OOIDA member Marloes Shoulders had all 18 of his truck tires slashed in the dark of the night at the Flying J Travel Center in Lake Park, Ga., nearly three weeks ago.
And his truck hasn’t moved since.
Shoulders, an owner-operator based in Rockford, Ill., said he was still waiting on a resolution from his insurance company, Sedgwick. He filed a police report with the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Department but said he didn’t feel safe leaving his equipment unattended with no assurance of when the case may be resolved.
“I’ve lost thousands of dollars; this isn’t right,” Shoulders said. “They didn’t just stab my tires, they stabbed pretty much every vehicle that was in the parking lot. People around the area were saying this has been happening for the past three years. I don’t want to leave my truck here, because they might say it’s abandoned. The last few nights, I’ve seen people come up to my truck and look to see if anyone was in here. It’s very scary to be a sitting duck.”
Shoulders, who was delivering a load from Florida to Georgia, was among a group of drivers to file reports with the Lowndes County Sherriff’s Office on Jan. 6 regarding tire damage at the same Flying J. Those claims revealed more than $52,000 in alleged damages to seven trucks.
Damages to Shoulders’ truck were estimated to be around $12,000.
Additionally, OOIDA has received calls from several other Association members about similar incidents of truck tire vandalism, while various media reports dating back to 2023 revealed numerous trucks have been targeted at truck stops across Georgia, Florida and Tennessee.
MJ4 Trucking LLC, owned by Shoulders, is a two-truck operation. This small business is losing money by the hour, with its owner stranded thousands of miles away.
A nightmare scenario.
“I don’t know what the future holds,” Shoulders said when he first spoke to Land Line. “I’m waiting on my insurance, but they are moving really slow.”
Considering the circumstances, a certain level of anger and/or frustration would be understandable or even expected. Yet Shoulders was surprisingly even-keel – almost positive.
“I have to just wait it out,” Shoulders said. “(The insurance company) sent someone out who took pictures and everything. It’s tough on us truckers. It’s bad enough that we aren’t making any money. What makes it worse for me is that I am a single father. My son is all the way at home. He’s wondering, ‘Where’s my dad?’”
As of Friday, Jan. 24, it had been 18 days since Shoulders’ filed a report regarding the damage to his truck tires in Georgia, and he was still waiting for the insurance money he needs for making repairs in order to return home to Illinois.
“When you’ve had almost 20 days of sitting around, you’ve thought about it all,” he said. “I’m definitely not coming back to this area at all. This was a terrible experience for me. I’ve been driving for 10 years and owned my business for almost five years. I’ve never experienced anything like this.”
No details about what security measures are in place at the Flying J in Lake Park, Ga., were available on the store’s website. Land Line reached out to Flying J for additional information, but as of Friday, Jan. 24, the company had yet to respond to the inquiry. LL
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