Pennsylvania pro: Once trucking gets in your blood, you're stuck
DAVE RAMSEY Jr.
The Trucker News Services
6/15/2007
By JERRY BREEDEN, The Trucker Staff
LEWISTOWN, Pa. — In the 15 years he’s been a trucker, owner-operator Dave Ramsey Jr. has never lost his lust for the road.
Ramsey, a resident of Lewistown, Pa., began his career in 1972. He left the industry at one point when he took a job with the State of Pennsylvania. Even then, though, the lure of the highway kept beckoning him to return and his stint with the state was only short-lived.
“I love trucking,” Ramsey said. “I’ve never really wanted to do anything else. Once it gets in your blood, you’re stuck. My dad was a trucker. I always admired my dad and what he did. He died of a heart attack 19 years ago.”
He said he is “thankful to my old friend Terry Hackenburg for helping me get to where I am today. Terry lives in Middleburg, Pa., and he’s an ‘old-school’ trucker who taught me a lot about trucking that I didn’t know. That wasn’t easy, ‘because I thought I knew everything about it. Terry proved to me over and over again just how wrong I was back then. I’m still learning. All the time. Every day.”
Asked if he has any children, Ramsey grinned, adding only that “there’s a whole tribe of them.”
However, just one, Dave III, is a trucker.
“Davey’s been driving for six or seven years now, I guess,” said Ramsey. “He’s an owner-operator and drives flatbed. I used to take him with me a lot when he was a kid. I guess that’s why he got into the business.”
Ramsey said there have been many changes since he entered the industry, the biggest of which, in his opinion, is “a loss of camaraderie among the drivers of today. If you have a breakdown along the road somewhere, you’re liable to get run over instead of getting someone to stop and give you a hand.
“Do I stop and help others? Not all the time, but most of the time. Yes. I always carry enough tools and spare parts with me to practically overhaul an engine.”
One thing about truckers that Ramsey said he doesn’t believe will ever change is their ability to disagree with one another.
“Honestly,” he said, “if you put 10 truckers in a room and tried to get them to agree on one certain thing or plan of action, you’d be there until doomsday. There is a lot about trucking that needs changing, but those changes are never going to take place until we learn to work together toward a common goal. It’s as simple as that.”
Ramsey said he knows “one thing that will never change in the industry and that’s freight rates. We’re still hauling freight at 1972 prices, but everything else, especially fuel and food, has gone sky high.”
Ramsey said he gets really rankled by the conditions in which he finds many truck stops today. “A lot of them — most of them, in fact — are filthy,” he said. “I have to hold my breath and try not to breathe inside some of them. Owners and managers need to address these many problems of uncleanliness.”
While there may be a few things wrong with the profession, there aren’t enough of them to drive Ramsey totally away forever; there is nothing he would rather be doing.
“I like the freedom driving affords me,” he said. “There’s never anyone looking over my shoulder. Plus, there are a lot of nice places in this country. I especially like northern New York. Not New York City, though. I will not, under any circumstances, take a load there or any southern part of that state. Someone else can have it; I have no use for it. The northern part of the state, however, is beautiful.”
Ramsey is currently driving for MHF Express Inc. based at Zelienople, Pa. “It’s a very good company to work for,” he said. “I have the York, Pa.-to-Texarkana, Texas, run. I like it a lot. I get a lot of time off, but if I’m home for more than three days at any given time, I’m ready to roll again.”
Ramsey, who’s divorced, lives alone. He said he plans to put his house up for sale and buy a camper. “I don’t need a house. I’m thinking about putting my camper in along the river or maybe I’ll move in with my boss. His name is Mike Stringfellow and he’s president of the company. He’s a pretty good guy and he lets me do just about everything I want.
“I mean, I’m 58 years old and I’m getting close to that time in life where I just don’t want to do a lot of the things I did when I was younger,” Ramsey said.