The beginning of the road

Pictured is the truck we drove to AK. Note the half doors that served as ramps for the animals:

I've always been fascinated by cars and driving. At the age of 5, I would cut out all of the car ads from Life, and The Saturday Evening Post and spread them out on the floor, memorizing details. Soon I could identify just about any car on the road. Thousands of car magazines later, I couldn't wait to get my driver's license. In fact, with help from friends, I drove many miles during the year before I could qualify for a license. As a senior in high school, I learned to drive a VW from Greenwich to Lakeland, FL by myself in 24 hours. If there was a road trip, I wanted to drive. My favorite vehicles were sports cars, but I had never given much thought to tractor trailers. When the opportunity opened up to drive one of the big rigs to Alaska, naturally it sounded like a good idea. By that time I already had a Class 2 license for larger straight trucks and only needed to earn the Class 1 license that covered 18-wheelers. The written test was not very difficult for me, as I had a good understanding of the rules and the concepts came to me readily. The actual driving test was much more rigorous. While the written test took about a half hour, the driving test would last an hour. The test included doing a complete safety check of the vehicle, disconnecting the trailer, driving away and returning to hook up again, backing the truck several hundred feet down a straight path marked by cones, approaching and backing the trailer up to a loading dock, and then parallel parking the rig. If you were successful with all of these segments, you were allowed to take the last part - a drive through the downtown Worcester area with the DMV inspector. Lenny was my teacher, because he actually had a Class 1 license (but virtually no experience on the road). He was able to sponsor me, and we had access to the truck that would take us to Alaska. After various local trips learning to handle the truck with its 10-speed transmission, air brakes, and all, we scheduled the driving test at the Highway Department garage on RT 9 almost to Shrewsbury. Prudently, we arrived early and were able to watch the applicant ahead of me go through part of the process. He was doing fine until he reached the parallel parking section. He lined up the truck, got his marks, kicked the trailer to the right and began following it into the spot. For some reason, he never had the courage to finish the maneuver. After admitting failure, he told us it was his fifth try (you could only take six tries in a year) and he had already scheduled another test the following day at another location. I doubt he did any better that day. Fortunately, I passed all of the sections with no problems, including the challenging parallel park, and did fine driving on the road in Worcester. With that behind me, I was on the way to making my first trip.

With no Internet to glean information on mapping, legal requirements, and common sense precautions, we were left to make our own way to Alaska. The truck we had available was an International cab-0ver single-screw (drive axle) with a sleep bed, a ten-speed non-synchromesh transmission (all shifts required double-clutching), and a gigantic Cummins Diesel Super 250 engine. Missing was power steering and winterization and a Jake brake, items we would miss at later times. We had two trailers available for our use. For the first trip we would carry about 40,000 lbs of equipment, personal belongings, supplies, and two oxen (Pete & Joe), and eventually two work horses. All of this would fit into a 40-ft. long, plain white moving van. Other trucks would give us the nickname "plain white wrapper." To provide access for the animals, we removed the side doors and added sturdy half doors on each side, hinging them at the bottom to make ramps for them to walk up and down. That worked great and provided considerable fresh air for the animals while en route. With our plan to drive through Canada, we had to get all of the paperwork for our beloved oxen. That included inspection by the State Veterinarian, appropriate vaccinations, and two-inch stack of paperwork. We would take the oxen all the way from the beginning of the trip and pick up the horses in Minnesota.

An unseen preparation for the trip was developing a quiet confidence that nothing would stop us. As the Blues Brothers later said, "We're on a mission from God." That means we learned to recognize what we needed to conquer, figured out ways to overcome, and then went ahead with all of our effort to reach the goal, in this case to make it to Hoonah and return safely. We learned that the difficult could be done immediately, but the impossible would take a bit longer. It sounds arrogant, but it was a necessary part of facing the extremely challenging road ahead. For instance, we made plans to handle the numerous flat tires we could expect from a challenging trip over difficult roads. Road service was not an option, so we learned how to jack the truck up, remove the offending tire, break-down the split rims, locate and repair the cause of the flat tire, reinstall the tire, tube, and wheel, put it into a safety cage, reinflate it to proper pressures, and then remount it on the truck. Yes, people have been killed reinflating a split-rim wheel that wasn't properly put together - thus the safety cage. Yes, we did get to use this routine on several occasions.

