I’ve driven a truck for twenty-six years, and I’ve heard a lot of trucker scary stories at a lot of truck stop counters. Most of them are made up. This one isn’t. Somebody on my CB radio counted down the mile markers to where he was waiting for me. Most scary stories from truck drivers get better every time they’re told. I’ve never added a word to this one.
It was February of 2018. I was hauling a load of frozen chicken from Arkansas to Phoenix, westbound on I-40 through the Texas panhandle and into New Mexico. I like to drive nights out there. Less traffic, no wind farms flashing in your eyes, and the scale houses are usually closed.
I still run a CB. A lot of younger drivers don’t bother anymore. They’ve got their phones. But I keep mine on channel 19 for company, and for the old-timers who still use it to call out wrecks and bears. That’s cops, if you don’t know.
“Forty-Two to Go”
It was a little after 2 a.m. I’d just crossed into New Mexico. The road out there runs dead straight, and there’s nothing on either side but dark range land and the occasional ranch light ten miles off.
The CB had been quiet for a while. Then a voice came on. Male. Older. Slow and easy.
“Westbound reefer, you got your ears on?”
I was the only westbound reefer I could see. I keyed up and said, “Go ahead.”
He said, “Forty-two to go, driver.”
That was it. I waited. I said, “Forty-two to what?” Nothing came back.
I figured it was somebody messing around. There are lonely guys on the CB at night. Some of them get a little strange. I looked at the next mile marker that went by. Mile marker 362.
About ten minutes later, the same voice. “Thirty-one to go, driver. You’re doing real good.”
I looked at the mile marker. 351.
He was counting down. Exactly. And he was counting my miles, not his, because nobody else was out there. I checked my mirrors. There was a set of headlights way behind me, a mile or more. Nothing ahead.
I keyed up. I said, “Who is this?” I’ll admit I used some other words too.
He didn’t answer that. He waited till the next marker and said, “Thirty to go.”
The Count
I told myself it was a driver behind me with a sense of humor. The headlights in my mirror. Maybe he’d figured out where I was going from my trailer and was playing a game. Truckers do dumb things to stay awake. I’ve done some.
So I slowed down to fifty-five. If he was behind me, he’d catch up and I’d see him.
The headlights behind me slowed down too. They stayed exactly where they were.
“Twenty to go, driver.”
The voice wasn’t coming from behind me. I don’t know how to explain how I knew that. CB isn’t like that. You can’t tell direction. But the signal was getting stronger. Clearer every time. The static got thinner, like he was getting closer. And he wasn’t behind me. So he was somewhere ahead.
There’s a long stretch out there with no exits at all. I looked at my GPS. The next exit was a ranch road at mile 319.
“Twelve to go.”
I tried calling my dispatcher on my phone. No service. That stretch is famous for it.
“Ten to go. Almost there, driver.”
The cab smelled like the heater. Burnt dust. My hands were sweating on the wheel and I turned the heat off and the cold came in and it didn’t help.
“Five.”
“Four.”
He wasn’t waiting for the mile markers anymore. He was just counting. Slow. One every few seconds.
“Three. Two.”
I had my foot on the brake. I don’t know why. Something in me said to be ready.
“One.”
Mile Marker 319
Headlights came on in front of me.
On the right shoulder, maybe a quarter mile ahead. A pickup truck, parked facing the wrong way. It had been sitting there completely dark. Now its high beams were on, pointed right into my windshield.
And there was a man standing in the right lane in front of it. In the middle of the interstate. Arms out wide. In one hand he was holding something with a coiled cord hanging down from it. A CB handset.
He was waving me down. Big slow waves, both arms.
I didn’t stop. I moved over to the left lane, laid on the air horn, and went past him at sixty. He didn’t flinch. As I went by, I saw his face in my lights for half a second. Gray beard. Smiling. Just smiling at me, like he was glad I’d made it.
In my mirror I watched him walk back to his truck.
Then the CB came on one more time.
“That’s all right, driver. Next time.”
What Other Drivers Said About These Trucker Scary Stories
I reported it to the New Mexico State Police when I got to the port of entry in Gallup. The officer wrote it down. He wasn’t surprised. He said they’d gotten maybe a half dozen calls like that over the years, always on that stretch. Always a man on the CB. Always a pickup on the shoulder at the end. He said nobody had ever stopped, as far as he knew.
“As far as you know,” I said.
He didn’t answer that.
A few months later I was at a truck stop in Amarillo and I told the story at the counter, the way you do. An old driver two stools down put his fork down. He said he’d heard the same voice in 2011, on the same road. He said they call him the Counter. He said the Counter never talks to two trucks running together. Only to a driver who’s alone.
He said a friend of his heard the countdown in 2006 and pulled over at the end of it, because he thought someone was broken down.
I asked him what happened to his friend.
He said they found his truck at mile 319 with the engine still running and the driver’s door open. He said that’s all anybody ever found.
I don’t run I-40 at night anymore. If I have to, I find another truck going my way and I stay with him till sunrise.
But I still keep the CB on channel 19. And sometimes, way out in the middle of the night, I hear a voice I don’t recognize come on and say, “Forty-two to go.”
It’s never been for me again. But somebody out there is always alone.
If you want more creepy scary stories from the road, read the fake detour horror story about the signs on a county road, a scarecrow horror story from Halloween night in Iowa, or our creepy text stories post about a stranger who bought an old phone.
Do you have trucker scary stories of your own?
If you drive for a living, you’ve probably heard something on the radio that you couldn’t explain. Share your trucker scary stories, or any scary truck driver stories from a long night on an empty interstate, in the comments below.
How scary was it?
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