First up, a response to my post from a couple weeks about Bryan DeKock’s restoration of the 1977 Kenworth the family says was the inspiration for the big truck mural on the old Monteagle truck-stop. If you missed that post, find it via this link — the rig made it’s first show this past week at the American Truck Historical Society annual convention in Des Moines Iowa. And .. a picture:
Via Facebook, this from Warren Wylds, who cracked wise: “No ELD, no ABS, no ERG, no SCR no DEF? Hell he probably don’t have steer axle brakes, either. How does this truck operate without killing people?”
Wylds of course left the most crucial thing for the end — “Oh, that’s right. It had a Pro in the seat.”
As noted ahead of some of the past year’s installments in the chronicle of longtime former owner-operator turned company driver Wes Memphis and his transition to e-logs, known for embellishment, coffee-shop/truck-stop philosophizing and more, the pseudonymous Memphis is based in the Midwest. As noted today for the first time today, Memphis also might be the first-ever trucker whose decision to haul was instigated by reading a poem in a college English class. Catch Memphis’ previous pieces is his series of guest contributions to Channel 19, which officially sunset last year but which like many a trucker before him has come out of retirement this first half of the year, at this link. The following is his latest update after a period of growing angst over the reality of trucking with electronic logs:
I can remember reading the Gary Snyder poem “Why Log Truck Drivers Rise Earlier Than Students of Zen” in a college English class in the ’70s and deciding at that moment to become a truck driver:
In the high seat,
before-dawn dark,
