He is still working at age 90.
A Kansas man in his nonagenarian who has been behind the wheel of commercial trucks for 60 years was recently honored as the world’s oldest living truck driver.
And despite his advanced age, great-grandfather Doyle Archer told The Washington Post he has no plans to retire anytime soon.
During his career, the married father of nine has traveled a staggering 5.5 million miles across 48 states and five Canadian provinces, according to the Guinness World Records, which has certified his incredible record.
In a phone interview Wednesday, Archer likened his longtime job to a continuous vacation exploring different parts of the United States.
“I’ve always done what other people do when they take a vacation, which is save up money all year and take a month or so to travel around the country,” the grandson, 25, and great-grandfather, 26, said in an interview. “We do that here all the time.”
He visited the Kennedy Space Center and the Johnson Space Center, drove through the mountains of the Northwest, and explored several major cities.
Archer also drove the famous Route 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles, including the original eight-mile section of the Eisenhower Interstate Highway in Kansas when it was first built.
The truck driver still vividly remembers crossing the George Washington Bridge just three or four days before 9/11 and seeing sunlight shining on the Twin Towers.
“Otherwise I would never have been able to see them,” he said of the various sights he’d traveled to.
But, he warned, “You have to work hard. You have to work long hours, sometimes inconvenient hours. Sometimes you have to drive all night.”
Archer came to the attention of Guinness World Records after a woman he worked with at Coombs checked his eligibility and helped him complete the application.
The records-tracking organization then ran a background check to ensure Archer was a legitimate nonagenarian truck driver.
The record for oldest truck driver was awarded on February 2nd. It was organized last month.
“I was happy about it. I wasn’t overly happy about it, I wasn’t crazy happy,” he said. “I just took it as a happy thing and carried on.”
Although he grew up on his family’s farm and has a degree in agriculture, he started driving trucks in the early 1960s, when gas was about 30 cents a gallon.
Currently, truck drivers are expected to drive about 70 hours over an eight-day period, he noted.
According to Guinness, Archer recently earned the title of “Million Mile Safe Driver” after driving one million accident-free miles.
“You have to be fully focused on your job,” he said.
“There’s a lot of responsibility that comes with being on the highway. You’re driving an 80,000-pound, 70-foot-long truck and you have to keep your eye on it the whole time you’re sitting in traffic.”
He’ll take a few days off over the Fourth of July holiday to spend time with Lois, his wife of 70 years, at their home in Logan, Kansas, but also plans to travel to Oklahoma and continue his journey from there.
“It’s an interesting life,” Archer said, adding: “As of now, I have no plans to retire. As I’ve said to some people, retirement is not a word in my vocabulary.”
