Truckers save family from being Found On Road Dead

GREAT FALLS, Mont. — Melody Mercer, of Moundsville, West Va., says she tried to teach her kids two things: Stay away from the military and “don’t buy Fords.”

But her 22-year-old son, J. Scott Mercer, up in Anchorage, wouldn’t listen. First thing he did was join the army.

When he got called up, he quit his dead-end $8-an-hour Dairy Queen job and bought a Ford F 250, into which he packed his wife, his father, his two-month-old daughter and their two cats. They headed for a military base in Georgia.

Cue the scary-movie music.

Because what should have been an interesting, scenic and optimistic drive 4,200 miles south turned into “Nightmare on the Alcan Highway.”

As reported in the Grand Falls Montana Tribune, right near Fort Nelson, B.C, which is close to the Yukon border, their truck broke down. With only 3,280 miles left to go on their trek.

And if it weren’t for the intervention and kindness of a string of Canadian truckers and dispatchers who ensured the Mercers got from Fort Nelson to Grande Prairie and then south to Montana, the whole bunch of them might have perished.

“The truck drivers in Canada are the only ones trying to help,” Melody Mercer told the Tribune reporter Kristen Inbody at the time.

One generous trucker even hauled their busted pick up all the way to the border town of Coutts. Without asking for payment.

It stayed there until somebody from a Montana Ford dealership came across the border to rescue the vehicle and fetch it stateside where the local dealership fixed it at no charge.

The Mercers are all safe at home now.

Reporter Inbody told todaystrucking.com that the Mercer story generated a lot of response from veterans who called [the paper], ready to drive to Canada to help if need be.

"The story also reinforced many positive ideas people in north central Montana have about our neighbors and friends to the north," Inbody said.

"As we like to think we are good hosts to the many Canadians who visit, this proved Canadians [truckers and dispatchers anyway] are good to wayward Americans in need, too."


Have your say


This is a moderated forum. Comments will no longer be published unless they are accompanied by a first and last name and a verifiable email address. (Today's Trucking will not publish or share the email address.) Profane language and content deemed to be libelous, racist, or threatening in nature will not be published under any circumstances.

*