10-4 Magazine December 2024

Trucker Talk: By John & Kim Jaikes To make it to 100 years old is amazing, but to be 100 and still able to get out and occasionally drive a truck is incredible. Wayne Dein from Omaha, Nebraska, has done both, and the stories he has to share about his experiences are captivating. How this story came to be told is because things really do happen for a reason. Our mutual friend Cathy Sherman recently called us excited about reconnecting with her old friend Wayne and getting the chance to stop by and see him on her way home from Arizona this year. Wayne’s friend Mike said Cathy’s visit made Wayne’s year – he was so excited to see her after 30 years. The two met in the mid-1980s when they were both driving cabover Peterbilts. Over the years, life happened, and they lost touch, but Wayne talked often about Cathy with his friend Mike Schnuelle, and wondered what happened to her. It was in a Trucker Talk column I had mentioned her and that started Mike’s search to find Wayne’s old friend. Thinking about it, I’m sure it was the time when I quoted Cathy as saying “our neighborhood is 3,000 miles wide” in reference to us truckers. How true that is, and this is proof! Mike met Wayne in 1984, and this friendship has only grown stronger over the years. We would like to thank Mike and his wife Tiffany for all their help getting us the information and pictures for this story. Born into a family of farmers in Nebraska, Wayne was only 14 years old when his trucking career began. Art Clausen was a cattle feeder who asked Wayne’s dad if Wayne could drive a truck – it was an emergency to get a load hauled. Wayne learned as he went, with his first load being 85 bushels of shelled corn. And, as they say, the rest is history, along with a lot of great trucker stories. Joining the Merchant Marines in 1944 during WW-II, when the Germans were sinking ships and submarines, Wayne’s fear of dying and being 1,000’ below the surface of the ocean was real. But thankfully that didn’t happen. The war ended on Wayne’s 21st birthday, and on September 2, 1945, he got to come home to Nebraska. Thank you for your military service, Wayne! Once home, Wayne worked on the farm, hauled grain, and trucked part time. Back in the 1930s and 40s, cars and trucks didn’t have heaters. They tried putting gas heaters in cars, but that never really worked. Wayne can remember hauling eggs he loaded near the Minnesota/Iowa border, going either west to California or east in the winter, and they had to put an upright gas heater in the trailer to keep the eggs from freezing. He bought a flight suit, shoes, and helmet to stay warm in the truck. The boots didn’t fit down by the pedals very well, but he made it work. The flight suits were designed to keep pilots warm in brutally cold temperatures up in the air, and they worked just as well in those cold truck cabs back then, too. In the heat of summer, they had ice bunkers in the front of the trailers, and you could stop in most little towns and have 300-pound blocks of ice blown into the bunkers. Fans helped to keep the load cold in the dog days of summer. I told Wayne that they still shred and blow blocks of ice over certain refrigerated loads today – things like carrots, green onions, and broccoli, to name a few. He was surprised to hear that. Back in those days, many trucks had “coffin” bunks. The driver would crawl out of what would have been a window in the back of the cab into a bunk that was pretty much about the size of a coffin. When I learned to drive in 1978, the truck I was driving had a small coffin bunk. Back in 1949, Wayne hauled three loads of dynamite from north of Reno south into Mexico, we’re guessing into Tijuana or somewhere near there. He ran over Donner Pass when it was still a 2-lane road (there was a 9% grade back then, too). They had single axle tractors with tandem axle trailers with four-inch brakes. You had to be a real driver to get over those mountains on the roads 68 10-4 Magazine / December 2024 100 YEARS YOUNG!