I’ve been hauling freight across the Midwest for over two decades. Seen all kinds of crazy things—ice storms, blown tires, even a guy in Wisconsin who flagged me down carrying a live goose. But last Tuesday? That one’s got me rattled worse than anything before.
It was just after 6 a.m., the sun barely rising, and the highway was dead silent—except for a man standing on the on-ramp near Keeler. Flannel shirt, small backpack, hand raised like he was sure I’d stop.
I don’t usually pick up strangers, but there was something about him that didn’t scream danger. He looked to be in his early thirties, polite, even called me “sir” even though I’m not that old. Said his name was Jules, heading east to chase a job opportunity in Columbus.
We talked a bit—weather, coffee—normal trucker stuff. Then he suddenly went quiet. Really quiet.
“Mind if I crash in the back for a couple hours?” he asked.
I hesitated, but the guy looked wiped out, so I agreed, on one condition: don’t mess with anything.
He climbed into the sleeper cab, zipped his jacket, and that was that.
Hours went by. I stopped in Dayton for gas and a quick bite, expecting him to still be asleep.
But when I opened the back door—he was gone.
No trace he’d been there.
Except one thing resting on the floor beside my bed:
My old driver’s logbook.
The very one I’d lost three years ago.
The black leather-bound book, stained with coffee and doodles from my daughter, the one I thought was gone forever.
How did it end up there?
I flipped through it, everything as I remembered, until the last page. There was a new entry, written in someone else’s handwriting:
“Don’t ignore the mile marker.”
I sat there, cold creeping up my spine. I hadn’t paid attention to mile markers in years, but something about that note felt like a warning.
I stashed the logbook in the glove compartment and hit the road east toward Columbus—like I told Jules.
This time, I watched every mile marker.
And just past marker 247, I spotted something odd.
A car, stuck halfway down a ditch behind a thicket of pines. No lights, no movement.
I pulled over, heart racing, and walked through the brush. Inside was a woman, slumped over the steering wheel. I knocked on the window—no response.
I called 911.
They said she’d been there for two days, injured after swerving to avoid a deer.
If I hadn’t stopped, no one would have found her.
Later, at a rest stop near Columbus, a waitress asked if I was the trucker who reported the wreck.
Her sister, she said. The woman in the ditch.
“She remembers the man who knocked on her window, told her help was coming,” the waitress said.
I told her I found her unconscious. No one knocked.
“She says a man in a red cap stopped,” the waitress said.
I was wearing that cap.
That night, I looked in my rearview mirror—and for a moment, I saw Jules sitting in the back, smiling. Then he vanished.
Five months later, the logbook still sits in my glove box. No new entries. But sometimes, I feel a tap on my shoulder—like a nudge.
Since then, I’ve helped more people than ever: pulled someone from a ditch, stopped a drunk driver, got an elderly woman to the hospital.
I don’t talk about it much—even to my daughter, who just thinks I’m getting softer with age.
Maybe I am.
But I like to think this way: sometimes you pick up more than a passenger on the road. Sometimes you carry a purpose.
So if you’re ever on Route 41, and see a guy in a flannel shirt, with a light pack and a raised hand—maybe stop.
Because maybe he’s pointing you toward something bigger than you realize.
Maybe he’s not just hitchhiking.
Maybe he’s already riding with you.