31 Truck Drivers Reveal Their Crazy, Bizarre And Wild Experiences On The Road

Truck drivers have one of the most stressful jobs in modern-day America. People might think it’s an easy job, but imagine being on the road for 18 hours, hauling 10 tons of whatever-it-is, without anyone to talk to, but the drone of radio and passing cars? They face harsh weather, crazy people and eerie situations more than any one of us, and this particular Reddit thread bares it all.

1. CalvinDehaze

My mom is a trucker, this is her story.

She was driving through Arizona when she saw what she thought was leaves blowing across the road in the distance. This puzzled her since there’s mostly pine trees in northern Arizona. When she finally got to the “leaves” she realized that they were migrating tarantulas, 1000’s of them. There were so many of them that her truck was sliding on their guts so she had to slow down. She stopped at the first truck stop and told her co-driver to fuel up (he was sleeping at the time) because she wasn’t going to step foot outside after what she just saw. Her co-driver was pissed since it was technically his time off, and he thought she was crazy, until he saw the tarantula guts and legs caked in the inside wheel well of the truck.

She also outran a tornado in the midwest. She was about to pull over and take cover until she saw another big rig that was parked on the side of the road get tossed a couple hundred yards like a toy. She called me and told me that she thought she was going to die and wanted her last words to be “I love you” to me. She pulled off the freeway and got to a Wal-Mart, where she ran into the basement where all the staff and customers were taking shelter. After the tornado passed, they stepped out of the basement and into daylight, since the Wal Mart was destroyed.

She has many many stories like this. Trucking is 90% boredom, 10% insane shit like this.

2. Tkis01gl

This happened to me when I was 15. My dad ran a wrecker service for over the road truckers.

Late one night we got a call that a truck had run off the road and struck a tree 20 miles south of town. So my dad and I fired up the wrecker and headed south. When we came on the scene the truck and trailer had ran off the road to the right and smacked a tree head on. It was one of those 100 year old oak trees. This was back in the day when there were cab over semi trucks, or the ones without noses or the engine is under the cab. The truck was still running at an idle, the door was closed, but no driver was seen from the drivers window. The front drivers windshield was busted and there was a large hole in the middle.

The trailer was loaded with flat 1/4″ sheet steel. Of course, it is pitch dark and you can’t really see things that well when we first got there. Our impression was the driver smacked a tree, hit his head on the windshield and was already getting treatment somewhere. So my dad set up the wrecker to hook onto the trailer and he wanted me to open the cab in order to release the brakes.

When I opened the door, I was greeted with a lower half of a body. When the driver hit the tree, a single sheet of steel broke free and cut through the cab cutting the driver in half. The upper half of his body went through the windshield. I found the drivers upper half in a corn field about 40 feet from the truck and he was still grabbing the upper part of the steering wheel. It looked like he was frozen in time still driving the truck. Needless to say he went into a body bag with his lower half and we worked through the night getting the truck and trailer back to town.

This is one of many experiences I had growing up in a wrecker service family.

3. Digyo

Many years ago I was on what is called a “meet and turn” This is where a driver that is domiciled out of one city will drive a load halfway to its destination, while a driver domiciled out of that destination will drive halfway with a load that is destined for my city. We meet in a parking lot, switch trailers and drive back home. I had been on this run for a few months and found that I always got to the meet point about an hour before the other driver. It was a dark and empty dirt lot at about 3 am, so I would stretch out across the seat and take a short nap.

One night, about 10 minutes into my nap I was awoken by a barking dog. I tried to ignore it, but it carried on for several minutes and got louder as the dog got closer. Soon, it became apparent that the dog was right outside of my truck barking at me. OK, either this dog is Lassie and is trying to alert me to something, or else he is just a pain in the ass and I will need to throw something at him to scare him off. It is important to note that the barking had been going on for a good 10 minutes at this point.

So, I sat up and looked out my window. Standing there, mere inches on the other side of the glass was a man of about 35. He was a large fellow. And was barking at me. his eyes were crazy and he was frothing at the mouth a little — the scene really held my full attention for a moment. The sheer creepiness of this struck me. Gently, and making an absolute minimum of sudden movements, I reach down and started my truck and slowly pulled away. He chased me, much like you might expect an angry dog to do, barking all the while.

Needless to say, it played hell with my power naps from then on.

