A Tribute to Trucker Lloyd - You Are Missed!

Welcome to episode 6 of Truckers Have Feelings ... Todays show is about remembering good truckers who have now passed on ... If its okay I would like to start my tribute and respect to a fellow I dispatched years back his name was Lloyd and to family and close friends he was known as Allison. Lloyd was an owner/operator with Brookville Transport for over 20 years. He was the kind of guy who touched many lives in very positive ways. He was a true gentleman and his family was his top priority. While working for Brookville Transport I was transferred to an office in New Brunswick in the fall of 1998 from our Nova Scotia site... It was around this time I met Lloyd. Lloyd was the kind of trucker and human being that you could trust and rely on. If something happened that he couldn't help with, there was definitely a damn good reason for it. When I was transferred to our site in New Brunswick, the office staff there thought I was being sent as a spy - paranoid people I guess! Ha ha I have to say there were a handful of truckers who made me feel more welcomed than the “paranoid” staff - Lloyd was on the top of that list. He and his wife were always very kind to me. The other truckers were known as John, Jim, Leonard and Gene - don't get me wrong, most of the truckers made me feel welcomed there more than the office staff ever did. Even when Lloyd felt he was being screwed around with loads he never raged out at me. The most over used phrase when a trucker delivered his load and called into dispatch looking for the next pick up - dispatch would often say “we are working on something call me back in an hour.” An hour later same thing... Lloyd asked me one time, when I was new to the dispatching game - “Are you really working on something or is this just your way of putting me off?” I told Lloyd on that day they have no loads, no prospects. I remember Lloyd telling me he appreciated my honesty and he was going for a rest and would leave his cell phone on if something came up before he called back in a couple of hours. So I actually thought... “That was fair enough” From that day on I always enjoyed talking to Lloyd, he would talk to me sometimes about nothing to do with trucking and those I gotta say were very interesting conversations because he had knowledge on some pretty interesting things. Before I lost touch with Lloyd when I left my dispatch position in 2000 I had a very heartfelt experience with him. It was a Monday, a pretty much typical Monday and that upcoming Saturday was Lloyds sons birthday and when calling in on that Monday he asked me for a favor. He had a load on that was going to the Toronto area where most times reloads for a flatbed would mostly go South with very few coming back East. He asked me if I would make sure that he could get a load back East so he could make it to his sons birthday. I did promise him that I would do my best to get him back East for his sons birthday. All week this was on my mind and I kept him in mind for any decent paying load coming East out of Toronto. Well Thursday afternoon came and he was empty waiting for a reload - I honestly worked my ass off trying to get him a load East and then Friday came along, he was still empty and all the East bound loads were so few that week and there was nothing that would provide him a decent revenue to come back East. So close to 5 on a Friday in Toronto, not a great time to be empty and waiting for a load or looking for a load because they are usually at that point of the day gone or there's no loads going anywhere so sitting in Toronto for the weekend was not ideal but I found him a good paying load going to Tenessee and there would be a reload coming back into Toronto and then a definite load east the following week. Well I had to give all this news to Lloyd knowing that he wouldn't be able to make it home to his sons birthday that he had told me about. This was really very hard for me because I was going home to my family, to my kids that night. Lloyd was really good about it, he was very disappointed but he found the positive in it and I wished him a safe trip and we would talk to him on Monday. Well here's the thing - that same Friday around 8pm I received a call from Lloyd at my home and he said to me - “I know you did your best to get me home to my sons birthday and for that I thank you and I know it bothers you that you couldn't get me home but here's what I want you to know... I've made my choice in life to be a trucker and this unfortunately is part of the trucking game. While it's not ideal I will call my son to talk to him on his birthday so he knows I'm thinking about him, now you go and have a great weekend with your family, and I’ll talk to you Monday.” That was a tough moment for me but if you know anything about trucking there is no room for those type of feelings, if you know what I'm saying but I held on to that conversation and to this day can still hear Lloyd saying those words to me. - maybe those weren't his exact words but they were damn close for sure. Now Fast forward to 2019 I believe and I am no longer in the trucking industry and I meet up with a trucker who I had actually been looking for and wondering how he was doing - his name was Johnny B... It was honestly the weirdest thing cause I met him unexpectedly at another friends home and we were able to catch up after all those years and I actually asked him that day how Lloyd was doing and it was then that he told me Lloyd had passed away a few years back - he was found passed in his truck while in the United States - that hit me hard even though I didn't fully show it that day.... Lloyd was such a positive influence in my time with Brookville... If it wasn't for guys like Lloyd I would never have stayed as long as I did because the management when I first got there well as we know were a bit paranoid... You know lol ... I mean Mr Bean he would have made a better spy than me - can you imagine me a spy! Ha ha ha ha sure!!!! Like Lloyd Johnny B was similar, he was a great guy to me and he made my time at Brookville tolerable in New Brunswick. Another sad point to this is not even a week after meeting Johnny B he passed away suddenly. Next week I would like to talk about John so tune in for our next show... Thanks for listening... If your really enjoying this show subscribe so you will be notified when episodes are first released. Thank you and keep safe out there.