Early on in my career as a hay hauler, I found myself hauling distances that made it impossible to sleep in my own bed at home every night. We were running from southwest Idaho to the Portland, Oregon area. To make matters worse, we often found a back-haul of freight that took us in the general direction of home, if you can count Salt Lake City, Utah or Billings, Montana “in the general direction” of southwest Idaho.

Old bridges are part of trucking hay or cattle in the backcountry. Leo told of hauling cattle out of a backcountry ranch and questioning the bridge. The usual response from the ranchers was that the bridge had been holding up big loads for all their lives. They had no idea when or why the bridge in question had been posted for a ten-ton load limit.

I mixed business with pleasure one day way back when, and it turned into a rather long day.