There are mistakes you make on the road and forget by the next fuel stop. Then there are the ones that get named.
This one got named.
It was early in my driving career, running teams, back when I still believed doing something a hundred times meant I understood it. We were north of Las Vegas, up around Moapa, Nevada, chasing the last of the light.
If you’ve driven the desert, you know how it goes. The sun doesn’t set so much as disappear. One minute you’ve got visibility, the next you’re working off instinct and shadow.
I was pulling a reefer, pallets of iceberg and romaine, and I was tired in that way that makes your decisions feel faster than they should be.
Kalen, my Australian co-driver, a man incapable of passing a truck stop without at least a quick look, spotted it first. A Terrible Herbst. Small, independent, not another Flying J.
Different sounded good. I swung in.
Now here’s the thing about being new and running tired: you think you’ve got it handled.
You’ve backed into tighter spots. You know your angles.
What you don’t know is what you can’t see.
I set up what I thought was a clean arc into a space near the edge of the lot. Kalen was watching, quiet in a way that should have meant something.
Then he yelled.
“STOP, MATE!”
Too late.
There’s a sound every driver recognizes immediately, the tearing, metallic shriek that means something expensive just became more expensive. I had dragged the side of my reefer into a parked rig.
Not just a tractor. This one had trailers stacked, and on top of that, because why not, an ATV strapped up high like it was part of the skyline.
The unsecured upper trailer caught my reefer and lifted.
For a moment, everything just hung there. My trailer, hooked and suspended like it had decided to quit trucking and become sculpture.
Behind me: pallets of lettuce, doors still closed, quietly depending on me not to make things worse.
Kalen, to his credit, moved fast.
Not to help.
To document.
He stepped out and started taking pictures from every angle, calm as anything. “Got your back, mate,” he said, like he was covering a news event.
The folks from the Terrible Herbst came out next. Not angry. Not even concerned, exactly. Just ... interested. Phones out. Smiling. Like I’d provided the evening’s entertainment.
I stood there doing the math every driver knows: damage, load status, who to call, and how bad this was about to get. The reefer was banged up but running. The lettuce was fine.
My pride took the main hit.
And here’s the part that still surprises me: nobody treated it like a disaster. Not the truck stop, not even the trucking company we drove for. Somewhere between the ATV, the photos, and the sheer absurdity of it, the whole thing tipped over into comedy.
The Terrible Herbst crew even asked for copies of the pictures.
In my years OTR, I’ve had worse days.
But only once did I turn a routine stop into a parking-lot comedy, with an Australian witness and pallets of romaine.
Some nights the road gives you a story.
Some nights it gives you a story, and photographs.
[Related: 'Road's good for thinking,' but real life's where it takes you back]
