Well, Mike "Mustang" Crawford has finally gotten all the way there. At around 5 a.m. Thursday morning, April 28, he passed 4 million miles, all without an accident, a feat accomplished by so many of the best of the best out there delivering the goods. There's a little wrinkle to that feat for Crawford, though, that regular readers may well recall from the day back when he hit 3 million: he ran every single one of them in the Detroit Series 60-powered 1994 Freightliner where he got his start, with a lease-purchase he ventured into with Prime 28 years ago April 6, completing the purchase a couple years later.
It was a load of drywall from Georgia Pacific in Oklahoma that took him to L&W Supply in Elk Grove Village, outside Chicago in Illinois, last week, and when he set out he knew that load would get him pretty close to that 4 million, and I bet he was knocking on the closest four-by-four as he tarped the load in Oklahoma, thinking to himself he was sure to get tied up in some on-highway conflagration with buzzing city four-wheelers before he got all the way there.
"Coming into Chicago I just knew I was going to get 20 miles from my 4 million and have a wreck," he said. "I was nervous, but I made it."
[Related: Mustang's 3-million-mile, one-truck haul nears end]
And as Crawford eased into the facility in Elk Grove Village he thought of his plan, relayed to me some months ago: he'd been carrying a rattle can of spray paint with intentions of marking the side of whatever highway he happened to be on when he crossed the 4 million threshold in the Freightliner. Yet he holds quite a lot of pride in his customer-relationship-building prowess, ultimately, one of four main points he makes when asked to look back on his long career steering the course of the 1994 and his now-independent business. "The lot at [L&W Supply] was a nice new one," Mustang Crawford said. No way he was going to put his marker there. The picture above, and the following one, showing what you can't see on the too-grainy screen up top, served the purpose, sent in a text my way right as I was waking up:
Crawford's been using this GPS device for his odometer and to track IFTA miles since the last in-dash replacement odometer went out on the rig some years ago.
The other points of pride? "I've never been late picking up a load minus a few weather mishaps" through the years, he said. No 2: "I've never had a claim" for damaged freight or something else levied against his business. No. 3: The basic story here -- that a steady hand on maintenance, and a steady-as-she-goes approach to acceleration on the road, have built the Freightliner's ultimate longevity.
