You settle in, coffee hot, radio on, a few miles outside Oneonta, Alabama, state route 132 eastbound near SR 75 after unloading fertilizer at the county co-op. You’re tooling along in your 2005 Peterbilt 379, that Cat C-15 single turbo softly mewing around 25 mph, with a few more gears to grab. Your 72-inch sleeper’s packed with all you need, May 8, 2024. Life is pretty good.
Then you pass through a residential area, and everything changes.
Charles “Peanut” Pilkington was born in Blount County, Alabama, in spring 1968. His grandfather took one look at him and said, “That boy is no bigger than a peanut.” The name just stuck.
“My oldest brother bought his first truck in 1978, when I was ten,” Peanut Pilkington said. “I would get out of bed at 2 a.m. to crank his truck and turn the heat on for him. Hearing that diesel engine roar to life gave me truck fever.”
When he was 12, he “started washing my older brother’s truck on the weekends,” he said. “That just compounded my thirst for trucking. I would drive my brother’s truck around the yard and back and forth to the wash bay.” It marked his first experience behind the wheel.
I met the owner-operator out at the Stars, Stripes and White Lines truck show in Georgia last month, and the pride for his 2005 379 was clear as he told his story.
“I still enjoy driving an old-school truck,” he said. His first was a 1970 Kenworth with a 20-foot dump body, purchased at auction for $12K in Talladega in the mid-late 1980s. “I was 19 years old at the time, married with a baby on the way. I borrowed the money, and I had no idea what to do with that old truck."
It was just the beginning of P&L Farms, which he would grow to a seven truck small fleet with his own authority.
Today he hauls in the 379 pictured above, aptly named “Peanut’s Pride,” covered in LED lights, gray and black paint tinged with purple and orange accents and sporting a chrome chicken wing, cross-shaped hood ornament, upgraded headlights with chrome visors, and illuminated Peterbilt 379 emblems. 18-speed, 3.36 rears, Borg Warner S410 80-mm turbo, Full Tilt manifold, 16:1 engine kit, APC stage 5 cylinder head, matched injectors with modified tuning to turn around 900 horsepower.
The truck was truly a work of art, inside and out.
I’d never seen a big truck with a fire-breathing dragon mural on it. How’d Peanut come to own it?
“I bought the truck in Jackson, Mississippi, in 2016,” he said. “One of my drivers had wrecked my other truck and it was time for a new one.”
He well knew what he was looking for. “I don’t run over-the-road anymore myself,” he said, keeping within 250-300 miles of home. He might stay out just “a few nights a week. The old girl brought me home without issue for nearly ten years until the wreck.”
He gazed down at his boots.
“It was not my time, but God was letting me know how close I was and how quickly life can change."
--Charles 'Peanut' Pilkington
“I remember coming to a sudden stop,” he said, "almost a reflex action, like I was on auto pilot. There was a loud noise I did not recognize." He shifted his gaze to me. “I had no idea what just happened. I looked in the mirror and all I could see were tree limbs all around my truck.”
From the scene May 8, 2024
Turning to the passenger-side mirror, he noticed a shaft of sunlight coming through the top of the sleeper behind him, a “large log on the sleeper floor right behind my driver’s seat,” he said.
All of it was obviously difficult for him to talk about, so I gave him time.
“I climbed out of the truck, wondering what just happened,” he said. “I pulled out my phone, and my first call was to 911. I had a hard time getting the dispatcher to understand that a massive tree had just fell on my semi-truck as I was driving by and the entire roadway was now blocked, yet I had no injuries, and no other cars were involved.”
The sleeper was completely destroyed, top of the cab crushed along with hood panels and the right front fender. “My dump trailer had extensive damage, too,” he said.
He called his son to the scene with a chainsaw with which he cut limbs away from the top of the truck and trailer slowly, trying to prevent any more damage. City road crews brought out a loader out to help remove the rest of what had been a roughly 60-foot-tall tree.
And believe it or not, “after the tree could be lifted off my truck and trailer, it was actually drivable,” he said. Peanut had come about as close as a man can get to being crushed to death, yet drove the rig the 13 miles back home with a big hole in the sleeper behind him.
Ultimately, it would cost $60K to repair the truck, $30K for the trailer. “The accident report stated that a dead tree fell from the nearby property across the road, landing on top of me,” he said. “I met with the homeowners, who were very nice. They were very helpful, once we had an interpreter on hand to obtain their insurance information.”
At once, their insurance adjuster called it an act of God and denied all claims, this despite the fact that the tree was “clearly dead inside and should have been cut down months before,” as Peanut saw it.
He had to use his own insurance to cover most of the repairs, which played out over the next 18 months. Thankfully, the small fleet owner-operator had a spare power unit he put into service to cover the loss over that time. He worked it all the way up until the truck show last month, where he stressed the importance of insurance coverage -- and a nest egg -- for any owner-operator. Without it in his case, the loss here could have been financially devastating.
[Related: Catastrophic engine failure delivers customer calamity: How these owners prep for the worst]
“Be sure to have proper insurance coverage with a reputable carrier,” he said. “Remember that cheaper insurance is not necessarily better.”
For anyone just starting out with a CDL in over-the-road work, he advised, “get your experience and do your training at a larger company before trying it out here on your own. Have yourself a good nest egg built up first, you just may need it.”
Given the act of God happened so close to home, repair work for the 2005 379 took place in Alabama, where Peanut’s headquartered in Altoona. Some of the work was “done in-house at my own truck shop,” he noted.
Body and paint work was done at Griffith Body Shop in Odenville, and custom airbrush work by Michael Swann in Tarrant City.
Out at the truck show, I could see no sign of the calamity Peanut narrowly escaped. The fact that his dashcam captured the entire ordeal really brought it home.
A few inches' difference and that tree would have been in his lap.
“It was not my time,” he said, “but God was letting me know how close I was and how quickly life can change. Today I think about things differently. I try to enjoy life more and show my loved ones that they are dear to me. I focus on spending my time wisely. A close call like this makes you thankful. I count my blessings and remind myself each day that there is truly a God up above.”
He's run the route right by the disaster site several times since. “I can’t help but think about what happened and that I had a guardian angel that day,” he said. “I find myself looking at the trees close to the road as I pass by.”
Charles “Peanut” Pilkington today has a small cattle farm that keeps him busy when he’s not rolling. “I love what I do, it is in my blood,” he said. “I will always be involved in trucking in some form or another.
“I have a second chance, and that is why this 379 will never leave me as long as I am alive.”
[Related: Red, white and 'Little Blue': The story of owner-operator Raiko Graveran]
