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EXIT ONLY Of Highway Knights Owner-operator saves motorists in dangerous South Dakota ground blizzard “I ’ve been doing this a long time, 30 years,” says owner- operator John Crozman of his long trucking career, for the past two years leased to Albertville, Minn.- based Long Haul Trucking. Like so many haulers, he’s seen his fair share of on-highway res- cue action. “It’s not a problem. You come upon accidents and try to maybe help somebody out. I think all truckers have been in this situa- tion. We’ve all been there and done that.” Living and operating often in the upper Midwest, he says, “I’ve helped folks before from a blizzard.” But the night of Feb. 3 would turn out dif- ferently. Crozman was on something of a rou- tine haul in his 2009 Freightliner Cascadia northbound on I-29 in South Dakota when he neared the top of a ridge north of Summit Cro- zman calls “the Bermuda Triangle of South Dakota” when it comes to weather. “You never know what the weather will do.” This particular evening, winds gusts of an estimated 50 mph blew up drifts of recent dry, heavy snow that had fallen throughout the region, creating dangerous ground blizzard conditions. Crozman could see well enough from the height of his Cascadia, but prudence with regard to the travelers around him led him to pull off at what he describes as a ramp that climbs to a rest and refuge area “well off the interstate,” at exit 213. Crozman, seeing large snowdrifts blocking some sections of the ramp, as well as at least one other vehicle parked there, stopped to wait out the worst of the storm. As he sat, 82 TRUCKERS NEWS APRIL 2011 between “breaks in the snow blow- ing,” he says, “I noticed another car out there” and thought he could see a light intermittently through the vehicle’s windows. Thomas and Mary Lynne Fischer had been trapped in the car for more than four hours. The two retired teachers, residents of Win- nipeg, Manitoba, were on their way back north from a cycling vacation in Arizona when they were caught in the whiteout conditions. Given the high winds and wind chill esti- mates in the neighborhood of -60 F, snow had begun plug- ging the vehicle’s air fil- ter, and the two were huddled around a small candle, a sleeping bag draped across them, for what little warmth it provided. Owner-operator John Crozman Soon enough, their savior would arrive. “They were sure glad to see me,” says Croz- man. The owner-operator, in a snow suit and fighting against the wind gusts and snow drifts packed hard as concrete, managed to get the Fisch- ers to his Cascadia, where they sat for a time warming up before he noticed the blowing snow impact- ing his own air filtration systems and decided to move back south- bound to the Coffee Cup Truckstop in Summit. There, the three warmed up indoors and talked before settling in for the night in each of the Cas- cadia’s double bunks. Crozman “didn’t tell anybody about that for a day. The next day I didn’t even think about it” but to tell his wife he’d had a couple roommates from Canada. But as several days went by and he returned home to Blackhawk, S.D., after his runs, a bombshell TODD DILLS Truckers News Senior Editor Todd Dills is the author of a novel, Sons of the Rapture, and blogs daily at www. overdriveonline.com/ channel19. Write him at tdills@rrpub.com or http://twitter.com/ channel19todd. awaited. “We are writing to advise you of a situation of heroic propor- tions that occurred on the eve- ning of February 3rd, 2011,” the Fischers had posted to John Dan- iels, CEO of Long Haul Trucking. In the letter, they detailed the entire episode. “We have always had the utmost respect for those individu- als involved in the trucking indus- try,” they wrote, “and now we owe our lives to one of them. John is a humble man who did not want us to make a fuss over him, however, we know that we must relay this information and have him receive the recognition he deserves. John is a fine man — he is our hero, and we will never forget what he did for us on that frigid night on I-29. John speaks very highly of the com- pany he represents and of the indi- viduals with whom he works.” Crozman was the subject of a fea- ture in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. A longtime member of the Owner- Operator Independent Drivers Asso- ciation, Crozman appeared then on the organization’s radio show. As other news got out, positive reper- cussions continued. “When I got home the other day,” he told me, two weeks after the event, “I had a card in the mail from a doctor in Minneapolis. He sent me a check for $50 to take my wife out to eat” as thank-you for looking out for others. “So many times we hear the neg- ative side of the industry,” says Long Haul’s safety director, Mark Theis. “We had to make sure that [Croz- man’s] story was told. Drivers are often looked at by the public as an 80,000-lb. monster with a license to kill. But there are largely good peo- ple in this industry all over, and we’re proud to have the ones that are representing them out there.”