The Last Roundup

Preface

After visiting my tax guy last winter and seeing how low my income was for the third year in a row, I thought to myself, “Self, how much worse could I do on Social Security???” So I set out to discover the answer.

I grossed about $42,000 driving truck in 2014. After adding the Social Security my wife was about to start drawing; a retirement account I was eligible for from a company at which I was employed (inexplicably) for more than five years; and my own Social Security benefit I learned that I could make slightly more than $42k. Dayyum! Make about the same money – actually more because I wouldn’t have SSI or Medicare withheld – and not have to be gone for two weeks at a crack for mediocre miles and long periods of just sitting?  Sold!

So the numbers shouted their message and the decision was made. I would embark on my last tour and draw my last check as a working man in September.

Of course there was good news and bad news. Bad news first – Social Security is paid in arrears. Actually, in my case, almost two months in arrears. My first check (actually automatic deposit) wouldn’t hit on the fourth Wednesday in OCTOBER. Also, if I made more than $1,310 in September I would be penalized. So I would have to go almost TWO months without income before I could start living like a retired man.

The good news – my wife would be eligible for an additional spousal benefit of almost $300 a month. All in all – YIPPEE!

Leaving Home for the Last Time

So I departed Houston the morning of Monday, August 10th. I knew this would be my last tour but thought I wouldn’t be getting back to the house until August 28th or even 29th knowing the tight “planning” our “planners” practice.

I would be loading at the worst shipper in the country. This plastics company abuses drivers worse than any other shipper I, personally, have seen. They take trucks on a first come, first served basis. Appointments? Mere suggestions. They make you wait for a minimum of two hours and then take another couple of hours to load you. During the loading part you may NOT stay in your truck. Even worse, you may not leave the truck running. This means that if it is 100 degrees outside, the interior of your truck will be 130 degrees-plus by the time you’re loaded and ready to pull out.

The last time I left after being at home I picked up at this armpit of a shipper. It’s a two hour deadhead from Houston and I had to wait for 3 1/2 hours outside the gate. No rest room. Only a port-a-potty – that was barely a hundred degrees. Thank heavens I didn’t have to Number 2. When the time finally comes you are not directed to the warehouse, you follow a pilot truck back to the appropriate building. Is it hard to find? NO! Left. Right. Left. You can see the warehouse from the parking area. But we obediently follow the pilot who then tells you to wait in parallel lines until you are given a dock number to back into.

This last time I got backed in fairly quickly but it took THREE HOURS to get me loaded. There are four doors so four of us poor sap truckers have to exit our trucks and wait in the warehouse. I was the only one who took in a bag with my “meltable” food items. For my load, they had to get the pallet loaded with 50 pound bags hauled to the auto-turntable where they carefully wrapped it with cardboard and plastic sheeting. Why they couldn’t do this in advance is a mystery, but trust me when I tell you after you see the first pallet full of bags of plastic pellets wrapped, the entertainment value is gone. Of course, the warehouse workers had to take a lunch break in the middle of my load which accounted for a wasted 30 minutes.

After I was loaded I had to wait another 30 minutes for the paperwork and then be piloted back to the front gate because, ya know, I totally forgot where I started a few hours earlier. I was scaled -empty -on the way in and then weighed again on the way out. It’s only for them. They won’t allow drivers to get axle weights because they only care about total weight. We are required to stop at a TA about 30 miles away before we can officially begin the drive to our final destination. Fine.

After scaling at the TA I was a bit heavy on my drives so I tweaked the tandems and hit the road … a whopping 40 miles up U.S. 59 to a Pilot where I ended my day around 15:30. Of course I had hours of drive time left but would have gotten to Houston in the middle of rush hour which would have wasted AT LEAST 90 minutes and pegged my blood pressure. Plus I wouldn’t have gotten to a truck stop at a decent enough hour to find a parking spot. Better to shut down early and get an early start.

A Short Ride to Laredo

However, that was last time. This time I went to the loading facility at Gate 2 which was a heckuva lot quicker, at least the last time I picked up at Gate 2. This time wasn’t quite as quick, but I was on my way down to Laredo, not the misery of Houston, where I would be dropping my trailer at our terminal and picking up another load from there. Based on my total weight and the approximate weight on my drives I adjusted my trailer tandems and headed southwest. No official truck stop scale. The route I’d be taking included no freeways and no Tier 1 Inspection or weigh stations. (Actually I just made that Tier part up, but I didn’t remember any big time weight stations between Port Lavaca and Laredo.)

Ending the day in Laredo usually means a stay at the company terminal which means a sure thing parking spot and the terminal offers a free IdleAir connection. So it was with this visit.

Before morning I had my next load bound for greater Kansas City. Since my route would take me through Joplin and I still had not been counselled for an incident in Laredo (a parked trailer at a forwarder’s lot – without warning – crashed into my passenger side rear view mirror – sigh) I was instructed to actually stop at the Death Star in Joplin so they could deal with delinquent me. (Bad driver. Bad.) I tried to beg off until the end of the month and thereby avoid this whole exercise in futility, but they didn’t buy it.

I hate going to the home terminal. It always costs at least half a day’s worth of driving. This time would be no exception.

At Joplin drivers are required to drive through the inspection building where they actually do a valuable job of inspecting your trailer and, to a lesser degree, your tractor.

But I digress. I was a full day on the road leaving Laredo and after more than 600 miles spent yet another night in the Loves in Eufala, Oklahoma. I was up before the sun and arrived in Joplin at 07:30. After a short wait at the inspection barn where the techs found stuff wrong with both the trailer and my tractor I dropped my trailer in Row 6 and drove the tractor to the appropriate building and stopped in the lead tech’s office to add to their fix-it list.

Last Stop at the Death Star

From there I trekked to the Death Star safety office where, for no apparent reason, I waited for 30 minutes only to be taken into a conference room where my safety advisor spent a grand total of six minutes telling me my incident wasn’t the end of the world and that I should head over to the Driver Lounge where other safety / training personal would try to reprogram my reckless ways, thus making me “wreckless.”

Once checking in with this new safety crew I was ushered into the training room where I was required to watch a video on – wait for it – backing.

Any new information?

No.

Then I was introduced to a computer monitor outside the safety offices among the break tables used by other drivers just hanging out between loads or during the time their truck was being maintained or repaired. This means everybody walking by would see me at one of the “terminals of shame” and know I was nothing but a safety slacker who was doing penance. This video viewing was accompanied by a series of quizzes to make sure I was comprehending the material. Again, any new information? Nope.

I figured the time I was wasting was of no significance since I would otherwise spend the time sitting and waiting for my truck repair ./ maintenance anyway. As it turned out, my truck would remain in the shop for more than two full days. I spent the rest of the day hanging out, and …

Workplace Injury

… making contact with the company Workers Compensation specialist.

A Brief Digression

About five or six weeks earlier I was dropping and hooking in Cleveland, Tennessee and injured myself trying to reengage the trailer tandems lock after sliding them forward as far as they would go. This particular trailer was a newer one that had aerodynamic skirts and a pull-out release (or locking / unlocking rod) that either engaged or released the locking pins. Of course the locking pins were in the unlocked position and I had to lock them again, else the tandems would slide all the way to the rear as I was cruising down the highway. (This has happened several times before and it never failed to startle me just short of making me pee in my pants when the tandems slam against the backstop.)

The normal way to release this kind of lock is to pull out and up on the on the handle and it pops the pins right out. If the pin is aligned with a hole, the lock is complete. If not, you just have to leave the trailer brakes on and either back up or drive forward until the pin pops through a hold. Well it wouldn’t be that ease. With the tandems all the way forward I had to reach around the skirt to get my hand on the pull-out. And it was wedged pretty good. I could not move it. So I tried a little harder. Still couldn’t budge it because I just didn’t have the leverage or a decent angle. I gave it one more try and ERK … I felt something pop in my back between my shoulder blades. This pop was followed by a sharp, stabbing pain. Shoot! I retrieved my crowbar and just hammered the pull-out into the proper position. I was on my way in minutes with an incredibly full but exceedingly light trailer. (

Long story short, even this many weeks later, my back still hurt. Not all the time. Just when I hit a certain position. Or when I took a deep breath. I figured since I was in Joplin, with a little time on my hands, I’d get this pain checked out. I didn’t want to retire with an injury and, because I hadn’t gotten it checked out, be in pain for the rest of my life with a cracked rib or torn something. The Workman’s Comp specialist arranged a visit to the company’s occupational medicine where x-rays were negative and I was released to drive again but advised to check back if things didn’t improve over the next couple of weeks.

Phshew!

Once I  knew I was likely going to survive I checked with the head tech who told me my truck would be in the shop for at least a day and a half and would be spending at least a few hours at a local Cummins dealer for a little recall work. He was sending me over to the motel for at least one night. Cool. Comfortable bed. Nice shower that I wouldn’t have to go outside for. And – bonus! – a hot breakfast in the morning. I gathered enough of my stuff to get me through the night and boarded the company shuttle that made the circuit to Walmart, a couple of restaurants, a couple of motels, and Sam’s Club.

My motel room didn’t start out cool -it being a west-facing room, it being 95+ degrees outside, and the AC being turned off  – but after 30 minutes or so it became livable. I spent that time hiking a couple of blocks to the Sam’s down the street and by the time I got back to the motel I needed the cool that my room was now beginning to provide.

After a lazy evening watching a real (though low def) television and surfing the web on the motel’s wifi, I took a nice long shower and hit the sack. Breakfast the next morning was decent and I caught the 8:30 shuttle back to the terminal where I learned that not only was my truck not ready, it was likely to remain out of service for at least 24 hours. I was not shocked.

So I headed on over to truck assignments to see if there was a tractor I could recover, preferably in a galaxy far, far away. They found one. Unfortunately, it was at our terminal in West Memphis, Arkansas … my least favorite Con-way terminal of all. I’ve been through the place maybe 10 times over the last 12 months and never had a timely turnaround or clean getaway. The other downside of this retrieval was backroads coming and going. The driving to Memphis part would actually be a pleasure – it was a nice day and the route scenic. And I’d be in a RENTAL CAR. The return would be a bitch – lots of hills and a goodly number of small towns to drive through.

The Recovery

The recovery folks set me up with a nice Enterprise rent-a-car. They “picked me up.” Before leaving Joplin I first drove to my tractor, which was by this time parked in a Cummins (engines) dealer service bay located next door to our terminal. It was lunch time. I drove up to the open door. Retrieved what I thought I would need out of my tractor and was about to leave when I thought, “Hey, anybody could waltz in here and take whatever they wanted and no one would be any the wiser.”

So I walked to the shop office just to let them know I was here and what I was doing. I spoke to what I assumed to be the shop foreman who obviously didn’t give a rat’s ass whether I was there or not.

With (almost) everything I needed, I left Joplin and made my way to West Memphis with a single, quick stop at a Walmart in Pocahontas, Arkansas.

I was not paid for the miles I drove in the rental car – only for the hours driven at a whopping $10 per.

I arrived in West Memphis a little after 6:00. After transferring my non-meltable gear into the truck I would be retrieving and checking with the local dispatcher I passed through a Super 8 next to Southland Casino (no non-smoking room available) and found a room across I-40 at a Ramada. No hot breakfast in the morning but the room was decent and I was only a mile or so from the terminal.

The dispatcher had found a load for me to take back to Joplin but it wouldn’t be ready for me until late in the morning. Super. The West Memphis Curse.

I slept in and caught a lame breakfast in the motel lobby. When I got to the terminal I still had hours to wait before I had to leave for my pickup.

The only good news in all this low-grade misery was the recovery tractor was absolutely spotless. The interior looked like it had never been used. MUCH cleaner than my own tractor (although in my own defense this unit had obviously never had a dog on board).

I lolled around for a couple of hours and finally hooked up to an empty (that I had selected and swept out the previous evening) and made my way to the shipper where I picked up a load of paint (which is a liquid, therefor HEAVY) bound for Carthage, Missouri, a short hop from our Joplin terminal. Since the load wasn’t scheduled to deliver for a few days I was instructed to just drop the load at the terminal. Another (probably local) driver would get it to the receiver and I would be free to pick up another load.

Since I was driving back to the Mother Ship it really didn’t matter how late I got in. There would be a place to park and clean restroom facilities where I could end my day.

The pick up was a only slightly nastier than usual – tight dock; had to wait for the workers to get back from lunch; couldn’t keep the truck idling during loading (and it was hot with my windshield facing directly into the sun) – but I got loaded and set out for Joplin.

Uneventful trip back. I arrived after dark. My truck was fixed and waiting for me. I transferred my stuff and checked with local dispatch for my next load. Nothing available at that time, I was told, check back in the morning. Shortly after I got back to my truck and tucked myself in for the night I heard a message alert from my Qualcomm. I foolishly got up to see what had come in.

A Northbound Load

Yay, they found a load for me.  (This would be the last “Yay” for awhile.)

Boo, the load didn’t pick up until late morning.

Let me reiterate on a continuing theme. I like to start early and finish early. This would be another load that would be late starting and force me to drive past the time when truck stop parking spots are readily available.