4. Bear_Like

Was driving north through the mountains of Colorado towards Pueblo, and it was my first time dealing with anything like the Rocky Mountains so I was taking it nice and slow with my hazards on and in the right lane. This was in the spring, and there wasn’t much snow on the ground aside from a light dusting.

I remember passing another truck pulled to the shoulder on my way up, nothing out of the ordinary. However, as I was heading down the mountain (which can be scary as shit in an 18-wheeler, trust me) I saw the same truck I passed earlier FLY by me in the left hand lane. Now being passed on the left going DOWNHILL in the ROCKY MOUNTAINS by another TRACTOR TRAILER is crazy enough, but what really makes this story is this guy’s trailer brakes were on fire. He was pulling a load (could tell because the trailer was sealed) and if you know anything about trucks you know there’s only so much braking you’re supposed to do before they overheat and, worst-case, catch fire.

This guy’s truck looked like a fucking comet as he sped down the mountain at what I thought was a surely to be deadly pace.

I grabbed the mic to the radio and called out to him, “Hey Driver! Your brakes are on fire! I mean literally on fire!”

This rough and weathered sounding voice comes back over the speaker of my radio and says, cool as a cucumber, “I know.”

And he disappeared around a curve.

I never saw any wrecked truck, emergency crews, or even mention of an accident over the radio.

I did see a discarded fire extinguisher on the ground at the base of the mountain though.

Just one of many awesome stories.

5. dilligasatall

A few years back I was driving up an icy hill in the middle of winter after a snowstorm when another semi coming down the hill started to jackknife. His trailer swung out sideways blocking the entire road at around 80 kph (50 mph), and heading straight towards me giving me nowhere to go, except to stop and try to back up as quickly as possible to give him a little more space to (hopefully) get his trailer to tuck back in behind him. Thankfully it did about 15 meters (50 feet) in front of me.

The whole time all i could think of was “I really hope he’s empty, because this is gonna hurt.”

6. loopyseeka

I was a transportation broker for a number of years. One of those years we obtained government contracts for the transfer of “undisclosed hazardous materials.” We were under restrictions to keep everything about these loads confidential: from the trucking companies to whom we brokered these loads to their specific locations.

Every single day, we had to give hourly updates to an internal agency about the status of our drivers. Each load required a team in order to minimize stopping time. These trucks had specific instructions to not stop for more than a half hour throughout the itinerary nor to open the contents of the trailer. Their location was constantly monitored by a GPS coupled with a timer to ensure these conditions were met.

We have had many of these contracted loads without any notable issues. However, one day proved different. During this day, one of our truckers was stopped by DOT (Department of Transportation). The officer demanded the drivers to open the trailer to reveal the unidentified contents. Our drivers cited our contract with our client, stating that we could not open the trailer under any circumstances. However, the DOT was persistent, and broke the electronic seal himself. Our systems at dispatch were frozen immediately. To the officer’s surprise, the trailer contained Tomahawk missiles used by the Department of Defense. Two Apache helicopters were scrambled from the nearest AFB and the DOT officer was taken into custody (later to be released).

Turns out, the transportation of contents such as this are quite common. Since they are concealed in a dry van, however, the public is completely unsuspecting.

7. pb5434

I was only a long haul driver for 3 months but one of the strangest things I noticed were the number of other truckers who had life-sized stuffed animals riding shotgun. I saw one with a life sized gorilla, a huge dogish…thing and a few aliens. All in their seat belt, of course, for safety. Also, the gallon sized piss bottles left in truck stop parking lots is amazing.

8. justible

Out in remote Montana, my dad had a can of ether crack open behind his seat and spray onto the battery box, causing the interior of the truck to catch on fire while he was driving down the road. He downshifted so it would eventually slow down and aimed the truck off the road at an open field, then jumped out. I shit you not, the police counted his shoe marks on the highway — several yards apart at first. He somehow managed to keep upright, doing the Olympic triple jump down the blacktop. He did eventually fall and get scraped up badly. Then he got up, chased after his truck, which was driving a long slow circle out in that field, opened a side hatch while running beside it, got his fire extinguisher, and put out the fire. I saw the tracks, the burnt truck, the used extinguisher, and my dad’s scrapes. I always wished that somehow someone else could’ve seen it.

