Everything about Jerry Clark, a native North Carolinian who drives for Estes Express Lines, is oversized, from his big personality to the mammoth safe miles total he has racked up during his career.
Clark first got behind the wheel in 1992 for Schneider and promptly piled up a million miles in a scant seven years’ time, then covered his second million in about eight years. The second batch took longer, he said, because his career briefly detoured into being a trainer.
After taking some time off to work other jobs, he’s stacked up miles by the truckload in the eight or so years since he’s been with Estes. He put his career odometer at somewhere around four million accident-free miles and is still going strong.
“I’ve been to every state at least 25 times and Canada 12 times,” he said. “Me and my wife teamed and we went everywhere at Schneider. We were called an elite team because we would stay on the road for six weeks at a time and come home for three or four days and then go do it again. We had a goal, you know, of paying off all of our bills and being debt-free.”
His total mileage isn’t too shabby for a guy who started out looking to work under the hood rather than behind the wheel after he separated from the U.S. military where he served a tour during Operation Desert Storm.
“In the military I drove a wrecker, which is about the same size as a truck,” he said. “We pulled heavier vehicles and tanks and stuff, but I just figured since I had some education to be a mechanic, that’s what I wanted to do.
“I got out of the Army in 1992 and I went to Schneider National thinking I was going to be a mechanic. They were going to start me out at like $12 an hour and I’m like, ‘No, I don’t think so.’ The man said, ‘If you really wanna make money, be a driver.’ So that’s where I started.”
The rapid pace that led Clark to his first two million miles is easy to understand, given how completely he threw himself into the job taking whatever the company threw at him, but that doesn’t mean the ride hasn’t been without quirks. When team driving with his wife, Dianna, herself a member of the million-mile club, Clark took his turn at night and therefore much of the country he’s covered he’s never even seen in the dark.
“I love driving at night. It’s just, you know, you get in your little zone and put in an audio book and the miles click away,” he said. “The traffic is lower but the animals are worse, though. That is really the worst part of driving at night, the animals, especially through the rural areas. I killed three deer at one whop once because they just would not move. I hit one just two weeks ago ― he darted left, I went right and then he turned around and came back at me.”
Asked what has allowed him to cover that much ground safely, Clark credits his military training and his employer’s focus on safety topics.
“The Army calls it space-cushion-drive; just drive with a big bubble around you,” he said. “Even though you try to do that, with some of these cars out here it’s like a big video game. At Estes they stress safety here all the time, I mean, they always have something going on with safety, every quarter.”
Unlike the go-anywhere attitude of his early years Clark today sticks to a single route. He started with a run between North Carolina and Charleston, West Virginia and recently got bumped to a route from North Carolina to Indianapolis. Despite his wife stepping into retirement recently, Clark said he has no plans on parking his rig for good, given how well he’s treated by his employer.
“She says, ‘Well, you can retire, you know, when you’re 59.’ And I was like, this company is so easy to work for,’” he said. “I’m home every other day now. At Estes, they get you home every holiday; I mean, they won’t even let you drive because they don’t want anybody to get hurt for all the DUI drivers and stuff out there.
“I mean, they keep you pretty busy but after years of driving six weeks at a time, this is feels like a vacation. It’s a good company, I love it here.”
Dwain Hebda is a freelance journalist, author, editor and storyteller in Little Rock, Arkansas. In addition to The Trucker, his work appears in more than 35 publications across multiple states each year. Hebda’s writing has been awarded by the Society of Professional Journalists and a Finalist in Best Of Arkansas rankings by AY Magazine. He is president of Ya!Mule Wordsmiths, which provides editorial services to publications and companies.
