Hitchhiking is one of the oldest forms of transportation around. Though it can be dangerous at times, there will always be pedestrians with their thumbs out on the side of the road looking to hitch a ride from a passerby. With luck, somebody will stop and let that person into their car and drop them off at the nearest possible location.
This is distinctly different than train hopping, where a person will jump onto an empty (or empty-ish) freight car and travel that way. This is unfortunately illegal, with obvious safety concerns being the issue.
For the first time in recorded history, somebody combined these two concepts. Okay — it might not be the first time this has been done, but it’s still an interesting story.
A man was arrested in Oklahoma for jumping onto a semi-truck and riding it 100 miles to a different state
Again, there are many options that somebody can choose to travel long distances without any existing form of transportation. Legal or illegal, the list is pretty long. This guy just added to it on his 100-mile trip from Wichita, Kansas to Logan County, Oklahoma.
Last Monday, a 30-year-old named Dustin Slocum decided to hop onto the back of a semi-truck and hope for the best. The truck traveled over 100 miles on the highway, receiving multiple 9-1-1 calls along the way. The calls were so ridiculous-sounding that police troopers didn’t believe it at first. Here’s what Eric Foster of the Oklahoma Highway Patrol said.
“When you get a phone call like that, you’re like, oh, is that what they’re really seeing or is there something else going on?”
How did he do it? Apparently, it was extremely simple — he was just hanging from the back of the truck. The “joyride” came to a stop when other drivers on the road repeatedly waved the semi-truck driver down, which eventually prompted him to pull over. He was completely unaware that Slocum was clinging for dear life on the back of his vehicle.