I’ve have been driving trucks over 50 years and I want to share with you the best method I have found for chain management on your truck. I don’t do anything a certain way simply because “That’s the way I’ve always done it.” I do something a certain way because I haven’t found a better way to do it. If you are hanging your chains on any kind of hooks, and it takes you longer than 12 to 15 minutes to chain up eight drive tires, there is a better way! A system for chaining up and a method for hanging chains on a White Original will make chaining easy for you!
I struck my first arc when I was still a teenager. It was Bill Boley who fired up a portable and showed me how to run a bead. In my early twenties, while working at the Mineral Hill mine in Arizona, it was Darrel Sisty and Red Patterson who broke me into welding. Those guys could lay something out and build anything!
I have been around heavy equipment, trucks, and welding all my life. My dad was what I like to call an “Original”. I used to skip school sometimes to go to work with my dad and this is when my real education began. Dad was no ordinary “cat skinner” and the knowledge I gained from being around him was very valuable to me, especially when I went to work hauling crude oil for Giant Refining. I knew more about getting equipment unstuck than some of the hands that were already there hauling crude.
My second experience with an “Original” was with my older brother, Lowell. Lowell broke me into driving. He was probably better at backing the first truck and trailer he ever drove than I was after driving one for 12 to 14 years. He was a natural.
I was working for United Nuclear, based out of Ambrosia Lake, north of Grants, New Mexico hauling Uranium when Dan White came to work there. We worked there for a few short years and got to know each other pretty well. He was what some people would call “rude and crude” but he would do just about anything for a friend. The day I left United Nuclear, Dan quit. He gathered up his jacket and thermos and left the truck idling in the middle of the road by the guard shack. A couple days later, we both went to work for C. B. Johnson in Cortez, Colorado. While working at C. B. Johnson, Dan showed me how-to put-on chains (doubles) for the first time. When it came to chaining up, Dan White was the “Original”.
Since that time, I have learned not only how to build a chain hanger but have refined a method for its use. I have been using a hanger of this nature for 40 years. It has only been in recent years that it dawned on me why so many drivers get in trouble in the mountains in winter. It has to do with how everybody hangs their chains on the truck. If I had to use one of those hangers with the hooks and aluminum lid, I wouldn’t want to chain up either! I know that no one thinks twice about switching trailers. With a White Original, I would rather throw on a set of chains than switch trailers.
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