Truckers Share Their Most Chilling Stories From The Road
Ah, to be a truck driver. No stuffy office to confine you, the freedom of listening to music and podcasts all day, and seeing the beautiful countryside zip by.
However, a lot of strange things occur in some of the most far-flung reaches of the vast highway networks that stretch across our nations.
Things we would never see, unless we happened to be driving by at the exact right moment, at the exact right—or wrong—time.
Whether it be gruesome roadside casualties, nitrous-pumped semi-trucks spewing flame, or waking up to a grown man barking like a dog into your window, these chilling stories will leave you with mental road-rash.
1. Satan, Take the Wheel
On the I25 south of Albuquerque, there's a huge dip in the road that goes straight down one side of a canyon and up the other. I'm a very cautious driver, so I took the downgrade slow and crawled up the other side with my hazards on.
Looking in my mirror, I see headlights from another truck at the bottom, then two jets of flame shooting like 20 feet into the air above it.
This truck runs past me doing 80 miles per hour up the slope. I didn't even know it was possible to put nitrous into a semi; I know it isn't legal, but I thought the devil himself was riding up on me.
2. Seeing Red
A friend who is a truck driver told me this one. He was driving through the edge of some bushland on his way back to Perth, Western Australia when he hit a kangaroo. He stopped the truck, grabbed his flashlight and knife in case he needed to dispatch it, and got out. He went over to the kangaroo. It needed to be dispatched, as it was alive and in immense pain, but he got this weird feeling that he was being watched.
He flashed his light around and saw dozens of pairs of red eyes watching him. A whole mob of kangaroos was just standing there watching him kill one of their mates—kangaroo eyes reflect red.
He quickly dispatched the kangaroo, bolted back to his truck, and took off. He said it was the creepiest thing he had ever seen on the road.
4. Clowning Around
In the 90s, I lived in a logging camp in northern British Columbia. It was a big one made up of trailers and had about 300 people living there including families. I drove a water truck on weekends when the camp had days off.
When driving on logging roads, you radio your kilometer markings with the name of the road to avoid collisions.
"Empty on Windfall 10" to say you were 10 clicks on the Windfall road heading away from camp, and "Loaded on Windfall 10" to say you were coming back.
Anyway, being that is was a weekend, I didn't expect anyone to be hanging around except a skeleton crew. I had no idea that there was a kid’s birthday party up on the top end of the windfall road.
It’s beautiful up there with a clear landing and a pond, so why not. The family hired two clowns from a nearby town for the kids. Apparently, the clowns wrapped up their show and were heading back to camp, but they were not using the radio.
I'm on the road in a big water truck doing 50 kilometers per hour, and they come bombing around a corner doing 50 in a freaking clown car, and we almost collide.
I blasted the horn as this car with a plastic star on its roof goes whipping by with two screaming clowns inside, and I could just not figure out what the heck had just happened.
4. Dinosaur Screams
While driving on the 80 East, I saw a semi two truck-lengths in front of me drift, bounce off the median barrier, then regain traction, tip, and slide on its side. The entire load was all over the freeway.
It was the most god-awful noise I've ever heard. It's what I would imagine a T-Rex getting shot, and dying sounds like.
