AMUSING RECOLLECTIONS from an AMERICAN CAR HAULER

There was about a 10 year spell in my car hauling career when I got on a west coast deal and I'm still trying to get my body's clock re-adjusted from that era. I received a preliminary call from a strong west coast buyer that made weekly trips to east coast auction houses to buy for a large corporate entity back in California asking if I had trucks that could help him. Having been glued strictly east of the Mississippi for 75% of my travels, I immediately felt that familiar feeling of wanderlust as I envisioned long stretches of open road and blazing sunsets while listening to The Beach Boys as I "run to the sun". Since my motto was "Have Truck, Will Travel", my reply to the buyer, "Corky", was..."How much?" He must have said the magic number and my trucking career was about to change for the next decade.

Determined to show a new customer what Kentucky car haulers were made of, my brother and I gathered a team for 2 Carl's Car Carriers trucks and proceeded to the ADESA auction facility in Framingham, Massachusetts one wintry Friday evening back some 15 years ago. 2 trucks fully serviced and ready to make an impression...4 drivers all rested and raring to make new tracks along with a few $$$ to feed the families back home...and at 7 pm EDT on a Friday evening outside of Boston, snowflakes as big as Mom's pancakes began to fall on already piled up snow banks in the parking lot where we awaited our cargo. We met the new shipper, got our releases for 20 units and told him we would see him Monday morning in El Monte, California. He had to catch a plane home and was late already so there was no time for chit-chat but I saw the unbelief in his eyes as he departed the lot. He didn't believe for a minute those 20 cars would see a California sunrise come Monday morning.

Some 3100 miles and about 57 hours later, those 20 cars were safely unloaded off the trucks awaiting the opening of the gates of the receiver Monday as promised. As Corky arrived that morning to work, he saw we had fulfilled the promise of a snowy late evening departure in Boston. It was immediately apparent his unbelief in Framingham had turned to disbelief in El Monte. We listened as he made the call to associates exclaiming..."You know those cars I bought Friday in Massachusetts????! I am looking at them all on the ground right here in front of me at the office in California!" Needless to say, we had sealed the deal on a good shipper contact that developed into a friendship for years to come.

While this may not have been record time for a cross country trek via full-sized car hauler, there were several factors that added miles and minutes to a regular route from the northeast to the southwest. We chose to run the "southern" route because of the winter weather as we were determined not to be delayed. This added probably a couple hundred miles as we traveled down I-81 and out I-40 for our appointment with the left coast. A pair of drivers in each truck, swapping out driving chores as the spare driver rested, this direction of the trip was pretty much fuel and go.

This would be the first of many cross country journeys for this and other shippers as we developed new relationships with customers outside our regular travel routes. The desert southwest remains my preferred destination for trucking even though I don't get there much anymore. Business patterns and market changes dictate travel routes for those of us that work in niches and once I get on a horse, I tend to ride it till it's dead...figuratively speaking. Done right, which we seldom did, these are epic journeys that everyone should aspire to make at least once in their lifetime.