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speaks about his drivers. In 2001, he While his dad worked the pipeline truck, he went to Pencil Bluff, by Mt.
bragged about his drivers’ safety records, and his family followed its progress Ida, in 1966. “Pulpwood was five feet
saying, “It’s the employees who have across the Southwest, Wayne and his wide and top heavy. I remember there
kept it all together, and that’s the bot- four brothers began picking fruit and was a hill that you had to shift as fast
tom line.” vegetables. In 1960, he got his first as you could, and it was raining the
Today, when Wayne talks about chance to drive the truck to haul the night I had my first load.”
drivers, his voice cracks and his tone produce through the camps.
is hushed, almost reverent. Vickie “The first time I drove a truck I was WHATEVER IT TAKES
Berkemeyer, whom he has called his 14 to make the harvest. I finally got to One reason, Wayne and the drivers
“right hand” in the office for 34 years, be on the orchards and canning. Each have so much mutual respect is that he
explains, “To his drivers,” she pauses, season, the supervisor always asked, considers no job beneath him.
“well, he’s King Wayne. He’s good to What do you want to do this year? Until recently, Wayne would still
‘em. If you don’t have drivers, you don’t “I said, ‘I’d like to drive a truck.’” drive when he needed to. He would
have a business.” The drivers will come After a quick spin around the park- work all day in the office, and then he
in, she says, to check on Wayne or talk ing lot to prove he could do it, he was and Peggy, his wife of almost 50 years
about their day, their work, their family. handed the keys of a ’47 International, now, would take roll-stock paper to
He respects the ones who climb in cabs and his career more or less began there. Tulsa before coming back the next day
and carry loads day after day. “No physical. No drug test. When and going back to work.
After all, he started out as a truck the peaches and prunes were all over. I But he won’t just get behind the
driver in a labor camp near Bakersfield, hauled potatoes in from the field to the wheel. He’s also willing to get his hands
Calif.—the kind of camp you might see cellar. Then I started driving a dump dirty in the maintenance shop. He used
as Steinbeck’s Joads family rolled over truck.” to work on all the trucks. When his
the hill in The Grapes of Wrath during When he was 17, Wayne was hired only mechanic was off on Mondays, the
the Dust Bowl or the kind that were in Arkansas to haul rocks and later company president would also become
torn down in the old Merle Haggard pulpwood. the company mechanic.
song. After moving rocks in a dump “We’ve just always kind of done

28 Issue 3 2016 | ARKANSAS TRUCKING REPORT