Helen's Headache

The new ODT trucking regulations were an awful blow to a pretty, 33-year-old redhead from Detroit named Helen Slocum. If no trucks can come home less than 75% loaded, what will happen to the specialized operators (beer, ice cream, etc.) whose equipment is designed for one-way delivery? Helen is such a case. Her specialty is so important that an exception may be made. An off-center Alger heroine, she delivers Navy boats.

Helen Slocum's husband Lawrence delivered new cars on a haul-away trailer out of Detroit ten years ago, and business was terrible. One day she "read in the paper about some boat races, and got to wondering how they hauled these boats around." Later she heard that Yachtsman Russell A. Alger Jr. was going to take 13 new sloops from Detroit to Charlevoix, Mich., asked for the job, got it.

Setting out to "get acquainted with all the boat people," Mrs. Slocum landed bigger & bigger jobs. Now her Boat Transit Co. has 23 tractors and trailers, some of special sizes. Her business came not only from boatbuilders like Chris-Craft at Algonac, but from private yachtsmen who wanted to sail into strange inland waters, have their boats trucked home. Blue-eyed Mrs. Slocum, president of Boat Transit Co., is no terrene "Tugboat Annie," does not drive a truck herself. Husband Lawrence does.

When the Navy began to order small craft (up to 45 ft.) from inland yards, the Slocums hauled them east to tidewater, made that their principal business. Up to now their biggest headache has been the variety of State restrictions on size and length (TIME. April 6), for most of her loads are outsize and require special permits. ODT's new return-load restrictions are giving her a worse headache; for boats are her specialty, and boats nowadays are all moving towards tidewater, not away from it.

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