Driving Beet Truck A Yearly Event For Savage Resident

Combine a love of driving with the desire to help out neighbors, and you have Wilma Prevost, Savage, who has been driving beet truck for growers off and on for the past 40 years. She hauled her first load of beets during harvest as a senior in high school. She then drove truck off and on during the ‘60s and ‘70s, and returned to driving on an annual basis in 1999, driving for neighbors who required help at harvest.

“I grew up on a farm and drove tractor as a teenager, but the first time I drove a beet truck I was a senior in high school,” Prevost recalls. “I helped my dad harvest beets, and I really did enjoy the driving.”

Prevost began driving beet truck again in 1964, when she helped her husband get in the beet crop. “We started farming in ’63 and in 1964 I had no choice but to drive beet truck,” Prevost comments. “I had four kids and my mother-in-law in the truck with me.”

She continues, “When I started driving beet truck, the beet dump was ten miles south of Savage, along the railroad tracks. We could only load six cars each day, and when those cars were full, we were done. A train came through every day and took the full cars and left six more empty ones. If the train was late, we’d have to wait until the empty cars arrived before we could start up again.”

Prevost continued to drive beet truck during harvest every year throughout the ‘60s. She then accepted a full time job delivering the mail, a job she held for the next two decades. She did take vacation several times during those decades to drive beet truck at harvest. “I did a mail route for 20 years,” Prevost says, “but I did take vacation time three times during beet harvest in those 20 years to drive for neighbors.”

Prevost retired from delivering mail and in 1999 she resumed the practice of driving beet truck each year for neighbors, a task she looks forward to with great enthusiasm. “I’ve been driving every year since 1999,” she says. “The past four years I’ve been driving for Del Nollmeyer.”

“I love driving,” she adds. “I don’t know why I love it so much, but I do. I plan to keep on driving as long as I have my health and as long as they’ll have me. The people I’ve driven for have been so very wonderful to work for.”

Prevost feels that driving truck has become easier as manufacturers continue to make improvements on vehicles. “The first truck I drove was a five-ton truck with no power steering,” Prevost comments. “They were really hard to drive. Trucks are bigger now but they are easier to handle. I really enjoy driving the bigger trucks.”

Prevost generally delivers about ten loads of beets per shift. “It depends on the weather conditions, but I usually have 8-12 loads each day,” she says. “We do work every day that we can dig, and it usually takes about three weeks each October to complete harvest.”

She concludes, “I take all loads to the Savage beet dump. It is a bit busier there than it used to be, but we have three pilers now so we don’t have a long wait, which makes it better for all of us.”