When trucker Percy Davis suffered a stroke in Manteca, Calif., the trucking company he drove for didn’t hesitate to respond: The fleet flew a driver out to California and reclaimed the truck, leaving Davis to convalesce in a hospital.
Even though the company had promised to help, in the end it stopped returning calls, leaving it up to Davis’ family to find him a way home. “We still haven’t heard from them,” says Percy’s sister Sherri. “I can’t believe that a trucking company would say, ‘You’re through doing for us, so we’re through doing for you.'”
The issue was further complicated by Percy’s medical condition. The stroke had devastated his mind and body, leaving him paralyzed on one side and requiring heavy medication. Doctors were forced to amputate his leg when blood clots formed there, and the condition made it difficult to move him back to his hometown of Houston, because he could not sit up. Car travel was out, and moving him by plane and ambulance too expensive.
“The cheapest way to get him back was $12,000 aboard a medevac jet,” Sherri says. Because Percy was with his carrier for only a few months before the accident, he didn’t have insurance, and the family was footing the bills. Sherri says they were stuck.
That’s when she discovered Bob and Carol Hataway. When doctors decided Percy could be moved, Sherri began looking for help. A friend put her in touch with Werner Enterprises, which in turn referred her to the Hataways.
The couple operates AmCoach, a one-bus service that helps truckers stranded on the road by injury or illness. If a trucker is too debilitated to travel by plane or commercial bus and cannot arrange for travel, the Hataways hit the road in their patriotic-themed bus.
Bob and Carol Hataway drive AmCoach across the country to help truckers in need.
