Longtime tanker driver Frank Hutton, 84, holds two of the three trophies he won as a national driving champion. Other awards displayed behind him include a plaque for Driver of the Year bestowed by the West Virginia Motor Truck Assoc. The Marshall sweatshirt and autographed football reflect his years as a charter coach driver for the Marshall football team.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Talk about a road warrior. At 84, Frank Hutton looks back with pride on more than three decades as a crackerjack trucker, mostly as a driver for Mason-Dixon Tank Lines.
Three times, in 1969, 1975 and 1979, he won national driving championships. He won 11 of 15 state competitions, earned two second-place awards and one third-place finish.
He finished his career as a driver for a Huntington bus charter company, a job that involved transporting the Marshall University football team and its coach, Bob Pruett.
He doesn't yearn to be on the road again. It's lonely and dangerous out there. But the work was good to him. And obviously, he was good at it.
"I grew up at Walnut Gap where Dry Branch of Campbells Creek and Elk Two Mile head up. I attended a one-room school, Walnut Gap Grade School.
"My dad was a truck driver. He got killed when I was 6. He delivered groceries down at Institute. He was on his way back, and it was icy, and at that crossing between Dunbar and North Charleston, he slid in front of the train.
"He left my mother with six kids under 9 years old. She had two sets of twins. We didn't know what the Depression was, because we were so poor anyway. When Roosevelt took office, the first thing he did was pass the widows' pension, and we got $16 a month to live on.
"We lived on my grandfather's farm. My grandfather deeded my father an acre. We grew our own vegetables. For breakfast, I ate biscuits and gravy mostly. For dinner, I ate beans and taters.
"I went to DuPont High School. I walked two miles each way to catch the school bus.
"I entered the Navy in February of '45. During the war, if you started your second semester and entered the service, the Board of Education awarded you a diploma. So I did receive my diploma.
"I sailed from San Francisco. I was on the USS Biloxi, the third-largest ship in the Navy. I was anchored in Okinawa Bay when Truman dropped those bombs. We were within three weeks of invading Japan, so he may have saved my life.
"They transferred me to a minesweeper, a wooden ship a little over 100 feet. I went from a cruiser to that.
"I was the cook for 36 men and six officers. We left Japan the day after Christmas of '45 and didn't get back to the States until April of '46.
"There was no work here. I went to Cleveland. Republic Steel was hiring, so I went up there and worked six years.
"My first truck driving job was with the Department of Highways. I started there in 1952 and drove a 2 1/2-ton flatbed truck with a core drill. I core drilled several bridges around the state, including one at Winfield.
"In 1955, I went to the Boone County Coal Corp. in Sharples and drove a coal truck for five years.
"The mining industry didn't look too good, and Mason-Dixon Tank Lines had just started a company. I figured I could retire there. I drove for them 28 years. I went to 38 states and logged 3 million miles.
"That's not many miles today, but when I drove, you had to drive Route 60, and you didn't make 70 miles an hour. Nowadays, if you drive 28 to 30 years, you will log between 5 and 6 million miles.
"The first truck rodeo I was in was 1962 after I'd been driving two years. In '64, I drove, and I was just as calm as I am now. They had two courses at the Civic Center, one on the Elk River side, one on the Lee Street side.
"After I drove, I went to watch them driving on the Lee Street side. One of the drivers came up and said 'Frank, they want you on the other course.' I was tied for first.
"After competing with 20 drivers, all I had to do is beat him to be the state champion. I was so nervous and my foot shook so much that I killed the engine two or three times on the course. I couldn't hold the clutch. But I beat him by 10 points.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Talk about a road warrior. At 84, Frank Hutton looks back with pride on more than three decades as a crackerjack trucker, mostly as a driver for Mason-Dixon Tank Lines.Three times, in 1969, 1975 and 1979, he won national driving championships. He won 11 of 15 state competitions, earned two second-place awards and one third-place finish.
He finished his career as a driver for a Huntington bus charter company, a job that involved transporting the Marshall University football team and its coach, Bob Pruett.
He doesn't yearn to be on the road again. It's lonely and dangerous out there. But the work was good to him. And obviously, he was good at it.
"I grew up at Walnut Gap where Dry Branch of Campbells Creek and Elk Two Mile head up. I attended a one-room school, Walnut Gap Grade School.
"My dad was a truck driver. He got killed when I was 6. He delivered groceries down at Institute. He was on his way back, and it was icy, and at that crossing between Dunbar and North Charleston, he slid in front of the train.
"He left my mother with six kids under 9 years old. She had two sets of twins. We didn't know what the Depression was, because we were so poor anyway. When Roosevelt took office, the first thing he did was pass the widows' pension, and we got $16 a month to live on.
"We lived on my grandfather's farm. My grandfather deeded my father an acre. We grew our own vegetables. For breakfast, I ate biscuits and gravy mostly. For dinner, I ate beans and taters.
"I went to DuPont High School. I walked two miles each way to catch the school bus.
"I entered the Navy in February of '45. During the war, if you started your second semester and entered the service, the Board of Education awarded you a diploma. So I did receive my diploma.
