Evening star., 1941-09-14

train Planting two flares beside the
rails, he ran on, frantically waving the
third flare in his hand and praying
that he'd cover enough distance to let
the engineer stop in time.
You can relax now - he won by
hundred feet.
pass the incident along because
it is so typical of hundreds of cases on
record which demonstrate the quick
wit, the unselishness and the courage
of the modern transport trucker.
Whether it involves driving blazing
gasoline truck into an open field where
it can do no harm when it explodes -
or the affair of the 148-pound driver
who loaded four unconscious, 200
pound accident victims into his truck
single-handed - the prevailing ele-
ment in them all is that spirit of
lending hand which makes these
hearties in windbreakers the modern
Samaritans.
Pages could be filled with cases of
truckers wrecking their vehicles in the
ditch TO avoid hitting some foolish or
drunken driver. But that would give
only a one-sided picture, for more
often they play their roles in less
theatrical but nonetheless vital ways
Here's Francis Weeks, for instance,
driving through binding Idaho bliz-
zard at night when his lights show him
a faint pair of tire tracks leading off
the road - but not back again. Stop
ping to investigate. he found a pas
senger car upside down in a creek
thirty feet off the highway. Two
occupants were already dead; two
Others were pretty far gone. But Weeks
dragged them out and went to work on
them. reviving both.
First Aid Experts
NExr to putting out fires in other
peoples cars, first aid is one of their
major activities on the highway and
thousands of truckers have taken
either the standard or advanced Red
Cross courses. Some fate must have
whispered this to the colored woman
who ran screaming into trucking
company's garage. her throat cut from
ear to ear. Later the doctors at the
hospital agreed that but for the intel
ligent first aid applied by the truck
drivers, she would have been dead
before she ever reached the hospital.
Such deeds are building up con-
viction among travellers that the
trucker is one fellow on the highway
who is always willing and able to
help in a pinch. But most of us have
no conception of how often they render
these services until. for example. we
encounter report of one big fleet
operator in North Carolina whose
drivers, in three days of a statewide
sleet storm, aided no less than 387
passenger cars which were in trouble!
The result is an increasing lore of
good deeds done by the truckers -
the most important of which. Incl
dentally. is their own safe-driving rec
ords. Working without pause through
darkness. rain, snow and sleet, thou
sands of them wear buttons testifying
that they've driven from one to five
years without an accident. And that
means without even fender scrape
that's somebody else's fault!
At this writing. 1O3 large fleets -
many of them representing hundreds
of vehicles - completed the first nine
months of the National Fleet Safety
Contest without single mishap. And
among the outstanding records, there
are ten fleets that have rolled any
where from 100000 to 100000
accident-free miles.
These records pile up despite in
creasing traffic and pressure of defense
demands for the truckers are playing
a vital role in the Battle of Produc-
tion," working side by side with the
rails and the ships tc keep raw ma