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There was no bypass around the city when Gene Bost started driving.
In fact, he wasn't even of legal age to drive, but growing up during the Great Depression and World War II, in a family of farmers and truckers, age is just an artificial construct.
"My dad had a truck, that he left on the farm," he says. "And we started the business with that, the Bost Trucking Co."
"We hauled livestock and grain for farmers. Coal in the wintertime. Coal was a big thing," Bost recalls from his easy chair, taking a break from daytime television programs. "In the Depression, there was a program, my dad would be sent down to the coal yard to get a load for families who couldn't afford it. In the wintertime it was a pretty busy business."
The Bosts kept hauling coal "until coal was abandoned," but by then Bost Trucking had tooled up and was hauling another home-heating fuel: propane. Born Wiley Eugene Bost on Nov. 2, 1929, Bost is the eldest of three brothers, and now the only survivor of the brothers.
His youngest brother, Bob, passed away in August, and Gene's wife of 70 years, Peggy, died in June.
Bost attended University High School in Carbondale, and gained credits there to finish a degree at Southern Illinois Normal University. "I came in the front door and went out the back," he recalls, taking just three years in college. He served in the U.S. Army, in the 101st Airborne, and was trained for the Korean Conflict. He was instead sent to Salzburg, Austria.
Asked when he retired from the trucking business, Bost asks "which time?"
In fact, he could never completely stay away from the business, and he remained active in Bost Trucking up until around three or four years ago. "I retired like three or four times," he says. "If I saw something that needed to be done, I had to do it."
Bost trucks kept on the road, and when they weren't on the road, the Bosts kept busy in their shop. "We took whatever kinds of work. Whatever could keep us busy. We took to repairing other peoples' trucks," Bost says.
"I used to get a kick out of my wife," Bost recalls, remembering when he would talk about the trucking business with Peggy. "She would pull out a piece of paper and start to write, asking 'how many zeroes is that?'"
These days, one of his sons, Dan, is in charge of the day-to-day, along with Dan's cousin Larry. Another son, Milton, is a Baptist church pastor in Chatham. There's daughter Deborah Pittman in Murphysboro, and another son Mike Bost, former state legislator and now U.S. representative, serving Illinois' 12th Congressional District.
"He called me last week. He said 'Dad, guess where I am? I'm on Air Force One, headed for Washington, D.C.'," Bost recalls. "I don't remember where he had been. But he was riding with the president. I'll always remember that, a young man from Murphysboro, Ill., riding with the president of the United States."
Bost remains nostaglic for yesteryear, when downtown Murphysboro was more bustling than it is today.
"Murphysboro was a busy place back years ago. Every building along Walnut Street had businesses in it, and more on the second floors. There were menswear stores, ladies dress shops. Folks came from all around," he says.
As traffic patterns changed and the Murphysboro of the 21st Century took shape, Bost Trucking had a part in the development, hauling material for such projects as Kinkaid Lake, Cedar Lake, Southern Illinois Regional Airport, the new Illinois Route 13 and the Illinois 13-127 bypass.
He remains fond of the days when trucking was a more rough-and-tumble industry, before there was electronic logging, and before emissions regulations.
The American Truck Historical Society recently devoted a spread to Bost Trucking in it's bimonthly Wheels of Time magazine. Some of the trucks from that classic fleet of the 1940s and '50s remain on the Bost Trucking roster.
Not that change is necessarily bad, Bost points out. "They have done everything they can to save fuel on these vehicles," he says, noting the advances in diesel technology. Operating costs and motor-fuel taxes have ratcheted up over the decades. "But somebody's got to pay for the roads for people to use them," Bost says.
"The business changes as time goes on," he says. "It used to be the Bost trucks wouldn't venture any further than 350 miles away from Murphysboro. Now they are all around the central part of the United States."
"Sometimes you can't get to go home," Bost says of the over-the-road trucking life. "But we try to get our drivers in, every weekend."
"Things have to be accepted," Bost says. "Got a lot of rules to go by."
Source: murphysborotimes.com
Type: News
Date: 2019-11-19
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