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Epidemic of roadside `trucker bombs' litters highways, riles states

By Howard Witt
Tribune senior correspondent
Published January 22, 2007

CASPER, Wyo. -- The first thought that occurs to a driver cruising down Wyoming's long, lonely highways is that a lot of folks out here must really like lemonade, given how many plastic jugs and bottles half-filled with lemonade-looking liquid litter the roadside.


And then a third, more disturbing, revelation dawns: That's not lemonade in those bottles. It's urine.

While most of us weren't looking, a new epidemic appears to have broken out along the nation's interstate system: a plague of "pee bottles," also known as "trucker bombs," uncounted thousands of nasty soft-drink bottles and milk jugs filled with liquid human waste tossed by drivers, usually long-haul truckers, who can't be bothered to stop at restrooms.

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In defense of truckers

Spokesmen for the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, a truckers advocacy group, declined to be interviewed on the topic. But Internet discussion groups catering to truckers are alive with the most common explanation for the problem: Truck drivers are under enormous time pressures and often cannot afford to stop to relieve themselves.

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