9. Nairb131

I used to work as a driver for a soft drink company in Alaska. We have a real problem with moose crossing the roads up here. Needless to say one morning I was on my way from Anchorage to the Valley and a moose decided to run out in between the car in front of me and my truck. Luckily I barely hit the moose in the ass and it runs away. So I drive for another half and hours or so and a few people have honked at me (assuming general douchebaggery). I back up my trailer to wally world and let the warehouse guy unload. I come out to about 20 people standing around my truck (consumers and workers). Look at the moose guard on the front and there is a moose fetus tangled inside of it. Apparently when I hit the mother and forced to have an abortion. It was truly terrifying.

10. Koffeeboy

Well, My dad sometimes drives a WPS shipping truck out of state and he has a couple stories but there is one that I really like. My dad was coming back one night when he hears a loud thud that sounded like it came from the front of the truck. He pulled over and finds that he had hit a huge owl and that it is was lodged in his grill, It also turns out the owl is still alive. This happened at around 12 in the morning so my dad has a great idea and decides to buckle up the owl in the passenger seat, for the first hour the owl was unconscious, but at around 1 my dad hears the seat belt move, he turns to see one pissed owl staring at him. One of the owl’s eyes were hanging out and the owl knew that it was my dads fault. The first thing my dad now notices are the talons on this owl, they could have easily tore my dad up. Even so the owl seemed content to stay put, probably because he was pretty beat up. So my dad just turns his head back to the road and they both have one awkward trip back. He pulled over at the next gas station and calls the police, he was pretty much at the border so it took a awhile for both state departments to decide who had to pick up the owl. after that my dad decided that he has a new found respect for owls.

11. [deleted]

I was making a delivery and was crossing the train tracks in an unfamiliar town. Along the tracks were those cone-shaped pine trees used as wind breakers or privacy walls. I couldn’t see through them at all they were so thick.

Slowly I crossed the tracks. There were no red lights flashing, the oncoming traffic was blasting through there, and I had no reason to believe it wasn’t safe to cross.

Needless to say, I began crossing the tracks. Immediately past the trees I looked left and saw a train, with its light on, coming at me from about 40 yards away! I could feel the engine thumping.
I gunned it! In an automatic this means you go nowhere fast.

Fortunately for me I made it. Barely!

I looked back over my shoulder and saw that it was a stupid rail yard and they were doing a turnaround and had parked that train there out of the way.

It sucked. Big time!

12. randommusician

A friend of mine has a relative who was/is an owner operator.

One time, he was supposed to ship containers of whipped cream from one state to another, passing through the Rocky Mountains. He looked at the route that was provided and realized he could save time by taking another road through the mountains.

Once he gets to the other side of the mountain he stops for a meal or something and checks in the back. Turns out the pass he took was high enough in altitude that the pressure caused the lids to pop off all of the containers, and the inside of his trailer was covered in whipped cream.

13. yaboyAllen

My dad was a trucker. One time he was driving around Chicago at 3:30 in the morning trying to find the warehouse he was dropping at (before GPS). Rolled his window down to ask a little old lady at a bus stop.

“Do you know where Big Company is?”

“No, but I’ll suck your dick for six dollars!”

“Thanks, ma’am.”

14. catsasss

My dad (who just died last Nov) was a long-haul trucker from his teens until his mid 30’s. He never told us a lot of stories, except the one about how he knew it was time to get off the road when the pills he was taking to stay awake made him see giant rabbits on the road, but his favorite was when he was about 19, he went across a bridge in the middle of the night, then was surprised to be pulled over. Turns out the lights on the bridge were all wired together over the roadway–and his trailer had been high enough to catch the wires, and very efficiently pulled down every single light pole. (How he didn’t see/hear what was going on is probably due to how much attention he was having to pay to the road bunnies.)

15. gaqua

I used to drive I-80 between San Francisco and Cheyenne, Wyoming a lot. It’s about 16-20 hours of driving depending on weather and traffic and whatever.

Anyway, one time I got out at a rest stop to stretch my legs and take a piss, maybe buy a coke. I go into the bathroom and there are three beefy, bearded guys all naked from the waist down just lying on the ground blowing each other in a daisy chain. I looked at them, and two of them looked up at me, cocks in respective mouths, and one of them kept going and the other one’s eyes went wide as hell. I just said “Er, sorry.” and walked right back outside. Oddly, all I could think of was “Wow, that floor is probably filthy.”