Boo, again. The load didn’t deliver until late morning two days hence – Monday morning so there would be no opportunity for early delivery – in Winona, Minnesota, a mere 595 miles up the road. I could’ve done it in a day. There would be more boos coming. This was after all The Last Roundup.

So I slept in for the third day in a row. I took a leisurely breakfast at the company cafeteria. I found out that my incoming load would be delayed until at least 13:00. Boo. I don’t even remember what I did for the day until I was finally able to hook up my trailer at shortly after noon. I figured I’d drive to a Pilot just north of KC and pack it in early. I’d then take off early and get to a small, no-name truck stop about 90 minutes from the final.

I might mention here – oh hell, I will mention here -the main reason I wanted to get my truck into the shop was apparently not yet fixed. I discovered this less than an hour into my trip. The check engine light had been on, pretty much non-stop, for the last seven or eight months. Joplin had had a go at it some time ago and the KW dealership in Laredo gave it a shot as well. In the word of a typical Laredoan, NADA. The light by itself wouldn’t have been a problem – to me, anyway. I mean it was usually off again most mornings, but after a few hours on the road, usually when climbing a hill, I could sense a loss of power and the light would pop back on. Other than a probable loss of fuel economy it was no skin off my back. Fuel economy. Hmmm. Remind me to return to this topic later.

Getting through KC on the early end of rush hour was untaxing and I pulled into the Pilot in Kearney, Missouri just after 16:00. Plenty of spots. Close to the store. It being shower night and me having plenty of shower credits I got clean and cuddled up with my laptop and the world wide web. I watched at least one movie on Netflix and listened to some classic rock on YouTube.

Since my next day’s driving would only amount to 370 miles I tried to sleep in. Sleeping in was getting to be very tiring. I was up before 06:00 and, with a 24 ounce Philmor cup of Pilot coffee in hand, on the road 3o minutes later. I looked for interesting places to stop. I felt a little bit like Jeff Gordon on his “last race at   fill in the blank racetrack   .” I felt imaginary people calling for me to stop at places I had driven by a dozen times but never stopped. The only new stop was at an Iowa Welcome Center off I-35 in south Iowa. Big whoop.

I hit Des Moines about right and fueled up at a Petro in Albert Lea, Minnesota. I’d stopped here before for a mechanical issue. It had real rustic-looking facade and was sparkling Minnesota clean. I would miss this Petro. Another hour and a little bit later I pulled into the Amish Market Square on the south side of I-90 in St. Charles, Minnesota. I had hoped to hook up with a high school classmate who was living in Rochester – not that far away – but he and his wife had plans.

Quick aside

I enjoy getting in touch with old friends and when I make initial telephone contact most of them say they would LOOOOVE to get together, BUT …

I get it. I am usually calling within 24 hours of getting to their town – this constitutes last minute and people do have plans. But dang, when I’m getting to town at 1:30 in the afternoon and my “friends” say they have plans for the evening, I think, I’m not necessarily interested in spending hours and hours in conversation and reminiscence. A couple hours of polite banter would probably be quite enough. As a rule, after a couple of even polite declines from friends from one of my past lives I’ll just stop calling. While I’d love to hook up and catch up, I’m really just a pussy who can’t take the rejection.

For those handful of old friends who did carve out a couple of hours to come and see me, I really, REALLY did appreciate it. Thank you (east to west) Frank, Cub Scout, Timmer, Bob, Deano, Don, Val, Gayle, Ty, Rudy, and Michael. Roald, I appreciate you too because even though I believe you sincerely wanted to get together, it was my fault we didn’t because I snagged a load that took me back out of Green Bay before we could hook up. Phil, you’re borderline (smile).

So I spent many hours at this tiny truck stop with a two-holer men’s room. I would’ve loved to walk to downtown, small town St. Charles but it was just too many steps away. I did take a little hike on a county road west of the truck stop. It was so quiet. And I gazed over corn fields as far as the eye could see. I also tracked a nice thunderstorm through the area. In fact, it was still lightly raining when I pulled out in the morning. The upside to my departure was the clerk in the truck stop waved me out with my coffee refill – no charge. Thank you clerk who may have been (but probably wasn’t) Amish.

I pulled into Winona a around 07:30 and made my way to the receiver on the industrial side of the tracks. My NaviGo wanted to take me down a “No Truck” residential street so I ended up snaking my way through the industrial area, criss-crossing railroad tracks to the poorly marked receiver.

When I arrived, it had stopped raining, but by the time I checked in and started to back my truck up to the dock 15 minutes had passed and it was pouring.  After breaking the seal and opening the trailer doors I was quite moist. Before I could pull forward into position so I could back the last few truck lengths and bump the dock, a handicapped employee pulled into my rearward path and spent another 10 minutes maneuvering himself into his office after which his driver cleared the lane and I finally got back to the dock.

Of course at that moment it stopped raining.

Forty five minutes later I was empty and had collected my paperwork. It was 08:30.

Delayed Load Back South

My next pickup was less than two miles away with a pick up appointment scheduled for – wait for it – 17:00, eight and a half stinkin’ hours later. What could I do? No truck stops within 30 miles. I didn’t want to stay at the receiver. I couldn’t score a different earlier load. So I crept the almost two miles to the next shipper, parked in the street, clicked on my four way flashers, walked to the warehouse door, knocked and tried to charm an early load.

“Maybe,” they lied, but it would definitely not happen before noon. I had located a Walmart mile away so I parked along a side street on the north side of the building and hoofed it to my discount supercenter of choice. I didn’t need much, but I wasn’t ready for a nap and what else was I going to do? As a bonus there was a Menard’s Supercenter right next door to the Walmart. Again, I really didn’t need anything from Menard’s but they have tons of cool stuff and I thought one of their displays might trigger some ideas for post retirement projects.

An hour and a half later I was back at the truck and it was still only 10 a.m.

From what I could tell, out of the six warehouse docks, only two were being used. One for UPS and FedEx comings and goings. The other was for 18-wheelers who looked mostly to be loading. I can’t vouch for any activity while I was “meditating” in my bunk.

At half past noon I knocked on the shipping door again. Nope. They might get to me by 16:00. Sigh. Now I started sweating where I would spend the night. I didn’t want to stay at the shipper after loading – no facilities. The Amish paradise where I had spent the previous evening was starting to look pretty good even though it only had two holes. Then I remembered the Petro in Albert Lea. There wouldn’t be a traditional spot available but they had paid reserved parking. Hmmm. The other advantage of a night at the Petro was it was shower night and since I had just fueled there I had a shower credit. Bingo.

As I watched other trucks show up empty and leave full – they evidently had earlier appointments – I struggled to fight the boredom. Just before 18:00 I was finally called to back up to the door. And two hours later (TWO HOURS!!) I was finally loaded and after another 30 minutes(!) I had my paperwork and was ready to roll. It was so overcast that the streetlights were already on.

My load was due at the Lowes Distribution Center (LDC) in Mount Vernon, Texas whenever I chose to get there – a drop & hook – so I could get there when I got there. That part would not be a problem. I was already thinking ahead to what would certainly be an LDC pick  up bound for a store somewhere south and west of Mount Vernon. Based on past experience I was hoping for McAllen or Brownsville although odds were it would be Bryan or San Antonio.

At any rate I fondly departed Winona in full dark. I wound my way back to I-90 in a light rain and an hour and a half later I was pulling into the rustic Albert Lea Petro. I had reserved a parking spot along the way so at half past 10 I parked in the nearest fuel lane and went into the fuel desk for my assigned place. A nice clerk took my payment and told me a nice lot attendant would guide me into my slot. Everybody was Minnesota nice in this Minnesota clean truck stop.Twenty minutes later I was rest roomed, teeth brushed, contacts cased and in my bunk.

To coin a phrase, I was TYE-ERD! It had been a long day and I was whipped, even though I just sat most of the day (and worked in an hour long nap). I have found that no matter what you do for a living, it’s more tiring to be bored and not working than steadily working – even for long hours. In other works, when you’re away from home, not driving is much harder work than driving.

The next morning after inserting contact lenses, brushing teeth and filling my coffee mug I went to the breakfast buffet to get my usual three dollah cheap ass to-go breakfast. Boo, bummer. Unlike every other Petro I had patronized over the last three years, this outfit charged the same for a to go as they do for a stay and eat all you can eat breakfast. Normally to go is sold by weight and is much cheaper for a reasonable quantity of food. But this Petro was Minnesota cheap so I returned to the food line and topped off my Styrofoam container. It would be good for a breakfast and one or two additional meals.

After a leisurely breakfast in my truck I fooled around until my 10 hour break was complete and drove south through Kansas City, southwest on I-44 at Joplin (no stop at the death star on this leg) and south on U.S. 69 at Big Cabin, Oklahoma. As the sun was sinking slowly in the west I pulled into a Flying J in Checotah, OK. The place was half empty and I found a nice convenient parking spot.

It was an unscheduled shower night. In fact I was showered on my way into and out of the store and slept that night to the patter of rain on my cab.

It was raining lightly when I woke up and after my morning routine I was on the road. It was still dark and as I passed the Love’s in Eufala, where I had spent many nights, when the skies opened up. South of McAlester I picked up the Indian Nation Turnpike that would take me to Hugo, OK, where I would wend my way to Mount Vernon via back roads. It was rainy and dreary but scenic in a rural Texas sort of way.

I pulled into the LDC a bit before 10:00. This facility is a fussy sort of drop in that you better get there at a time other than shift change. If your timing is off, coming or going, you just sit and wait for up to 30 minutes. It has only happened to me once and I have been at this facility a lot.  I try to plan ahead. A safety vest is required and they have people who physically go to your trailer and break your seal. They assign you a specific slot for your loaded trailer and tell you what and where you will pick up an empty – or your next load.

The one helpful thing they were doing when I first went to this LDC was to display all the locks they had to cut off trucks in order to get to the loads. Because most of the deliveries are drop & hook, there were dozens of loads a month that got parked in their designated slots with padlocks still in place. Having part-timers disease myself, I have left a loaded trailer all locked up on four different occasions, two of which cost me money in replacing the cut off / destroyed / thereby rendered useless lock. The exceptions were:

• Naperville, IL – The receiver called Stevens which called me to tell me I had left the lock on a dropped trailer. I was 20 miles away but gladly returned to the shipper to retrieve my property.
• Lancaster, TX – I left a lock on a Con-way trailer I left at our terminal. Because they had the master key, they were kind enough to remove the padlock from the trailer and hang onto it until I passed back through the terminal 5 or 6 weeks later.

Since they were now dealing with the incoming seal I guess the would also catch a padlock so let’s call it square. But I digress from my parade of misery. Before I left this DC I got the good news and the bad news.

Good: Dispatch had a load assignment for me and it picked up at this DC.

Bad: The load wasn’t ready and besides didn’t deliver until 16:00 the following day in San Antonio, less than 400 miles away.

Screw it, I bobtailed to a Loves a couple of miles away and packed it in for the day. I would pick up my trailer in the morning and be in San Antonio by noon the next day. Needless to say, it being 20 minutes shy of noon, it was another looong day. Movies, nap, reading. Rinse. Repeat

Another Slow Motion Load Heading Farther South

At zero dark thirty the next morning I picked up my trailer, weighed it at the DC scale and arrived at the Lowes on the north side of San Antone by noon. The receiving crew was very nice and got me backed up to the dock within 30 minutes.This gave me time to walk to the HEB Supermarket next door and pick up a couple of bananas.

By the time I left I actually had my next load, livestock feed, picking up in Seguin, Texas – less than an hour away. And that was the end of the good news for awwhile.

The bad news was that it didn’t pick up until the next morning and involved three drops in south Texas, the nearest being an 08:00 a Tractor Supply 50 miles from the mill and the farthest being a store in Brownsville. I hate multiple drops. But it got worse which I’ll get to a bit later.

I tried to call the shipper on my way out of San Antonio but couldn’t raise anyone. Since I knew I wouldn’t be able to deliver early anyway, I drove as far as the Loves on the west side of Seguin. That would leave less than eight miles for my drive in the morning. Needless to say I had another long, boring afternoon at a truck stop. I had one last Loves shower credit left and I burned it so I was clean and fresh as I turned in at sundown.

Waking up before sunrise meant I arrived at the pick up before sunrise. It was a cold, wet morning and the feed plant had a dirt / gravel lot with very poor lighting. For the moment I was the only truck in town. (That wouldn’t last.) I spotted what I thought was the office and, leaving my truck in the middle of the lot, meandered in to see what fresh horror awaited me.

I knew I was in  trouble when the “reception area” looked like a rustic tool shed and there wasn’t a sign of life – two-footed or four-footed. There were file folders arrayed in little holders on the wall. As I noted that each column of holders was hung under a different date and started riffling through the ratty things, another driver walked in. Fortunately, he had been here before and was able to get me started at least. He snagged his paperwork and was out the door before I had even found the paperwork for my first drop. I then spent 20 minutes looking for the other two stops. NUTHIN’.

