The last mile of a Wisconsin trucker

On July 31, 2026, a buddy of mine whom I’ve had on my podcast, a fellow trucker who really put down the miles and kept this country fed, turned over his last mile and passed on to the great truck stop in the sky.

Kevin Kenneth Koehnke died as he lived, out on the road and working, a lifestyle he hardly strayed from in his four decades over the road. Kevin had some kind of health episode immediately after completing a delivery in San Jose, California. An ambulance came to get him from his customer’s driveway, and he didn’t make it to the hospital. Kevin was only 64 years old.

'Awww, when I got to the yard, they had a hot load going down to Pennsylvania and they asked me to go, so I took it. Sorry, Gordo.'

Man of many hats

I came to know Kevin, like so many other people in my life these days, from the internet. At some point a few years ago, selfies Kevin was posting on Facebook began to be copied and were circulated around various corners of the internet, often with commentary attached written by posters who were imagining what someone who looked like Kevin would say, and were congruous with the custom-made trucker caps that Kevin had become known for.

Kevin Koehnke

There was an incongruity to Kevin’s habit of printing these hats, which come off as abrasive and unnecessarily inflammatory to some; by all accounts, Kevin was a very warm and talkative guy who really liked people and had friends all over the country. There is an innocent quality to these photos that Kevin took of himself that I believe connected with people at a deeper level than the sort of online meme legend that grew around him. That said, the memes followed the messaging on the hats, and once unleashed on Twitter, they touched a particular nerve.

x.com/Tha_Big_Dog

x.com/Tha_Big_Dog

x.com/Tha_Big_Dog

Conversation with a 'Bub'

I’m a follower and friend of the poster "Big Sib," who first introduced me to these images of Kevin, and I became intrigued by the guy. Being a trucker myself, I’m familiar with the type that spends a lot of time on the road and, in times past, perhaps consumed a little too much AM radio, which provided a weird mental placeholder for the "normal" lives one cannot live while out over the road. Sib seemed to channel a particular "Bub" working-class outlook in the commentary he added to Kevin’s photos, especially those of Kevin enjoying a hard-earned meal, and it all sort of worked. Sib was one of the guys who helped Kevin become somewhat infamous online.

At some point I decided to try to seek Kevin out and invite him on my podcast, and sure enough, his contact details were found on a Facebook post he had made of his business card. I made a few phone calls and got in touch with him, and he agreed to come on my show, which you can listen to right here or on most podcast players of your choice.

Kevin Koehnke

Kevin had stopped at the Iowa 80 Truck Stop to call in and speak with me, and he filled my listeners in on much of his life story, from working on his parents' cabbage farm in Wisconsin as a kid, where he came into contact with the type of truckers made famous in films like "Smokey and the Bandit," through his life on the road, to various adventures and misadventures with police, abusive employers, and friends along the highway who helped him out when times were tough. It’s a fun listen and one of the most downloaded episodes of my podcast. You will also hear a lot about truck stop food and the types of freight Kevin hauled.

'Just like his dad'

When I received news of Kevin’s passing, I asked to be put in touch with his family by the folks at the Konrad-Behlman funeral home, who have been helping them along at this time. I’ve had a couple of phone calls with his mom, Pat, who is pretty spry and a great conversationalist at the ripe old age of 86. She had listened to the podcast at some point as well and got quite a chuckle out of it.

”Kevin told some pretty tall tales,” she said, laughing. “He certainly was not born in the cab of his father’s dump truck. I spent 24 hours in labor trying to push him out.”

Pat did mention that much of Kevin’s career was spent away from home and family and that he was indeed a very high miler. When Kevin’s father died, Kevin couldn’t be there and was a day and a half late getting home.

”Kevin was just like his dad — loved being on the road. Before we bought the farm, his father would drive the dump truck all day and then hop in an 18-wheeler at night for another company and run up to northern Michigan and back overnight. He often only lived on two or three hours of sleep.”

Pat tells me that Kevin worked for about 10 different companies throughout his career, and a certain pattern emerges from her confirmation about things he told me on the show. Kevin is what we in the industry call a "runner," a guy who basically lives in his truck, works his tail off, and almost never goes home. As of 2023 when Kevin came on the podcast, he told me that he had worked for 17 years straight, mostly only ever taking the mandatory 34-hour reset periods truckers are subject to under Hours of Service regulations. So no weekends, no going home, living in the truck, putting miles behind him as he crisscrossed the nation he loved so much.

The problem with "runners" is that trucking companies become dependent on them, reliable as they are, but often do not return much in the way of gratitude for all that hard work and sacrifice. Kevin told me he was fired from one company after requesting four days off to go visit family, being told he could take it, but when the time came, they wanted him to keep going. He had put over 1 million, 300,000 miles on one truck for that particular outfit and was thrown out the door as replaceable. This in an industry that has been whining about a supposed shortage of truckers since the mid-1980s. The real shortage, in Kevin’s case, was making it home for Christmas or almost anything else important.