A second time I was driving at night and the car starts making this odd grinding noise. Like I ran over something that got stuck. It’s about 2am. I pull into a rest stop (well-lit) and wake up my buddy who was sleeping. I explain it to him, as we get out of the car we both hear what sounds like a kid crying. There are no other cars at the rest stop, but we frequently heard stories about child trafficking and kidnapping nearby, so we decided to check it out. We grab our flashlights and head towards the noise, which is coming from the bathrooms.

As we get closer we realize it’s coming from the women’s bathroom, and it’s a low, dull sobbing. We are prepared for the worst. We walk in expecting to see some brutally beaten and/or raped 8 year old or something, and we see – nothing. The sound is still there, and it’s still clearly coming from the room, but the room is empty. We turn on the lights – still nothing. Check each stall, the trash can. Nothing. Even start looking for WHERE in the room it’s coming from – nothing. Is it a hidden speaker? Are we on candid camera? What the fuck?

My buddy climbs up one of the stalls to get to the top window in the rest stop which is vented out, and open. He closes it, and the noise stops. Completely. Opens it, and there’s no more noise. We sit there for a few seconds, staring at each other. He shrugs. Then the window slams shut again without him touching it.

We were out of that fucking bathroom in seconds. The noise starts up about 10 seconds later as we get to the car, and we’re tearing out of the parking lot within 10 more seconds. The grinding noise is still there. So this time I pull over a few miles later at a Flying J Truck Stop, well-lit, sometimes occupied. Couple of truckers there, no other “civilians” like us. We check under the car.

There’s a red and silver piece of metal wedged between part of the car and the road, about 1/2″ or so off the ground, so with us in the car it would definitely have been grinding against the ground. Can’t remove it by hand, it’s really wedged in there, so we kick at it to bend it and figure we’ll remove it when we get back.

A week later I had my mechanic take it out when he was doing a service – it was part of a kid’s tricycle. The red area where somebody can stand, like on the back of this.

I don’t know why, and I don’t think they were connected or anything, but that was one of those moments for me. Totally fucked up and crazy.

16. drchickenbeer

Okay, here’s my noble trucker story.

When I was young, my family had a dog named Mackie. He was a runner. You had to be careful when you opened the door to the house, because Mackie would take off.

When I was in the fourth grade, Mackie made it out the door when we were being babysat. I chased him out the door, but he was too fast. I followed him out of the neighborhood and out to a country road nearby.

As I ran after him, Mackie paused in the middle of the road. A red hatchback came zooming up the road and hit Mackie right in front of me. They didn’t stop. They didn’t swerve. They didn’t even slow down, they just kept on driving.

Mackie was left in the middle of the road, still alive. I was hysterical. I tried to move him out of the road, but he bit me on the hand.

A semi truck slowed and stopped for the sobbing boy in the road. Two truckers got out. One asked me my name, what happened. I can’t remember the specifics, but I remember them asking what vet we took him too. I couldn’t remember.

One of the truckers wrapped Mackie in his red and black flannel shirt, and they took him to a vet. I can’t remember if they took me home, or if I walked. I don’t know how they found a vet- this was in the late 80’s, and no one had an iPhone then.

Mackie didn’t make it. He had to be put down.

I never forgot the kindness of those truckers to stop and help out a boy grieving over his wounded dog. As far as I’m concerned, they were heroes.

17. mannequin-sex

My dad was in albuquerque, stopped for the night in a pawn shop parking lot. It was about 1030pm and his air compressor was empty. Earlier that night he had rolled down the windows, but since the compressor was out, he couldn’t roll them back up until it refilled.

Anyway, he is getting ready for bed, and a voice yells at him not to move. A female puerto rican tweaker jumped into the truck from the driver side (the voice was in the passenger side window) and pressed a gun to his head, ordering him to give her all his money and belongings of value.

Unfortunately for her, my dad doesn’t ever have cash on him, and the poor guy never buys himself anything expensive. He only had $60.00, a broken laptop, a cup of change, and his clothes, blankets, and toiletries. Of course he did have his debit card, credit card, and a T-check (checks they can redeem at stops from the load they’re hauling).

They held him hostage in there for more than an hour as she unloaded EVERYHTING from the cab, and handed it to her 300 pound black male friends. According to my dad, homegirl was tripping balls the entire time.

She ordered him to follow her to the ATM, but considering that my dad owns his own business, it probably wouldn’t have ended well had she seen his accounts. He decided he couldn’t let it happen.

