The Last Long Haul

 

The Last Long Haul

For over four decades, the hum of diesel engines and the whine of tires on endless asphalt had been the soundtrack of Hank "Highball" Murdock’s life. A legend among long haulers, Hank was the kind of trucker you heard about in diners from Amarillo to Albany, his name etched in grease-stained ledgers and whispered like a myth over cups of burnt coffee at 3 a.m.

He’d started driving in the summer of 1985, fresh out of the Army with nothing but a duffel bag, a CDL, and a hunger for the horizon. His first rig was a beat-up Kenworth W900 with more rust than chrome, but to Hank, it was freedom wrapped in steel.

The road became his companion. He saw America through rain-streaked windshields and dusty side mirrors. From the icy passes of the Rockies to the sun-scorched highways of Arizona, Hank was there—always moving, always delivering. He hauled everything: beef, boots, machine parts, even a shipment of carnival rides once that made him laugh for miles.

Over the years, the industry changed. GPS replaced the old road atlases, and CB chatter turned to silence as phones and satellite radios took over. But Hank never minded the solitude. He found a rhythm in the road—a peace others couldn’t understand. It wasn’t just a job; it was a calling.

But now, the odometer on his latest Peterbilt had turned over again, and the ache in his knees matched the miles on his logbook. The company threw around the word “retirement” like it was a party, but for Hank, it felt like the last exit on a map he hadn’t finished exploring.

He wasn’t bitter, just reflective.

At his last delivery—a parts run to a plant in Missouri—the yard crew gathered to shake his hand. They’d heard the stories, even if they couldn’t quite believe them. Hank just chuckled and said, “It’s been a hell of a ride.”

Back home in Tennessee, his wife Loretta had set up the porch with two rockers and a cooler full of cold beers. “You ready to sit still for once?” she teased, her smile as warm as it had been when they’d met at a truck stop dance hall in ‘89.

“Not sure I know how,” he replied, settling into the chair with a sigh that seemed to carry four million miles in it.

That night, under a sky full of stars, Hank looked out at the road beyond the fence—just a county road now, but it led somewhere. It always did.

He’d hang up his keys, sure. But part of him would always be out there, riding the night winds, a ghost in a chrome rig chasing the next sunrise.

Because once you’ve lived the long haul, it never really leaves you.

And Hank Murdock? He was the long haul.