibly interesting responses, and learned a great deal along the way.

One of the very best answers yet was to the question, “What’s your first memory of being in a truck?” Jeff Sturm answered:

“I remember my dad’s 1968 9000 cabover Ford… My brother was a newborn and I was 2. It caught on fire while we were sleeping and my mom grabbed us and jumped out the passenger side over the guard rail…(yes, we were parked). My dad was yelling for the fire extinguisher. My mother, instead of unclipping it, ripped it out of the floor, with the screws and bracket, and handed it to him.”

Does anyone else get the idea his Mom was not to be trifled with? Holy guacamole.

I like this story because it reminds me of the time a tornado was coming and my own Mother heaved a queen-size mattress into a 4-by-6 bathroom with one arm while simultaneously dragging and throwing me under it with the other. She broke the door off the hinges. I have a distinct feeling she would have stood face first in the path of the tornado and slapped the hell out of it, if she could have. Our apartment complex was destroyed, but my dog and I didn’t have a scratch on us, because she had managed to kick the dog into the pile of things she was throwing the mattress over. During a tornado. Go Mom.

The stories readers share with us are priceless to me – someone made the comment they thought the story about their first solo run was boring because it was just taking sugar beets a short distance. Not true. Every story told helps put a personal face on the industry. It’s imperative to make people outside the industry understand there’s a person in that truck, a person with a story and a life. Someone who matters and is loved and missed while they’re away.

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I’m truly thankful for the opportunity to do what I do. We’ve met some incredible people, and I’m sure there are many more out there to find. Tell someone a trucking story today, even if you have to get on the CB and yell over a bunch of idiots. Someone is listening, and they appreciate you and want to hear what you have to say.

Be safe, and keep on truckin’.