After a few more minutes, she decided they were walking to the ATM. She had her friend on the passenger side help her down, ordering my dad to follow. As soon as she was clear of the door, he closed the door, locked it, and tried to honk the horn, but it made a hardly audible noise. Apparently, this was enough to send the trio running into the darkness with blankets in hand.

Shaken, my dad called the police. Surprisingly, they had an amazing response. 15-20 patrol cars, a helicopter, dogs, etc. were there within five minutes. They caught two of them, but not the third one.

I would also like to add a second story, and figure why not put it here.

My dad drives in Texas a lot as well, but there is a particular road he always avoids. I’m not sure what road it is, but he says its in the middle of old Native American land.

One night as he was driving through, he kept seeing shadows running along side his trailer. Every once in a while he would hear a loud BANG as if someone was slapping the side of the trailer. He decided to stop and see if a tire has blow, because that’s the only thing that could be making that noise.

He did his usual walk around, checking the tires, but as he turned the corner, he heard a laugh, and a shadow took off running down the road.
Needless to say, he shit his pants, jumped in the truck, and didn’t stop until daylight.

Flickr / twodolla
Flickr / twodolla

18. psychopathenator

My trucking days were shit, but I got some good stories from them. Going south on I-75 in Georgia at around three a.m., I see this bright light maybe about two miles behind me. Not only is it super-bright, but it is on the interstate and it is HAULING ASS. It’s big too, and it’s moving faster than anything I think I’d ever seen. Now, earlier that day I had called the guy who taught me how to drive, and he is really, really superstitious about life on the road. He would tell me stories about how a green apparition chased him in Florida when he was pulling too many miles, all kinds of stuff. I was already spooked from that conversation earlier, so looking into my mirror and seeing this giant light FLYING towards me made my asshole clench onto the seat. This thing closes the distance between us and FLIES past me, probably doing around 120. I had the window down and as it went past me, I felt this massive amount of HEAT. When it passed me, I could finally tell what it was!

Get this.

It was a hay hauler, a truck that hauls a trailer designed for hay, and the ENTIRE LOAD OF HAY IN THE BACK WAS ABLAZE.

I jumped in the CB and screamed “DRIVER, YOUR TRAILER IS ON FIRE!!!” The driver comes back in a surprisingly calm voice with, “I know, I’m just letting it burn off. I figure if I go fast enough, I can keep my cab from getting burned.”

I’ve got a few more stories, but I’m too lazy to type them out.

19. wolfmankipp

I’m not a trucker and neither is my mom but this happened on her way home from Pennsylvania.

There was no one else on the highway except an 18-wheeler and my mother. Since there was no one else she decided to drive next to the truck, and after a couple hours of this the truck got off for a stop and so did my mom. When she got out of her car the trucker gave her a big hug because he felt so lonely driving with no one else on the road before she started driving next to him.

20. mic43ll3

Once back in 1994, I had delivered a load down near Riverside, CA and dispatch told me to lay over in a hotel for the night at company expense (a rare treat).

Halfway through dinner and a movie on the TV mid-evening, They called and told me to deadhead (run the empty trailer) to Salt Lake City for a morning pickup. Sucked, but okay.

I got to St George, UT and pulled into a truck stop to fuel up. I put the hose in the tank and jacked it so that it would run fuel into the tank without my help. I stood there waiting for the first tank to fill when all of a sudden the hose jumped out of the tank and sprayed diesel all over me.

Fuck. I finished fueling, got my shower ticket and cleaned up, washed my clothes, and went on to Salt Lake.

Got there and found out that I’d missed the Northridge earthquake by a couple of hours. I don’t know if that’s what made the hose jump out of the fuel tank in St. George but I figure it was as that was the only time it ever happened to me.

21. PhedreRachelle

My grandparents were truckers. One time they were driving along in BC and came across a fill station. They filled up and started to head down the road when they see a camper just sitting on the side with smoke coming out of it. They stopped and investigated and it looked as though the camper was on fire.

So my grandpa, being the crazy man he is, wrapped his hand in material and opened the door. It was a really good thing he did, because there was a family trapped. So he got them out, brought them back to the gas station, and my grandparents left. No idea what happened to the family and they never took my Grandparents’ names.

I was about 5 at the time and so there don’t seem to be any digital articles

22. tadjack

My mother was a trucker for a number of years, and in the early 80s was hauling a load of old El Paso sauce to California.

At the top of the mountain, in Grapevine, she had the brakes on the trailer adjusted for the trip down the mountain, instead, the guy had accidentally backed her trailer brakes completely off.

