TKS S1 E6: "A Killer on the Road".

[Salsa]

If the US has money for a wall then we certainly have enough manpower and money to set up guard stations at the entrance of every truck stop to collect and scan ID of everyone coming and scanning once they leave. This set up would also prevent these girls from coming in for this sad work.

 

[katydid23]

This whole truck driver thing makes me very sad and angry.

When I was in college, many decades ago, I did a lot of road trips by myself. My bf lived in another state and I often drove 7 hours to visit him, in remote roads in the middle of the night. My parents were very frightened and hated it when I took those trips.

But the one main piece of advice they gave me was to SEEK OUT BIG RIG DRIVERS if I needed emergency help. They told me to go to the truck stops for gas and food, and not the rest stops. AND I TOOK THEIR ADVICE. I felt very safe. There were no prostitutes there at all. I was often the only female besides the waitresses. But I was treated with total respect and I felt very safe and protected. This was in about 1970 through 74. Truck drivers were polite, well dressed and helpful. Maybe not all of them, but it was certainly NOTHING like the cesspool we are hearing about now. :sigh:

 

[honesty]

If the US has money for a wall then we certainly have enough manpower and money to set up guard stations at the entrance of every truck stop to collect and scan ID of everyone coming and scanning once they leave. This set up would also prevent these girls from coming in for this sad work.

Those truck stops are private property belonging to the corporations who own them. Posting a guard shack to gather the things you speak of would not be the responsibility of the government. It would also make things move much slower getting in and out of the facility.
To be frank, those truck stops are so small now that a lot of drivers are having to find other places to stop for the night to sleep, a lot are sleeping at shipping and receiving facilities with no access to a bathroom or any other kind of facility one may need. Some shippers and receivers will not allow them on the property ahead of time and they are forced to park on a street in hopes they are not ran off by law enforcement or security.

This whole truck driver thing makes me very sad and angry.

When I was in college, many decades ago, I did a lot of road trips by myself. My bf lived in another state and I often drove 7 hours to visit him, in remote roads in the middle of the night. My parents were very frightened and hated it when I took those trips.

But the one main piece of advice they gave me was to SEEK OUT BIG RIG DRIVERS if I needed emergency help. They told me to go to the truck stops for gas and food, and not the rest stops. AND I TOOK THEIR ADVICE. I felt very safe. There were no prostitutes there at all. I was often the only female besides the waitresses. But I was treated with total respect and I felt very safe and protected. This was in about 1970 through 74. Truck drivers were polite, well dressed and helpful. Maybe not all of them, but it was certainly NOTHING like the cesspool we are hearing about now. :sigh:

Back then, truckstops were actually quite nice and pretty cool. You didn't have these commercially owned places like Pilot, Loves, Flying J, and Petro. They were the real deal that had not just fuel pumps for trucks and cars, a store with snacks and goodies but they also had sit down counter service and table service meals and you had the drivers counter and round tables where stories were told and coffee was a plenty. And most were family owned operations, not corporation ran except for a few like unicoal 76, but even those were really nice.

Fast forward to today's truck stops and you have corporation run, cookie cutter places. When you walk into a loves or a pilot or whatever brand it may be they are all the same, much like walking into a Walmart supercenter, they all have pretty much the same stuff, and are set up the same way. There are no real meals, it's fast food like McDonalds, Subway, etc or the option of grab and go from a bank of soda fountains and hot roller bars with hot dogs and eggs rolls. There is no personal touch to tem at all. Gone are the days when you can get a nice hot meal, steak and eggs for breakfast and chicken fried steak and mashed potato with gravy for dinner.

Parking is a premium. These places come in and buy only a few acres at a time and have limited parking spaces for overnight parking. Roll in after dark and chances are you are not going to get a place to park your rig so you can go in for a hot shower, a meal and gone are the days of drivers lounges where drivers used to watch TV together and talk on banks of phones to their loved ones back home. The old style of stops are phasing out and are far and few between now and really it's sad as they were really cool places back in the day.

Back years ago truckers were called the Knights of the highway and yes they would help people out and we're safe. These guys would change your tire for you, now you'll be lucky if they even offer to find you road service to come to you and charge you to change it.

