Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/611028
VOICES 4 | Overdrive | December 2015 A tweet from Minnesota's state police in late October showed the pallets pictured here and held especially prescient import after a deadly crash the preceding week. The accident ended the life of a gasoline tanker driver after a mattress atop a cargo van broke loose on the New Jersey Turnpike and brought traffic to a quick near-halt. To avoid flattening a quickly stopping four-wheeler ahead, the tanker driver turned hard right into open space, rolling the tanker and sacrificing himself in the process. A memorial service for the JSK Transport driver, Dalip Kumar, fol- lowed the incident. Kumar reported- ly immigrated to the United States in 2005 and had been hauling since. "He is a trucking professional," Sam Olessi said of Kumar. Video of the event from the dash- cam of fellow trucker Kevin Hauer, circulated in the aftermath, "shows traffic had almost come to a stop" in Kumar's lane, Olessi said. "The cars went left, he went right to avoid running over someone … . Right lane was clear – always look in your mirror every five seconds. Trucking 101. God bless him and his family." Kevin J. Reidy concurred, not- ing that the "tanker would have flattened the car and everyone in it if he hadn't done what he did. As it was, he still clipped the Honda. My condolences to all who knew and loved that driver." The Honda's driver reportedly was uninjured. JoAnn Jehoich: My prayers go out to this family, and may he rest in peace. My dad also had a wreck in a tanker, and it burned. He was lucky, and so was his brother, Red, who also drove tankers. They both had bad wrecks because of four-wheel- ers. They escaped, but barely." Jehoich recalled driving in her pickup near New River, Ariz., when another pickup lost an unsecured box springs. She "managed to avoid Vocabulary.com defines "sacrifice" as: something you give up, usually for the sake of another cause. Some people think it's a sacrifice to go without Starbucks coffee for a week. Some people think it means pulling the wheel to the right when you know you're probably going to die instead of killing a bunch of other people on the highway. On the morning of Oct. 7, in Kearny, N.J., the latter is exactly what happened. We've all seen the mattress idiots. We were beside one recently, a tiny Mitsubishi with a box springs tied to the top with regular old laundry line, flying down the highway. George immediately slowed and gave him a wide berth to get by, and we both mentioned how stupid you have to be to do something so dangerous. We were lucky: Our mattress idiot took the next exit, and we were spared a potentially disastrous situation. The driver in Kearny wasn't so lucky. Dashcam video and eyewitness accounts describe an incredibly selfless act of sacrifice on his part, and I will think of him every single time I see a mattress idiot for the rest of my life. Notes on sacrifice 'Trucker lives matter' "You can't make this stuff up," the Minnesota Department of Public Safety tweeted Oct. 16 with this picture. "Here's how not to use your seatbelt." When four-wheeler load securement is more than just a nuisance issue This view is from the dashcam of Kevin Hauer, the first trucker on the scene of Dalip Kumar's fiery tanker crash. Hauer told local 101.5 FM that he believed Kumar's evasive action "saved many lives." By Wendy Parker Overdrive contributing blog- ger Wendy Parker dispatch- es several times a week via OverdriveOnline.com/wendy.