I looked into the cavernous warehouse and still didn’t see any sort of human activity. But I did spy a buzzer. I leaned into it and after a few long minutes, an annoyed-looking dude in a white coat and hair / beard net walked up and started coaching me. He started walking away before I called out that there was no paperwork for my second two drops. He rummaged around a bit and looked at what I assume was his production / shipping schedule.

Final word? I would have product only for the first drop, the Tractor Supply in Kenedy. I would have to drop my empty and hook up to the loaded trailer, and it was pretty full. There wouldn’t have been much room for feed for the second two stops anyway. But this whole “half a loaf” situation meant that I would be empty by mid-morning with no next load.

On my way back to my truck I put a call into dispatch. At dark thirty I had no confidence that anyone at headquarters would have any kind of resolution to my problem. I just wanted them to know that I did NOT have any reason to drive all the way to Brownsville. My lack of confidence was rewarded with a lack of resolution. I finally found somebody to tell me I could get rolling to Kenedy, so out I pulled into the wet darkness. It was dawnishly hazy as I pulled into Kenedy and found a store that had an easy set up for docking. It was a bit after 07:00 so there was no one around, but  my appointment wasn’t until 08:00 so I put on my patient cap and booted up my laptop.

No sign of life at the appointed time but I did see some activity at a quarter after. I got out of the truck and meandered around to the front where an older guy was messing around with what looked to be a security chain that was wrapped through half a dozen pieces of lawn equipment. He certainly looked like he knew I was there but chose not to look up or otherwise acknowledge my presence. I have to admit, it kinda pissed me off. Just what I needed on this FUBAR morning.

After a moment I asked, “Are you with the store?”

“Yep,” he replied. “You the delivery in back?”

“Yessir,” I answered.

“Appointment is for 9 o’clock,” he said, blowing me off.

I muttered something about my assignment saying 8 o’clock as I sauntered back to my truck

I assumed, correctly as it turned out, that this day was cooked.

Back at the truck I made another call to dispatch to see where I should head to pick up my next load.

They had no answer. The people they had to speak to at the feed company hadn’t responded to their inquiries yet and until they did I should plan on heading to stop number 2 on my load assignment and then to stop number 3.

But, I reasoned, I would be empty within a couple of hours and I doubted the other two stores would be on the lookout for a nonexistent delivery. Let’s just put a stake in the heart of this delivery and start over someplace.

Another admission: I was trepidatious about being sent to Formosa Chemical in Port Lavaca. In fact, I vowed then and there that on my next call I would inform dispatch that Port Lavaca would in no way be an acceptable load for me. What could they do to me? I was a short-timer on my last roundup. The only thing in question was the specific date of my last day. I almost looked forward to getting the assignment so I could cheerfully tell them where they could shove it.

The Tractor Supply guy rapped on my door at 10 minutes ’til 9. He had a whole new attitude. Must have been hidden somewhere on aisle 6 inside the store. He cut the seal on the trailer and helped get me backed up to their portable dock. An hour later I was empty, clean, and on the phone with dispatch. They almost wanted me to head on to original stop number 2. I said I would stay put for another hour and to please find me a decent load load that did not include the words “Formosa Chemicals.”

“Why?” they asked.

“Because I will no longer be subjecting myself to their form of driver abuse,” I replied.

“But if that’s the load we give you, you won’t have a choice. You cannot turn it down,” my dispatcher said smugly.

“Try me,” I said calmly. “There are a dozen places I could leave this truck within 50 miles.”

Telling me to stay put they disconnected.

Sigh.

Ninety stinkin’ minutes later I was told to deadhead down to Brownsville where I would pick up a load the next day due in Denton, Texas by noon (NOON!) the the following day. I’d been hoping for one final cross country run and ended up with an intrastate shuttle.

Sigh.

Another Non-Timely Load Even Farther South

It was barely 10 o’clock. A leisurely drive south even with hourly pee breaks would get me to town by 16:00.  There looked to be a couple of truck stops within 25 miles of my pickup – one of them only four miles away. So I headed south. None of the route was new to me and I didn’t recall any sights I wanted to spend any time at. I stopped at a Flying J in George West (it’s a town – really – north of Corpus Christi) for a quick break and arrived at Stripes truck stop in Harlingen at about 15:00. The Android app on my smartphone told me it had parking for 25. Well 25 drivers had arrived before I did – there was nary an open spot.

Fifteen minutes later I pulled into the closer truck stop, also a Stripes, which had a whopping eight slots – two of which were open! So I  got parked and prepared for a long evening. It was still upwards of 90 degrees and the sun was beating down onto the driver / front side of my tractor. The air conditioner, set on high, could barely keep up.

After my first visit to the men’s room I realized that, yes indeedy, I was in “Texico.” Far as I could tell, and I am pretty perceptive, I was the only one in the place who spoke English as a first language. I’m not saying that this was a bad thing, only that it was obvious I was but a few miles from the border. What did I expect? There were neighborhoods within 10 miles of my home in Houston with the same demographics.

Another pretty boring evening and it didn’t pay to wake up early since my pick up appointment wasn’t until 11:00. It was excruciating. Not even a strip shopping center I could walk to. The only upside was the food counter at this Stripes was serving barbacoa. Mmmmm, barbacoa.

Couldn’t Drive Any Farther South So …

I was up by 07:00 and could only dawdle until 09:3o before I felt the need to coffee up and creep on over to the shipper hoping against hope they would be able to load me early and send me on my way.

This was another pretty large Paccar (Kenworth / Peterbilt) facility (I’ve been to at least four around the country). I pulled through the front gate, parked, and waltzed through the door to be what appeared to be the office for the shipping / receiving office. I noted two trucks backed up to two of the half dozen doors along the front of the building. It being a weekend morning – possibly – there was no one to be found. I pushed a buzzer and no one responded to the buzz. I whistled half a dozen times. Nuttin’.

Finally a warehouseman came to the opening in the chain link and, I think, asked me what the hell I wanted. After giving him my pick up number he disappeared for a few minutes and returned. He directed me to the back side of the warehouse and instructed me to check with the hombre back there. He added that it was possible I would be loaded before 11:00 but not likely. Swell.

At the back of the building I parked along the driveway leading to two docks. There were eight empty(?) trailers parked on the grass out from the building and one backed in, doors open.. I walked up to the cab of that truck and seeing no driver, walked to the back of the truck and waited. Around five minutes later a forklift zipped out and the driver was able to tell me that I could be next. Yay!!!

A mere 45 minutes later, sigh, the truck in front of me was loaded and pulled away. It was a no-brainer straight back in and there I sat for 30 minutes. As I was about to get out and investigate, I felt a forklift trundle into the trailer. Phshew, finally! Yeah, right. After another 20 minutes with absolutely no activity, I made my way back to the dock and tried to track down the forklift driver. Within a minute he was tooling out of the warehouse, but rather than drive into my trailer he drove over to the side and deposited his load there.

I waved him down and tried to discover his plan, but the gentleman spoke almost no English, and with a bit of shrugging and pointing I figured my best course of action would be to shut up and go back to the sleeper for an early “meditation.” A full 40 minutes later I heard a knock at my door and my forklift hombre had me sign the paperwork. By that time there were two more trucks in line to be loaded.

I pulled away, closed and padlocked the trailer doors and prepared for my trek north. No indoor plumbing for us lowly drivers so I took a leak on one of the other parked trailers before I departed Brownsville. Probably for the last time. Ever.

It was elevenish on this hot, sunny Saturday. My load wasn’t due at the Paccar facility in Denton until Monday morning but since the deliveries to that facility were usually drop and hook I decided to get there by midday Sunday. I could almost make it by the end of this day but I figured there was no need to push it because the possibility of getting another load out of DFW before Monday morning was somewhere between slim and NFW. I took my sweet ol’ time and made it as far as the Pilot in Robinson, just south of Waco.

Easy park. Just after I backed into my slot two Cirque du Soleil rigs pulled into the Idle-Air on the east side of the lot. For the record I didn’t see a single itty-bitty person or juggler. (Although I thought I heard waves of soft, ethereal music through the night.)

It was shower night. So I showered. This Pilot is one of those truck stops with the professional driver facilities, including the showers, upstairs. The game room at this location is usually empty and I’ve never seen the tv room with more than a handful of people watching their usual NCI reruns on TBS. Maybe this is because all these luxuries require the climbing of stairs. There is an elevator of course, for the otherly-abled. Not sure, and not willing to waste any more thought on this lightweight mystery.

I wiled away the final hours of the day on my laptop and slept fitfully. I had pretty much made my mind up that the next day would be my last in a big rig … at least for a few months. I had hoped that I could score another load out of DFW that would rack up another 1,500 miles or so, but if I did, it wouldn’t happen until Monday which would mean sitting around for another day with the result being a piddling 700 miles over three days. Not worth it.

Last Day in the Trucking Biz

I was up, lensed, brushed, coffeed and rolling by 07:00.

I pulled onto the street outside the Paccar warehouse in Denton at around 10:00. I had made a couple of calls to dispatch along the way hoping to actually get the next load, but it didn’t seem like it was going to happen so I alerted my wife who was standing (sitting?) by in Houston. She would head up to the Con-way lot in Dallas to help me vacate my traveling condo and launch my retirement.

The second guy I talked to in the warehouse told me where to drop my loaded trailer and informed me they didn’t have an empty. He indicated that they’d probably have one at their other warehouse a mile away. So I called dispatch … again … to confirm that there would be no other load that I could bobtail to and whether I should pick up an empty. Response:  No other load. Pick up an empty.

Sigh.

So I bobtailed the mile to the empties lot which is secured by two or three people with Uzis. Just kidding about the machine guns, but security is their job so it takes a while to get onto the property. This particular facility utilizes tracker thingies and while I didn’t have an empty trailer to affix the tracker to I would have to return the tracker on the empty I picked up.

I had learned over my three years driving to check out empties – inside and out – before hooking up.  I don’t want one that’s too dirty or with broken lights or flat tires. I’ll also take a newer one over an older one. On this day I found a newer one with decent looking tires and no apparently broken lights. the inside was trashed but at this lot, with the trailer doors pointed away from the traffic, I could just crawl in and push everything out the back and onto the ground. If one of the trailer lights happened to be burnt out, no big deal. It was Sunday and I was heading directly to the Con-way lot. The odds of getting stopped were very slim.

The Final Leg of The Last Roundup

So I hooked up, slipped the trailer tandems all the way forward, motored to the gate where I stopped at the security hut to let them check that I was indeed empty and give them their tracking device. Once out on the street, I sent in the second to last QualComm message I might ever send and set out for the new Con-way lot a mere 40 miles away.

Well let’s call it 43 miles. This being my first trip to the new facility, and the facility showing a Miller Road address, I (foolishly) assumed that I would enter the lot off Miller road. Wrong. I needed to turn onto the side street just before the lot and enter through the control gate.

Since the neighborhood transitioned quickly from 18-wheeler to passenger car traffic there was no way to just scoot around the block so I had to tool down the road to another heavy commercial street and hope there was a something up the road that would allow me to get headed back in the right direction. Not really.

Nevertheless, I picked a street that was a cul de sac. It was almost big enough to allow a U-turn. Almost. This allowed me to mow down one more shrub and put a pair of ruts in the grass between the sidewalk and curb. I boogied out of there as quickly as I could. The last thing I needed was to fill out one last incident report. I believe I got away clean.

So after logging a few out-of-route miles I pulled through security gate of the new but still ratty terminal. And who was waiting? My wife. After dropping my empty against the north fence I pulled the tractor up near the gate where I would begin the move.

It was already almost 90 degrees. Of course I let the truck run as I started transferring my truckly possessions into my personal automobile. It took a stinkin’ hour. Sweat was pouring off my brow as I got into every nook and cranny of that Kenworth, and there are lots of nooks and crannies.  The transfer of goods took a bit more than an HOUR, and I was far from loaded having offloaded perhaps a third of my stuff over my last two visits home. After I finally stuffed the last of my stuff into my car, I collected the remaining trash into a garbage bag and swept the cab out. I am confident that it was considerably cleaner than it was when I first “moved in.”

After parking the tractor against the east fence as instructed I took the keys, fuel card, and my ID into the desk dispatcher and got into my four wheeler, heaved a giant sigh of relief and drove to my daughter’s home in Roanoke, just north of Fort Worth. After we got there I realized I had left my $20 seat cushion in the truck. Damn!

Mini-Epilogue

Let me just quickly say that after six months of retirement I miss only three things about the trucker life:

1. Listening to my audiobooks.
2. Seeing the cities and countryside of this great country.
3. The ability to spend at least some of my time in almost absolute solitude.

After a few more months of reflection and contemplation, I’m sure I’ll have more to offer. In the meantime, I’ve mostly enjoyed retirement.

Adios and stay safe out there.

