Truckers News Senior Editor Todd Dills blogs daily from Nashville, Tenn., via www.overdriveonline.com/channel19. Follow him at http://twitter.com/channel19todd. To read Todd’s blog on your smartphone, scan this QR code using a decoder, which can be found in your phone’s app store.

Renewed Vigilance

Keep situational awareness high for stowaways along the border

Desperate people sometimes take desperate measures. That maxim was never more evident than in mid-November when owner-operator Henry Albert was fueling his Freightliner at a Pilot Flying J location in Laredo, Texas, and was approached by one of his fellow haulers. The driver urgently asked Albert questions in an attempt to determine the whereabouts of a U.S. Xpress driver parked in the fuel line adjacent to Albert.

Unbeknownst to the U.S. Xpress driver, a young man and woman were crouched on top of his sleeper in the small cavity behind the tractor’s high roof fairing (see Albert’s picture here) in an attempt to stow away on the U.S. interior-bound rig. A testament to the value of drivers looking out for each other, Albert posted the story to his blog after one of his regular runs from the Charlotte, N.C., area, where he lives, to the border zone and back.

I can’t imagine a more uncomfortable spot anywhere else on a tractor but straddled atop the trailer landing gear, as unrealistic as that might be. (Though the circumstances are very different, the whole episode does bring to mind the hauler who, in an effort to foil a theft of his tractor, running bobtail, ended up on its deckplate during a dramatic hour-long police-chase ride outside Atlanta I wrote about in 2009.)

Stopping to fuel in Laredo anytime soon? Look up – there may be a stowaway in the space behind your roof fairing, atop your cab, as in this photo captured at the Flying J there by owner-operator Henry Albert.

The truck’s driver, Albert said, did the smart thing and decided to let the authorities handle the situation, calling police. “Also, he contacted his company to make them aware of what was happening,” Albert wrote in his blog post about it. And as he and other drivers went about their business waiting for the cops to show up, “the two individuals realized the truck was sitting for too long and they climbed out and ran away.” When police came, they gathered details of the incident from Albert and other witnesses before beginning their search.

If you’re hauling regularly to the border zone, best to keep extra-vigilant awareness about you during stops, Albert says. Miss something like this happening and you’d have quite a problem on your hands at the checkpoints at the end of the border commercial zone.