Captain Albert Corbin was never one to complain. Not as a rookie patrolman with the South Carolina Highway Patrol, as a captain overseeing the Size and Weight Enforcement Division — or even as a widowed father balancing parenthood with patrolling when his wife died suddenly after the birth of their second child.
“He never missed the ballgames, dance recitals or school functions that mattered. Daddy just showed up,” Elizabeth Corbin wrote in her father’s nomination. “As a child, I thought that was simply what fathers did. As an adult, I understand what it must have required of him.”
Corbin, 90, who retired from the Highway Patrol in 1994 after 37 years of service, was among 13 law enforcement officers inducted Wednesday into the South Carolina Law Enforcement Officers Hall of Fame for Meritorious Service.
Like his daughter, Corbin perhaps looked to his own father in stepping up to the plate during times of hardship. His grandfather abandoned their family, and his father stepped up to provide for his mother and sisters, accepting a job as a truck driver at a young age. Corbin, too, later spent much of his career working in commercial motor vehicle safety as a patrolman with the Highway Patrol from 1957 to 1994.
When Corbin was 30 years old, his wife, Marie, died unexpectedly just one month after giving birth to their second child. At a time when law enforcement agencies were overwhelmingly comprised of men, policy did not allow accommodations for troopers who were single parents. Corbin — while still grieving his wife — was expected to continue fulfilling his responsibilities, and could not change his assignment from the night shift. But following his father’s example, Corbin did what was needed at home, and what was expected at work, enlisting family members to help care for his children while he worked nights. Eventually, he was able to transfer to the Size and Weight Enforcement Division, which provided a more family-friendly work schedule.
He spent 25 years in the Highway Patrol’s Size and Weight Enforcement Division, which is where he achieved the rank of captain. Referred to by truckers on the CB airwaves at the time as “weight watchers” or “roosters in the coop,” the Size and Weight patrolmen focused on weighing trucks and identifying those that were overweight and damaging South Carolina’s roadways.
“Our primary mission is to save the taxpayer — and that’s all of us — money by preventing overweight trucks from damaging the roads,” Corbin was quoted as saying in a news article in 1978. “They (Size and Weight patrolmen) have got their hands full. You can’t be a daydreamer on this job.”
As captain, Corbin was responsible for statewide operations of the Size and Weight Division, from planning, organization, and staffing, to reporting, budgeting, and training. But one of his key accomplishments was leading the division through a period of significant technological change, including the advent of a then-new computerized weigh-in-motion system capable of weighing trucks as they passed through a weigh station. This prevented traffic backup on the interstates, reducing delays while improving enforcement capabilities and efficiencies.
“This thing is a personal computer — it's got a screen, and it's smarter than some people I know,” Corbin told a reporter at the time, calling the new technology “the best thing since grits.”
At that time, the Highway Patrol managed size and weight enforcement of CMVs in South Carolina, while the Public Service Commission handled inspections. Corbin saw potential issues with two separate agencies regulating the same industry, and was a supporter and advocate of one agency regulating it all. By the time the Government Restructuring Act of 1993 created the Department of Public Safety and the State Transport Police, the latter of which merged the Highway Patrol’s Size and Weight Enforcement Unit with the Public Service Commission, Captain Corbin’s decades of work and development became the foundation for what we know today as the South Carolina State Transport Police.
One thing that made Corbin so effective at enforcing CMV traffic was the rapport he established with drivers, companies, and associations. His daughter, Elizabeth, believes his understanding and compassion for CMV drivers stems from the respect he had for his own father.
“He understood that there was a person behind that wheel,” she wrote. “He knew what it meant for a family to depend on the person driving it.”
Jerry Smith, who retired from the Highway Patrol and is now general manager at Associated Petroleum Carriers Inc. in Spartanburg, recalled Corbin’s compassion toward the farming community, and said he sympathized with the time constraints they faced in getting their products delivered.
“He went on the Size and Weight Unit as a necessity to continue being a single father,” Smith said. “He is a man of honor. He fulfilled his commitment as a father and as a patrolman by doing his duty.”
