Americans are used to highways, semi-trucks, and breakdowns. They might not be as familiar with what can be in some of the trucks that break down:
Loucks, a mechanic at Super Truck Service in west suburban Addison, didn’t think anything of the call. But when he got to the semi, he found 14,000 live chickens in the trailer…
He couldn’t tow the truck the nearly 30 miles back to the shop because tipping the trailer up could be even more dangerous for the chickens, Loucks said, so his team chained up an axle and had the semi drive back to Super Truck Service on eight wheels instead of 10. That meant driving 35 to 40 mph down I-90, which wasn’t a very safe option either, Loucks said.
After returning to the shop at 562 S. Vista Ave. in Addison, and with the temperatures rising, Loucks said the first thing he did was grab a garden hose as he started to “water the chickens,” despite being afraid of birds.
Three things stand out to me in this short story that might be easy to ignore since vehicles break down all the time:
- The number of chickens on one truck is astounding. Ask people on the street how many chickens would fit on a truck and I wonder how many would be close to this number.
- While this is a large number of chickens, this is just one truck. Therefore, this is just a drop in the bucket in the number of chickens in the United States. According to Statista, there are over 1 billion chickens in the United States.
- There are numerous ways to ship goods and animals. Moving all of this requires a lot of infrastructure behind the scenes that helps get eggs and chicken to grocery shelves. Put #1 and #2 together and you need a lot of ways to transport everything.
The United States is a large country with a big economy and a critically important set of structures and vehicles that get things where they need to go. Semis and other trucks are needed to help make this possible.
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