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The Worst Tour Ever (That didn’t involve sub-zero temps and butt deep snow)

I wouldn’t have dreamed so many things could go wrong. Let me count the ways (forgive me in advance for the SHOUTING):

1. Started out with a local short run. I HATE short runs. I especially hate short runs with live loads or unloads. I picked up a loaded trailer at our Houston drop lot and took it less than 25 miles to NW Houston. It took more than FIVE hours. The pay? $40!
2. Went back to the lot and picked up another loaded trailer, this one bound for a receiver just north of Tyler, Texas. When I stopped to scale the load in New Caney, it was OVERWEIGHT! Overweight on the gross! No amount of tandem sliding would or could fix it. I was instructed, AFTER AN HOUR(!), to take the load back to the lot and leave it for somebody else. Almost four hours for a little over $30.
3. They dispatched me to a paper mill northeast of Beaumont. I’d picked up an overweight load there before. Would I get my second of the day? Not this time, but by the time I dropped and hooked I had less than three hours left on my clock. I got as far as a Walmart in a small town in east Texas where I spent the night. I had to drive almost three hours the next morning before getting my caffeine fix.
4. On the way north my CD player finally revealed itself as definitely broke. On my last trip I had trouble with the last couple of audiobooks I listened to but blamed the problem on the CDs. It was NOT the CDs but my player which decided, on its own, that it didn’t have to track every last word of a book but only the passages it deemed fit. That just don’t work. In the long run, this would be the most crippling of all the bad things that would happen on this tour. I get so tired of listening to music or talk radio. Now that’s all I would have. Serious BUMMER! But wait! Maybe I could get routed to or through one of our terminals staffed with service techs. Maybe they could make the repair or replace my audio equipment. Naaaaah.
5. I delivered the eight gigantic rolls of paper weighing almost 40,000 pounds to our Grand Prairie terminal and was sent to a shipper in Sunnyvale. This would be a drop and hook heading to MAINE! Yippee! But after checking into the shipping office I was told that since they didn’t have an empty Roehl trailer, it would be a live load and the warehousemen were all at lunch. It got worse. They told me it would be up to seven hours before they could get me loaded. They made it happen in only five. Whereas I had hoped to get past Little Rock or even West Memphis, I barely made it into Arkansas.
6. The next morning I had one contact lense that was irritating the daylights out of my right eye. When I finally stopped to fix it, I pulled out half a lens. The other half was still in my eye and it was not pleasant. I drove as far as Knoxville that afternoon with only my right contact in and my left eye watering like crazy. At the Knoxville TA at Exit 374 (remember that exit number) I fueled up and then took my stuff in to get a receipt and handle my personal hygiene for the evening. I tried to dig out the lingering piece of contact lens and even got one of the fuel desk clerks to check out my bloodshot eyeball. (it was the little clerk covered with tattoos). The other one just said “Ewwww” when I asked if she could perform a little visual optometry on me. Although my eye was still sore, she could see no plastic in there anywhere and pronounced me “Cured.” I had evidently flushed it out in the men’s room.
7. The following morning, my eye was still sore, but improved. I pulled out of the TA at 5:30 a.m. The first traffic light light came to turned yellow as I was shifting into seventh gear, and I quickly made the judgment that trying to stop would take me into the intersection, so I gunned it on through. I sensed a FLASH as I hit the midpoint. I’m pretty sure I got nailed by a dreaded “red-light-camera.” Super! Another ticket! My only question was whether it would be a points ticket or just a fine. Either way, the company would be notified because that’s where the a$$holes nice staff from the KPD will send the notice. So I have that to look forward to. My only hope is that a rational person looks at it, figures “Hey, it’s dark thirty on Labor Day morning, nobody else was near the intersection, and this big heavy truck would have caused more problems by stopping than by doing what he did.” Yeah, right.
8. I take this break in my litany of woes to recount the only good thing that happened on the trip. I stopped in the Petro at Exit 205 on I-81 in Virginia to see if they had the shaver I had left in the shower room five months earlier. This was the honeymoon suite of truck stop showers. It had a double vanity (?) and at the far end of the vanity the counter sunk to a bench level sitting area (where the honeymooners … er, you know) and that’s where I had put my old Braun shaver. I called a couple hours down the road and nobody could find it, but the next day I got a call saying the shaver had turned up. Eureka! But when I stopped in the next time I was in the neighborhood, two months later, the shaver could not be located. One of the clerks was pretty sure it had to be someplace and offered to ship it to me when it turned up in the elite ladies leg shaving room. Never heard a thing. And by that time I had told my wife that I threw the shaver away because it just didn’t hold a charge for very long (which was mostly true). Low and behold, when I stopped in this time, the dude behind the desk said, “So you’re the shaver guy.” He called everybody in the place to come over and look at me. I was a legend. They sent a guy to the admin office to retrieve my shaver and I was on my way again. After an 8 hour charge, the thing seems to work just fine. It has an especially good neck shaving feature. And while my wife’s suspicion that I was a lying SOB was confirmed, I count this as the Labor Day miracle of 2014.
9. There was one nightmarish event that occurred on I-84 in Massachusetts, and it had nothing to do with fueling. I was tooling through downtown Worcester (pronounced Wooster, if you’re interested) and heard an explosion. A BOMB had gone off, and it was close. As I hunkered down in my seat I scanned the scene. I immediately saw the source of the KABOOM. A dump truck that had just passed me blew a tire. Who knew it could be so loud? I then saw a byproduct of the explosion, the entire tread of the blown tire had separated from the body of the tire and then broke into two pieces. Both pieces were cartwheeling up the freeway as the dump truck maneuvered to the shoulder. One of the pieces was flopping (it almost seemed to be walking) right into my lane. I already had my foot off the the accelerator and I now lightly braked while checking the traffic around me. I didn’t pull into a different lane but the “alligator” settled down right in front of me, laying on its edge, so I drove right over it. Upon later inspection, I found no damage to my tires. Phshew!
10. What started as an uneventful day after Labor Day turned eventful when I got an email from my dermatologist.  As a walking / talking basal cell carcinoma there were a couple of blemishes I had been keeping my eyes on. I got them checked out during my hometime. Well the labwork on the biopsies was in. Both spots were malignant. Super! More outpatient surgery (small time procedures, really) so I had that to look forward to when I get home. I spent that night at a Maine Turnpike Travel Plaza close to Kennebunkport (I saw neither George W. nor George H.W. Bush). It did have a neato moose sculpture and a Starbucks. What more could a driver ask for?
11. Disaster struck at my delivery to a flooring distributor in Augusta. Two of the door latches on the trailer were especially balky. In trying to open the first one I had to use all my strength to get it almost open. There were only a couple more inches to the fully released position. So I got a running start and as I kung fued it, it gave way ever so freely and the tip of my middle finger on my left hand was crushed against a metal piece on the door. I uttered a not very nice word and looked at my finger. No blood. And then, in slow motion, the blood started oozing from beneath the flap of flesh that had been torn loose from its neighboring flesh. It HURT. I reached into my truck and grabbed a couple of tissues. I held the tissues tightly against the wound with the thumb of my left hand and finished opening the doors and backing my rig up to the dock. Then I got a bottle of peroxide, a tube of polysporin and a bandaid and went into the warehouse hoping they would have a relatively modern restroom that I could turn bloody. They did. The finger tip was ugly, but I managed to get it cleaned and coated with the antiseptic ointment. I was, however, having a major problem getting the bandaid on. I have a rather noticeable tremor which was at high ebb after my injury. I had to find a warehouseman to help me get it onto the wound. I found a big, burly guy, with fingers as big as my wrist, who took charge and wrapped that bandaid around my fingertip like it was a tourniquet. The pad got pretty red, pretty quickly, but I thought I had sufficient coagulation to avoid a trip to the emergency room. As I write this my finger is still pretty tender, and I am amazed how involved the middle finger is in a whole variety of actions, even if not in a leading role. I’ve only banged it hard a couple of times and three days later, I didn’t think I was going to lose the finger. Maybe only the finger nail. I was pretty much afraid to look.
12. After picking up another load of (guess what) PAPER. Bound for (guess where) WISCONSIN. From a delightful paper mill only 30 miles from the nearest freeway I started wending my way west. I was to hand off the load at our terminal in Gary, Indiana. Of course I ran out of hours and had to stop about an hour east of Gary where another driver met me. He thoughtfully provided me with an (unswept) empty trailer and I bestowed a load of PAPER on him. (The upside was this load was due in Wisconsin by 10 p.m. and this poor sap would have to drive through Chicago on a Friday afternoon in order to make the delivery. A single ray of sunshine in an otherwise dark and gloomy world.) After only four hours of waiting, the genius planners finally found another load for me – a relay I would pick up in Dayton, Ohio, a mere two and a half hours southeast. Since I was out of hours. I packed it in for the night. Bright and early the next morning, meaning dark and foggy at 3:45, I was awake and getting ready for my drive to pick up a load that would take me back to TEXAS! Our rendezvous was scheduled for 8:45 a.m. and I rolled into our drop lot at 8:35. It was then that I learned that the other driver had not made the pick up. In fact, he wouldn’t be able to make the pick up until MID-F*#&ING AFTERNOON!!!!!!! After a little more investigation, I found that the load was originating only an hour and fifteen minutes from where I started the morning. The genius “planners” and / or weekend dispatchers (generally speaking, the dispatchers who had to take the short bus to work) knew this whole relay was jacked for the beginning and yet didn’t deem it necessary to communicate that information to me. If they had thought about it for a millisecond, they could have called or even messaged me to NOT drive to Dayton but to drive directly to the shipper and pick up the load to Texas myself. Instead, I would have to wait more than NINE STINKIN’ HOURS for the load to arrive after which I would have just over an hour of driving time left to get it started towards Texas. Words cannot describe …
13. (Lucky 13. Cute.) After dropping my load a day and a half later in Durant, Oklahoma, I had the pleasure of waiting another three and a half hours for my next load that would take me home. Have I mentioned at any point in the past that I HATE WAITING! After all this time, when I was repeatedly informed that it was “tough this time of year,” “just not many loads out there.” and we have “everybody working on it, including management.” After all that time with no loads out there they hooked me up with a load that picked up FIVE MILES FROM MY DAUGHTER near Fort Worth! Heavy sigh …
14. Words STILL cannot describe.

After this tour from hell, I did get to spend some time with my daughter and her family. She ordered Pizza (From Mr. Jim’s. Very good.) and let me take a shower. After a night at the Pilot not two miles from my daughter’s place, I drove to the shipper to pick up my load.  I even managed to scoot around a major accident that resulted in a freeway closure south of Fairfield. A kindly driver told me about a flambe wreck as I was fueling at the Loves and another kindly driver pointed me to the best route around the wreck. I got back to our Houston drop lot, parked the loaded trailer and my tractor, and tried to forget the total and almost complete misery of the preceding 12 days.

A Couple of Firsts

I’ve only been driving for two years, yet the job has become almost totally routine:

1. Drive to Point A
2. Pick up a load at Point A
3. Drive to Point B
4. Deliver load at Point B
5. Rinse and repeat at a different Points A and B

First First

I had picked up a load in Milwaukee (Point A) and was on my way south (which other direction can you go from MILWAUKEE). A mile or so down the road I felt a ripple in The Force and reached across to the passenger seat (carefully) for a peak at the Bill of Lading. The load assignment had said I was to deliver the load in Nashville (Point B). Danged if the BOL didn’t say Atlanta.

This was a first. I ALWAYS (normally, usually, from time to time) check the BOL to ensure that everything is in order. One of my personal trucking nightmare scenarios is getting to a receiver (Point B) only to discover that I grabbed the wrong trailer at a drop & hook. 

Since I was still pretty close to the shipper, I could get back to the dock pretty easily, but I decided to pull over and call in first. I found a nice deserted church parking lot and pulled in. I managed to actually get through to my fleet manager and laid the discrepancy on her. I was somewhat concerned that I would have to drive back to the shipper, back into the dock again (which was kind of a mess), wait who-knows-how-long for a new load, then get back on the road just in time for a Milwaukee rush hour headed south to a worser Chicago rush hour.

After a few minutes of swapping emails with customer service, it was decided. I would take the load I already had to Atlanta. Evidently there was no load to Nashville, so I was able to get back out on the road and beat rush hour. A mistake had been made but it was a mistake in my favor since I was getting a longer route.

So on this occasion I picked up a load at Point A and got to deliver it to Point C. C for Cool.

Second First

I was on my home after about 10 days on the road. Getting home is usually a pain. It seems there are rarely loads going to Houston when I need to be home so I end up limping back to town in a series of 200 mile days. Not good.

This particular return from the midwest was shaping up the same way. I got a load from Chicago to St. Louis (just five blocks from Barack Obama Elementary School). After the better part of a day I got a load from East St. Louis to Garland, Texas. Probably another half day would be spent twiddling my thumbs (anybody out there remember that saying, or even better, that act?) waiting for the final load back to greater Houston.

Imagine my surprise when I got a preplan for a load before I even got to Garland that picked up in Garland . Even better, it would be at the same facility to which I would be delivering which was a large warehouse complex that served numerous companies.

It gets even better. I would be delivering and loading from the SAME COMPANY. You wouldn’t think it could get even better …

BUT IT DOES!

