I was driving between Melbourne and Albury very late one night on the Hume Fwy. For the non-Aussies, that stretch of the Hume is very wide, flat, and straight, so it's boring and hypnotic, especially driving alone at night. It was the middle of summer, so I was surprised to see little wisps of fog whipping through my headlight beams, but then the smell of burning plastic hit my nose and I realised it was smoke.

Up ahead, there was one other car on the road, and I could just see a tiny yellow light on the back, like a candle flame. Worried, I sped up to catch this guy, and by the time I reached him his entire muffler was on fire. I flashed my lights and honked my horn, trying to get his attention. Just as I drew up alongside him, I saw him turn to look at me, and then a HUGE gout of orange flame burst out from under the car and licked across his driver's side window.

Needless to say, he pulled over in a big hurry and I pulled over about 50 metres ahead of him. I jumped out from behind the wheel and sprinted back to him to make sure he was out of the car and safe, then back to get my phone, and called emergency services while running back to him. It was less than a minute since he'd pulled over and the entire car was a fireball. I asked if he was okay, and he said yeah, but his phone and wallet were both still inside the car. I let him use my phone to make some calls and gave him all the cash in my wallet, which wasn't much at the time, and finally continued on my way once the firefighters and ambulance arrived. Let's just say I was WIDE awake for the rest of my drive. -MCDexX

I used to travel for work doing construction. My boss was driving and I was passenger. were on our way back home from Tennessee to Illinois. Just leaving the mountains but still pretty much the middle of nowhere and we notice a couple dead deer on the road. These things are like... exploded. My boss and I say something about "that sucks, a semi must have been hauling and clipped a herd".

We get to the top of a hill and there are so many more dead exploded deer. Possibly hundreds. Definitely dozens. They didn't look like they got hit by a semi. They looked like they had sticks of dynamite put into them and lit off. Semi trucks had definitely been driving through because we didn't have to dodge any of them. And we were driving our big work truck and trailer so if we had to crush a couple it was no big deal. It went on for more than half a mile. Maybe up to a mile and a half. -kickaguard

A trucker I know claims he was driving a logging truck down a remote dirt road in the middle of a forest at around midnight when a "dog-man creature" walked out in the middle of the road. It stared at him for a few seconds plainly visible and well illuminated by all the auxiliary lights on the truck, then it just took off and disappeared into the woods on the other side of the road.

He's not a superstitious man and he rejects everything supernatural as fiction, but he 100% believes that what he saw that night was real. I've only heard him talk about this twice, he was very drunk both times he opened up about it. Just talking about it rattled him, he was clearly uncomfortable thinking back about that night. -Kitten-Eater

My dad used to drive trucks and he used to tell a story of his scariest time on the road. I'll try to do the story justice dad. He was driving up the side of a mountain that apparently genuinely resembled one ripped right from a Bugs Bunny cartoon. It spiraled up, has these rickety, flimsy metal guardrails that had smart cars been invented, they still would have not prevented even them from vaulting over the thing, let alone a semi.

It was insane o'clock and my dad was super tired but he wanted to push it so he could get home faster. What happened next woke him right the fuck back up, so much so that if I recall correctly, he had to actually take an hour break on the side of the road just to collect whatever was left of his sanity. He was making his way up the mountain when on his radio he hears what he swore was: "Flying Frenchman!" Followed by a whole bunch of hootin' and hollerin'.

My dad apparently wasn't confused by the exclamation for long as mere seconds later, two full sized, seemingly fully loaded semis came barreling down the mountain, on EACH SIDE of the road. My dad had to make a quick decision: cliff or rockface. There was hardly a shoulder but it beat almost certainly crashing into the side of the mountain, so he did what he could to avoid them the best that he could and went for the bank.

