WINNSBORO – Every two-by-four, sheet of plywood, and wooden beam in a new house starts out by going from the forest to the mill. For 42 years, Charlie Gladney Jr. has helped make that happen. He started out working for his dad’s short-wood hauling business, then branched out on his own in 1998 with his trusty red-and-white Superliner Mack – the truck that has now logged over three million miles.
“It’s been too much of an adventure for me,” he said with a laugh. “It used to be fun, going in and out of the woods on dirt roads. There was plenty of wildlife: snakes, wild hogs, all sorts of stuff back in there. The furthest I’ve been in the woods was seven miles. I got stuck plenty of times! All I can say is I hope my truck survives a few more years and we’ll retire together.”
Gladney, 60, lives just outside Winnsboro with his wife, Evelyn, who helps run their business, Gladney Trucking.
“I couldn’t do nothing without her,” he said.
Gladney’s been hauling wood since before he was old enough for a driver’s license. He took his first load of short-wood from Tookie Doo to Pontiac at age 12, driving a six-wheel Chevy on back roads while following his dad’s truck.
“I was just knee high to a chicken head,” Gladney said. “My dad would take me different places where we would be moving equipment, and he would let me drive the truck on the back road. It was exciting. I would just follow him wherever he wanted me to go.
“Then we got our first Mack truck in 1988 from a guy named Willie Davis, who had a big logging outfit and was getting rid of some older trucks,” he said.
They eventually got a second truck, the 1966 Mack that Gladney still drives today.
“It’s helped raise my children, and now my grandchildren are almost grown up, and it’s still surviving,” he said. “It rides good. It’s a good truck. I do a lot of my own maintenance – fixing tires, replacing brakes, oil changes, washing the truck. Fuel is the number one problem now. You can’t afford to haul so many loads.”
He said there have been some dangerous close calls over the years.
“There was a young lady approaching a stop sign and she was on her cell phone,” he said. “I could see everything – in a big truck you sit up so high. She was all the way out in the road before she realized. It was a good thing there wasn’t anything coming on the opposite side of the road. I had to go all the way across and run off the road to keep from hitting her. I’ve had to do that quite a few times to avoid an accident. She just froze – it scared her so bad. She was in shock.”
Gladney said he hauls mostly pine, and hardwoods like poplar, maple and sweetgum.
“We do a lot of thinning,” he said. “Not a lot of clear cutting. That helps the other trees grow. When they’re too crowded, there aren’t enough nutrients in the soil to go around. But when they’re spaced out, they can grow to their full length and size. And the animals and wildlife still have plenty of places to go.”
He said that while trees are a renewable resource that provide us with so many things from houses to paper to fuel, trucks are an essential part of actually getting those things to people.
“Trucks keep America going,” Gladney said. “They keep the whole world going. You can bring it on an airplane, you can bring it on a ship, you can bring it on a train, but what has to come pick it up? A truck.”