Checking into the shipping / receiving office (you may recall the place where I was jerked around by a clerk named either Maria or Marion) I encountered Jesus (cue celestial music: Ahhhhhhh!!!) Seriously, the clerk looked just like Jesus. And this Jesus performed a miracle.

He arranged things so I could back up to the door and be unloaded, and then be loaded at the SAME DOOR! I would have bet a month’s pay (no big deal, I admit) that I would have had to pull away from a receiving door and then back up to a shipping door. NO! Jesus lifted his staff and (Ahhhhhh!), I would be unloaded and then loaded without having to move my lazy a$$. This was HEAVEN (you should excuse the pun).

This was even slicker than a drop and hook with a loaded drop and a loaded hook from the same vendor, which come to think of it, I pulled off in Indianapolis not long ago.

Of course, this was even better since it was a live unload and live load, I didn’t have to crank down the landing gear, unhook from the trailer, then hook to another trailer. The only physical work I had to do was open the trailer doors before I backed up to the door and then close them after I pulled away from the door.

Double cool. Two memorable firsts.

(Ahhhh!)

Nightmare Accident Scenario

First off, I am totally ticked at myself for not getting a photo, but by the time I got to the accident scene, traffic was moving and I have a hard enough time dealing with my camera phone while I am not behind the wheel of a 79,680 pound 18-wheeler (I was carrying big, fat rolls of paper). So, my apologies for not having visual aids.

I was hauling the aforementioned load from Atlanta to Indianapolis and had to first ascend Monteagle Mountain on I-24 just northwest of Chattanooga, Tennessee. It’s pretty steep – 6% grade for most of the way. The ascent went reasonably well as I chugged up the mountain in 7th and 8th gears. Like I said, I was heavy. Just over the crest of the mountain the traffic slowed to a crawl so I was in 3rd or 4th gear, if not stopped, for the next five miles. As I finally merged into the left lane, I saw why the right lane was closed.

The ass end of a trailer was resting on the guard rail on the right (downhill) side of the freeway. While the path of the highway was leveling out at this point, the grade across the freeway was still very steep. The mountain went straight up from the ascending, eastbound lane, flattened out, of course, across the four lanes and median of the interstate, and then went straight down from the westbound lanes.

So I saw the ruts the semi made from the eastbound lanes, across the median, over the westbound lanes and into the heavily wooded downmountain side of the road and thought, Holy Crap,  how many times have I contemplated running off the road and down the side of a mountain. The wrecked truck was almost perfectly perpendicular to to the roadway and I couldn’t see much more than the last ten feet of trailer. The downslope was more than 45 degrees and, as I said, heavily wooded. The trees obviously saved the rig from rumbling all the way down to the floor of the valley. I can only hope the driver didn’t take a tree branch through the windshield and into his face.

Before I started driving trucks I would have come up on this scene and thought the truck driver really messed up. Now though, I wonder, did some jerk four-wheeler cut in front of him and forced him off the road?

No telling. Just hope noone was seriously injured and the driver has a good story to tell about how he ran off a mountain and survived. May I never have a first person story like it.

After clearing the wreck I

Quite a Tour – Boxing America Part 2

This is the concluding segment recounting my saga of the long and choppy trip from Houston to Florida to New Hampshire to Wisconsin and back to Houston. If it isn’t a perfect square it’s at least a lopsided box.

As I wended my way from Connecticut to Wisconsin, I got as far as a TA in Barkeyville, PA, just 29 miles from the Ohio border by the end of the first day. I stopped at a Flying J along the way for a shower. The next day I got to our Gary terminal. My favorite! Not. While I hate stopping at this outpost located at the end of the worst mile of city streets in the country, I was able to replenish my supply of motor oil and coolant. After a 30 minute break I continued on to Wisconsin. It being early afternoon Sunday, July 6th, I was hoping I could get through downtown Chicago with a minimum or traffic issues. I mostly succeeded.

As I drove north from the city, I did feel bad for the people heading heading south from Wisconsin. Traffic was stop and go for miles north of the  Wisconsin / Illinois border. I had scoped out a Petro in Racine as the pace I would stop for the night. Downside was the ramp directly to the Petro was closed due to construction so I had to snake my way down well-marked frontage and back roads to finally get there. The upside was this location had a buffet in their restaurant so I dined on a nice balanced to-go meal for the first time in almost a week. A minor downer was a men’s room with air dryers instead of paper towels.

I was driving to my final in Oshkosh before the sun came up and after a scenic diversion through the industrial park (bad navigation), I found the receiver who got me unloaded very expeditiously.

I was next directed to pick up a relay load from our Neenah terminal that delivered in Plover, WI in an hour or so. Another crappy short run.

They too got me unloaded pretty quickly and I was directed to a Del Monte plant within three miles for a load that I would drop at our Marshfield, WI, terminal for a relay to I forget where. Yet another hour long load. They were killing me with all these short and highly (lowly?) unprofitable (for me) runs.

The human interest in this pickup was the fact that I got to drive through the whole operation before I found the right office. The plant was in the middle of green bean season and semis were streaming in with their hoppers full. It brought back memories of the summers I worked at a Bird’s Eye plant in Waseca, Minnesota where I worked peas and then corn. The equipment, the employees and the smells had me back flashing back from the time I got there until the time I left.

Once I found the right dock I went in the warehouse to track down the shipping personnel. I saw hundreds of pallets stacked with hundreds of thousands of empty cans. This load would be a light one. Cool. Only trouble was, they loaded me up with collapsed cartons which meant the load would be a heavy one. Not cool.

After I was loaded I directed myself to the onsite scale and learned how heavy I was. Real heavy. After a tandem adjustment I set out for Marshfield. Heck, it wasn’t even 2:00 p.m. yet. But I had a date at the terminal and didn’t want to be late.

The date was a little maintenance on my truck. I usually have pretty good luck getting my truck service in Marshfield so I was pretty confident they would finish what they needed to do before the end of the day. I knew I wasn’t going to be going any further that night, but I didn’t want to have to stay up past my bedtime waiting for them to get my truck back to me. I needn’t have worried.

After I dropped my loaded trailer I scooted around to the truck wash bay to get my tractor all spiffy and clean. Since there were trucks behind me I then looped around to vacuum station to clean out the interior. Before I had even finished the driver’s side a technician walked out to tell me he would be doing the maintenance on my truck and to inquire when I might be able to turn it over to him.

Dang! That is SERVICE! I told him I could have it in his bay within five minutes. He was agreeable.

He and an associate took care of everything there was to take care of within two hours. It gave me time to Transflo in my paperwork for the last three loads and to make myself some lunch. I even snagged a shower in the terminal’s less than impressive locker room. I also got my next assignment which was – wait for it – another crappy short run, this time an hour’s drive up to Wausau,WI.

The techs changed all my filters, topped off my fluids, aligned my wheels. checked out my funky wiper and replaced both blades, AND made a repair I hadn’t even told them about filling in a star on my windshield. I don’t even know where the crack came from, but I noticed it a month or so back. It was low and on the passenger side so I didn’t give it much thought. To be honest, the repair didn’t do much. I can still see the star. But it’s the thought that counts and maybe the patch will keep it from spreading.

After getting my truck back I hooked up to the loaded trailer I would be taking to Wausau and weighed it. I had actually talked to the driver who brought the load in from Alabama in the driver’s lounge. I mention this because when I weighed the load it was at least 1,500 pounds over legal on the drive axles. The dude had driven more than a thousand miles over the weight limit. Lucky it was Independence Day weekend because there weren’t many scales open. I certainly didn’t get pulled into any.

Maintained, loaded and showered I had a nice night’s sleep, was up before sunrise (again) and made my way to Wausau. This was a receiver I had delivered to before. It’s one of those places where you have to back into the covered dock through a door. As they unloaded my truck I hiked back about half a mile through their warehouse to use the men’s room. By the time I got back to the receiving office he was pulling the last paper roll off the truck and within two minutes I had my signed paperwork and was pulling away from the dock. Very efficient.

I had my next preplan which was a pickup in Rothschild, Wisconsin, the next town south of Wausau, bound for Garland, Texas. It wasn’t taking me home, but it was a nice run and it was getting me closer.

The routing provided had me running back through Marshfield where I was to top off the tank. Now why would they dispatch me out of Marshfield without topping me off then. I could’ve blown by Marshfield without stopping. I took advantage of the situation by waiting to weigh my load until I got to my terminal.

Quick Refresher: When you weigh at a truck stop you have to pull onto the scale, click the intercom button and give the clerk your truck number and whether it is a first weigh or a reweigh. When they have your weight, the clear you to come in to get your paperwork and pay for the service. First weigh (at CAT scales, at least) costs $10 and unlimited reweighs are only $2 apiece. When you reweigh you have to give them a four digit number that  appears on your original weight slip.

THEN, you have to pull off the scale. You can either pull into a legitimate truck stop parking spot or – my personal favorite if the fuel island isn’t too busy – loop around and pull through the fuel pump station up to the pull-ahead line and head in to take care of business. Jerks will often just pull off the scale and off to the side. Some truck stops allow space for this move. At most truck stops this move just inconveniences everyone else.

You then have to get out of your truck and run in to pay and get your weight slip. If the place is jumping, you may have to wait in line. If you have to reweigh, you get to rinse and repeat. Of course, you will have to adjust your trailer tandems before reweighing. Odds are your total weight is okay, but you may be heavy on your drive axles or your trailer axles. This will be important to remember later in this post.

So I get the weight distribution right on the first pass. Even a blind squirrel … Yay!

I get to Texas without incident and stay at a Flying J in Anna. Early the next morning I roll into the greater DFW metroplex and my navigation system decides it wants to take the scenic route. I call up google maps on my smartphone and find a more direct route. Only a mile or two was posted “No Trucks” but I made it to the receiver who unloaded me in no time flat. I cannot say the same about the “planner” who took his or her sweet time finding me a load to Houston. I sat for more than 90 minutes before they found a load I could be late for. Truly. They take more than an hour to find a load that has probably been available for at least half a day.

I get to the warehouse in Arlington just in time to get in line behind 10 other trucks to pick up a load of beer.  And they made the line a snake starting at the doors at the back of the facility, around the side to the front where it slithered down the building before it u-turned back to the office. And by the time they got this conga line organized I wasn’t even at the tail end. An hour and 15 minutes later I was backed up to the door where I had the privilege of sitting for another 40 minutes before they started loading. And it was hot enough that my bunk A/C was barely keeping up.

Another 20 minutes and I had my paperwork and was out in the street trying to balance my very heavy load of Corona which was to be delivered to a distributor in Rosenberg, TX, southwest of Houston by 8:30 the next morning.

I weighed my load at the scale at a TA on I-20 south of Dallas. The spot I would normally have parked in order to run in and settle up was already occupied by two truck so I had to go to their traditional lot. I then had to walk about 500 yards in the heat to the fuel desk where I’d get my weight slip.

GREAT NEWS! They were training in a new clerk. Six people in line and the experienced clerk was letting the trainee run the cash register and talking her through every step. TWICE!

I called on my inner reserves of patience which was somehow deep enough that I was able to avoid popping an artery before I got the bad news. Turns out I didn’t do such a good job balancing. I was 1,400 pounds heavy on my trailer tandems. So I fastwalked back to my truck, moved my tandems and reweighed.

The good news was I was able to find a temporary parking spot a lot closer to the fuel desk. Of course, the training was still going on, but I managed a fast recharge of my patience reserve and the line wasn’t quite as long. The bad news? I was now about 800 pounds heavy on my drives.

So I reweighed AGAIN. Found another close spot to park but when I got back to the fuel desk, the line was longer and evidently the trainee was evidently” trained.” No trainer. She may have been trained but she was by no means speedy. While I waited, with drivers getting in lane behind me, another experienced-looking clerk walked through the area to a computer where it kinda looked like she was clocking OUT.

I couldn’t help myself. I said in a rather loud voice, “Is there NOONE who can help this new employee handle this crowd?”

The experienced clerk looked towards me, paused a moment, then went to another cash register and started dealing with customers.  The guy in front of me, obviously fearing for his safety and well-being, waved me to the front of the line where I finally got the good news that I was legal.

All this wasted time meant I would NOT get to Houston before my hours ran out. I would NOT be spending the night at home. Dang.

I got as far as Huntsville, about 40 miles north of the truck stop near my house. Double dang. Since it was still relatively early, and I had a shower credit burning a hole in my Pilot/Flying J loyalty account, I decided to shower and get the sweat and grime of the day (actually two days) off of me before I turned in for the night.

More great news. As I ran (and ran … and ran … and ran) the water just to wash my hands before I took my contact lenses out, I found that the water wasn’t getting too hot. So I cranked on the water in the shower. It stayed decidedly cool.  With my dirty clothes already on the floor and me wanting to get clean and back in the truck for the night, I bit the bullet and took a cold shower. Not fun.

On the way out, I stopped at the front desk and instructed them to credit my account for the shower since it didn’t live up to my expectations. He didn’t blink. When I asked why they didn’t put out a sign saying they had no hot water, he responded with the simple statement, “They wouldn’t let me.” I kid you not. They were evidently afraid the news would set off a riot.

