Slight Detour – May 2023
Life on the open road provides the opportunity to see things others wouldn’t normally see. If a trucker says, “I’ve never seen that before,” then you’ve stumbled upon a rare occurrence.
This month’s edition of Slight Detour features an array of things you likely haven’t seen before.
A 10,000 gallon hat
They say everything is bigger in Texas, but “they” might want to give Oklahoma some credit too. That’s because the state is now home to the second-largest cowboy hat in the world.
The 24- by 32-foot, 12,650-pound steel behemoth can be found at the recently opened Howdy’s Travel Plaza in Hennessey, Okla. A local company, Henry’s Welding, was tasked with constructing the massive hat.
Jay Riaz, the owner of Howdy’s, says the structure will help to draw visitors to the travel plaza. In addition to serving as a roadside attraction, the hat also will help provide shade for a soon-to-be picnic area and nearby dog park.
According to Riaz, the hat is the largest in the state and the second largest in the world behind another mammoth cowboy hat in Seattle, Wash. Despite being beaten out in size, Riaz says his hat weighs more than the fiberglass one on the West Coast.
It’s not just the hats. Apparently the soda variety is bigger in Oklahoma too. Riaz brags about Howdy’s huge selection of soda, which features 130 flavors. On top of a restaurant with both barbecue and Mexican foods, the travel plaza offers amenities specific to truckers, like overnight parking, laundry services and showers.
“A lot of times, (truckers) are the ones who are going to bring in a lot of businesses,” Riaz told the Enid News and Eagle, “but at the same time, they’re the ones who are most ignored, so my whole idea was to focus on them, too.”
Disabled by doo-doo
Figuring out something new requires foreshadowing issues, along with a whole lot of trial and error. As the push for autonomous trucking continues, plenty of those “unforeseen” issues will arise.
Case in point, one driver recently discovered the limitations of his automated driving partner. In a Facebook post, a trucker claimed to be parked at a truck stop when he witnessed another driver pulling into the lot in an autonomous truck.
According to the post, the driver of the autonomous vehicle had to stop the truck because its autopilot had been disabled by an act of nature.
“He said the truck stopped driving because a bird pooped on the camera radar,” the post read.
It turns out this isn’t a new problem. In fact, Waymo developed a tiny wiper for the cameras on their autonomous vehicles all the way back in 2017. It sounds like others need to adopt this technology in order to avoid another fecal crisis.
I suppose you could add this to the growing list of reasons you just can’t replace drivers. While certainly unpleasant, I’m not sure how many drivers would have been unable to continue to do their job after being hit by a bird bomb.
It happens … again
Our next story features a trucker whose day was literally “down in the dumps.”
While driving on I-10 in California, a truck hauling human waste was involved in a rollover crash. The crash caused traffic to be backed up for 5 miles as crews worked to clear the processed human waste from the road.
California Highway Patrol reported that another vehicle was involved in the incident but, fortunately, nobody was hurt. Although I would assume their sense of smell would beg to differ.
I know I said we’d be talking about things you don’t see every day, but we actually had a similar story in Slight Detour in our December/January issue. Admittedly, I don’t have my finger on the pulse of human waste disasters, but it’s wild to see this happen a second time in a matter of months.
I was under the impression that crap only happens “sometimes,” but it seems to occur at a higher frequency. I’m sure if you really get in the weeds, you’d likely find these things happen more often than you’d expect. I suppose some things are better to just not think about, especially if you drink tap water.
Going out in a blaze of glory
Rounding out our collection of things you don’t see every day is the story of a driver who, despite going through something most drivers fear, may have penned the perfect ending.
Firefighters in Utah recently responded to a vehicle fire involving a semi. Crews worked for “several hours” to extinguish the blaze. In a Facebook post, Morgan County Fire Warden Dave Vickers said the fire most likely began after the truck’s turbo blew.
The driver was uninjured in the fire but was taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital for observation.
As it turns out, the 44-year trucking veteran was on the way to completing his final haul before retiring. Unfortunately, he didn’t get to make that final destination. According to the Morgan County Fire and EMS, he was overheard saying, “I guess this is my way of going out in flames.”
That’s a big 10-4. Enjoy retirement, driver. LL