Updated April 5, 2021, on the occasion of Overdrive's ongoing 60th anniversary coverage.
The author of this 2017 story, Bill Ward of Delta Junction, Alaska, credited the erstwhile forums of the old "Hank’s Truck Pictures" website for “the circumstances that allowed this story to be written,” he says. While Ward wasn’t around during the days of the early trucking pioneers, he’s got a keen interest in those “early days, the 1940s and ’50s when driving was a real challenge done by the toughest of men,” evidence of which you could find in no small measure at the old Hank’s Truck Pictures site. “It’s become important to me to find ways to remember some of the early trucking pioneers who built this industry as owner-operators,” Ward said at the time of the original writing. This story that follows from Ward is well representative of that mission. -Todd Dills
After knocking around driving as a beginner in the 1960s, doing more damage to clutches and gear teeth than I was worth, I finally landed a dream job with a fuel hauler in Bozeman, Montana. Up until then I’d hauled hay, grain, lumber, sheetrock, 100-lb. bags of cement, and the final insult, bone meal. Nothing stinks like cooked bone meal, and after you’ve unloaded 40,000 lbs. of what’s left at the end of a slaughter plant, you do not get back into the truck, you walk to the nearest shower with clean clothes. A job where you can put on a pair of gloves, hook a hose to a camlock fitting, and turn a valve to unload is the perfect job.
My new boss, Gene Ballinger, was one of the true pioneers of trucking. He began his career in 1945 hauling fuel out of Billings, Mont. He bought his own truck and was leased to common carriers in the area. Even though his truck had the carrier’s name on the door, Gene built a reputation for service, guaranteeing that the delivery accounts he served were loyal and would follow Gene wherever he worked. In those early days, trucks were powered by Cummins 220s or 250s and hauled maybe 5,000 gallons in steel tanks on narrow roads. There were no interstate highways, and it could take a long day to deliver fuel to a station a couple hundred miles away. Trucks were rough-riding, noisy, and tiring to drive. Gene bought his first new truck in 1957, a Kenworth 925 with a 250 Cummins, 5x4 transmission and Rockwell rear ends.
It was his pride and joy, he kept it in top condition, and it made him a good living. He hauled fuel all over Montana and Wyoming and was well-known and -liked by the trucking industry. He learned early that service, punctuality and honesty were hallmarks that made a strong business. When I started working for Gene in the late '60s he’d moved to Bozeman and hauled out of the pipeline terminal.
You may wonder how a greenhorn driver like me landed that dream job. It was a fluke, really. I had left resumés with all the carriers in Bozeman because I wanted to be based closer to home. Gene took mine, but didn’t offer any encouragement and dropped it on his desk. Soon after that his longtime driver finally got tired of working Gene’s 24/7 schedule and up and quit. Gene was left to haul all the loads himself. Gene’s was a non-union company, while all the other bulk carriers were union. He wouldn’t touch any of their drivers with a 10-foot pole.
He was desperate, and called me out of the blue to come in and talk with him. No cellphones then, of course, so he got hold of my wife, who chased me down at a truck stop in Helena where I’d laid over for the company I was driving for. She jumped into our Pontiac Grand Prix SJ and drove the 100 miles to pick me up in just over an hour. We raced back to Bozeman, and I caught Gene at the loading rack looking bleary-eyed and tired. We talked awhile (he’d already spoken to a few people who knew me), and he offered me the job.
