Trucker Talk: By John & Kim Jaikes From Prudhoe Bay to Miami and just about everywhere in between, Norma Bradford (62) has seen our country over the last 46 years, and stopped to smell the roses and take pictures along the way. She was born to travel and travel she has, be it in trucks, planes, motorcycles or trains. Norma’s first ride in a truck was while her amazing mom Ginger Jenkins was pregnant with her. At four months old she took a ride with her dad in a truck and, as they say, the rest is history. Like her mom, Norma was born in New York City. Ginger was born five days after Pearl Harbor was hit on December 12, 1941. She grew up in an apartment in Manhattan that her mom rented. Norma spent her first nine years in that apartment, located four blocks from the George Washington Bridge. The apartment stayed in the family until 2008 thanks to a rent lock. On a trip to California with her grandma when she was five, Norma met Tim Bradford and his cousin, and when the boys asked if she could come out and play, they played with Tonka trucks. Over the next few years she would spend the summers in Mohave, CA with her grandma visiting her aunt. Over the years, Norma and Tim’s friendship grew, and when he got older, he told her mom he was going to marry her one day. Another move took the family to Oregon and at 14 it was here that Norma ran away from home to Florida where she got in a truck with her dad. And she didn’t just ride along – he taught her how to drive, laying the foundation for the Old School driver she is today. Her dad may have taught her how to drive a truck, but I think she got a gypsy gene from her mom. Once her mom figured out where she was, she took a bus bound for Florida to go get her. Thanksgiving that year was spent on a very tense ride in a Greyhound bus from St. Petersburg, FL back to Medford, OR. Then, at 16, Norma was hit by a car, causing her to miss a lot of school. She made up her mind to drop out, and in August of 1979 she moved to Alaska. In Alaska, Mike Doyle, who became like a second father to her, got her a job driving a truck. Back then, all you needed was a car license to drive a truck in Alaska. In April 1980, Norma went back to Oregon to take the test to get her GED, which she accomplished in one day. It was her 17th birthday present to herself. Then, right back up to Alaska she went. Occasionally she would come down to California to visit friends and then drive a truck to Florida to see her mom and Tim, who at the time was working at an airport in Sanford, FL. In 1982, Tim asked her to marry him, and Norma said yes. But, when she got back to Alaska to finalize everything, she got cold feet. In early December of 1984, Tim and Norma’s mom Ginger concocted a story that her grandma was really sick, and that she needed to get down to see her. When Norma got to Florida, she found out that her grandma was fine. Later that month, Tim asked Norma to drive back to Mohave, CA with him to visit his family. On January 3, 1985, on their way back to Florida, when they got to Barstow, Tim asked if they were going left or right – a left would take them to Vegas or right to Florida. They went left, and got married in Vegas that day, then had the church wedding in St. Petersburg on January 26th. After moving back to Mohave, their daughter Jamie was born on July 18, 1986. Tim was working on planes at Mohave Airport. Norma did a little local driving work and also helped Tim work on the planes. She was an apprentice mechanic under Tim but never got her pilot’s license. She was driving local when she was pregnant with their son Tim Jr. until a week before delivering him on March 3, 1988. Life took a horrible turn on July 3, 1991. Tim was on his way home on his motorcycle on a dirt road that he had traveled many times and there was a tragic accident. They will never know exactly how the accident happened, only the sad outcome – Norma lost the love of her life that day. In 1992, she got back on the road full time and a friend named Gary Bohannon gave her the handle “A Little Bit of Heaven” because a little bit of Norma went to heaven with Tim when he died. In 1994, Karen Bisbee and Carl Smith of Bisbee & Smith Trucking hired Norma. That year, for Christmas, they had a custom bug screen made for her that said “Little Bit of Heaven” on it. 72 10-4 Magazine / January 2026 LITTLE BIT OF HEAVEN
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