RELATED: Despite welcome reform, the war on America's truckers rages on

Anadolu/Getty Images

No days off

I invited Kevin to join my friends and me at the Mid-America Trucking Show in March 2024 and even managed to get him a media pass, which comes with access to a room with catered breakfast and lunch, something he would have taken full advantage of. I told everyone that he was coming, and there was quite a bit of anticipation about "Uncle Kevin" or "the Big Dog" coming to MATS. Having never met him in person, I was pretty pumped about getting to meet the guy myself.

Kevin told me months prior that he had booked the time off and that he was most likely going to rent a car and drive down to Louisville from his company's yard up in Michigan. When I arrived at MATS, Kevin was nowhere to be found, and it took me a little while to get ahold of him on the phone.

”Awww, when I got to the yard, they had a hot load going down to Pennsylvania and they asked me to go, so I took it. Sorry, Gordo.”

He sounded almost embarrassed on the phone, as if he knew he had let me down.

”But they knew you were coming here. What the hell, man?”

”You know how it is. No one wants to work, and I couldn’t say no.”

No one wants to work. An eternal Boomerism.

I’m not sure if his excuse was true or not, but it followed a pattern set by himself and his previous employers. Being a runner becomes a lifestyle for a certain kind of trucker, a badge of honor for being institutionalized to the truck. Kevin was 61 years old at that time and had never been married, no kids, and he didn’t see his family much.

Kevin’s mom, Pat, was not surprised by the MATS story.

”I haven’t seen Kevin in 15 years. He doesn’t come home.”

Heavy load

On my podcast, Kevin relayed the story of how he hurt one of his big toes, but didn’t think too much of it and kept on working. Eventually it got so bad that he had to stop and have surgery to prevent gangrene at a hospital near Atlanta, Georgia, pretty far from Wisconsin. He took a couple of months off afterward to recover at his friend's place in Michigan, and that may have been one of the only, if not the only, vacation the man ever had.

Kevin turned 64 on June 13 of this year, and Pat tells me that four days later, Kevin was in the hospital with pneumonia, having water in his lungs. The type of trucking lifestyle he led was clearly not good for his health. Once he recovered, he went straight back to work, taking little oxygen bottles in the truck to help him breathe. Pat is not sure whether Kevin lied to his employers about being fit to return or if they looked the other way, or perhaps failed to engage in any due diligence on a driver returning to duty. I contacted them to ask a few questions about what went down, and their head safety guy said it was "not their place to discuss a personal matter."

Well, a man died on the job under their employ, and I doubt they would give a stock answer like that to an investigator from OSHA or the Workers Compensation Board.

It seems to me that Kevin Koehnke was one of these guys who had some kind of hurt deep inside him and either ignored it or escaped it by just staying on the road. Many Old Hands know such a person, and to be honest, its an easy way out that I myself have undertook in the past. Always working long hours away from home is a good way to let the sleeping dogs lie, but a bad way to manage your own mental health. This scheme is then compounded by employers who take full advantage of the situation, almost like a drug dealer who is always there with the next hit to soothe the pain.

The trucking industry makes a good show of highlighting health and safety, managing hours of service, trying to color between the lines where so many shady operators do not, and end up as part of the steady stream of collisions and chaos on our newsfeeds. But it strikes me that the business is also opportunistic in its use and abuse of runners like Kevin and failing to ask why such a nice man would just keep on working like that, never saying no, always getting it done no matter the cost to his own health — mental and physical — or the cost to relationships with family.

"Having an intervention" is a phrase often tossed around for those with serious problems like addiction. Maybe interventions are needed for the runners like Kevin.

Save me a seat at that truck stop in the sky, Kevin. I’ll be there sooner or later, too, and I’ll be darned if you won’t need a hug.

*******

Pat Koehnke tells me they have yet to see any of Kevin’s personal items returned to them, including his phone or his wallet with all of his ID. If anyone has intel on Kevin’s things, please email me at gordilocks@protonmail.com, and I will see to it that you are connected with his family.

He was cremated in California and thus made easier to ship home, obviating the need for assistance from an organization like Truckers Final Mile, which assists families in retrieving the bodies of loved ones who pass on the road but whose companies refuse to help with getting them back home. It tells you something about certain players in this industry that such an organization exists at all.

You can read Kevin’s official obituary here. There are links to leave a message about Kevin or purchase a memorial tree at the link above.

And make sure you reach out and say hello to someone distant. You never know what they might be going through or how much it would make their day to hear from you.

This essay originally appeared in the Autonomous Truck(er)s Substack.