So she starts trucking down Interstate 5 down the mountain in a beat-up old Peterbilt when she learns that truck, trailer, and 20 tons of taco sauce have only the tractor brakes to stop the thing. She managed to bring it down to 6th gear in an 8 speed, and then the brakes were too hot to slow the truck down. Speedometer needle passed 100 and stopped against the peg, engine over-revved, and she rode the thing down the hill laying on the horn the entire way — didn’t take a runoff ramp because she didn’t want to get fired, didn’t have an engine brake to slow the truck down either.

So she rides this thing down the mountain in the triple digits, smoke pouring off her axles, dodging traffic. When she hit the bottom of the mountain, said it took her about five miles to stop the truck.

My Dad has been a trucker for a number of years, and had one occasion to be driving the company owner’s brand new Peterbilt, thing was geared and had the engine to run appreciably into the triple digits.

So he’s hauling a load out of Detroit when he sees a guy in a pickup truck driving down the left lane with a 2-3 year old kid standing on up on the bench seat, no seatbelt, no car seat.

My dad rolls his window down, yells at the guy, and eventually gets him to pull off the road, my dad jumps down out of his truck, calmly walks up to the window of the other guy’s pick up, and grabs him by the collar. “There’s a K-mart two exits up, Go there, I’ll follow you. Don’t try to run, because I will catch you.”

The guy nods and my dad follows him up to the K-mart, takes the guy’s keys away, and goes into the store, comes back out a few minutes later with a car seat, and presents it to the guy, “I drive this road every week, don’t let me catch you without that kid in a car-seat, okay?”

More recently, my dad was in Mississippi at a truckstop, and this young girl, maybe 16 or 17, is asking truckers for money, and my dad walks over to her. “Miss, you don’t want to approach these guys like this, something bad could happen to you, what’s the problem?”

She tells him, she ran away with her boyfriend, then he decided to just kick her out of the car a few states later and drove off without her, leaving her stranded. My dad takes her down the road to a Greyhound stop, buys her a non refundable ticket to her hometown, and sends her on her way.

Got a call a few weeks later from her parents, thanking him for getting her home.

This is a Peterbilt.  Flickr / born1945
This is a Peterbilt.
Flickr / born1945

23. nameismy

I was driving through central Illinois, and drove past a scene where, apparently, a Mother had stopped the car for a child to use the bathroom on the side of the interstate, and the kid thought it would be a good idea to run across the road. The kid actually made it across in one piece, but the mother’s first response was to bolt after the kid. She got hit by a car going 70MPH, and was basically torn apart. The whole scene was pretty gruesome.

Flickr / Fifth World Art
Flickr / Fifth World Art

24. two_toed_sloth

My dad drives trucks — he found a cat that had snuck into his trailer while it was being unloaded.

25. pirfle

I was a long-haul trucker for a few years and just spending everyday out on the road is pretty crazy. You see a lot through the windshield of truck.

A lot of people naturally assume that truckers are male (kinda like Reddit) and women will flash you a lot. I also discovered that a lot of men will masturbate as they commute to work. Once they see that you are a female, they like to masturbate for you.

The images that stick with me the most are the dead people you see. There was a bad accident one night in Chicago and it was late, rainy, on the interstate by Wrigley Field and I could see the flashing lights in the opposing lane. I don’t usually rubberneck cause I just don’t want to see other people’s misfortune but this time I did. There was a dead family lying broken on the road and the first responders were pretty much just standing around waiting for the coroner to arrive. I can still see the flashing lights in the rain and the little dead baby lying 30 feet away from its dead parents. I wish I had never looked.

Another time, again near Chicago, probably around Gary, I saw a possible drunk driver in a fancy car driving erratically on the interstate. I called the police and gave them the mile marker we were at so that they could try to stop it. I lost sight of the car as it sped off but a few miles down the road it was flipped over on the other side of the freeway engulfed in flames. I don’t think the driver made it out, there was no one standing beside it.

One night in Northern Ontario I was climbing a hill on a single lane black top and just as I crest the hill there is a minivan coming straight at me in my lane and a long line of cars that they are passing in the other. I have no where to go, and am not allowed to leave my lane of traffic even if it means killing you, so I hit the brakes, even managing to lean forward and grab the trailer spike to use all the brakes knowing two things: I am about to kill someone in this minivan and that I am about to be covered in the 1000s of gallons of horse piss that I was hauling in the trailer.