Time changes everything. As a older person I look at the younger generation and shake my head at some things, not just trucking related but in general. The reason for that is that times changes and each generation grows up with different things than the generation before them. This molds people differently in the ways they do things and the way they think. The generations before mine, they looked at us the way I now look at the generations that came after myself.

Whatever a person has in mind they want to do, in this case, to be a serial killer, they are going to set themselves up and position themselves to be able to do just that. Some chose trucking as a way to do that, but not all truckers are serial killers and not all serial killers drive a truck.

Back in the day, when really it was just men driving with the occasional woman here and there if any, the guys took great pride in themselves and the job they did. My grandfather, father and other truck driving men always looked their best, my husband as well followed the unwritten dress code. The men wore nice high quality button up shirts that either were sent to the cleaners or we pressed and starched at home, blue jeans with a crease pressed down the leg, and really nice shined boots. Some even wore cowboy or straw hats a lot. But my point is they took pride in their appearance. Now you see many but not all drivers in mismatched clothes with rips tears and stains and flip flops. They are not keeping their facial hair shaved off or neat and trim and they are not keeping their hair cut and combed. It is very sad to see.




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[Salsa]

Hi, I am not familiar with truck stops and admit to never being at one. What was shown on the documentary were very large truck stops with what looked like close to 30-40 vehicles or more. Something needs to be done regarding the trucking industry and the mass murdering. It has the statistics of war fatalities. I am one to believe if you have a problem then someone of great authority needs to step in and stop it, even if it is making a nationwide mandate that truck drivers check in to designated area for stops and sleepovers or place globe cameras over the area to monitor prostitutes entering and exiting leaving with johns.

 

[katydid23]

Those truck stops are private property belonging to the corporations who own them. Posting a guard shack to gather the things you speak of would not be the responsibility of the government. It would also make things move much slower getting in and out of the facility.
To be frank, those truck stops are so small now that a lot of drivers are having to find other places to stop for the night to sleep, a lot are sleeping at shipping and receiving facilities with no access to a bathroom or any other kind of facility one may need. Some shippers and receivers will not allow them on the property ahead of time and they are forced to park on a street in hopes they are not ran off by law enforcement or security.



Back then, truckstops were actually quite nice and pretty cool. You didn't have these commercially owned places like Pilot, Loves, Flying J, and Petro. They were the real deal that had not just fuel pumps for trucks and cars, a store with snacks and goodies but they also had sit down counter service and table service meals and you had the drivers counter and round tables where stories were told and coffee was a plenty. And most were family owned operations, not corporation ran except for a few like unicoal 76, but even those were really nice.

Fast forward to today's truck stops and you have corporation run, cookie cutter places. When you walk into a loves or a pilot or whatever brand it may be they are all the same, much like walking into a Walmart supercenter, they all have pretty much the same stuff, and are set up the same way. There are no real meals, it's fast food like McDonalds, Subway, etc or the option of grab and go from a bank of soda fountains and hot roller bars with hot dogs and eggs rolls. There is no personal touch to tem at all. Gone are the days when you can get a nice hot meal, steak and eggs for breakfast and chicken fried steak and mashed potato with gravy for dinner.

Parking is a premium. These places come in and buy only a few acres at a time and have limited parking spaces for overnight parking. Roll in after dark and chances are you are not going to get a place to park your rig so you can go in for a hot shower, a meal and gone are the days of drivers lounges where drivers used to watch TV together and talk on banks of phones to their loved ones back home. The old style of stops are phasing out and are far and few between now and really it's sad as they were really cool places back in the day.

Back years ago truckers were called the Knights of the highway and yes they would help people out and we're safe. These guys would change your tire for you, now you'll be lucky if they even offer to find you road service to come to you and charge you to change it.

Time changes everything. As a older person I look at the younger generation and shake my head at some things, not just trucking related but in general. The reason for that is that times changes and each generation grows up with different things than the generation before them. This molds people differently in the ways they do things and the way they think. The generations before mine, they looked at us the way I now look at the generations that came after myself.

