It’s probably not often a kid knocks on the cabin door of an 18-wheeler to offer the driver a meal, yet on Monday it happened a lot at the rest stop off Interstate 79, between Morgantown and Mount Morris, Pa.
“I overheard a conversation with my dad who went to bed hungry one night, so I just took matters into my own hands,” 13-year-old Logan Miller said
His dad, Jason, explained he couldn’t eat at the truck stop restaurant one night because COVID-19 was new, people didn’t know what to do, and the restaurant was closed for overnight sanitation.
“I just took it by surprise that a 13-year-old would want to go out and feed the truckers, but Logan is a very ambitious boy,” his mother Melissa said.
Jason was also surprised, not only that his son heard the conversation but that he recognized there was an opportunity to help. Not many truckers have the means to make their own food, he said.
Using the $100 he had from his allowance, Miller was able to get about 50 meals, which he handed out on Friday. He then went back to the truck stop on Monday and said he plans to deliver meals every Monday and Friday, from 2-5 p.m., until the money runs out or the COVID-19 pandemic is over.
Miller loves trucks and said he wants to take over his dad’s business as an owner/operator one day.
“America would stop, the world would stop, if we didn’t have truckers,” he said.
Each meal contained an Uncrustable, which is a frozen peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a bag of chips, a pack of crackers, a piece of fruit and a Slim Jim.
Both parents said they were very proud of their son.
“That was great,” Eric Leibnitz, 54, said of his surprise lunch. “I didn’t expect ‘Shorty’ to come up.”
Leibnitz, a trucker for 13 years, said Miller is proof there are still good people in the world, adding he’d never seen anything like it.
A trucker from Terra Alta and owner of a trucker video site, Hillbilly Express Media, Joseph Graham, encountered Miller on Friday and posted a video to Facebook, which has more than 740,00 views.
The story quickly spread to Transportation News Network and other media, but that’s not why Miller did it and he didn’t expect so many people to notice, he said.
Hillbilly Express Media set up a Paypal account to help fund Logan’s mission, and people interested in donating can visit hbxmedia.com/article/truck-new/logans-mission-for-truckers.html.
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