Eleven years ago, I was helping an old trucker named Leonard Grelck edit a book about his long career. He began in 1935 by driving tankers in his native Montana's oil fields, and retired in 1978 as an over-the-road owner/operator. More than half that time he drove primitive trucks over narrow roads in sometimes brutal weather in the wide-open West of another era.

Leonard worked for many truck lines, but his favorite was Consolidated Freightways, which he signed on with in Oakland, Calif., in 1943. Even though good drivers were hard to find during World War II, C-F had a thorough hiring process because it wanted only the finest. Getting on was a plum.

"C-F was strictly union, and the best company I ever worked for," he wrote in his manuscript. "Had they not been union, they still would have been the best because of the people and company policies. They thought highly of their line drivers and treated them accordingly.

"At this time, most of their key men, like dock foremen, dispatchers, rate clerks, terminal managers and even superintendents, came up through the ranks, many of them starting out pushing a handtruck on a dock floor. This made it easy for us drivers to relate to them.

"C-F's seniority system and bidding system for drivers was by far the best of any trucking company around. Seniority ruled all over the system, and it gave the driver the opportunity to bid anywhere over the system with great working conditions."

When C-F turned 50 in 1989, its management remembered Leonard and his buddies. "I received from them a very nice letter and chain medallion, thanking all of us old drivers for helping making it possible for them to be celebrating their 50th anniversary in the transportation business. It was signed by Ron Burbank, the president at that time. I have it proudly displayed in my ‘fireplace room.'"

Leonard showed off that letter and medallion when my wife and I visited him in Myrtle Creek, Ore., in mid-1991. I was editing his many pages of trucking tales, and felt honored to meet him. He was a healthy, energetic 78. But a few months later, he died in his sleep. I still have the manuscript, and I'll get back to it someday.

Leonard would be sad to hear his favorite company is also gone. As you know, C-F died on Labor Day weekend. Competitors say its woes came not from its costly Teamster employees nor even the savage deregulated climate, but from hauling too much cheap freight.

C-F was a pioneer in operations and an innovator in equipment. Who knows how many tons of freight its people moved? Who'd have guessed its prewar project of building lightweight trucks would become Freightliner? As Leonard would say, C-F was once a great outfit.

My run with Road King has been great, too, even if it lasted just under nine years. By the time you read this, I'll have signed on with another outfit that also publishes trucking magazines and made me an offer I couldn't turn down. I can't say enough good things about my Road King boss, Bill Hudgins, and his colleagues at Hammock Publishing, which took RK from a little "digest" magazine to a full-size, award-winning journal for and about truckers. Bill's promised to keep an eye on what I do and that we'll cross paths again. As for me, I'll see you on the road.