Whatever a person has in mind they want to do, in this case, to be a serial killer, they are going to set themselves up and position themselves to be able to do just that. Some chose trucking as a way to do that, but not all truckers are serial killers and not all serial killers drive a truck.

Back in the day, when really it was just men driving with the occasional woman here and there if any, the guys took great pride in themselves and the job they did. My grandfather, father and other truck driving men always looked their best, my husband as well followed the unwritten dress code. The men wore nice high quality button up shirts that either were sent to the cleaners or we pressed and starched at home, blue jeans with a crease pressed down the leg, and really nice shined boots. Some even wore cowboy or straw hats a lot. But my point is they took pride in their appearance. Now you see many but not all drivers in mismatched clothes with rips tears and stains and flip flops. They are not keeping their facial hair shaved off or neat and trim and they are not keeping their hair cut and combed. It is very sad to see.




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Yes, yes yes...:sigh: That is just like I remembered it. I used to stop in the Truckee/Reno area at a Mom and Pop type Truck stop. It had a red flashing neon cup of coffee as the road sign...lol There was a nice diner with sweet older waitresses. A nice big clean bathroom and good refillable coffee with good hot food, made to order. There was a big well lit parking lot. I used to pull up right by the front door of the diner and sleep in my VW bug for a couple of hours before getting back on the road. I felt totally safe. No one ever bothered me at all.

I feel like society has devolved in some ways. My DIL is a teacher and tells me horror stories about students these days. Total and utter lack of respect and attention spans are seconds long. Google makes some kids think they don't need to 'learn' anything because all the 'answers' are right there at their fingertips. Teachers really have an uphill battle these days.

 

[honesty]

Hi, I am not familiar with truck stops and admit to never being at one. What was shown on the documentary were very large truck stops with what looked like close to 30-40 vehicles or more. Something needs to be done regarding the trucking industry and the mass murdering. It has the statistics of war fatalities. I am one to believe if you have a problem then someone of great authority needs to step in and stop it, even if it is making a nationwide mandate that truck drivers check in to designated area for stops and sleepovers or place globe cameras over the area to monitor prostitutes entering and exiting leaving with johns.

30 to 40 trucks would be a small truck stop. Large truckstops can have parking for 100 or more tractors.

I'm going to agree to disagree with you on mandated check in for a truck driver to sleep.

What if you were mandated to check in so the authorities knew when you went home and when you left? It's the same thing.

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[Salsa]

It does not have to be authorities running the mandate, it could be a security company who logs people in and out of these large 30-100 or so capacity truck stops. I would not care if I needed to swipe in and out because I would have nothing to hide. I look at it like a traveling motel. Motels now require IDs and license plates, have cameras watching the coming and goings. Some seedy ones do not because they are allowing criminal activity. If there are 1000s of estimated murders occurring in and around these destinations, this could curb it. If these women have to check in and out then they may not come in and if they do and go missing then all truckers are accounted for ro narrow down suspects.

 

[honesty]

Not for one minute do I believe anyone is "allowing" criminal activity.
People who are involved in unsavory activity will find a way no matter what obstacles you out in their way.

Let me point out one hole in your idea.

Say I have a delivery I am making to say Colton California. It's pretty industrial out there. Say I want to get a prostitute when I get there. All I have to do is get on backpage. I can use a smart phone and contact girls and find one with her guard down and tell her to meet me at a address and I'll be in the such and such colored truck with ABC on the door.
I could do my deed right there on the street outside of wherever it is I chose to park. Then move on. I don't need a truckstop to do what it is I want to do.

As far as parking for the night somewhere. Do you know there is a parking shortage?
This is why you see drivers illegally parked on on and off ramps. Then there are the trucks you don't see. Go down into any industrial area in any city in any town. You will find truck drivers having to park in places that are not truck stops in order to get their sleep.

Back years ago there were no on board recorders. No GPS tracking, and cameras on every building corner and pole were not the normal like the world we love in now. These forms of technology are still fairly new. And YES all truckstops and facilities have cameras just as you are on camera everywhere you go as a private non-truckdriving citizen. There are still murders and kidnappings at locations that are not truckstops, but is it seen instantly? Those video recordings are what are used to build cases when law enforcement uses them as proof of a crime, but they didn't stop the crime.

