14 10-4 Magazine / August 2026 In the summer of 2021, I worked on a project with Bob centered around the Winton automobile. In 1903, on a $50 bet, Horatio Nelson Jackson drove his Winton from California to New York. It was the first transcontinental trip in a car. Bob Spooner and I were going to make the transcontinental reprisal a TV event, as Bob was going to be hauling the Winton House Car (the first RV ever built in 1913), along with many other historical vehicles, from Vallejo, California to Times Square in New York. I was excited to be working on that project with Bob but, as often is the case, some of the production partners backed out – foolishly, I might add. I recognized the significance of what Bob was doing, so I was planning to call it “The Last Haul: A First Becomes A Last.” This tour was going to be Bob’s final run, marking his retirement from his 60+ years of trucking. About two years later, on December 25th, 2023, Bob would make his last highway trip. He had retired, unceremoniously, sold his truck, and was traveling in his pickup truck when he got caught up in a crash on a snow-filled stretch of I-80 in Nebraska. A non-domicile “CDL” holder from a tropical climate wiped out next to Bob, and even though Bob had traveled over eight million miles and navigated safely for over six decades, the circumstances were beyond his control. This was Bob’s last chapter, on a road that he had traveled countless times, and for countless miles. After a long and fruitless struggle to recover, Bob Spooner died on March 13, 2026. Bob Spooner is now an American Trucking Legend. We’ll never see another like him. He is the proverbial mold that has been broken. In life, our memories are all we end up with. It is said that nobody is ever truly forgotten until the last person stops mentioning their name. In Bob’s case, he’ll never be forgotten, because a piece of the road is echoing his name right now, and that road goes on forever. n
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