The 2nd Teapot Dome Scandal Part 1

In 1978 the Wyoming Highway Patrol staff selected me to man a new duty station located in Farson, Wyoming. It was thought that my large family, along with my ranching background would fit in well with the tough people who inhabited the 17,000 acre, 7,000 foot elevation Farson Valley.

Part of my responsibilties while patrolling the Farson area was to regulate the heavy truck traffic that flowed through it over two major highways that intersected in Farson. Most of these trucks were oil tankers that are used to ship crude oil from the wells scattered through Wyoming to refineries in Salt Lake Cty, Utah and elswhere. This truck traffic was known for being scoff law, and for running trucks loaded with crude oil heavier than the state of Wyoming allowed on its roadways.

When I first moved to the valley I leased a 40 foot truck scale to be used by the Patrol from a farmers association. After a few weeks of running overweight trucks over the scale, and then fining the drivers heavily for the overweights it was soon known to the drivers that there was new law in town, that I was fair, but that I would throw the book at a them for breaking the law if I caught them. I soon found that my tough reputation enforced the law for me, and after the initial break in period I worked my way out of the overweight truck business because the drivers were obeying the law. I also developed a group of truck drivers who would inform me when anything of an unusual nature was happening in the local trucking industry which worked to my advantage.

One day in the spring of 1980 I received a call from a driver who stated that I had a serious problem brewing in the form of a trucking company located out of Salt Lake City, Utah named Clawson OIl Company. The legal weight limit for a five axle tanker tractor rig is 80,000 pounds maximum. My informant driver told me that Clawson Oil drivers were filling their tankers clear up to the portal on the tanks which meant that their loadswere probably weighing over 135,000 pounds, or 55,000 pounds over weight. A weight that would tear up roadways rematurely, loads that I would have to stop.

That day I made it a point to patrol east bound on Highway 28 towards South Pass with the intent of catching one of their drivers coming west bound, so I could stop the driver and check his bill of lading papers to determine for myself whether they were loading illegally, or not. About ten miles east of Farson I suddenly heard two drivers talking on their citizen band radios. Suddenly I saw two oil tankers traveling west bound towards me, so I pulled to the side of the roadway to observe them as they passed me. When they passed I noticed that the rear tractor was painted a bright fire engine red, with a big gold filigree "C" painted on the side of the hood. I deduced that this might be a Clawson truck.

I then turned around and began to follow the trucks and it was then that I could see that the rear oil tanker was so heavily laden that the frame of the trailer was almost touching the trailer axles. I picked up my CB radio microphone and keying the mic tried to reach the drivers, but neither driver would answer me. I then told the rear driver to follow me into the scales in Farson, and that I intended to weigh his truck. Neither driver responded to my cb radio transmission so I just followed along behind them as they traveled west towards Farson.

Before we reached the intersection of Highway 28 and 187 in Farson where they would be required to slow down and stop, I turned on my red lights to indicate to the driver that I wanted him to stop his truck on the edge of the roadway. Instead of pulling his truck to the right hand side of the road as the law requires, he abruptly turned left into the parking lot of a truck stop and stopped his vehicle at a diesel pump. I pulled my patrol car into a position at an angle in front of his tractor so that the driver could not continue forward, and I got out of my car. The driver exited the tractor and then violently slammed the door behind him.

I addressed him asking, "Did you see my red lights?" He returned with, "Yeah, I saw your damned light!" I then told him to get back in his truck and follow me to the scale, or I would arrest him and tow the truck over the scale. He responded by turning to his truck and locking the door and then placing his keys in his pocket. He then says, "Do it yourself!" I told him that he was under arrest and that I wanted him to put both of his hands on the front fender of his truck. He did not comply so I grabbed him and threw him against the truck and the fight was on. We wrestled for several minutes before I gained comtrol of him and placed him in handcuffs. I then restrained him in the front seat of my patrol car.

I then instructed Cheyenne Dispatch to dispatch Macy's large wrecker in Rock Springs, Wyoming 45 miles miles away to respond to Farson to haul the truck over the scales, and in the mean time I had a very angry, very vocal truck driver telling me how much trouble I was in, and that his boss was going to make me pay; using curses that I had not even heard in my tour in the Marine Corps. It took all of an hour and one half for the Macy's wrecker to get there, and in the mean while the truck driver I had under arrest was beginning to feel the pain of the handcuffs behind his back. I warned him not to move around much with the cuffs on or the pain would get worse, but he kept struggling.

The Macy's wrecker hooked up to the Clawson truck and towed it across the scales and I found that the truck weighed 137,500 pounds, 57,000 pound overweight. I instructed the wrecker driver to impound the truck in their yard in Rock Springs, and I then transported the driver to jail in Rock Springs. By the time I arrived at the Rock Springs Police Department the driver who had been in handcuffs for over three hours had a much changed and more conciliatory attitude towards me and the law.