There are steps being taken to curtail nefarious activities in the trucking industry but some are taking a long time to implement due to activists keeping those proposed rules tied up in the courts and mostly using the plight that such things will violate civil and constitutional rights. The biggest organization that is protecting truckers rights is called OOIDA.

Not all prostitute murders are done by truck drivers either by the way. What about the girls who are murdered at hotels and motels? Even though you are required to give ID to rent a room, not every person in that room has to shoe ID and it's not always a John who rents the rooms.

By the way, if truckstops were to implement a system like you say are you prepared to pay for the increase in the price of transportation? If truckstops have checkpoints it requires new constructions for the gates, costs for the computer systems needed and the cost of hourly manpower. Those costs are not something that will be obsorbed but will be passed on to consumers. Have you ever noticed when there are I creases in the cost for fuel that there are increases on prices for items you buy and use every day? Milk is $4 or more a gallon, bread $4 and more a loaf. And truck drivers are not only workers, they and their families are consumers as well so they pay as well. Since you state you've never been in a truckstop, did you know the same big Mac combo you pay $6 for cost $8 in a truckstop? Also, truck driver pay has not increased in many years. So as the cost of living goes up a trucking family has to adjust their budget while most of the world get a raise to adjust for cost of living.

This is a bit off topic, but you know, truck drivers have feelings too and not all of them are bad just as not every person is bad.
Last night, I went to say goodbye one final time to a truck driver I've known for a couple of decades. The funeral parlor was packed to capacity. The majority of those present were drivers who had driven alongside this man at some point in their lives. There was not a dry eye in the house. There were men who came wearing jackets, shirts and or hats with the company logo on it of the company they drove with him on it even though some of those men no longer worked at that company. They stood around telling stories of times spent with this man, with giggles remembering the good times between the tears falling down their faces. Never once in the 4 hours we were all together did anyone feel uncomfortable being around anyone else, even the non truck driving citizens that came, and there were many who were not truck drivers. Before this driver fell sick with cancer he volunteered in his community, he was a member of a brotherhood I will not name who is very involved in being charitable, he was a husband, a father and a gradndfather. Most of all he was human just like you, just like me.

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[Salsa]

Truck drivers have feeling too & not all of them are bad? At no point have I crossed those T's or dotted those I's. My post was attempting to come up with a plan that would curb the numbers that were thrown out on the high number of murders committed by truck drivers every year. My post in no way was pointing that all truck drivers are bad. To project that onto me is unjust and unfair. The lady on the Missing Missing project estimated extremely high numbers of dead trucker prostitutes on the highways and more missing. Not all airplane passengers are terrorists, less than 0.5% but 100% of people are monitored by security with strict detail. They are allowing it as proven on show by not working together and allowing egos to prevent multi state task forces to fix the problem.

 

[Tricia]

Please remember not to attack fellow posters.

Thank you,
Tricia

 

[honesty]

http://turnkeywebs.net/Surveillance/security-cameras-in-truck-stops-around-the-united-states/

The reason for so many security cameras in the areas where the trucks actually park to allow the drivers to sleep, is in all honesty a good one. This is the area of high solicitation believe it or not, and most truck stops do not allow solicitation on the truck stop premises. There is also the high rate of female solicitation to the truck drivers, and this being a growing offense, truck stop owners are trying to take extra measures in order to intervene and have the actual prevention of this occurring on the premises.

(There is much more useful information within the full article at the link above)

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[MonsterGirlMom]

My father has been a long haul trucker since the mid 70's. When I saw this episode it gave me chills. He kept an apartment in Dallas, we live on the East Coast, with several other truckers and I was told women, drugs and alcohol. I know he was definitely into women, drugs and alcohol. Anyway, the people he would bring to our house were beyond sketchy. One man came over when my sister and I were teenagers and had his penis hanging out of his short shorts. When my mom fussed at my dad after he left he only laughed and said "You can't blame a guy for trolling". When I was small one his friend's nickname for me was 'mutton'. He definitely had a friend named Roadrunner. But of course they all use handles and I'm sure there are many with that name. However when I split from an abusive husband my dad said he still knew people in Texas and could have him killed. Oddly that's the most 'fatherly' thing he has ever done for me. We are still in touch and see each other. This isn't some kind of angry daughter witch hunt. I just know when I saw the episode I thought of all the rough ones and speed freaks I've seen over the years, cryptic statements from my dad and whatever. While I don't really believe my father would have been one, who would?, I really believe he knows at least one.

