Carlile Transportation driver
“We were about 12 miles outside of Dead Horse on the Dalton Highway,” he says, “on the way to Prudhoe Bay. There were a couple vehicles sitting there
Dobbs made sure to roll up his window as the bear picked his Carlile Transportation rig out of lineup of parked vehicles and ambled over. “It disappeared then under the front of my truck,” he says, “and then I looked down out of my window and the bear was standing there looking at me. It went down around the front of the my truck,” disappearing again before standing and looking at Dobbs over the bug screen.
Why did he pick out Dobbs? “He could smell the bugs and such on the radiator is the only thing I can think of,” Dobbs says. “It was a pretty nervous situation with a bear that big. He could rip your door right off or break your window, easy.”
Dobbs has been driving for decades, after starting in the Air Force at age 17. He got his first commercial transport job in Nevada in 1979, and he’s lived in Alaska throughout most of the subsequent years, driving for Carlile for the past 13.
Overdrive Editor Max Heine rode with Dobbs’ former Carlile colleague George Spears in 2006. Read the end result here.
UPDATE:
Today, Jim Dobbs sent in the pic at left, taken from his iPhone on the day in question, giving the up-close-and-personal view from his driver-side window as the bear made its way around the front of the Kenworth.