"I sailed from San Francisco. I was on the USS Biloxi, the third-largest ship in the Navy. I was anchored in Okinawa Bay when Truman dropped those bombs. We were within three weeks of invading Japan, so he may have saved my life.
"They transferred me to a minesweeper, a wooden ship a little over 100 feet. I went from a cruiser to that.
"I was the cook for 36 men and six officers. We left Japan the day after Christmas of '45 and didn't get back to the States until April of '46.
"There was no work here. I went to Cleveland. Republic Steel was hiring, so I went up there and worked six years.
"My first truck driving job was with the Department of Highways. I started there in 1952 and drove a 2 1/2-ton flatbed truck with a core drill. I core drilled several bridges around the state, including one at Winfield.
"In 1955, I went to the Boone County Coal Corp. in Sharples and drove a coal truck for five years.
"The mining industry didn't look too good, and Mason-Dixon Tank Lines had just started a company. I figured I could retire there. I drove for them 28 years. I went to 38 states and logged 3 million miles.
"That's not many miles today, but when I drove, you had to drive Route 60, and you didn't make 70 miles an hour. Nowadays, if you drive 28 to 30 years, you will log between 5 and 6 million miles.
"The first truck rodeo I was in was 1962 after I'd been driving two years. In '64, I drove, and I was just as calm as I am now. They had two courses at the Civic Center, one on the Elk River side, one on the Lee Street side.
"After I drove, I went to watch them driving on the Lee Street side. One of the drivers came up and said 'Frank, they want you on the other course.' I was tied for first.
"After competing with 20 drivers, all I had to do is beat him to be the state champion. I was so nervous and my foot shook so much that I killed the engine two or three times on the course. I couldn't hold the clutch. But I beat him by 10 points.
"You had to be accident-free for a year to enter, plus if you won two years in a row, you had to sit out a year. That was to keep someone like me from dominating it. I won it 11 out of 15 tries, came in second twice and third once.
"I've got good eyes. I caddied when I was a kid, so I learned to judge distance, and that's what it's all about.
"In '69, I won the national championship in Denver, Colo. Mason-Dixon told me to order a Plymouth, Chevrolet or Ford like I wanted. I ordered a Plymouth station wagon.
"In '75, I won in Indianapolis and Mason-Dixon gave me $1,200 in cash. The Teamsters gave me a $500 savings bond and the American Trucker Association gave me $1,000.
"They set up a course with six problems on it, and they simulate driving conditions. You ran through a set of balls only 4 feet wider than your tires. You had to make a right turn, zigzag and do a stop line, like stopping short of a crosswalk.
"I liked being on the road, but I didn't like being away from my family. I'm not a good hunter because I like to see what's over the next mountain. So I did enjoy seeing the country. Every day was different.
"When I first started driving a truck, they called us 'Knights of the Highways.' The CB radio ruined the truck driver's image because some of those guys had such filthy mouths.
"I would not start driving the way you have to do now. The most I was ever gone was 11 days. Now they keep you on the road for 30 to 60 days.
"Mostly, I would be gone four or five days, sometimes down tonight and back tomorrow. I've been in all kinds of weather. I've been on icy bridges on the right side, and without turning the steering wheel, I'd come out on the left side. The ice and wind would carry me across.
"I tell everybody I train, when you get in trouble, the worst thing you've got on that vehicle is a set of brakes. You drive yourself out of trouble.
"I had a couple of bad incidents. I went to sleep one night and hit a pickup in the rear and turned my truck completely over, and it went over the hill. It didn't hurt me or my driver. The first 15 years, I drove a two-man operation. One of us would sleep while the other drove.
"The worst situation I was in, I loaded a load of nitric acid up at Buffalo, N.Y., for Allied Chemical. I got 40 miles west of Buffalo and looked back in my mirror, and there wasn't anything but a white cloud behind me.
"I shut down the New York throughway for 10 hours. They had to evacuate a motel, a restaurant and a small shopping center, and that cost Mason-Dixon a pile of money.
"Someone had taken a flange off the bottom of the tank, and they had to have a special gasket, but they put on a regular gasket. The nitric acid started to leak.
"The Interstate running through Charleston is a disaster waiting to happen. I drove chemicals through Charleston, and if I had wrecked, I would have blown up half the city. They should start at Cross Lanes and build a bypass and come out at Campbells Creek. Most big towns will not allow a load of dangerous material to go through the town.
"I retired in 1979 and started driving a charter bus for West Virginia Coach out of Huntington. I loved that job better than any job I ever had. I got to go to dinner theaters. I hauled a lot of kids to the Columbus and Cincinnati zoos. I drove the Marshall football team all the time Pruett was down there except the last year when the bus company went out of business. I drove for Capitol Coach for four years after that.
"I retired from driving a bus in 2006.
"I want to tell you about driving. With today's traffic, these cellphones need to be banned. You need to give that vehicle 100 percent of your attention. And you should never go one minute without looking in your mirrors.
"Another thing, a lot of drivers will get on the Interstate and immediately get in the left lane and stay there until they get off. I have met eight vehicles coming the wrong way in that left lane.
"I made a good living for my family. My wife passed away in '06. We were married 59 years. I couldn't have asked for a better life."
Reach Sandy Wells at san...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5173.
