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Oregon Trucking Associations, Inc.
Oregon Truck Dispatch
AT THE AGE OF 90, BILL CALL HAS
SEEN LOTS OF CHANGES
in the
trucking industry in Oregon—and he
personally helped make his fair share
of them.
Bill and Dolores Call transformed
Reddaway Truck Line from a mom-
and-pop short-haul operation into
one of the largest carriers on the
American west coast, at a time when
Oregon’s entire trucking industry was
stifled by regulations from the horse-
and-buggy era.
Growing a trucking company was
difficult under those conditions, and
Bill discovered he had the skills of a
diplomat as well as those of a trucker.
By the time he retired, he personally
knew most of the important people in
the industry from Salem, Oregon to
Washington, DC—and Reddaway was
serving the I-5 corridor between
Vancouver, BC and San Diego.
If you claimed Bill Call grew up in a
truck, you wouldn’t be far wrong. His
dad drove for Morgan Truck Line (it
later became the Rand Line) out of
Cloverdale, Oregon, in the 1920’s. Bill
can recall riding in the cab of a solid-
tire truck as his father negotiated the
marginal Tillamook County roads,
including sections of “corduroy”
where timber had been laid down as
a roadbed.
The freight business was changing
rapidly in the teens and twenties of
the last century. For the most part,
freight arrived in Oregon on ships,
via the Panama Canal, or on trains—
but for ships and trains, the job ended
at the dock or the railhead. Beyond
that point, big wagons pulled by
teams of horses (hence “teamsters”)
had always moved the heavy freight,
and one-horse drays were used for
lighter deliveries. Motor trucks could
do either job, something that the
railroads were quick to understand.
The result was regulation, both at the
Federal level (Interstate Commerce
Commission) and by the State of
Oregon (Public Utility Commission).
The ICC was established in 1887 to
guarantee consumer rights and keep
standards high.
Oregon’s regulators did something
similar. Long-haul carriers were
heavily restricted, and short-haul
firms were allowed authority to
operate within certain areas—usually
a matter of picking up at a dock or
railhead and driving goods back to a
home territory. Reddaway’s authority
was Portland-to-Oregon City and
within Clackamas County.
Bill enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps
in 1943 at the age of 17 and arrived in
the South Pacific with the 3rd Marine
Division Tank Battalion in time for
campaigns on Guam and Iwo Jima. At
war’s end he completed his military
service in China, then spent two years
as a construction worker in Alaska.
He re-enlisted in the Marines in 1950,
where, in a motor transport battalion,
he was part of the Inchon and Chosin
Reservoir operations.
Back in civilian life in 1951, he went
to work at Pierce Freight Lines as an
over-the-road and city driver and in
BILL CALL
Keeping Trucking History Alive
By Robin Will, Historian
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