Joseph Edward Dawson, who died May 1 in Greeley of complications from an infection, spent 37 of his 55 years as a truck driver.
He was a driver for Montfort Transportation, cheerfully taking on the unpopular weekly run from Greeley to New York City’s meat market.
Few truckers willingly took on the drive colloquially known as the “swinging meat run,” after the scores of beef carcasses swaying from ceiling-mounted hooks in the refrigerated trailers.
The shifting carcasses made the trailers oscillate, requiring truckers to re-correct constantly during the long drive to Manhattan. Wind gusts made the tricky counterbalance even more problematic.
“It’s harder to pull that type of load, with the trailer moving all the time, but he was a good driver,” said his wife, Connie Dawson.
“He drove fast, and he had the speeding tickets to prove it.”
Joseph Dawson regarded the travel logistics as a challenge equaled only by the sortie awaiting in New York City, where opportunistic thieves robbed trucks at intersections.
“He told me, ‘You slow down at stoplights, but don’t come to a complete stop, or they’ll jump on the back of your truck and unload it in broad daylight,”‘ Connie Dawson recollected.
She witnessed her husband’s technique when she once accompanied him on a swinging meat run. She never again watched him navigate the meat district’s perilous streets.
“After that, when I went with him, I’d go back to the bunk because it was too nerve-racking for me to see,” she said.
Dawson, who grew up in Miami, became a truck driver immediately upon graduating from high school. His adoptive father, a long-distance truck driver, became his mentor. His apprenticeship took place on Interstate 95 and other busy East Coast roadways that schooled Dawson in congested traffic and impatient drivers.
During a run, Dawson fueled himself on Benson & Hedges menthol cigarettes, truck-stop coffee, Popeyes Chicken and Mountain Dew. He learned to keep a dog in his truck for company and to wake him during a nap when thieves tried to break in to the trailer or gas tank. His final canine trucking partner was Dusty, a gray Lhasa apso comically tiny alongside Dawson’s girth.
Dawson met his wife, who audited Montfort Transportation’s truck logs, upon moving to Greeley in 1989. She is Anglo, and he was among the few African-Americans in Greeley, “but he felt as comfortable in the white community as he did in the black community,” Connie Dawson said.
“He liked people,” she continued, “but yet, he liked his space. That kind of sounds funny, but if you talk to anybody who’s ever been a truck driver, they’ll say it’s in their blood. He just loved the road.”
Besides his wife, survivors include son Teriq Romaine Dawson of Mississippi and stepson Wes Sheehan of Evans; daughter Monique Williams of Miami; stepdaughter Courtney Sheehan of Englewood; and a granddaughter.
Staff writer Claire Martin can be reached at 303-820-1477 or cmartin@denverpost.com.
