BELFIELD, N.D. - Church bells and truck horns filled the Belfield air Thursday morning, heralding the passage of David Schmidt's final haul as a funeral procession left the town en route to Mandan, N.D. - Schmidt's casket, his truck and a caravan of over 20 other semi trucks and their drivers.
They were sending off a man who never said a bad word about anybody.
"He's a man who will never be replaced. He's an irreplaceable man," Lee Eberts, one of the drivers in the funeral procession and a friend of Schmidt's for years, said. "A great guy, never had a bad word to say about anybody. Didn't matter day or night, Dave would help anybody." Shorty Koppinger, who said he knew Schmidt "in passing" at Belfield's truck stop, had known from their first meeting that he was a man of character.
"You can tell a genuine person off the top," Koppinger said. "You could just see he was a top shelf guy."
Schmidt passed away on June 16 following a battle with cancer. A father of four, veteran of the United States Army, lover of travel and owner of a farm near Prairie, Schmidt drove truck for roughly 50 years. His son, Mike, will be taking the reigns at the head of Schmidt's trucking business, and he recalled his father being a deep reservoir of technical know-how.
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"He worked on trucks for years and everything. As far as the older stuff, he knew little tricks and stuff like that that'd make things work," Mike Schmidt said. "I learned quite a few of them, but you never stop learning."
For a whole fleet of trucks to show up to pay respects to a single man was unprecedented in the memories of any of the participants in Thursday's ceremony - though many had driven trucks for decades themselves, none had heard of anyone being honored in such a way by so many. Schmidt's casket was carried on the back of his bright red semi truck, before ultimately being transferred to a hearse for the long ride from Belfield to Mandan, where he would be interred.
"He never said a bad word about anybody. He was a hell of a nice guy. He trucked for 50 some years, a really good friend," Dennis Binstock, another close friend of Schmidt's, said. "Real good friend and he fought hard, the cancer he had, he fought but it got him. And it's hard, he was a (public relations) man, he found all our work for us."
Good memories were not in short supply from anyone in attendance when it came to Schmidt.
"There's a lot of good memories. Whenever he'd call me, I'd always be excited to go with him," Ed Cerkoney said. "He did a lot of hay hauling for people in the area. A lot of people depended on him to get their feed ... he was the most fairest person you'd ever want to know."
Perry Rettinger had both worked alongside Schmidt and hired him for tasks, describing him as punctual and honest. He said he'd miss having such good help around.
"He won't be around to help me haul my cows every summer. We used to have a get-together and hang out after we'd loaded the cows, visit and shoot the breeze," Rettinger said. "I'm gonna miss that."
Mike Schmidt said that to be honored by his friends and family with a truck escort was exactly what David Schmidt had wanted.
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"It's kind of what he was wanting: everybody to come out, clean everything up and send him off," he said. "We mentioned and called everybody and told 'em 'bring 'em in.'"