My dad said that he turned the wheel as quickly but carefully as he could toward the extremely narrow embankment on his, did everything he could to avoid skidding, and narrowly avoided the closest fucker. He apparently also narrowly avoided jack-knifing the truck AND the scariest part of all: his own semi had tipped during the procedure. All of the wheels on the one side of his truck got air and he was sure he had just tipped the truck down a bloody mountain, all so these two assholes could have a f*cked up game of chicken. -ParanoiaHime

My mom is a trucker, this is her story. She was driving through Arizona when she saw what she thought was leaves blowing across the road in the distance. This puzzled her since there's mostly pine trees in northern Arizona. When she finally got to the "leaves" she realized that they were migrating tarantulas, 1000's of them.

There were so many of them that her truck was sliding on their guts so she had to slow down. She stopped at the first truck stop and told her co-driver to fuel up (he was sleeping at the time) because she wasn't going to step foot outside after what she just saw. Her co-driver was pissed since it was technically his time off, and he thought she was crazy, until he saw the tarantula guts and legs caked in the inside wheel well of the truck. -digitalmarketeramil

Long-haul trucking for my firm is done by a dear friend of mine. He awoke surrounded by police in a parking lot a few months ago. 15 feet from his pickup, this dude had been shot and dumped. -Whoseed12

I service fire equipment, so I drive a box truck, and cover parts of PA, NY, OH, MD, and WV. I was in rural NW PA, returning from a service call and heading towards the interstate to go home. On the way to this customer, I saw a small pickup truck on the interstate whose right rear tire was steadily deflating. A mile or so before my exit, they pulled off to the side. I didn't stop to see if they needed help, and felt a little bad about it.

As I drove down this dark, twisty road, I passed a Dodge Durango pulled over into a barn driveway. There was a person lying on the ground behind it, struggling with something. It looked like the guy was trying to change a tire or get the spare out from under the Durango. Remembering the pickup from earlier, I decided to turn around and see if he needed help. I pulled into the first driveway I saw, about 1/4 mile down the road, turned around, and headed back. Halfway back, the Durango passed me, going the direction I had originally been headed.

I got back to where I had seen the Durango, planning to turn around again, but as I swung into the driveway, my headlights caught a figure lying motionless in the snow. I stopped and jumped out just as the figure sat up. It was a woman, maybe in her 40s, in a thin, torn black skirt and top. Her hair was mussed, her eye was starting to swell, she had red marks on her throat, and her lip was bleeding. I helped her up, got her into my truck, and cranked up the heat. I had taken my jacket off, so I gave it to her, and she covered her torso and arms.

She didn't want to say anything. Her throat was sore, and she was badly frightened. I called 911, and they dispatched a police car. I gave her a bottle of water, and she whispered, "Thank you", then sat with her head bowed and eyes closed. It took about 15 minutes for the police car to get there, and she stayed silent. As the car pulled in, she said, mostly to herself, "He's gonna arrest me." The trooper walked up and motioned me to exit, asked her if she needed an ambulance (she declined) then asked me what had happened.

I explained what I had seen. He wrote everything down, then talked to her for a few minutes. He helped her out of the truck and into his car. She quietly thanked me for coming back, because she thought that guy meant to kill her. As far as I know, she wasn't arrested. She was pretty beat up, and the trooper spoke and handled her as if she were the victim of an assault. It was almost certainly a transaction (sex or drugs) that had gone badly. I never found out what had happened. I watched the news outlets for that area for a while, but never found anything. -Jef_Wheaton

A logging truck accident in Texas. It totaled 3 semi's all together and multiple logs went through the backside of a cab and likely smashed the driver in front or decapitated them. Minimum of 3 fatalities were on the news for that accident and I felt awful seeing the debris and damage. I'm terrified of log trucks now and I'm OTR through many states. It had the final destination feel to it. -Blackberry_1743

At 16, I was on the road with dad every summer, because "You have to learn sometime, and this is how my dad taught me." Snowstorm. KANSAS. Do you know where they can't drive in the snow, during a storm? KANSAS. White knuckle tight as I pass wrecks and cars and OTHER TRACTOR TRAILERS WHO HAVE JACKNIFED, I begged dad to take over, but there was nowhere to pull over, so I had to muscle through.

