So I’m not a trucker (yet … I just passed my Heavy Rigid test two weeks back! Job hunting now 😀 ), but I did want to thank one. It’s unlikely as hell that he frequents this sub, but in the slight chance he does …
My wife and I were on a short road trip in Outback Queensland recently. Day five of our trip, and second last day overall, we left the small town of Hughenden and didn’t realise until forty minutes later that we foolishly forgot to fuel up.
We pulled over in a tiny town called Prairie, thinking perhaps it had fuel. Actually, calling Prairie a town is to do towns a disservice – it was a single street and had a police station, a motel/pub, and a shop, but it was empty. Complete ghost town, not a soul to be seen with the exception of two blokes with a four-trailer road train parked on the side of the road.
After checking the motel, the shop, and the police station, and finding them all devoid of life, I decided to approach the truckers and ask whether they knew where the next fuel was.
Turns out it was a father/son team, the son learning the trade. The older fella told me that whilst the next town had an ancient shop and two pumps, he’d never seen it open before; the next reliable fuel stop was over a hundred kilometres away.
I knew it’d be a gamble whether we reached that town on what was in the tank. I thanked the trucker, and told him I’d head back to Hughenden to fill up just to be on the safe side.
“Fuck that,” he said. “Whaddaya run on?”
“Diesel.”
“Well, no fucken worries then, mate. Pull up on the other side of the truck. I’ll give ya some diesel.”
This man and his son siphoned their own diesel from their own tank into ours, laughed at me when I asked whether I could offer him anything in return, and simply seemed pleased to help out and have a chat.
Joe and Jason, you guys saved us both a lot of time and money. I hope you know exactly how grateful I and my wife were to you, and that we’ve brought up this story to our friends multiple times since we arrived home. If you do read this, know that I’ve been on the lookout for a way to pay your kindness and generosity forward every minute since we met.