Although this was during the mid-70's, there was already a maze of requirements that varied from state to state. Fuel permits, reporting requirements, maximum weights per axle and tire size. We were forced to rely on good fortune and divine guidance to make it through all of the legal jurisdictions without any problems. On the return trip we were driving peacefully through Manitoba on a Sunday afternoon, enjoying the lack of traffic. When we stopped for fuel another trucker politely informed us that it was against the law to be driving a truck in that province until 5:00 PM on Sunday. We had no way of knowing that! A few hours of rest and we were on our way again. Other times we passed closed weigh stations in districts with tight weight limits. Divine guidance. So we mapped out our routes and hoped.

Back in Massachusetts, we reached one of the more challenging parts of this trip--packing the load into the trailer. There were a number of factors to consider. First, I had to leave room for the animals. Then I had to make sure everything fit neatly and would not shift on a long and bumpy road. Fortunately I had help with this massive project--a ten-year old lad. Danny wasn't able to heft some of the heavier weights, but he was a willing and cheerful helper. After several days of fitting and packing things into just the right spot, we went for the next test. Driving over to the next town, I drove the rig onto a set of truck scales and waited for the printout. After a few minutes we got the news - too much weight on the drive axle. Back to work, carefully unloading everything and reapportioning the heavier items to bring our load within the most common limits between Massachusetts and Alaska.

The picture to the right shows how tightly packed our load was:

All that was left to do was to finish maintenance on the truck, pack for an unknown set of conditions, load all of the perishables for the animals, and head out. Bud joined us to care for the animals. We learned little things like having to stop and walk the horses every two hours to prevent damage to their feet. Our plan was to drive to Albany, NY and pick up Bill, an experienced truck driver who would help with the driving. Bill was coming up from South Carolina and we planned to meet at the bus terminal. The only problem was I had never met Bill, didn't know what he looked like, and I didn't know where the bus terminal was either. No problem--we knew the way to Albany and headed out. But how would I find the bus terminal? I kept driving toward the heart of Albany until I saw a Greyhound bus going the same way and then followed it to the terminal. As expected, when we pulled up to the terminal, Bill recognized the truck and waved us down. Then the three of us pointed west toward Alaska -- three men, two seats, one bunk, 4,000 miles.

One of the neat things about driving a truck is the rhythmic, slow but steady progress. We had to keep stopping for the animals, stopping to eat occasionally, and we were limited to 72 mph on the level stretches. In the midst of that you just keep making progress one mile at a time. It gives you a glimpse of what patience looks like. Our next goal was Duluth, Minnesota, where we would pick up the two work horses. The rhythm included regular stops (every 100 miles) to check the tires by whacking them with a small club. With dual tires on an axle, one of them can be flat and still look good, but if you hit it with something, it sounds different with no air. Failure to do this leads to the scraps of truck tires that are so common on our highways, especially in the summer. If the tire was flat, we would go through the drill of jacking, removing the wheel, breaking down the wheel, patching the tire, reassembling, remounting, and then driving away. The animals had their own rhythm as well. The oxen were wonderful travelers. They would just lie down and enjoy the ride. When we stopped for a break at a truck stop, folks would come over and peek in through the open top half of the side door. Bill and I would always refer to Pete and Joe as "the bulls" so people wouldn't get too close. Actually, they had a great easy-going temperament and wouldn't hurt anyone in spite of the large horns.

As we approached Duluth, we were excited with the prospect of picking up the two horses and heading out to Alaska. Duluth is situated right on Lake Superior, the largest of the Great Lakes. When approaching the city in a loaded trailer truck, the entrance is very dramatic. We were cruising along a two-lane road, headed for downtown. Bill was driving and I was relaxing in the sleeper. Suddenly I heard the whoosh sound of telephone poles passing by at a close distance and high speed. Alerted, I sat up and peered out the windshield to see us careening straight down a steep hill at considerable speed. With his timely driving skill, Bill got us safely to the bottom of the hill, where we pulled into a small shopping center and admired the billows of smoke pouring off the brakes. After an hour or so of adjusting the brakes to make up for the sudden wear, we were ready to head out when we heard a "bang." A quick inspection of the trailer's brakes showed that one of the air brake bladders had popped. We were able to pick up a new one and replace it while the truck sat in that parking lot. As we drove away with the repair completed, we were thankful it had not blown while we were speeding down the hill aimed at Lake Superior.

Our next step was to find the horses and pick them up.