Sarah Brown
A song vocalized by Norma Jean in 1968 begins “A little boy is what my daddy wanted, a little girl just didn’t fit his plans to help him on the road when he was on it, cause Daddy was a truck drivin’ man.”
The song continues: “I’m a truck drivin’ woman, my daddy taught me everything he knew. I’m a truck drivin’ woman and this woman’s gonna fill her daddy’s shoes.”
Anyone who knows Bonnie Jeanne “BJ” Neal, of Sweet Home, would agree this song could have been written about her.
“My daddy was a log truck driver right here in Sweet Home on these mountains,” Neal said. “I remember the old, old, old trucks.”
Neal, 76, began riding with her father, Donald Neal, when she was 10 years old, and declared she won’t stop truckin’ until her license is denied. Today, she drives for T2, hauling wood chips, shavings, hog fuel and sawdust up to Foster.
Hauling is in her blood. Her dad was a trucker and her great-grandfather, Otus Festus, who raised him, used oxen and a wagon to haul goods. And, she’s told, her grandmother Linnie Neal was good with mecahnical things.
Born in 1942, Bonnie remembers attending the one-room Beulah Land schoolhouse in the Pleasant Valley area. She graduated from Sweet Home High School in 1960.
A self-confessed tomboy, she loved machines, tools and mechanical things when she was growing up, which she learned about from her daddy, Neal said. He told her she was a natural driver because she understood what the equipment should and shouldn’t do.
The spry child, who later would be given the handle “Cricket” due to her ability to leap in and out of her cab, always knew she wanted to be a truck driver, and neither social expectations nor reclusive husbands would deter her.
“When I told (Daddy) I wanted to drive a truck, he says, ‘You’re gonna have to work a lot harder.’ He didn’t go into it a lot, but I understood that I was a bit strange that I liked things like that.”
Neal was unable to continue driving with him when she reached 17 years old, but she soon married a boy from Junction City who wanted to be a truck driver, so she figured she would get to pursue her truck drivin’ dreams with him.
“Driving to me is invigorating,” she said. “If I’m wore out and tired, I love to drive.”
In the early to mid-1900s, it was nearly unheard of for women to drive trucks unless they were permitted to do so by their father or husband, she explained.
After raising her children, Neal got her first “chauffer’s license” in 1974 and began trucking with her husband between Vancouver, B.C. and southern California, but after she split from her husband, she found herself in need of a job.
“The thing that I knew was to drive a truck and make money, because girl jobs didn’t pay anything. Well, I couldn’t find a job on my own because it was only considered a woman was a safe driver if she was a co-driver.”
So Neal spent a year splitting the pay with other female co-drivers at a company out of Portland, then she moved to Texas where she could easily find driving jobs that didn’t require her to co-drive, “because they didn’t have a problem hiring women down there,” she said.
She drove long haul from Texas for several years, hitting all 48 states and living out of her truck.
“Daddy took us camping a lot, so to me driving long haul was like camping, only you’re paid for it and I got to see lots of things,” she said. “I like to be able to see everything, and it’s never the same. Even the same highways were never the same.”
Neal loved Tennessee because it reminded her of Ore-gon, and was fascinated by the mountains of West Virginia. She enjoyed seeing the Suwannee River, walking along the east coast in Maine, and witnessing the wonder of Niagara Falls, she said.
She also visited covered bridges whenever she could.
“I’m a covered bridge enthusiast because I was raised around covered bridges. I got to go up to Vermont once and I was laid up for the weekend, and you could rent a bicycle and they had a covered bridge, so I did that.”
Looking back over nearly 40 years of trucking, Neal suspects she’s logged about 2 to 3 million miles. In all that time, she’s never been attacked or seen anything violent, which surprises her, she said.
The closest trouble she encountered was two burglaries – once in Chicago when a man stole $50 out of her hand, and another time in Mississippi when a woman stole her purse out of the cab while Neal was sleeping inside. The thief left Neal’s truck keys on the seat, and later would find only a handful of Bible tracts in the purse.
Finding female-appropriate accommodations was a challenge during most of her career.
There were no facilities for women at truck stops, she said. Trucker laundromats and warm showers were located in men’s bathrooms, so she’d wash herself from a cold sink or rent a motel room for a couple of hours.
“It’s not nice to say it, but it’s true: It was assumed that a woman truck driver by herself was either a prostitute and a drug runner, or a lesbian and a drug runner.”
But Neal met many truckers who treated her very respectfully, she noted.
She picked up hitchikers only once when she spotted a stranded group of young girls, but otherwise knew that most hitchhikers were likely unsafe. She also had to be careful where she parked if she wanted to avoid “lot lizards” – truck stop prostitutes.
Driving long haul may have been fun, especially since Neal avoided a lot of the trouble that’s assumed to come with the position, but she missed her family.
“I got tired of that,” she said. “Always alone, always missing all the holidays, all the family stuff. My kids had kids and I didn’t even know them.”
To stay near family, she tried operating her own rock hauling business, and later went on to tanker hauling until her doctor diagnosed her with osteoarthritis and osteoporosis. He put her on medication and told her she had to quit trucking. He expected she would be crippled for the rest of her life.
Without medical approval, her CDL was yanked. Neal stayed active with various jobs, but behind the scenes, her body was healing until she realized she could get her license back.
Even beyond 70, Neal has the vitality of a 30-year-old. She cited two reasons for why she will not retire.
One, there’s nothing physically wrong with her.
“Sometimes our bodies don’t give us a lot of trouble, so that means we can keep going,” she said.
And two, it not only supplements her Social Security, but she enjoys being able to help where help is needed.
“I could sit at home and do nothing, or play, and that would get boring,” Neal said. “I do get a little anxious when you can’t keep me busy.”
By the time she reacquired her commercial license, Neal was 73, and her next hurdle was to find someone who would hire her at that age.
It wasn’t much of a hurdle, though. Companies often have trouble finding drug-free drivers with a clean record, she said, so Neal was able to obtain a job driving regionally in five states around Texas.
Later, she returned to Ore-gon for a promised job that immediately went defunct when the company was sold. Her housing situation also went sour, so she found herself scrambling for work and shelter in her own hometown.
That was only a couple years ago, but Neal is grateful because T2 provided her the part-time work she wanted, and she found a home for her and her cat, Kitty.
In her spare time, Neal enjoys reading, sewing, Bible study and craft groups. She is on the beautification team that maintains Sweet Home’s median gardens, and attends City Council meetings from time to time. And, given her mechanical nature, she still enjoys fixing things for people.
She has one son, one daughter, one grandson, one granddaughter, and three great-granddaughters.
Neal can’t seem to stop talking about how great the owners at T2 have been to her. She described the dispatchers as respectful, and the owners as very kind people who would do anything for her.
“It’s been a blast. I just love it.”