Born to chase the white line, Ryan Robb was a trucker’s trucker. On Nov. 29, 2021, when Robb, 33, passed without warning, his long-haul brothers responded in force. They measured, cut, welded, painted, and mounted a stout rack on a rig—a casket carriage for a beloved 6’4”, 400 lb., big-boned country boy on his last ride.
Why did a team of truckers craft a rack for a fallen comrade and drive him to a final resting spot?
“Ryan Robb was the trucker who did it for the lifestyle, not the check,” says Allen Small, manager of Blackjack Express, LLC. “Pride of work. Devotion. Gratitude. He was like someone out of a book, except he was the real deal.”
A gentle giant atop the rumble of a sleek, blue Peterbilt 389, Robb traded the asphalt slab of the interstate for a granite headstone, and his final run was a one-way route to glory.
Going Home
Beginning at age 13, Robb worked farmland around Palestine, Ark., scratching dirt throughout his teen years in eastern Arkansas’s St. Francis County. Fieldwork and machinery maintenance were in the daily cards, but Robb was singularly consumed by a particular farm task—grain delivery behind the wheel of a truck.
Robb married Natalie Kitchens in 2007. “To know him was to love him,” she says. He would give you the shirt off his back and his last dollar if you asked. Trucking was just in his blood and all he really wanted to do was drive a truck.”
Following a welding stint in Jonesboro, and short bout of railroad work, Robb couldn’t shake the trucking bug, eventually landing a job at Blackjack Express in West Memphis, Ark. He was home.
Bitter November
Founded by Bryce Carlson, Blackjack Express, with a stellar reputation in the trucking industry, transports big and wide loads—or, more accurately, massive loads on open-deck, 130’ trailers over 13 axles, with 80-90 tires touching pavement. On any given run the Arkansas-based company may haul windmill parts, cranes, excavators, agricultural machinery, and far more throughout the lower 48.
Manager of Blackjack Express, Allen Small, 47, began hauling in the late 1980s, and secured his first truck in 1994. All told, he has encountered every stripe of truck driver, and as a veteran judge of hard work and diligence, Small immediately recognized the qualities in Robb, who started at Blackjack pulling a hopper bottom and quickly moved up the ladder to the upper tier of drivers, deservedly reaching the open-deck division.
Robb soon became a mainstay of Blackjack—not only as a trusted name on the roster of drivers, but as a physical presence at company headquarters. Despite a pay scale tied strictly to load percentage, Robb walked through the Blackjack doors every morning, rain or shine, whether driving or not. “Most guys come off a load and we never see them. They are home and they are gone,” Small says. “Ryan showed up at the office every single day, and at first, I’d ask, ‘Ryan, you’re not getting paid, but you are here?’”
Robb’s response: “You might need me for something.”
Simple truth.
“Ryan had genuine devotion,” Small continues. Every day, like clockwork, he was here, like something out of a movie. If he had to, he’d sit in the office sometimes from eight to five, just in case he could fill a need. When we needed somebody to take a company pickup up to the Ford place to get the oil changed—he’d jump in it and go do it. He never got paid for the extras and he only did them to help. That’s how grateful he was for his job in trucking. That’s how much he loved being around trucking.”
Small’s recollection is backed in every detail by Kitchens: “Ryan may have been a big boy, but lazy he was not, and work came first no matter what,” she says. “He learned that from his pops, Burl, and his mom, Joann.”
In short time, Robb moved beyond a dedicated Blackjack employee—he became a genuine friend. “Ryan was a good ol’ boy that loved to hunt and fish, and you couldn’t make him angry, and that’s good, because he was a big-boned giant of a man,” Small recalls.
The cream always rises, and in October 2021, almost five years after arrival, Robb moved up at Blackjack from a plain company rig to a borderline show truck—an eye-popping, blue Peterbilt 389 kitted with an additional $40,000 in post-dealership customization. “I can’t describe how proud he was to gain that level of achievement and get that truck,” Small says. “He and the truck fit together, both full of pride for the work in trucking.”
Watching his career trucking dreams come to fruition and just hitting stride, Robb, always concerned for others, had no inkling of the bitter November ahead: In approximately 30 days, the trucker of constant good cheer was due for his final ride.
Square One
On Nov. 29, 2021, seated in a chair in the living room of his mother, Joann, Robb unexpectedly breathed his last and sent a family into mourning—one day before his 34th birthday.
Intent on honoring Robb, Small was highly familiar with the rites of last rides. Only one year prior, the Small family had buried their patriarch, Jessie, with a last ride—casket strapped to a combine.
In Robb’s case, Small hoped to carry his friend and employee on a final ride aboard the Peterbilt, casket mounted on a rack attached to the back of the truck. With an immediate green light of approval from Kitchens and Joann, Small hit the highway to pick up a casket rack from a friend in Missouri. (The same rack had seen service in three previous trucking industry funerals.)
Arriving back in West Memphis, casket rack in tow, Small was poked by a plain question: Considering Robb’s stature, would the rack fit the casket? “I called the funeral home and asked for a measurement,” Small recalls. “Bottom line, they measured it and the casket was wider than the rack.”
Back to square one.
Working with his crew in the Blackjack shop, Small copied the basics of the Missouri rack, and bumped the dimensions to 36”-by-84”. Once the angle iron construction was completed, Small was hesitant on color: “I sent one of the guys into town to get paint—and he asked, ‘What color?’ I answered back, ‘Light gray primer and silver paint,’ even though I’d never painted anything silver in my life. Why did I say that? I don’t know, but I figured it would look sharp alongside the truck.”
The night before the funeral, Small asked Kitchens, ‘What color is the casket?’”
“Silver,” she answered.
Of course.
Just A Chance
On Thursday, Dec. 1, 2021, 11 lifelong friends—five on opposing sides and one at the back—lifted Robb 46” off the ground and onto the mounted rack at the back of the Peterbilt truck, strapping down the casket—gleaming silver on a beautiful blue. Small took the wheel and pulled onto the highway, running roughly 20 mph, bound for the cemetery and a final goodbye to a trucking brother.
River over a rock, the Robb family was overwhelmed by the tribute and respect. “The appreciation I have for Blackjack Express I can’t put into words,” Kitchens says. “We truly lost a great man. Dependable. Loyal. Quick-witted. Strong. Kind. Loving. Always got the job done. A true blessing.”
Small is grateful for the opportunity to honor his friend: “Ryan never asked for nothing, just a chance at the trucking life. There’s no doubt in my mind he would have retired here. That’s why we did what we did; that’s how much we thought of him.”
Respect and RIP
Every hour of each day, the American economy is carried by truckers, often unappreciated or unrecognized—a far cry from the cultural heyday of trucking in the 1970s and 1980s. However, a strong trucker core maintains a deep attachment to the lifestyle and love of country. No trucking; no modern America.
“When we were kids,” Small explains, “truckers were admired, and we saw the culture in Smokey and the Bandit and so many other movies or television shows. Sure, things have changed, but trucking still has so many great drivers out there that are classic hard workers who do this for the life and not only a check. They do it because they love it.”
“Ryan was never alone and that’s part of what he loved so much about working here,” Small adds. “Our whole group of guys here still don’t look at this as just a job. They do it for the love of trucking.”
Indeed, a fitting epitaph for Robb: For the love of trucking.
Respect and RIP to a trucker and prince of the road forever: Ryan Robb, 1989-2021.
