Fleet Profile: Majors, Russell and Waddell
When asked by the son of a friend whether he should enroll at a truck driving school, I described the beauty of the ocean at sunrise and the sweet aroma of desert flowers. We discussed the fabled Freedom of the Road. Then, because I didn't want to be accused of sugar-coating the drivers's lifestyle, I painted the other side of the canvas....

Gary Addis
Senior Field Editor

Gary Addis Associate Editor

Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them. -Washington Irving

First, I "drew" a crude tractor and surrounded it with honking, speeding four-wheelers. I gouged potholes in my imaginary pavement, and caked the underside of my imaginary rig with blackened chunks of snow and ice. As the face of my friend's oldest child clouded over I dipped my hand in an imaginary bucket and splattered the imaginary canvas. "Why'd you do that?" he said. I shrugged. "Those red splotches represent DOT inspectors and speed-cops, because there's one on just about every corner."

The young man swallowed and asked hopefully, "But you do make a lot of money, don't you?" "Yes," I said, "we earn a pretty good paycheck." I drew a stick figure of a trucker and filled his hand with greenbacks. The young man nodded enthusiastically--this was what he was hoping to hear. "Wait a minute," I said. "The picture's not finished." I littered the ground with pages of a logbook and tried to relate how hard it is to drive ten hours straight on a catnap. "For a trucker's wages you'll unload freight when you're too tired to yawn, and then you'll get behind the wheel and drive 500 miles before morning. If you ever divide that big paycheck by the number of hours you had to work, it'll make you want to cry." To signify the loneliness that burdens solo drivers, I then bathed the painting with a heavy coat of blue paint. DOT inspections, thousand-dollar logbook violations, cops with itchy trigger fingers, stagnant mileage rates combined with volcanic fuel prices-- no wonder there's a driver shortage. Makes you long for the "good old days," doesn't it?

Thirty years ago I was a teenaged Burger Chef manager, so I missed a lot of the fun. I've never had to manipulate two gear shifts simultaneously, for instance, and all my tractors have had power steering. So I'll just have to take the word of you 30-year veterans that the sixties was the golden age of trucking.

I never drove a team of mules, either. But I like to read. A history buff, I have read at least a dozen books about muleskinners, bullwhackers and the equipment they drove. I've even published a few articles on the subject, myself. Because people have always had to eat, a thousand years before there were cities there were freight-haulers, people who transported goods to market for a fee. Incidentally, the word "truck" was in use long before Henry Ford introduced his gasoline engine. It's a shortened version of the English word "truckle," which was itself bastardized from the Greek word "trokhos," or wheel. So, even in Ben Franklin's day the men and women who transported the nation's goods were collectively called "truckers" and "drivers."

One of the most interesting, enterprising men of the late, great 19th century was Alexander Majors, a guy not much different from you and me. At fifteen years of age, having become expert with a twenty-foot whip, Majors signed on with a wagon train as a fully qualified bullwhacker--a job few adults could handle. A God-fearing man, Majors worked hard and saved his money; seven years later he bought a rebuilt Conestoga and a team of oxen. A dozen years after that, if you had a shipment that "has to get through, no matter what," you waited until one of Bible-Totin' Alex's wagon trains pulled into town.

Such was the freighter's reputation that when the U.S. Defense Department needed to provision an emergency military campaign--a rescue mission, really-- Majors's tiny 28-wagon fleet got the nod. To service the contract, he formed a life-long relationship with two other visionary "owner-operators." In 1857 the new firm dispatched 350 fully loaded wagons into the unsettled Western territories. The train's Cavalry escort was called away at the last minute (to fight marauding Cheyenne), and Utah's Mormons were in open rebellion. The partners lost everything except their good names. Perhaps because no other freighter wanted the job, the Army twisted a few bankers' arms; loans were granted, and Majors, Waddell and Russell was back in business. Alexander Majors secured a truce of sorts with the Mormons when he gave his word--and kept it--not to transport whiskey, wanton women or gamblers into Mormon communities or across Mormon territory. Traveling without military escort through the wilderness in small trains, these ancestors of today's trucker were attacked regularly by Indians, outlaws, rattlesnakes and the occasional bear (the furry kind). Every dram of water they drank, every rasher of wormy bacon they ate was flavored by Fear. And like the saying goes, there are no atheists in a foxhole. Alexander Majors issued every employee an expensive leather-bound bible; he required all new hires to sign an oath "not to use profane language, get drunk, bet on games of chance, or treat their animals cruelly." So there were no further "incidents" between the freighters and the devout Mormons. The investment paid off. Handsomely. In 1858 the firm transported six million pounds of military and civilian freight employing 3,500 wagons, 40,000 oxen, 1,000 mules, and nearly 5,000 drivers.

Although the firm's success encouraged the birth of several well financed, politically connected competitors, the fleet prospered throughout the remainder of the decade. Needing another challenge, in April of 1860 the partners sank approximately $750,000, a King's ransom in those days, into the Pony Express, a bi-weekly mail service. Because they must have known that the enterprise was doomed before their first pony left the corral (a transcontinental telegraph line was nearing completion), history has labeled the three partners seven kinds of fool. The historians are wrong. The Pony Express was an investment in public relations, a gamble meant to curry favor with the politicians who passed out the lucrative mail contracts, which would coexist alongside the telegraph. Toward that end, Majors, Russell and Waddell subcontracted with the Butterfield Overland Mail Company to operate mail and stagecoach service over the Central Route.

Due to some slick "politicking" greased with fat campaign contributions, the contract went to freighter Ben Holladay, who subsequently built himself an empire. When the bills came due, the firm of Majors, Russell and Waddell dissolved into bankruptcy. Although granted relief by the courts, Alexander Majors sold everything he owned, including a house he had bought for his aging mother, and applied the funds to the firm's debts; he eventually paid off every loan. He died practically a pauper, but his life had been a resounding success. For he left many mourners. Because he paid them well, and treated them with respect, tears rolled down the dusty cheeks of thousands of drivers at his funeral. Can an employer be given a better eulogy? Trucking continues to be a difficult job. Freight haulers of today are seldom attacked by outlaws on horseback; the bears we meet write tickets--they won't eat us. But we are exposed to dangers aplenty. Every time a speeding four-wheeler twitches, every time we descend a steep grade or drive across a patch of ice, we are staring into the cold black eyes of the death angel. Whether it comes at the point of an Indian lance or at the hands of a drunk driver, death is just as final. Freight-hauling has always been, and always will be, a tough way to earn a dollar. When the time comes I may not encourage my teenager to strap himself behind a 24" steering wheel. But the industry has been very good to me. It's in my blood; I'd be miserable doing anything else. After showing my friend's son both sides of the picture, both the good and the bad aspects of trucking, I pulled a book off a shelf and opened it to a marked passage. In his memoirs, Seventy Years on the Frontier (University of Nebraska Press), after describing the orneriness of mules and the stupidity of oxen, Alexander Majors stated that the happiest moments of his life occurred "out on the trail." My young friend graduated from truck driving school last month. The very next day he signed on with J.B. Hunt, and last week he left town with a driver-trainer. When he's really, really tired, or especially lonely, he's gonna curse the day he was handed a CDL. But whenever things slow down a bit, he'll gaze through that high, wide International windshield and realize that he has never been happier. At a family gathering a few days before his death, Alexander Majors said, "The life of a freighter is not an easy one, but I wouldn't trade memories with anyone." Well, neither would I.