I remember my first trip across Colorado on I-70 too, same trip I first crossed Donner Pass on-1979. I stopped at the scales west of Denver and asked the scale man "how long before I get out of these mountains?" He looked at me like I was crazy and said "son, you're just getting started". I couldn't even cross Donner until they opened it to all traffic because I had no tire chains and it was snowing so I hung out at Sierra Sid's truckstop in Reno. This was in April or May, snow was long gone around here. Good thing I was hauling furniture at the time, a typical load was about 12-14,000lbs, or things might have turned out different,eh? But Bollweevil reminds me of another story, and it just brings to mind how different things are now and how different drivers are today. I welcomed any advice I was given by older drivers and was respectful to them even if I didn't follow their advice, like the time I was loading some steel coils in Burns Harbor. I had several coil coils,loaded shotgun, and I was criss-crossing 2 chains through the eye then putting one across the top. A couple of other older drivers were in there loading and one of them said "you don't need to do all that,one chain over the top is enough." They might have been going across town for all I know, but I was going to either Walker muffler in Harrisonburg or Modine Mfg. in Buena Vista, Va. so I was going across rt. 60 from Charleston, so I chained them like I wanted. Many years later when I had hauled hundreds, maybe thousands, of loads of chips and pulpwood across the mountains on rt. 60 to Covington there was a Schneider truck coming east on 60 one fine day. 2 of our drivers met him just after he had started off the last mountain, Long Mountain. They asked him on the radio if he was loaded, and he said "yes". So one of them told him "you're going pretty fast" and he said "...eff you, I know what i'm doing!" When they came back across after unloading in Covington, there he was, turned over at the last "s" curve before you get to the bottom. A piece of the trailer was stuck in a tree there about 10' off the ground for years...might still be there.