Too shocked and too tired to respond, I shook my head and, as the skies let loose a nice rain shower (which was warmer than the shower I had just taken), I walked back to my rolling palace.

Up early the next morning, I made it through Houston before the traffic got ugly and arrived at the beer distributorship an hour early. I was expecting an adult beverage fantasy oasis. And while it was an orderly-looking place with cases of beer and other malt beverages stacked to the ceiling, it smelled like a New Orleans gutter. Ah, well. I was on my way to our drop lot back in Houston within 90 minutes.

This was a circuit around the country I do not care to repeat.

Quite a Tour – Boxing America Part 1

It was a looong, choppy tour – at least compared to my runs over  the past 10 months. They kept me running for 16 days. I almost ran out of underwear. I left with a heavy load out of Houston.

First up, a short haul to Garland, TX for delivery later the same day. I did not make many friends at the receiver. I sat backed up to a door for perhaps an hour before I returned to the office to make sure I was at the right place. The surly dude crankily said, “We’ll get to you when we get to you.” I’m sure that added an extra half hour to my unload time. When they finally finished, I got the green light.

Special Note: when you get backed into most doors, they extend the ramp from the warehouse into the trailer and sometimes hook your back bumper. This causes the red light next to the door to illuminate. It won’t turn green until they unhook and retract the ramp. This is usually the signal that they’re done loading / unloading and you can return to the office to pick up your paperwork. There are variations on this theme that I will expand on at a later date.

As I was retrieving my paperwork, I noted who signed the Bill of Lading. I need this information for the “Empty” message I’m required to send in. I usually confirm the name with the individual giving me the paperwork. In this case, I very clearly saw Maria M*****.  When I tried to confirm this with the clerk he responded with. “That’s me. And it’s MARION.” Riiight. I can only assume he was jerking my chain.

Next I was routed to our Grand Prairie terminal to pick up a relay load for Opelousas, LA. I spent the night at the terminal and left just before first light. Arrived in rural Louisiana and made a tidy drop and hook. Since I didn’t have my next load assignment I camped out at a nearby truck stop. After a long 30 minutes I got an assignment that picked up in Zachary, LA, a bit more than an hour away. I looked but didn’t see any gators along the way even though much of the trip was across rural roads and beaucoup (a little Cajun dialect) swampland. This load would deliver to Jacksonville, FL. Finally a decent run.

The downside was Zachary meant a HEAVY load of paper at a picky-ass mill. When I arrived I was about the 10th semi in line.  This is a shipper that requires steel-toed footwear, long pants and a safety vest. It was nearly 100 degrees and, it being Louisiana, very humid. This shipper inspects your trailer for cleanliness and weather-tightness. They do NOT want their customers to get dirty, soggy paper. An hour later I was dropping my empty and hooking to my loaded trailer. The only “good” thing about this shipper is they have their own scale. Unfortunately, being close to my 80,000 pound load limit, it took a couple of trailer tandem adjustments to get the weight distribution just right. More unfortunately, I had to wait in line for each reweigh. Did I mention it was hot?

Under normal circumstances this would have been my shower night. Not this time. My clock was ticking down to the point where I was “running out of hours” I would only have enough minutes to limp to a P-O-S truck stop six miles down the road where I parked for the night. It had a one-holer men’s room with no counter space which meant I would be dealing with my contact lenses in the truck. Before sunrise the next morning, I weighed the truck again and made another adjustment before leaving. I am definitely not a fan of Zachary pick ups.

The trip to J-ville was uneventful and the drop and hook went without a hitch. (Well, technically, I had to unhitch and then hitch up again, so we’ll say it went with “a single” hitch.) No preplan so I spent a half hour at a nearby truck stop. Another wait. I was instructed to drop my empty at a customer’s warehouse (they were very appreciative) and bobtail to our J-ville drop lot and pick up a lightly loaded trailer containing irrigation hoses and tubes. This would be the longest trip so far to the beautiful agricultural mecca of Leola, PA.

I overnighted at a converted Pilot in North Carolina. Converted means that what started as an independent truck stop was either purchased or otherwise rebranded as a Pilot. These places are usually of lesser quality than traditional Pilots but I thought (thought) this one was better than most. Until I went to the men’s room to take care of my morning business. No soap. Ah, well, it happens. I informed the staff on my way out. They responded with, “Yeah, no soap. In the entire place. Our supply truck didn’t make it.”

That right there is a problem. Soap is important. Especially in a truck stop. They couldn’t have sent somebody to a nearby grocery store to pick up a dozen SoftSoaps??? Note to self: Never stop at this Pilot again.

Once I got to Pennsylvania I drove many miles down scenic rural roads. At one point, west of Lancaster, I was driving high along the north side of a wide valley. As I took a long view toward the far southern side of the valley, I saw more than 50 silos scattered across the countryside. Wish I could have stopped and snapped a panoramic picture.  My last turn took me through half a dozen blocks of solidly middle class neighborhood to a small produce company surrounded by fields of rowed crops. Entering the sales office I saw immediately that I would be having my first up close and personal interactions with …

The Amish.

The giveaway was the lady with no makeup wearing a bonnet. The fit looking men with chin whiskers and long pants held up by suspenders sealed the deal. It being a small place I had to use most of the roadway out front to maneuver my truck back to the dock where a vary polite, suspendered young man had me unloaded in no time.

I was quickly on my way to pick up my next light load (styrofoam cups) in the same bucolic town. I would be heading to Harriman, NY . Unfortunately, I would be out of hours by the time I pulled away from the dock, so away I whipped around to the north side of the warehouse and spent the night. No running water before turning in for the night or after waking up in the morning. So I inserted my contacts with less-than-perfectly-clean fingers and snagged a coffee at a truck stop on the way to Harriman.

I arrived at the warehouse early and had to wait for a door to open up. And wait. And wait. They made me wait so long that a nice little weather system rolled in. Only after it started raining did they alert me that a door was open and I could back into it. Often the receiver will have me break the seal on the trailer. In this case, a receiver representative had to break the seal before I could back all the way to the door.

SPECIAL NOTE: Nearly all loads are are precious enough to somebody that the shipper affixes (or has me affix) a plastic or metal loop or bolt on the trailer doors. This doesn’t prevent theft of course, but it signals that a load has likely been violated. I’ve never had a violated seal in my almost two years in the biz. My company also requires that I padlock the doors with a super heavy duty chrome padlock which they thoughtfully forced me to buy for $50.

So I maneuvered my truck to the point where the warehouseman could break the seal and I could open the doors and put the parking break on. Ten minutes later, I walked, through the rain, to the receiving office to make sure I didn’t just dream that they were ready for me. After another 15 minutes the dude knocked on my door and said he was ready to break the seal. So I had to get out of my relatively dry cab and walk to the back of the truck in what was now a pouring rain to open the doors.

The adorable though tardy warehouseman broke the seal and noting my less than bubbly disposition said that they really needed the rain. I was not amused.

Thirty minutes later I retrieved my signed paperwork and began the wait for my next load assignment. Waiting. Again. This has been the first tour in quite some time where more often than not I did NOT have my next preplan before delivering my current load.

The assignment finally came through and I would be deadheading to Hazelton, PA, where I would pick up a load bound for Raymond, New Hampshire. I got as far as the Petro in Scranton where I snagged a shower (after a one hour wait) and made it the rest of the way quickly enough to get to the shipper 30 minutes before they opened at 7:00 a.m. I wound up being the second truck in line back at the docks. Which meant I only had to wait for 50 minutes before they began loading me.

This would be the first of what I fonly recall as “my woodchuck days.” While waiting to be loaded, as I often do when it isn’t too hot, too cold or too wet, I got out of my truck and wandered around the property. At the edge of the lot I came to a steep slope down to the railroad tracks that ran through the industrial park. After standing there for a few moments there was a minor commotion below me and I noticed a woodchuck scurrying downhill and ducking into his hole at the base of a pair of saplings. Wildlife.

I would see two more woodchucks sitting on their hind legs along the side of the road on each of the next two days before seeing a mostly flattened (and therefore deceased) woodchuck on the shoulder on the following day.

But I digress. This short run to New Hampshire delivered at 4:00 p.m. which should have been a no brainer. And I made the delivery on time with no problem. Well, no serious problem. Since I had to drive through a part of New Jersey, I got caught up in late morning rush hour traffic and a bit of construction. This telescoped the drive time enough so that when I left the freeway just north of the Massachusetts border, my eight hour clock was ticking down. The two lane, no shoulder road that I would be on for the last 18 miles meant that I had to stop for a 30 minute break before I got to the Walmart Distribution Center in Raymond. Trust me when I tell you that I was seeing no acceptable place where I could pull over. I was only nine miles from my final, and down to three minutes left on my clock before I turned into a pumpkin, when I found a produce business that seemed to be closed. It had a paved lot that extended to the left side of the two lane road. It looked like my truck would fit so I made an executive decision and pulled in. I swept onto the property as far as I dared and cranked back the the right. Lightly jackknifed in my front bumper was perhaps eight feet from the roadway and my back bumper was five feet. I put on my parking lights and prayed that noone hit me.

When I was good to go, I drove the final nine miles to the receiver. At my drop I was the sixth truck in line and it took almost half an hour to get through the gate. Because of stupid DOT rules I had to take a 30 minute break, nine miles (about 12 minutes) from the receiver where I would have to sit for 30 minutes before I could make my drop and hook. Modestly infuriating. I’m so glad the government has put so many ignorant rules in place to make driving so safe.

By the time I was ready to leave the receiver I had less than 45 minutes left on my 14 hour on duty clock. The closest truck stop I could find on my smart phone app was about 26 miles away, 18 of those miles were back down the same two lane road I had taken an hour earlier.

I reached the “truck stop” with only four minutes to spare. It was another P-O-S stop, but I had no options. And it was full. There were only 20 slots to begin with and some of those slots had cars or pickups in them. I drove in and backed up against a trailer that looked like it had been there for days. In doing so I blocked in another tractorless trailer and another truck / trailer combination. Hey, it was the 3rd of July so I figured that most of the truckers would be taking the weekend off. Plus I’d be leaving by 5:00 a.m.  If one of the drivers I blocked in had to leave, I could easily move and take their vacated spot. Turned out I was good for the night.

This brings me to the truck stop store itself. It was a small independent and I already described it as a Piece of Caca, right? Perhaps I used the wrong bodily waste. It had a one-holer unisex restroom that entered from a door on an outside wall of the store.

Quick aside: As I was looking for the restroom inside the store the guy who appeared to be the owner said in his charming Middle Eastern accent, “You’re not parking here all night are you?” Yes, but if somebody needs to get past me, I would be happy to accommodate them. Plus I’ll be leaving early. And what about those cars and pickups, I asked. “They pay me for regular parking,” he replied. The dude was a revenue machine. And as you will see his expenses were minimal..

Back to the so-called rest room. It was easily the most disgusting room I have EVER been in. ANYWHERE. It had a single dirty 60 watt bulb (which may have been an advantage), a toilet, sink, and low tech air dryer. Dirty. Wet. Moldy. But it gets worse.

IT. SMELLED. BAD!!!

It reeked as though it was painted with a pee-based paint. It’s like they piped in air from a septic tank. It was like they had cornered the market on urine-scented air fresheners. I was pretty certain that even if I washed my hands, for a long time, I would walk out of that room dirtier and germier than when I walked in. I should have taken out my contact lenses earlier, like when my hands were only dirty and greasy. I felt grimy and yucky all night. I woke up before my alarm went off and was driving away before 5:00 a.m. I will break the law before I go back to that truck stop. Pardon me for a moment while I go take a shower.

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There. I feel better now. Even the thought of that restroom makes me feel unclean.

My next load would pick up in Springfield, MA, bound for [Kiss My] Assonet, Massachusetts, just southwest of Boston. Another crappy short run. This load would be further complicated by the fact that it was a reefer trailer carrying dairy products from Wisconsin. I haven’t hauled a chilled load (other than every load in January and February) since my Stevens days.

I navigated my way to our Springfield drop lot over the objections of my GPS which wanted to route me from the middle of the freeway cross country in a straight line to the lot three blocks east and four blocks south of the freeway exit. I elected to take city streets instead. It was still raining off and on and the lot was fair-thee-well soaked. I was getting tired of the rain and the overcast. I shouldn’t have even thought about it. After dropping my empty and picking up my loaded reefer trailer, I was on my way to the grocery warehouse when the skies opened up again I had to flip on the windshield wipers.

Before I get to that excitement allow me to tell you about my fuel stop. I had to divert from my route about five miles to get 50 gallons of fuel at a Pilot off I-83. I swiped my fuel and loyalty cards and got to it. After I starting with the driver’s side I went to the passenger side pump. After getting it started I heard the driver side click off. Well, dang.  So I put all 50 gallons into the passenger tank. I was pretty low on fuel and knew it the two tanks would equalize at least a little. When I reported this defect to the fuel desk inside the store I was informed that there was no malfunction. You are only allowed to fill one tank at a time. Massachusetts has so little trust in fueling equipment and drivers that it has a stinkin’ law prohibiting the fueling of both tanks at the same. I learn something new every day. The thing I learned on this day was to NOT fuel in Massachusetts.

