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ANYTHING BUT ORDINARY Overdimensional
loads are the specialty of this pioneering lady trucker By DEBORAH
FENNINGTON
Debbie
Hoffman hauls
some unusual freight: tall smokestacks, big boats, oversize waste
treatment tanks, huge pieces of construction equipment, immense ductwork
that resembles a giant's accordion. "Anything that's wide, high,
or long," Hoffman says. But then, Hoffman has never been one
to settle for the ordinary. When she graduated from trucking school in 1970, she was one of
only a handful of woman truckers — and one of an even fewer number who was able to
make a long-term, successful career as an owner-driver. She wasn't content with an
ordinary truck, either; a 1982 Peterbilt, custom-built for the Poconos 500 Truck Race, was
her choice. A $50,000 sleeper with shower, toilet, kitchen and queen-size bed let this
grandmother raise her three children, who now have white line fever in their veins. Hoffman’s operation, Double D Truck Specialties of Haines
City, Fla., specializes in overerdimensional hauling. It's more profitable than regular
line-haul, she says, and more of a challenge as well. "From the moment I graduated truck driving my goal was to be
a specialized carrier” says the slim, muscular blonde.
"I knew the monev was not in general freight. With specialized hauling, I can
get $ 3,500 for a 50-mile haul. I used to have to go to California from New Jersey for the
same amout." Of course, to go that 50 miles may take 10 to 12 hours, waiting for
utility people to raise power and phone lines, doing some careful maneavering in tight
spots, waiting for escorts, notifying police to block off railroad crossings, etc. It was a lofty goal for a young woman in the early "70s.
Hoffman had married at age 15, and by the time she was 21 had two children and a third on
the way. "He supported me very well," she says. "I had a new
house with a new car in the driveway. One day I looked around and thought. What if he
stops loving me and leaves? Who's going to hire me with a sixth-grade education?"' Her husband was an owner-driver, so it was not surprising Hoffman
opened the yellow pages and called a truck driving school to ask if they took women. What
was surprising was the lack of support from her husband. "He said I could never do
it," she says. Friends and neighbors helped Hoffman get a job to pay for the
eight week course, and babysat for her. She graduated and had her third child at the same
time. "When I graduated I wasn't going to work," she says,
"But being a woman, I got all sorts of media attention — and all sorts of job
offers." Newspapers and women's groups regarded her as a pioneer. "I couldn't say 'No, I'm scared,"' she says. "But I
was scared." Hoffman's first job was good training for her later career in more
ways than one. The Michigan native hauled bulk cement at night in an 11-axle
"Michigan Train," grossing 161,000 pounds. She made $14.96 an hour starting pay,
thanks to the Teamsters union. But her boss didn't really want a woman driver, she says,
and assigned her equipment that broke down constantly. She watched the mechanic closely,
and learned a lot about taking care of a truck. "That guy actually did me a
favor," she says. "If it weren't for that, I wouldn't have the ability I do
today to find short." In 1977 Hoffman bought her first truck, and started hauling double
containers from Detroit to New Jersey. A year and a half later, she bought a cabover. Then
in 1982, she stopped in at Poconos Peterbilt to buy some chrome. She ended up buying a new
truck: a Peterbilt 359, custom-built to be a pace truck for the Poconos Peterbilt Bobtail
500 race. "All I could do was picture myself driving down the road in
that nice, pretty truck," she says. "When I divorced my husband (1980), I told
him, I’m going to have the most beautiful truck on the road.'" The Pete came with one of the earliest Cummins 400 big-cam 3
engines, an Eaton 13-speed transmission, 3.70 rears, and air ride — unusual 10 years
ago, but a great advantage in specialized hauling. She later added a Cuinmins C Brake
retarder, a stereo system and a cellular phone. The black, red and blue lmron paint job is
one of a kind, and Hoffman has worked hard to keep it looking new. In 1984 she added a $50,000 sleeper. A queen-size bed is tucked
away on top of the cab, while the normal sleeper space boasts a toilet, shower, sink,
microwave oven, refrigerator, and wooden cabinets and drawers for storage galore. A
separate generator supplies power to avoid unnecessary idling. "I was raising my kids
in the truck," she says. She didn't want her boy or two girls taking showers at truck
stops, and she didn't have time to stop often for restroom breaks. Hoffman hired full-time live-in babysitter to watch her children
while she was on the road. This way, she could let her children take turns going out on
the road with her for a month at a time. They were allowed to miss school as long as they
took their homework. An extra benefit for Hoffman was her own education. She learned while
helping them study. 'We had fun," says 22-year-old Vicky, who today is a trucker with
a young daughter of her own. She has been driving a belly dump for about a year now and
hopes to eventually work for her rnother. "They said they'd never drive a truck," Hoffman says of
her children. "But they started growing up and thought, 'how can I make good
money?” Hoffman's 25-year-old son, Raymond, is also a trucker and lives in St. Louis.
Her youngest daughter 19-year-old Christine, is planning to go to truck driving school. Vicky was a young teen when she went along on her mother's first
overdimensional haul. Hoffman's truck was one of a team of four hauling modular parts of a
medical clinic, 15-feet, 1-inch high, from Oregon to West Virginia. The other team members
(all men) liked to party late into the night and get a late start the next morning, she
says. That didn't exactly match up with her hard-working schedule, so she went on alone. Before long, Hoffman stopped at an overpass that was marked
14-feet, 6 inches. She was on the side of the road letting air out of her air-ride bags
and tires to help get the needed clearance when the other team members caught up.
Open-mouthed, she watched the others come flying by — and clear the overpass. What
she didn't know was the road underneath had been dug out for more clearance, but the
clearance warning was never changed. "I thought they were going to smash into
it,” she says. Hoffman had the last laugh though. Some time later, she came
across an overpass that was too low. Because she had been studying the fine print on her
permitss, nervous about her first job, she remembered instructions saying to "ramp
it” at this exit number. So she did just that, going up and over the intersection.
The other three trucks, she found out later, all smashed into the overpass. On that first load, she ran into another problem. She was snowed in on Cabbage Mountain, which had been shut down to wide
loads by a blizzard. "When they did open it, they shouldn't have," she says.
"My first time downhill on mountain, and it was solid ice, gusts of wind, and no
guardrail. I had this huge load, and I didn't dare touch my brakes. That was when I
realized how professional you have to be to set the load safelv where it has to be —
and how big these loads really are." But hauling those big loads was exactly what Hofirnan wanted to
do. "Seeing those big loads go down the road always fascinated me, so I'd get on the
CB and holler (at the drivers of the loads)," she savs "when I found out how
much monev thev got for doing this, I was really interested." In 1988, Huffman sold everything she owned and moved to Florida.
She was tired of cold weather, It was after she moved to the sunny South that she really
got involved in specialized "I love my job," she says. "It's a challenge; it's
always different." Today, Hoffman hauls to 48 states as an argent for Cheetah
Transportation of Mooresville, N.C. When a company calls with a load, she gets the
dimensions and then plans a tentative route. She finds out how much it's going to cost for
permits, etc., then makes a bid. Once she gets the load assignment,
a permit company arranges permits and faxes them to her
office (a renovated four car garage.) But just because you have permits for a state doesn't mean you're
free and clear, Hoffman says. "It's a driver's responsibility. You travel at your own
risk. If you
get on
a road
not big enough, it's your problem, even if the state told you to go that way." Her most difficult load,
she says, was a 100-foot-long smokestack. "Making my turns, the tractor would be way
down the street by the time the trailer even started making the turn," she says. Then
there's the physical effort involved. "It's rough work," she says, throwing
chains and binders, rnaking sure the load is secured properly.
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