Looking out the driver's side window, I noticed a family in a caravan going....backwards. I locked eyes with the father, who locked eyes with me and just gave me a bewildered, sad little smile before veering off hard to the left in a puff of white powder and disappearing from view. I'm sure they were fine, but I can still see his face to this very day. -UncleCoyote

My wife's grandfather hauled fruit and potatoes across the northwest and central plains. From what he would talk about, I swear he was a serial killer. He had found or been questioned about a half dozen deaths at rest stops. Most, if not all were determined suicide. -LanTechmyway

In 2017 on one of my routes I had stopped at Love’s gas station in Emerson, Georgia maybe 20 minutes outside Atlanta. I had been stopped for about an hour just resting and eating some fast food when a woman came knocking on my door. I opened it and she looked homeless and pretty old like in her 50s or 60s. I asked her if I could help her and she was like “I think we can help each other” and I said how so?

And she proceeds to proposition me paying her for sex which I declined and sent her on her way. I continue to rest and eat and play on my phone for another 30 mins when someone comes to my door and opens it and attempts to rob me in a ‘scream’ mask. It was obviously the old lady from before. I push her away and lock my door and crank it up. I assumed she ran off somewhere cause I could no longer see her.

After the truck was ready I pulled off and started driving. Soon cars next to started trying to get my attention and honking and pointing to the back end of my truck. I pull over and when I come to a stop I see someone jump and start running...it was that same lady. This crazy woman was hanging on to the back of my truck while I was driving. It was just a really odd experience. -MrTumnus__

Had a family member who was a trucker for a fireworks company in the 80s. They regularly had to make deliveries from the east coast to Los Angeles. Shipping these things to California meant many drives through the open desert of the American southwest. They have claimed to see tons of weird stuff out there, from glowing orbs, unexplained lights and weird animals in the dark. The desert has a way of messing with the human mind but one night a bunch of floating orbs on the horizon turned out to be legit.

They saw a bunch of orange orbs crossing the highway a mile or so ahead. It turns out that a bunch of tumbleweeds had caught fire in a forest fire several miles away and were flying across the highway ahead. They had to drive down this open desert highway at night while being on the lookout for flaming tumbleweeds. Not really something you want to maneuver around when you are carrying fireworks in your trailer. -yinzerthrowaway412

A completely unmarked semi, no dot #, no license plates, nothing. It was escorted by vans with heavily armed people. -skeltor007

I saw a young girl being beaten in the back of a car badly...closed fists to the face repeatedly clear as day even though it was night my lights lit up there car. Followed them hitting the horn, got number plate and rang police but they got away. Police called me the next day to say they had investigated and was told the girl was having a medical emergency and was fine. -huddo76

Not my story, but my best buddy freshman year was a trucker. His worst story was when he was going down to Georgia, just a normal trip of diapers and baby wipes. He spent a good long day traveling with a man who was carrying a full load of gasoline. The trip was a week there, and my buddy and this gas tanker guy spent the last 6 hours on the road together, shooting the shit through the radio and what not. After nearly a full day of talking, my buddy gets a call from the tanker guy, and my friend says the words ran his blood cold:

“Hey buddy, my brakes are out.” My buddy gets on the radio, let’s the other truckers know, they try to cordon off the passengers behind him while police can make their way ahead of him, clearing the road. My buddy loses line of sight as they shut down the freeway, as there is now a very large bomb with no stopping power barreling down a popular freeway. They get the all clear to go ahead, the situation has resolved, and by the time my buddy gets to the emergency stop section of the freeway, he sees that the entire section is now a 50 foot wide crater. Metal and dirt everywhere. But, there was not a single injury or casualty save for the brave tanker guy who drove headfirst towards his death to prevent any others. -reynosomarkus