 

[honesty]

Robert Ben Rhodes was a truck driver serial killer who had an apartment in Texas. His crimes were very disturbing to say the least. We have a thread on him here.

It sounds like your dad ran with a rather unsavory crowd. I wonder if he would casually offer up any information if you asked him some questions?

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[MonsterGirlMom]

I plan to try the next time I see him. He's very secretive and evasive, so I don't expect a lot (a wry laugh, a look away is usual when he doesn't want to talk) but I will definitely try.

 

[Salsa]

My father has been a long haul trucker since the mid 70's. When I saw this episode it gave me chills. He kept an apartment in Dallas, we live on the East Coast, with several other truckers and I was told women, drugs and alcohol. I know he was definitely into women, drugs and alcohol. Anyway, the people he would bring to our house were beyond sketchy. One man came over when my sister and I were teenagers and had his penis hanging out of his short shorts. When my mom fussed at my dad after he left he only laughed and said "You can't blame a guy for trolling". When I was small one his friend's nickname for me was 'mutton'. He definitely had a friend named Roadrunner. But of course they all use handles and I'm sure there are many with that name. However when I split from an abusive husband my dad said he still knew people in Texas and could have him killed. Oddly that's the most 'fatherly' thing he has ever done for me. We are still in touch and see each other. This isn't some kind of angry daughter witch hunt. I just know when I saw the episode I thought of all the rough ones and speed freaks I've seen over the years, cryptic statements from my dad and whatever. While I don't really believe my father would have been one, who would?, I really believe he knows at least one.

Hi I am sorry you had to go through that. Your father should have been your biggest protector and it does not sound like you were raised with an ideal for what is a great father and in turn a great husband. I have had some unsavory instances in my own childhood and am greatly against abuses toward women, children, and of course men too. You might be able to gain some clues if you feel comfortable questioning him.

 

[honesty]

I plan to try the next time I see him. He's very secretive and evasive, so I don't expect a lot (a wry laugh, a look away is usual when he doesn't want to talk) but I will definitely try.

I totally get his secretive nature and being evasive. When you spend long periods of time alone you can develop those kind of tendencies if you did not already have them.

May I ask, when was it he had an apartment with other drivers in Texas? Back in the 60's and 70's that was something some drivers did for several reasons. Sometimes it was to be able to have licence from another state, and a lot of times women were involved. Some drivers even had 2nd and 3rd families. It was much easier for them to get away with then now for sure as we love in such a digital age.

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[MonsterGirlMom]

He had his apartment about mid to late 70's to late 80's. He never had another family, just women. One longer affair that resulted in pregnancy. My mother actually wanted to get the baby and raise it as her own. Years later I asked where that kid was when he was drunk and when he finally answered he only said 'she got rid of it'. Which was wierd for him to be off about that when he had my mom abort a third child. But, who knows with him. I'm definitely fine asking him, I just don't expect much.

 

[MonsterGirlMom]

Oh, and thank you, Salsa. I'm in a healthy relationship now, thank God.

 

[honesty]

I plan to try the next time I see him. He's very secretive and evasive, so I don't expect a lot (a wry laugh, a look away is usual when he doesn't want to talk) but I will definitely try.

Maybe you could engage him in a way that makes him feel more comfortable by saying something along the lines that you seen this show and it alluded to these truck drivers who were serial killers. And ask him of he ever felt unsafe on the road around some of those guys and does he think there are guys who do stuff like that.

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[MonsterGirlMom]

That's a good idea, he might be more open that way. I'll let you know either way. Maybe I'll call him while he's on the road tomorrow.