Luckily the stupid minivan was able to get back in the other lane when other vehicles started hitting their brakes to avoid the incident that was about to happen.

Things like that I remember. Nearly dying in accidents, nearly killing people as they cut you off not realizing how long it takes for a truck to stop. There are good days to driving truck, but the bad ones were the reason I quit.

26. CrochetCat

My brother in law was a truck driver. A Toyota corolla driven by a man with suicidal tendencies pulled into his lane and within seconds he hucked that car and killed the dude. There was no way to avoid. My brother in law got out of his rig because his load was gasoline and saw the little car starting to be engulfed in flames and a decapitated man inside. After he called 911 he was taken to the hospital for minor injuries. He called my sister who I was with at the time to try to get his things from his rig the police were able to get.

My sister and I got there at all that was left was the trunk and back axle of the car. The rig was burnt but that car was almost completely gone. My brother in law has never been the same person. And I’m scared shitless whenever I’m around a big rig on the road.

27. catherder9000

My uncle was a long haul trucker back in the 90s (mainly did international runs from Canada down into the US and back to Canada) with a pretty nice new Kenworth that had one of those maximum size sleepers on it. It had a built in toilet and the works. He decided that the small tank that came with the toilet was a pain in the ass to have to empty so frequently so he converted half of his passenger side diesel tank into a septic tank.

A few weeks after converting his tank he happened to pull in at a truck stop somewhere in the States and parked for the night after driving longer than he should have. When he woke up at 5AM with the dawn just starting to get bright he climbed out to see beside his truck something that makes him laugh every time he tells the story.

On the ground on the right side of his truck was a 5 gallon jerry can, a siphon hose with one end in his tank and the other laying on the ground; puddle of puke and some puke foot prints; another few feet away, puddle of puke; another few feet away another puddle of puke.

Some dumb SOB tried to siphon his septic tank in the middle of the night.

JUST IMAGINE IF IT WERE DARK AND SURROUNDED BY TREES. Flickr / paraflyer
JUST IMAGINE IF IT WERE DARK AND SURROUNDED BY TREES.
Flickr / paraflyer

28. IMMADUCK-NARS

1. Waiting at an intersection in LA (by the East LA interchange, if anyone cares) and a guy hopped up on my truck and tapped on the window. I cracked it and he asked me if I could give him a ride to work down the street. Described the place, an old warehouse, and I knew exactly which one he meant. Thing is, that place had burned years before and was fenced off. And this guy is creepy as hell, and my husband’s asleep in the back of the truck. Luckily, he backed off when I told him that I couldn’t have passengers. Glad I’m from the area though and knew about that warehouse.

2. Came up into Kentucky from Tennessee on some back road – middle of the night, very foggy. We stopped at a truck stop and immediately felt really uncomfortable there. We were in a modern Freightliner, but every other truck was at least 30 years old (and it wasn’t a tiny truck stop – probably around 30-40 spaces). Whatever, still hungry and have to pee. We walk inside and this place is just unreal. It was like we stepped right into the 70s. Everything was old, but looked new. There was even motor oil in cans, not plastic containers. Sodas in glass bottles. The way they spoke seemed… off. We looked like aliens compared to how everyone was dressed. It just sent shivers up both of our spines the entire time. We left and never looked back. It was like an episode of the Twilight Zone.

3. This is my husband’s and I’m wondering if anyone can explain it. So he’s sleeping in the back as his partner is in Wyoming on the 80, middle of the night, full moon. And they stop somewhere (way out in the middle of nowhere) because my husband has to pee. So they both get out and look up, and it looks like there’s another moon in the sky. He says it was bigger than the moon, pale white, and there were flames dancing around it. It never moved, and they both stared at it for a while. (He’s also seen weird lights around Phoenix while driving on the 10. Whatever that is.)

29. MericaMericaMerica

This happened a little over ten years ago, when I was either nine or ten. When I was younger, my dad would take either my sister or I in his 18 wheeler across the eastern US (mostly so he didn’t have to unload the truck, because he was a lazy asshole). Anyway, I went with him one summer, and we stopped at a Burger King to eat. I forget where it was, but it was either in Kentucky, Virginia, or West Virginia. I nearly got hit in the parking lot by some douche, which was bad enough, but the real creepy shit went down once we were inside.

