The Lone Haul

A detailed Summary of The Lone Haul

When Emil Treuthardt started full-time trucking in 1949, he never thought he would find himself driving into the next millennium. The 21-year-old Wisconsin man was just passing time until something else came along. The problem was that his boss treated him so nicely that he could not leave. After about seven years, driving was in his blood, and he could not think about doing anything else.

Now he has 50 years of driving without a chargeable accident. "I won't retire." Says the 71-years-old resident of Monroe, Wisconsin. "I'm going to keep driving until I fail my physical."

For much of his career, Treuthardt had one thing motivating him, his daughter, Kathy, who was born with cystic fibrosis, a disease of the lungs. She had to spend 90 days at a time in the hospital throughout her youth. During her first 18 years, she had no health coverage, because insurance companies do not cover preexisting conditions.

Treuthardt had to pay the $300,000 in hospital bills out of his own pocket. "I had one hell of a bill for that girl," he says. "I could have bought a couple of farms for that." He drove 50 miles to Madison to see her every night she was in the hospital, according to his wife, Rozella. Now Emil's mo

Trailers today are twice as long, and the ride wasn't much worse back then. "It rode just as nicely as today's trucks, since the trailer wasn't as long and the load was lighter. We had 160 horses, and we thought we were getting somewhere. Now we're up to 425 or higher."

His first truck was a 1946 KB-7 International. It would do about 50 mph downhill or about 35-40 mph normally, depending on the load." The truck had a 26-foot, single-axle trailer. There were no air brakes or sleeper bunks in those days. In fact, sleep was something hard to come by. If you had bucket seats, you were out of luck. If you had a bench seat, like the one in Treuthardt's KB-7, you slept on it for two of three hours; any longer, and your body would cramp up, he says. The best bed was a blanket in a park on a summer night.

"A lot of these young guys can't pass a truckstop, they've got to go in and brag awhile," he says. "They don't care. They're late for appointments. Then they complain about their jobs. Well, it's their own fault."

Anyone who can drive their way to paying off $300,000 in medical bills has to have his nose to the grindstone. Emil Treuthardt still drives 100,000 miles a year, and he has many more miles planned. He says he's heard of drivers working into their 80s and 90s. "I'm still just a greenhorn," he says.

The only thing that gets his mind off the loss of his daughter is driving. "Once I get out on the road, I kind of forget about it," he says.

Treuthardt bounced back from that tragedy, just as he has from other setbacks in his 50 years on the road. Two qualities that have girded him through the hard knocks are his honesty and his work ethic. He prides himself on never lying. Once he got caught going faster than 70in a 55-mph zone. The officer was a little woman who could barely see into his window. When she asked him how fast he was going, he said "Oh, about 72 or 73." She went to her car, came back and said, "I'm not even going to give you a warning. You're the first man that never lied to me."

If the culture of trucking in the old days has been the highlight of Treuthardt's career, the low point is not hard to find. In 1954, two women in a car pulled out in front of his truck. He tried to turn to the right, but the wheel locked, and he smashed into the car, killing the driver. There were 90 feet of skidmarks tracing the path of his truck, so he was not far from the car when it pulled out in front of him. The judge found him 10 percent negligent. Treuthardt says he still can't help thinking about the accident. "If I see a couple of women on the road, I won't even attempt to pass them; it just brings back memories. Taking a life is something no one wants to do. I did it in World War II, overseas, but I didn't want to do it at

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Approximate Word count = 1879
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)

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