Life on the Road – Trucking News Blog

One of the sadder stories to come out of the Arrow Trucking shutdown two days before Christmas is the story of John Eischens, who has not been seen since Christmas Day in Butte, MT. An official missing person report has been filed in Texas. With no money, because his last Arrow paycheck bounced, he cleaned out his truck and gave the keys to the manager at the Pilot Truck Stop in Butte.

After that, no one has heard from him. My guess is had his stuff and started looking for a ride. If a truck driver was able to give him a ride from the Pilot, someone would have heard from him by now. He may have started hitchhiking and hitchhiking in Montana in December, can’t be easy. This has the possibility of being a horrible tragedy and it rests on the heads of Arrow Trucking.

Don’t misunderstand me, let me say this again, THIS IS ARROW TRUCKING’S FAULT. I haven’t looked it up, but I’m sure there’s a truck dealership either Freightliner, International or even a Kenworth dealer in Butte that he had enough fuel to get to. If he was able to pack up his stuff enough so he could hitch a ride, his stuff would have fit on a Greyhound Bus. When people are in a position of not knowing what to do and being overwhelmed, they can panic and make bad decisions. Putting a driver in this position is ARROW’s FAULT.

I’m the first one to admit, that I’m the last one to ask for help. If I don’t think I can do something, it doesn’t get done or I give it my best shot. One of the hardest things for me to do is to ask for help, but it’s one of the easiest things I do is to help someone else. One of the joys of trucking is (unless your company has a short leash and won’t allow you to make any decisions on your own, it didn’t use to be like that. Before cell phones and satellite tracking a truck driver, even a company truck driver was responsible and held accountable for making major decisions in his day to day trucking life, but that’s another rant), one of the joys of trucking is being the lone wolf, in charge of your own life, depending on no one for anything, but sometimes even the most independent macho trucker needs to ask for help.

Before I finish, from the Tulsa World article about John, toward the end:

Missing person report filed on trucker
By D.R. STEWART World Staff Writer
Published: 1/8/2010  2:23 AM
Last Modified: 1/8/2010  4:15 AM

But with the help of the drivers association, trucker message and bulletin boards, 7,500 people across the country became involved with the effort to bring stranded drivers home, said Lisa Philpot, a volunteer with “Support for Stranded Arrow Trucking Drivers” who lives in Baltimore.

“There were a couple of drivers up here (near Baltimore),” Philpot said by telephone late Thursday. “There are 300 to 460 drivers who are not home or (whose whereabouts) we can’t verify.”

I know Lisa has worked really hard to help drivers in this situation and she deserves everyone of the drivers and all of our thanks for working so hard during this situation. But… To those of us that are constantly connected to the internet with laptops, smart phones, twitter, facebook, blogs, online magazines, friends and family that are connected, this may come as a shock, but some drivers aren’t all that connected or care if they’re connected to the internet or not. They go about their day, get the job done like truckers have been doing the job for decades before the internet. They may be sitting in the restaurant reading a book (remember those?), or talking to an actual person at the counter and not updating their twitter and facebook feeds about what they had for dinner. I know it’s hard to believe and I don’t understand how drivers can work in the modern trucking business without all of these tools, but they do.

Maybe John didn’t know any other choices were available when he called his dispatch and heard that stupid recording telling drivers to find a dealership and turn in their trucks and whatever plan he had, he thought was the best plan at the time. I’m sure the other 300 to 460 unaccounted for drivers must be big boys and girls and they are handling the situation as best they can, have made it home by now or have already found another trucking job and are fine otherwise we would have heard about more families missing loved ones by now. Maybe they just don’t have internet.

If nothing else, this can be a lesson for everyone else. We know this is going to happen again, if it happens to you, what are you going to do? You, not facebook, not twitter, You. No matter how hard it is, try and keep some money for emergencies either on your person or accessible from any ATM. Enough to either buy fuel home or a bus ticket, plus a taxi ride to the bus station. Clean out your truck now so you can carry what you want to keep. I’m not real sure what else a company driver can do. One of the reasons I bought my own truck was so I could carry my stuff to my next job without unloading the old and loading all of my crap into another truck. That’s not going so well in this economy either.

This is a sad situation and should not have happened and hopefully will never happen again. Trucking companies are going to fail, but this shouldn’t have been allowed to happen and the execs at Arrow should be held accountable!