Since I'm sitting here bored, and have the computer out (way easier and quicker than doing this on the phone) here's another tale from days gone by.
This is early 90's. I was working for Phillips 66, hauling chemicals in the US and The Canada. Because our main job was delivering the odorant for natural gas and propane, we ran team, as that was a two-man job to do without any odor releases. This was one of the solvent runs we did to keep busy if we weren't hauling odorant. It was a gravy job: expense account, hourly pay, stayed in Holiday Inns. A nice private fleet job.
So one of the guys had moved the swinging bunk from the cabovers we'd had a few years prior, over into the 9300 which replaced them. These were sit-in sleeper trucks, so instead of the bed being at your hip, it was nearly at your shoulder when sitting in the seat. A pain to get into, but those motorcycle forks did eliminate a lot of vibration and bounce.
The only problem was, this particular driver smoked like a freight train, and never brushed his teeth. And he liked to roll his head out of the bunk to say "good mornin'!" His face was right at shoulder level with yours, and a foot away, when he did. Dragon breath would be being kind, I honestly believe he could have knocked the buzzards plumb off the **** wagon with that breath.
So we go to Odessa one night, and deliver right at 0600 like we always did. He drove the 5 hours down, I did the return trip. He asked me to wake him when Rush came on at 1100, which put us somewhere just south of Tulia, Tx when it was time to get him up. I-27 is flat as a pancake and straight as an arrow along that stretch, and the light bulb went on in my head.
The 9300's had M-11s in them, with the Pace system, which was one of the first cruise controls for trucks. Still a mechanical motor, just had a servo motor on the pump where the throttle linkage hooked up. This was still 55 days, so we were governed at 63 mph, and using all of it to get home. The bear reports were all clear, so I decided it was time to get Jim, and good.
Off came my seatbelt, crack open the door, gently slide off the seat and onto the running board. He was nearly deaf, so I knew if I didn't bounce or clank anything, he'd never hear me. Got myself positioned, reached in and knocked on the curtains to wake him up. (Heavy vinyl in those binders, might as well have smacking paneling.) When he swung his head out of the bunk, the only thing in the cab was my left forearm. And he wasn't real alert after a 3 hour nap after pulling a graveyard shift, so he never noticed that. All he knew was that the space the should have held Hammer was empty, and the truck was moving down the highway.
The look of sheer panic and his face, and his frantic attempt to vacate that swinging bunk, were beyond humorous. He was dang near kissing the shifter boot, still thrashing around trying to get his feet out of the bunk, when I slipped back in the door and into the seat. By the time he his head higher than his ass, I was buckled in and cruising along like nothing had happened. He lit up a smoke in the pax seat and glared at me. And he couldn't help it, he just started laughing. "You SOB! You scared the **** out of me!"
"Who, me?"