In
the past six decades, Detroit Lakes resident Clarence “Andy” Anderson
has traveled almost 7.9 million miles behind the wheel of a semi truck,
driving through 49 states and seven Canadian provinces. And since he
first started driving for Daggett Trucking on Aug. 20, 1952, he’s never
had a serious accident.
Semi
truck driver Clarence ‘Andy’ Anderson hasn’t had a major accident in
the six decades that he’s spent behind the wheel, though he’s traveled
over 7.6 million miles across 49 states and seven Canadian provinces.
Photo by – Brian Basham
Read the article: 60 years driving the big rig
In the past six decades, Detroit Lakes resident Clarence “Andy”
Anderson has traveled almost 7.9 million miles behind the wheel of a
semi truck, driving through 49 states and seven Canadian provinces.
And since he first started driving for Daggett Trucking on Aug. 20, 1952, he’s never had a serious accident.
Oh, he’s come close a few times.
“I’ve been through three hurricanes and five tornadoes (as a
driver),” Anderson says. “Hurricanes Andrew, Robert and Katrina … I was
right in the middle of them.”
When Hurricane Andrew hit, for instance, “I had a load of soft serve
ice cream I was taking to Homestead Air Force Base,” he said.
“I hauled 44,000 pounds of Kohler ice cream from White Bear Lake (Minn.) to Florida.”
But by the time he finally arrived at Homestead AFB, it basically wasn’t there anymore.
“I never lost nothing, but I spent a week in Miami trying to find
someone who wanted a load of soft serve ice cream,” Anderson said.
Fortunately, he found someone to take the ice cream off his hands.
As bad as Hurricane Andrew was, however, Katrina was worse, Anderson said.
“Katrina blew for two days,” he said. “I had a load of horse feed I
was hauling out of Ada, going to the Purina plant in New Orleans,” he
recalled.
Halted by the horrendous weather — “I spent two days with the wind
blowing over 100 miles per hour,” Anderson said — he hunkered down in
the cab of his truck, slotted protectively between two other semi
drivers.
“I couldn’t get the truck doors open,” he said of the reason why he stayed with the semi instead of taking shelter elsewhere.
Fortunately, Anderson said, “I never really got hit by anything.”
After a couple of days, the wind died down a little, to a mere 60 miles per hour, and he was able to continue on his
journey to New Orleans.
Unfortunately, when he arrived, he discovered the Purina plant where he was supposed to bring the horse feed had been destroyed.
“It wasn’t there anymore,” he said. “So I had to haul the feed to the plant in Shreveport to unload.”
Anderson also found that he was a popular guy among the hurricane survivors he encountered.
“I had the only working cell phone,” he said, adding that people
mostly wanted to use the phone just to let their loved ones know they
were OK.
Hurricane Robert, unlike the other two that he’s lived through, had
pretty much fizzled out by the time it hit land, Anderson noted.
And then, there were the tornadoes.
He recalled one that occurred in 1990, when he was driving a
Northwest Transit motorcoach from Motley to Duluth, transporting a
delegation from the national VFW Auxiliary on a tour of Minnesota. His
wife, who was a state VFW Auxiliary office holder at the time, was along
for that trip.
“I took them all over the state,” he said, adding with a laugh, “It was tougher than hauling cargo.”
While he was driving from Motley to Duluth, a tornado came close
enough to the motorcoach that the winds nearly tipped the vehicle on its
side — but after they arrived, Anderson discovered that his passengers
had no idea of the narrow escape they’d had.
“They never realized it until I said, ‘You know we just went through a
tornado?’” he said. “They were too busy talking to notice.”
That trip was one of the few Anderson has undertaken where he wasn’t traveling alone.
“I always run by myself,” he said. “It’s been a long road … but I take pride in never having had a serious accident.”
Anderson’s career hasn’t all been spent behind the wheel, however.
He also recalled one time in March 1973, when most of the truckers in
the region decided to go on strike — complete with rioting and
barricades at all the truck stops nationwide.
“All over the country, they (truckers) were organizing associations,
as we did here in the Red River Valley,” he said. “A meeting was
announced to be held at the Commercial East Acres Truck Stop in
Moorhead.
“Truckers came from all over South Dakota, North Dakota and
Minnesota. Something like 485 trucking companies and individual truckers
were represented … this was the birth of the Midwest Truckers
Association (MTA).”
Anderson became the head of the newly-formed MTA, and found himself
headed to Washington, D.C., to lobby for the rights of truckers. At one
point, he even met with President Richard Nixon.
“There probably aren’t too many that know what we went through to get
trucking and regulations to what they are today,” Anderson said. “We
changed all the rules.”
Over the years, from working for Daggett (16 years) to International
Transport (four years) to owning his own trucking business (over 30
years), and now as a driver for the Audubon-Waubun Co-op Elevator (three
years), Anderson has hauled everything from cattle to ice cream to
Caterpillar machinery.
At one point, he said, he even hauled a nuclear reactor from Minneapolis to Cincinnati, Ohio.
“It took two days, and I had two (law enforcement) escorts,” he said.
Because they had to stay off the main highways, the trip covered over 2,000 miles, on 58 different roadways.
And even after driving a total of 7,860,250 miles between Aug. 20,
1952 and Aug. 20, 2012, Anderson said, “I’m still adding more miles.”
Along the way, he’s also accumulated a family. He and his wife Bertha
have been married 58 years, and raised four kids — though “none of them
went into trucking,” Anderson said.
Two of them are engineers, one is a banker, and one works in the Public Utilities Department for the City of Detroit Lakes.
“I also have nine grandchildren and five great grandchildren,” he said.
He’s also been a part-time auctioneer for many years, Anderson noted.
So, now that he’s in his early 80s, does he have plans to just kick back and relax? Not really.
“I can’t sit around,” he said. “It dates back to my time in the military.”
A decorated Korean War veteran, Anderson served in the U.S. Army, Air Force and National Guard during his time in the military.
But it was in 1973, after he had been out of the service for a couple
of decades, that Anderson received a special commendation from the
Minnesota State Patrol for assisting at the scene of an accident where a
car and school bus had collided on Highway 108, seven miles west of
Pelican Rapids.
“That was a bad deal,” he said of the accident.
Though he has never had a serious accident of his own, or caused
injuries to another person, “I’ve hit two bear and several deer,”
Anderson said.
He recalled one bear he hit that was over 600 pounds – so massive
that the collision with the beast actually broke the frame on his semi.
“But I was able to get back home,” he said.
Even through all the thrills, chills and near-misses that Anderson
has experienced through the past 60 years, “It’s been fun,” he said.
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