I ordered a kid’s meal with a Dr. Pepper. The cashier was this weird, redneck looking dude. I remember taking a sip of my drink a little after sitting down, and it tasting weird, but I had a mouthful of food at the time, so I didn’t pay much attention to it. Now, ordinarily, I will CHUG anything caffeinated and/or carbonated, but for some reason, something told me not to this time. After I finished eating, I took another sip- it was DEFINITELY not Dr. Pepper. I told my dad that it didn’t taste like it; he tasted it, replied “it’s not,” then went and yelled at the creepy-looking redneck cashier. The manager fired him on the spot. I later learned in my teenage years that the flavor was that of very cheap beer. So, some creepy redneck, likely a pedophile, tried to get a nine year old boy drunk in a Burger King.

30. loondog

My mom and I were headed a few states away to visit my brother. About an hour into our trip, we got a flat tire and had to pull over. I was the driver, and as I didn’t want to destroy her rim, I made it to the exit ramp.

Trucker #1 stopped and helped us change the tire out for the spare. I tried to do it myself, but I had parked on an incline and was struggling. He was very nice, tried to refuse the $20 my mom gave him for the trouble, and suggested we try to buy a patch at the Walmart down the road.

We were both in need for a cup of coffee at this point, so we stopped at a Huddle House before we went to Walmart for the patch. We asked the lady behind the counter if she could give us directions to the Walmart, and in the process heard about the flat. She informs us that her brother-in-law was over in one of the booths and he would be happy to do the patch for us. Brother-in-law is trucker #2.

We finish up, and agree to follow the guy and his 18-wheeler over to the store. When we get there, I decide to stay with the car and my mom’s dog. My mom heads into the store with trucker #2.
When they get back, my mom has a strange look on her face. I looked at her in curiosity, and she responded with the look of “I’ll tell you later”. As he’s fixing the tire, he starts questioning my mom about my age and relationship status. It’s getting creepy because he’s asking her like I’m not even there.

The WTF moment happens as he goes to get his tool box out of his rig… When he opens the door, an object rolls out and hits the pavement. My mother, being the polite lady she is, starts to retrieve it. I knew what it was… it was a giant, purple dildo of the double-headed variety. As soon as the recognition took place, I threw my arm across my mom to stop her and furiously shook my head to get her to stop.

Eventually, he retrieved it himself. He got the tire back on the car and attempted to solicit my mom for information about me again. He refused to take cash from her, but requested my number instead. I answered before she could respond with a fake number.

As we drove away, I had to explain to my mom that she almost grabbed a trucker’s purple dong.

31. DERangEdKiller

Most if not all of these have a really involved story so.

Just the highlights:

  1. Bald Eagle flying off with a ram carcass as I was sliding down an icy highway pass.
  2. An asshole of a buffalo lounging in the road. In the Fog
  3. Having a meatball sub thrown at me by a racist in KY.
  4. Used to use the term Chief as a generic term until I was run off a Native American run Truck stop in South Dakota.
  5. Hanging out with some of the crew from Girl’s Gone Wild
  6. On the highway, seeing through my nose convex mirror: A crow smashing into my driver side exhaust pipe.
  7. Illiciting gay sex over the CB so the guy goes into the truck of a guy I got into a fight with earlier.
  8. Almost hit a moose (they are tall)!
  9. Snow in Amarillo (used to be kinda rare).
  10. Predawn winter, Nevada. Doing a pre trip inspection and seeing a mountain side glow.
  11. Driving to Phoenix from LA, The sunset made it look like I was driving out of the mouth of hell.
  12. Watched Katrina pass over Louisiana from a distance. (Glad I told dispatch to fuck off when they wanted me to deliver in Baton Rouge that night.)
  13. Screaming Cow escaping my Truck.
  14. I saw Al Greene give a Sermon in Memphis.
  15. 4th of July fireworks Near NYC during 4th of July.
  16. Live action Coyote & roadrunner bit with real animals.
  17. Almost ran over a live powerline. Cop stopped me by power sliding his car Movie style in front of me.
  18. The automated Amazon warehouses.
  19. Slipped and knocked myself out in the men’s room at Joann’s gear Jammer in SLC, UT.
  20. Being hit on in the men’s room. While taking a pee (Most awkward shoulder rub ever).
  21. Taking a piss on the side of a mountain road in CO, falling, and being pulled up by local FD. Thought Catalog Logo Mark

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