{"id":10807,"date":"2016-08-22T08:01:51","date_gmt":"2016-08-22T15:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/truck-driver-recalls-50-year-career-on-dalton-highway\/"},"modified":"2016-08-22T08:01:51","modified_gmt":"2016-08-22T15:01:51","slug":"truck-driver-recalls-50-year-career-on-dalton-highway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/truck-driver-recalls-50-year-career-on-dalton-highway\/","title":{"rendered":"Truck driver recalls 50-year career on Dalton Highway"},"content":{"rendered":"

FAIRBANKS \u2014 <\/strong>Driving trucks on the Dalton Highway is an adventure, which is why Jack Binder has braved the famed highway since it opened in 1974.<\/p>\n

Binder, 68, is in the twilight of a 50-year truck driving career. He relishes the challenge of driving in Alaska\u2019s harsh conditions and takes great pride in what he\u2019s accomplished, reported the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a career that\u2019s paid me well and given me a lot of independence,\u201d Binder said.<\/p>\n

Originally from Bemidji, Minnesota, he came to Fairbanks at age 18 to drive a cement mixing truck during the summer construction season.<\/p>\n

\u201cI came up here in \u201968 and Alaska got in my blood,\u201d Binder said. \u201cIt\u2019s sort of hard to explain. It was a frontier atmosphere and it was an adventure coming up here.\u201d<\/p>\n

After falling in love with Alaska, Binder did a three-year stint in the Army as a Laotian translator. He was never deployed to Vietnam but said he was willing to go. During that time he missed Alaska. So he returned in 1972 to drive the cement mixer during the summer.<\/p>\n

Binder\u2019s father was a truck driver, too, and when the Alyeska Pipeline and the Dalton Highway opened in 1974, the father-son duo moved to Fairbanks to drive for the now-defunct Weaver Brothers truck company and deliver supplies to the camps in the North Slope oil fields.<\/p>\n

\u201cI fell in love with trucks at an early age. He and I were really close. I suppose I was following in his footsteps,\u201d Binder said of his father. \u201cI grew up with this idea that truck drivers were kings of the road and they\u2019d stop and help everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Dalton Highway was different then. It was only open to commercial vehicles, the road wasn\u2019t as straight and there was no bridge spanning the Yukon.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn summer, I\u2019d drive onto a hovercraft. It was attached to a cable and wench (that pulled the hovercraft across the Yukon),\u201d Binder said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wondered: If that cable broke how far downriver I\u2019d go until I hit a sandbar and got stuck.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was hauling bridge beam pipes for the construction of the E.L. Patton Yukon Bridge, Binder\u2019s first true heavy haul, that he really fell in love with trucking.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just got in the blood,\u201d he said. \u201cTrucking is something that is easy to get into and difficult to get away from.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, Binder has made the decision to transition toward retirement.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to stay in the game but not necessarily behind the wheel,\u201d Binder said. He has recently decided to take on the role of mentor and trainer at Alaska West Express, where he\u2019s worked the last 13 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a rewarding career and I guess I\u2019m ready to be off the road,\u201d Binder said. \u201cIt\u2019s nice to be home every night.\u201d<\/p>\n

Binder spent a recent Friday evening watching his grandson\u2019s football game, which is the type of thing he missed a lot of while driving. Now that he\u2019s off the road, he\u2019s looking forward to more quality time with his big family. After marrying his high school sweetheart, Binder had six children and adopted three more. He has 25 grandchildren.<\/p>\n

Binder didn\u2019t permanently move his family to Fairbanks until 1987. He tried driving trucks Outside, but he said driving trucks in the Lower 48 is boring.<\/p>\n

He could always expect the unexpected while driving on the Dalton Highway. When asked about his most bizarre truck driving experience, he told the story of a baby musk ox that would not come out from underneath a fellow driver\u2019s truck. The young musk ox had walked underneath when this other truck driver was taking photos of the musk ox heard.<\/p>\n

Binder said he used a broom to push the baby musk ox out of the way but it then crawled under his own truck. Binder said he was quite nervous at this point because of the onlooking musk ox heard. Binder said a third truck driver eventually arrived and picked the baby musk ox up in his arms and carried it out of the way himself.<\/p>\n

Dalton Highway has changed over the years with a decrease of wildlife sightings as traffic has increased.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight north of Atigun Pass, we\u2019d always see grizzlies. It wasn\u2019t a matter of if, but how many. They\u2019re not so prevalent anymore,\u201d Binder lamented.<\/p>\n

Instead, he\u2019s seen more college-aged tourists seeking adventure, who are often ill-prepared to drive on the icy, snowy, dangerous road.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never would have guessed it. Spring breakers going up the highway becoming stuck in ditches,\u201d Binder said. \u201cI\u2019ve pulled them out. Truckers have saved a lot of young people up there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Binder had one of his most memorable and most terrible experiences this past winter. He was hauling a trailer with a housing module when the trailer came unhitched and wound up in a ditch. He was stuck three full days in subzero temperatures before the trailer was safely pulled from the ditch and attached to his truck.<\/p>\n

Binder said it was the experience with the unhitched trailer that spurred him to transition toward retirement. He\u2019s looking forward to camping with family, hunting and feeding his self-diagnosed motorcycle addiction.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter all these years hunting, I still haven\u2019t had the chance to shoot a bear,\u201d Binder said. \u201cI\u2019m hoping I have that now with more time on the weekends.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FAIRBANKS \u2014 Driving trucks on the Dalton Highway is an adventure, which is why Jack Binder has braved the famed highway since it opened in 1974. Binder, 68, is in the twilight of a 50-year truck driving career. He relishes the challenge of driving in Alaska\u2019s harsh conditions and takes great pride in what he\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":10808,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-10807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10807"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=10807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}