Back to the windshield wiper. Shortly after I flipped them on, the driver side wiper wobbled off the wiper arm and just flopped back and forth. So while I hadn’t lost the wiper, it was doing no wiping whatsoever. I thought about puling over and seeing if I could fix it, but by that time it wasn’t raining too hard so I made it to the receiver with the thought I could do what I could while the dairy products were being unloaded.

This was a biiig place. It rivaled any Walmart DC or even the bigger grocery chain warehouses I had visited. I made my way through the security shack and back to the refrigerated section where I checked in with the receiving clerk and was directed to the lumpers. There were half a dozen other trucks moving and a dozen lumpers ready to jump into action. They assigned me a door and told me they’d let me know how much the fee would be. So I backed up to the door and waited. From the time I got there until the time I was unloaded it was nearly two hours. Ah, well. The lumper fee was less than $100 which seemed like a deal for this part of the country. Not the quickest but I’d seen worse. Silly boy, silly boy.

Unloading was just the beginning. I had to wait an additional 90 minutes for the paperwork. All those doors and all those people and it was still almost a three and a half hour experience. Plus it was really raining by the time I left.

Fortunately I had reattached my windshield wiper and it was working fine as I left the property.

Unfortunately, the wiper flew off less than two miles up the road. Within the next two miles I had found an overpass and semi-legally stopped under a protective two lane road. Doing my best to avoid being hit by the Yankees whipping past at more than 70 miles an hour I retrieved another wiper from the utility space under my bunk. I had salvaged it from the last time I replaced my wipers. So with a soul full of hope, I switched out the uncooperative wiper with the lightly used wiper. It stayed on!!! I made my way back to Springfield where I dumped my reefer and rehooked to my empty trailer.

By the way, when I dropped the empty I was able to use my trailer lock for the very first time in 10 months. It’s a a little doohickey that locks around the trailer’s fifth wheel pin. It worked like a charm and wasn’t as hard to put on or take off as I had anticipated. I immediately set off for the bucolic berg of Erving, MA.

The last 20 miles was through a scenic vacationland that made me want to come back in a four-wheeler with a popup camper. There was even a river, complete with rapids, that parallelled the road for most of the last few miles. I found the paper plant on the east side of Erving and pulled in. Bear in mind this was Independence Day which explained why there were only 11 vehicles in the employee parking lot. After dropping my empty I bobtailed the quarter of a mile to the shipping and receiving office.

It being a holiday of course it was closed. I found two other doors but was not able to find any actual people, even though I wandered well past the “Employees Only” signs. So operating on a hunch I went to the Roehl trailer parked along the roadway between the empty lot and the plant. The trailer number happened to match the trailer number on my load assignment. I opened the trailer doors and found the paperwork that also matched the delivery instructions. After calling in and confirming I could hijack this particular trailer, I headed back on the aforementioned scenic two road highway and south on I-91 to Connecticut where I was scheduled to fuel and where I planned on spending the night.

As I left the paper plant I wondered at an unload taking three and a half hours at a facility that almost seemed overstaffed (Assonet) and a 20 minute drop and hook taking place at a shipper where I didn’t encounter a single human being. Conclusion: People slow things down.

I got to my TA truck stop in Connecticut with only minutes left on my clock. I made good time other than a little traffic mishap in the left lane of I-83 just a few miles north of my destination. I scaled my load as soon as I pulled in, then looped around to top off my tanks (both of them at the same time – thanks Connecticut). The weight was not distributed as elegantly as I would have liked so I made an adjustment and rescaled in the morning before I set out for Oshkosh, Wisconsin! Finally, a good run, although I wondered about hauling paper to Wisconsin. I mean, aren’t there paper mills all over the state? They had to import 22 tons worth of paper from New England?

Well, that’s 3,500 words on week one. I’ll get to week two next.

March – 666

March was NOT a good month. The sign of the devil certainly fits.

After sub zero temps and snow earlier in the month I followed up with two tickets and a tire incident.

Let me start by saying I am OVER any below zero temperatures. Forever. While I am looking for a regional, possibly a local, gig, I feel I can hang with Roehl through the summer. In fact, I kinda look forward to driving in the north country when it’s in the upper 90s in Texas. Howsomever, I’d rather deal with the upper 90s a Texas summer rather than again experience supersub zero temperatures in Wisconsin in the winter.

Oh, the 666 refers to the first three digits of the seven digit load numbers I had been assigned for most of the month. Thankfully, as I write this the load numbers now start with 669. Good riddance to 666.

Ticket Numero Uno

On my first run east carrying a load of coffee that was listed on the bill of lading at 36,000 pounds I was just 40 miles from my drop south of Atlanta when I was red-lighted into a weigh station on I-85. I say red-lighted because I have a PrePass device that allows me to blow by many weigh stations. I’m not sure how they know, in some cases I can see scale-like devices in the pavement on the freeway. In other situations I think the authorities figure if somebody has a PrePass they are less likely to be violating Hours of Service laws. In any event, I get green-lighted by many more weigh stations than red-lighted into them.

Once into a weigh station, most facilities there is a clearly identifiable scaling device on the drive into the station and after calculating your weight, you are either arrowed (green arrow to bypass and a red arrow to direct you to the official Fairbanks-Morse scale right in front of the official who will either be your buddy or your nemesis.

In this case, I was red-lighted up to the shed where the smokies record your weight down to the microgram. On this occasion, a dude actually came out of the shed and, using a tape measure, measured the distances between my axles, after which he told me I was 1,500 pounds heavy on my trailer axles and directed me to a parking place. Once parked he said I could feel free to rearrange the load if I liked. I think I had 28 pallets of coffee. I didn’t think that even if there were room to move the pallets forward (which would take weight off the trailer axles) I could move an almost 2,000 pound pallet of anything anywhere. When I informed him that I would not be messing with the load he invited me in for a conversation. Oh, and could I bring the truck registration and proof of insurance, please. How could I refuse?

Inside, the nice young man gave me the weight details. Turns out I was about 5,000 pounds heavier than my empty weight plus 36,000 pounds of cargo. The shipper had misinformed me. I arranged the trailer tandems so that I was in good shape if the load was indeed 36,000 pounds. I could have been even more conservative and placed the tandems so that the maximum weight was on the drive axles but, alas, I did not. Bottom line? My fine would be $79. The fine would be assessed against my company, not me. Of course, I would pay the fine in the end, but Roehl would be fronting this financial transaction.

I pulled into the next truck stop I came to because I foolishly thought the state’s scale might be wrong. Not so. I wasted another $10 in order to learn that the state’s scale was indeed accurate. Well just POOP.

Ticket Numero Dos

After some tooling around in the eastern U.S. I picked up a load in southeastern Pennsylvania bound for central Indiana. I like to get as far down the road as I can every day. It is not uncommon that I will do 600+ miles in a day which takes most of the driving hours that are available to me. On this particular trip I was wanting to get as close to the Indiana border as possible. As I was driving through the heart of Columbus, Ohio, I saw flashing lights on an official-looking vehicle and slowed to let him pass. Instead of passing me, he started waving frantically. I think the SOB wanted ME to pull over. WTH???

I didn’t think there was room along the side of I-70, but I thought, if he was so insistent, I better get over and stop. After I was over and stopped, I noticed he was right behind me and that there was another semi parked behind him. The SOB got two of us. I couldn’t wait to see what I had done this time.

The nice young a$$hole in a uniform walked along the passenger side of my truck, around the front, and then climbed up to my open window. He somberly stated that he had clocked me at 59 miles an hour. Could he have my driver’s license and truck registration please? Well I knew where those items were. While he was back in his truck I was thinking, “He pulled me over for 4 mph over the limit???”

I later learned that he allegedly clocked me at 59 in a 45 mile an hour zone. When he came back he handed me the citation and informed me that I could either come on back for a court date on March 31st or just pay a fine of $149. He said he did me the favor of not doubling the fine. I wish I could have felt better about that. To further complicate my day, I was instructed to not reenter the freeway but to take the next exit (which was just a hundred yards ahead) and then reenter the freeway a couple of blocks down.

While I was waiting a the light at the end of the ramp, the trooper finished dealing with the other truck he had pulled over and was passing me on the ramp. Apparently, after writing two tickets to mean ol’ truckers he was just getting warmed up. As he passed me he drove his SUV OVER a little traffic island and motioned two motorcycles over to the side of the street so he could break a record for number of tickets written in a 20 minute period.

My hours were clicking down. I was going to have a hard time getting to my target truck stop in western Ohio. But damned if I was going to speed. And here’s the thing. I NEVER speed. My stupid truck is governed at 63 miles and hour so 90 percent of the time I am physically incapable of driving faster than the speed limit. As I drove west on I-70 I second guessed my decision to not ask to see the radar reading of my alleged speeding. In the end, I figured that if the speed limit was 45 (How stupid is that?!? On a stinkin’ freeway!?!), there was a very high likelihood that I was going faster than 45. If I had gone back to his troopermobile and he was able to show me that I was, in fact, going 59 miles an hour, he might be offended and WOULD HAVE doubled the fine because the infraction took place in a construction zone.

It further hacked me off that he was targeting out of state trucks because he knew we would never come back for a court date. Aw hell. This was my first moving violation in more than 10 years. I would just suck it up and put my trooper detection senses on high alert for the next three years.

TIRE! TIRE!

On a pickup in beautiful (snort) Pine Bluff, Arkansas, I was looking forward to a quick drop and hook and then two and a half hours to an overnight in West Memphis. Alas, it was not to be.

This was another one of those paper plants where you get the white glove treatment on your trailer. That is, the trailer you drop off has to be spotless. In this case, I did not have an opportunity to sweep out my trailer after unloading at a Sams distribution center in Searcy, Arkansas. Unlike most paper plant inspection stations that have a dock that will accommodate four or five trucks at once, this was a low budget operation with a lone dumpster and a step ladder.

But I digress.

With a freshly swept trailer, I found a place to park it and then bobtailed to the shipping office where I would get my paperwork and be directed to my already loaded trailer. As the clerk was about to hand me the Bill of Lading, he took a second look at the weight of the lad and asked, “You wouldn’t be able to handle 45,450 pounds would you?”

Uh, no.

So he instructed me to  go get the loaded trailer and back it up to Door Number 1. Great! more work.

So off I went. I found the trailer at the far end of the disgustingly dusty gravel lot, hooked up and started back to Door Number 1. It seemed to pull kinda hard but I had been toting an empty trailer for the last couple of hours and figured a heavy load, would naturally pull a bit … heavier.

But I got it back to the loading dock and as I was chocking the trailer wheel, I noticed a huuuge gouge out of the rear tire on teh driver side. For the record, this was a super single. Instead of duelies, and the trailer having eight wheels, some of the newer trailers have one big fat tire that replaces two normal tires. I believe that I have previously mentioned that I have super singles on my tractor. This means that, technically, I have not driven an 18-wheeler for more than six months. Technically, I have been driving 14-wheelers. In this case I would be driving a 10-wheeler.

At any rate, I thought, “Hunh! I wonder who did this.” About that time the worker who had inspected my trailer came tooling up in his white pickup. He explained that I had drug the trailer a quarter mile across his large gravel lot. He told me to hop in and he would show me.

Sho nuf. There was a very clear, very long shallow trench that indicated the path of the locked wheel as it skidded across the expanse of sharp little stones (and dust). Evidently when I released the air brakes, three of the four wheels released, but the one stubborn wheel had another idea. That stubbornness doomed that tire. So I called it in, but nothing is ever simple with our road breakdown unit.

They wanted photographs and I could tell they just wanted me to just take the load and get it repaired in West Memphis. Uh, no, I said. This was not a road worthy tire and given that I had already been cited by the authorities twice in the last two weeks, I did not feel comfortable going anywhere with this trailer. Plus, given that I had woken up in Ina, Illinois, that morning, I only had a couple of hours driving time left.

There was a debate as to whether they would take me off this load or leave me on the load and just move the gigantic rolls of paper to another trailer. In the end, they took me off the load. They moved the freight to another trailer that would be picked up by another driver. It was left to me to get the trailer to a truck tire store that would be waiting for me four miles away. That ended up being the right decision. By the time I got to the repair facility, the super single, which had a 10 inch by 10 inch square section that was gouged down past the metal cords when I left the paper plant, now had significantly less rubber given that a few more huge chunks of tread had spun off the tire on my four mile drive. Driving anywhere with a 40,000 pound load would have left chunks of rubber all over the highways of Arkansas.

After the repair, I found a crappy truck stop on my way back to the interstate – it had a disgusting mens room with no soap and no towels> I figured I had experienced enough misery for the day and even though Iwas down to less than 15 minutes drive time, I boogied another six miles up the interstate and found a decent, no-name truck stop where I spent the night.

Phshew, what a day.

And what a month.

