Orrin Asmus doesn’t use a routing software, doesn’t even own a computer, and he only carries a basic cellphone — no bells and whistles.
“I never have had a GPS. That's what they make roadmaps for — to show you how to get there. The cellphones are great because you call a customer up and say, ‘I'm in your town. How do I get to you?’” Asmus said. “Just give me what the necessities are, and I love what I'm doing.”
The 94-year-old trucker still operates the old-school way.
In his early days of trucking, he most hated to drive in the crowded area near the World Trade Center in New York City, where he would park his semi in the street — “nobody was going to steal it” — and make his way to the 72nd floor to obtain customs papers. Despite today’s technology, he still retrieves and delivers paperwork by hand.
Asmus enjoys hand-delivering his paperwork into the office at McLaughlin Freight Lines in Mediapolis, Iowa, where he now works part time, because it’s another way to get out of the house and spend time with people.
“Dan McLaughlin, the owner, and his son Cody, who works for him, we were sitting there talking, and he was saying, ‘You're going to have to have a physical every year. You're getting old,’” Asmus said. “‘I wonder how old the oldest [truck driver] is,’ Cody said.”
After Cody’s quick search on the internet, Asmus learned he might just be the oldest semi-truck driver in the U.S., based on Guinness World Records. McLaughlin set about applying for Asmus for the Guinness title.
Kylie Galloway, senior public relations executive at Guinness World Records Americas, told CCJ the application has been received, and the organization is reviewing the evidence submitted, which Asmus said included his birth certificate and pay stubs, to determine its final ruling. She noted that it could take 12 to 15 weeks before Asmus knows whether he has made history.
For now, the title of oldest truck/lorry/heavy goods vehicle driver (male) belongs to Doyle Archer, a 92-year-old trucker from Phillipsburg, Kansas, who was verified by Guinness last December. Galloway said Guinness monitors the title for the oldest female driver as well, but no one currently holds it. Archer, who has earned a Million Mile Safe Driver award, continues to log miles from coast to coast in his 2003 Peterbilt, according to the Guinness World Records website.
Asmus also holds a Million Mile Safe Driver award from his time as a company driver for Walmart. He estimates that he now has close to 5 million miles under his belt. He put in 30 hours just last week — the week of his 94th birthday, which was Aug. 11.
“I work whenever the man needs me to work. In other words, I'm probably like a gofer,” Asmus said, but “I have done and seen the whole country.”
Asmus said he first climbed into a semi-truck at 19 years old to haul a 48-foot livestock trailer filled with cattle because the regular driver for the farm he worked at called in sick. He drove a semi for the first time along U.S. 30 from Manning, Iowa, to Chicago. It was 1951 — years before the first interstate was built in the U.S. and decades before a CDL was required to drive a truck.
He didn’t drive another semi for years, returning to his farm boy lifestyle, but he eventually fell back into it, making it a longtime career and trekking across all lower 48 states.
Asmus said he has hauled a little bit of everything, from grain, milk and farm equipment to industrial machinery, lumber and more. He added that he has also driven every kind of truck, except a Kenworth and a fire engine, as both a company driver and an owner-operator.
A little more than a decade ago, he met McLaughlin, who founded his trucking company in 2003, and went to work for him just to get out of the house, which he built himself from a semi load of lumber he bought direct from a mill in the 1970s for just $4,000, selling enough of the bunks of plywood off it to pay for the expenses he incurred hauling it.
“I don't need the money,” Asmus said. “I still want to work because … I'm tired of being in the house. I want to get out and do something.”
His wife passed away four years ago, so now he spends his time at the casino, the McLaughlin offices, driving a truck or serving on the city council where he lives in Middletown, Iowa.
After all these years, he said his favorite thing about trucking is meeting people, but a lot has changed in that time.
“I paid, when I first started, 23 cents a gallon (for fuel), and now it's five-something,” he said.
Now, drivers can speak to their dashboards instead of into CB radio mics, and trucks aren’t built to last, Asmus said. Instead of two-lane roads, his paper map is now covered with interstates, where he said everyone thinks they need to go fast with a phone in one hand and the steering wheel in the other.
Maybe it’s the lack of attention to the road or drivers’ urgency to get where they’re going that has taken away their altruism.
“You used to have a flat tire, and another driver would pull up behind you, help you, and get you off of the road and out of danger,” Asmus said. “Now, you better make sure you're off far enough because you might get hit by a car or another truck because nobody helps each other out.”
Instead, drivers set their cruise control and keep on driving, he said. He’s going to keep on driving, too, with no plans to retire.
Despite having broken his hip two years ago, the Guinness World Records hopeful continues to climb in and out of his semi with a 6-inch rod in his leg. But he said he is otherwise healthy: His blood pressure was in the normal range during his doctor visit last week, and his blood sugar level was only off by one point. He said that’s because he went shopping at Menards and bought a bunch of cookies that day — an atypical addition to his regular protein-filled diet.
“I'm doing fine,” he said, noting that he initially had no interest in applying for the Guinness record because he figured too many people were vying for the title. “Turns out, there ain't all kind of people [applying]. You're just one of the lucky ones that you're that old.”