Winter Driving – Chapter Next

I was hoping I was done with sub zero driving, but, alas, it was not to be.

On my last trip out of Houston I caught a load back to Ohio, last seen when frost bit my index finger and left me scarred for at least three weeks. While, as I mentioned in my last post, I thought I was fully recovered, I still have pain in one place on my index finger, and my hands get colder, quicker. And my truck’s auto start system still wasn’t working right. In fact, my first night out I was filled with trepidation about freezing to death in my sleep. I spent the first night at a Pilot in northern Louisiana and sho nuf, my auto start didn’t. Fortunately, it didn’t get below the upper 20s, but I had to get up and manually start the engine in the wee hours. Bummer. My auto start had not spontaneously healed during my time off.

This trip had me relaying my load outside of Akron and getting a load bound for – wait for it – Minnesota. Poop!

On my way to Bloomington, MN, I spent the first night in one of my favorite (barf, barf) places, The Roehl terminal in Gary, IN. I got there early enough that parking was not an issue. And since it had a fully equipped and staffed shop (barf, barf) at least I would be able to get my auto start fixed. Wrong, diesel breath. When I checked in I was told they were very busy. They wouldn’t be able to get to it until late that night. Heck, the foreman said, they had eight or nine repairs in front of mine. But I had called ahead and made arrangements, I said. Riiiight, they replied, but it’s still first come, first served. But, but …

It was about zero already and I made arrangements to stay in one of their “bunk rooms” so they could get the truck whenever they wanted to without waking me up. The only problem was I had numerous items in my tractor that I didn’t want to FREEZE SOLID. I conned my way into a parking slot in one of their unused bays until they could get to my repair. Cool.

So I adjourned to my bunk room.This was a first for me. Stevens had bunk rooms, but I had never had cause to use one. When I got the electronic key to my room in Gary, I was filled with anticipation. Since my expectations were quite reasonable, I can’t really say that was let down when I let myself into my room. Well … it was clean. I thought of a room at the YMCA. Although I had never seen one, I would expect a room at the YMCA wouldn’t be quite as nice as the room I was entering. Nevertheless, it was quite Spartan.  I could envision a monk living there. Or even a student at a really downscale college. It had a twin-sized bed with clean sheets, a pillow and a blanket. There was one small table and chair like you might see in a Holiday Inn conference room. The restroom was across the hall. 

Before I adjourned for the night I thought I’d check with the shop foreman one more time. Of course, a new guy was on duty who reported that there were seven or eight drivers in front of me and there wasn’t a prayer they would get to my truck for a day or two. Super. My preliminary call notwithstanding, I would be leaving Gary (good news) with an ongoingly defective auto start (bad news). I actually called dispatch before I turned in to see if I could just route myself through Marshfield (the Roehl mother ship). By going to Marshfield, according to the shop foreman, I might be able to get my truck fixed and still make it to Minnesota in time for my delivery. I got one of the snotty night fleet managers who said the shop foreman doesn’t have a say in where I drive and to shut up, go to sleep and check back at 5 a.m. if my truck still wasn’t fixed. I knew the answer to the last statement.

So in the morning I went down and did not see a shop foreman. I then went to load my stuff in my truck, which was NOT where I parked it the night before. I found it elsewhere in the shop and went back to find someone who could shed any amount of light on the situation. The shop foreman I had talked to first the previous day said it had not been fixed and that, perhaps, dispatch would have me pick up a loaner to complete the delivery. I did NOT want to have to move stuff from my truck to a loaner truck but said, fine, let’s do the loaner. Foreman said, dispatch knows where the loaners are and whether one was available for me. I called in and got an idiot night fleet manager who said to check with the shop foreman, who would know about loaners. Of course, he did not, so I called back hoping to get a different dispatcher. I did and he gave me a truck number. The foreman thought it was on the lot someplace but sent me to find it. I found it, dancing through three inches of newly fallen snow, only to find that while its auto start was working (the truck was running), it was locked up and the shop didn’t have the key. I elected to set out on my truck and deal with whatever I had to in order to survive the sub zero temperatures I would find in Minnesota.

I spent the next night at a TA in Hudson, WI, four miles east of the Minnesota border. On the drive north I decided there had to be a way to keep the truck idling for more than five minutes. The solution I found was to wedge something between the brake pedal and the accelerator pedal. That evening I looked around the cab for something. What I settled on was several of my audio books. After a little trial and error, the answer to my idle prayers was “Black Widow” by Randy Wayne White (excellent read / listen) plus “Indellible” by Kristen Heitzmann (okay read) plus the Hazardous Materials Handbook (boring). Wedged in just so, these three literary materpieces kept the truck idling at about 850 RPMs. Since it wasn’t just idling, but felt to the truck like a person was keeping the idle up with his foot, the truck kept running all night. This was important because when the alarm woke me up the next morning, it was 13 below zero.

The delivery went okay. I got there 90 minutes early for no apparent reason since they didn’t start unloading trucks until 09:00. From there I got a local delivery (more on “locals” below) that picked up nine miles away in Bloomington. This particular load was a drop and hook, which should have been quick, but cold. But remember, I have a very balky electric fifth wheel disconnect system. It ended up taking much longer than anticipated because I had to replace a loaded trailer at the dock with the empty trailer I was pulling. This meant:

1. Unhook my empty and leave it in the lot (temperature – minus 12 degrees).
2. Hook up to the loaded trailer at door #2 and tow it into the lot (temperature – minus 12 degrees).
3. Unhook the loaded trailer and leave it in the lot  (temperature – minus 12 degrees).
4. Hook up to my empty and back it into door #2 (temperature – minus 12 degrees).
5. Unhook from the empty trailer at the dock (temperature – minus 11 degrees) and, finally, at long last,
6. Hook up to my loaded trailer  (temperature – minus 11 degrees) and …

Drive to our drop lot in St. Paul Park. After a quick missed turn and semi-legal U-turn, I dropped my bales of shredded paper bound for Green Bay (seriously – a hundred bucks worth of waste paper was being shipped a couple of hundred miles) at the drop lot, picked up an empty, dropped and hooked a load of 3M industrial products bound for southeastern Wisconsin, and set out for a service stop in Marshfield.

YES! All my problems would be solved.

And damned if they weren’t. I got to Marshfield just before dark. They had my truck in the shop within 30 minutes and began a stem-to-stern maintenance inspection, after which they would hand the tractor off to the local International dealership. The dealer would fix my auto start problem.

I checked into the Marshfield monk’s quarters and slept the second night on this tour in a properly conditioned bunk room. When I awoke the next morning at 04:00 I found my truck, hooked up to my loaded trailer, and set sail for Pleasant Prairie, WI. I wasn’t sure if the auto start had been fixed, but I assumed, correctly in this case, that it had been. They did change my fuel filters (again), top off all my fluids, clean my cab air filters, and steam clean my fifth wheel. I was good to go.

So I goodly went. In two loads I made my way as far as Houston. I made my drop, expecting to then drive to our drop lot and catch a ride home for a couple of days, when I got a preplan for a local delivery.

I was not happy. Here’s why. A local delivery means no miles. I am paid by the mile. To help ease this pain, the company pays a flat rate for the delivery. That flat fee is TWENTY STINKIN’ DOLLARS. The last couple of short hauls I dealt with took five and three hours to execute. This mean I was being paid CRAP money to haul Roehl loads. When I complained to my fleet manager she said, I paraphrase, “Hey, every once in a while you gotta take one for the team.”

Bovine excrement! It’s not like they overpay me for all the other loads I haul so I owe ’em one. I’m barely making minimum wage as it is. Asking me to take LESS than minimum wage is a nonstarter for me. I conveyed this in a pretty harsh phone call to my fleet manager and she had pretty much no response. In this case, it wasn’t quite as bad because my pickup was only three miles off the route back to our drop lot, the shipper got me loaded within an hour, and all I had to do was take this load to our drop lot. So I didn’t get totally screwed this time.

I hope by making a big stink, my fleet manager will be less inclined to stick me with many more local pulls.

Thus endeth another run. My fervent hope is that by the time I get back in the Upper Midwest, the below zero temperature readings will be history or 10 months in the future. By that time I will have hit the lottery or, more likely, I will have a new regional gig that keeps me waaaay south of the Arctic Circle.

 

Driving in Winter Weather – #$^&;@)**%!!!!!

I have formally requested a regional driving position with Roehl; one that will keep me in THE SOUTH!

After four trips into the Sub Zero (the appliance brand) freezer that is the upper midwest, I have officially had my fill of sub zero (thermally-speaking) temperatures in the upper midwest or anywhere else for that matter. And don’t get me started on snow and ice.

You don’t have to get me started because I am starting myself. Responding to popular demand (thanks Val) I herewith present my winter driving experiences over the last couple of months.

FLASHBACK TO ANCIENT TIMES

Before getting to the grizzly details, let me declare that I grew up in Minnesota and lived in the upper midwest until I was 32 years old. As a child I ice skated, ice fished, built snow forts, sledded and toboganned and woke up early to listen to the radio for school closings. After getting my drivers license I regularly drove in both snow and ice.

Working as a propane gas company marketing manager in Green Bay, Wisconsin, (motto: It Can NEVER Be Cold Enough), I routinely drove the highways (giving more credit than due to many of the roads I drove) of the northern half of Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. News flash: Da UP, especially up in the Houghton / Hancock area, routinely gets 300 inches of snow each winter – often before January 1st.

My favorite Winter in the UP story has to be the time I stopped at the home of one of my local reps who lived just south of Houghton. Although the drive north had been beautiful and mostly sunny, it had started snowing around L’Anse and was coming down pretty good by the time I got to Russel’s place. After downing a quick beer with him he asked if I wanted to go for a quick snowmobile ride. Of course I did.

By this time there was five inches of snow on the ground and it was starting to blow. Oh, and now it was dark. So we set out on the country roads leading away from Keweenaw Bay, a beautifully large body of water extending south from Lake Superior (yeah, where the Edmund Fitzgerald sunk). It was COLD!

About 20 minutes out on a snow-drifted county road we came across a car sitting, almost floating, on a three foot drift. Its lights were on and the motor was still running.  We got off our sleds and slogged up to the driver’s door. There was an old coot sitting at the wheel with a dumb grin on his face. He said he’d been sitting there for maybe 30 minutes before we arrived and was visibly glad that we showed up. He said it was warm and sunny when he drove up the the Legion Hall in Iforgetwhere but was snowing pretty good by the time he’d had a few beers and decided it was time to head home to the wife. He was pretty surprised at how bad the roads were but thought he could make it. There wasn’t a homestead in sight so he thought he’d be best off just sitting where he had gotten stuck and wait for a snow plow. I think he would have waited a loooong time and there was a better than even chance that he would have run out of gas before daybreak. As drunk as we was, he was flirting with the great beyond.

Russ put him on the back of his snowmobile and we took him back to his place, a 20 minute snowmobile ride. His wife was thankful but couldn’t hide her anger that the old fool had gotten himself liquored up and stuck in the UP wilderness. Nevertheless, she offered a bite to eat and a sip of brandy. We declined, and headed back into the snow and thought the proper course of action was to head to a tavern to drink a few celebratory beers. Quite possibly, we saved to old dude’s life.

But enough of our heroism.

SLICK!

My first unique winter trucking experience came on my  first winter trip to Wisconsin. After an unload in Wausau, I had an 05:30 drop and hook at a paper plant in Wisconsin Rapids. I was out of hours for the day and thought there was a truck stop just east of there on I-39 in Plover. I had seen it on the way north and was hoping there’d be an open spot on the way back south. Turns out it was not quite open. The lot was barricaded but I snuck through the barrels where a FedEX truck was parked. A beautiful, large concrete parking area beckoned but I was a bit nervous about staying. The FedEX driver said there was parking at a restaurant just across the road, so that’s where I parked just minutes before my hours expired. I even had a nice burger at the restaurant before I bunked down for the night. The waitress gushed a stream of “OH YAHs” and “YOU BETCHAs” over the thirty minutes I spent in the joint. Because I had spent a lot of time in Wisconsin Rapids when I lived in Green Bay, I had a lot of questions about how the place had changed.

I was up at dark-thirty and headed for the paper plant in Wisconsin Rapids. The first thing I noticed was that the new truck stop across the street was now open for business. Sigh, timing is everything. I made my way to the paper plant where I dutifully dropped my empty and picked up the paperwork for the loaded trailer. I drove to a couple of different lots on the other side of the tracks before I found my trailer in a lot that was dark as a mother in law’s heart. It was around zero degrees with a nice northerly breeze. The lot was very icy. So icy in fact that when I tried to back under my trailer, I didn’t have enough traction to actually lock onto the kingpin. I bet it wasn’t until the tenth try when I got a 25-foot run and heard / felt the industrial strength click. Phshew! Then I had to weigh my rig on the single platform scale. This means I had to weigh the steer wheels, pull forward to weigh the drives and then all the way forward to catch the trailer tandems. I was heavy and it took a few weighs to get the tandems set right and the peoper weight distribution. When I finally got it right I was able to leave The Rapids and head south to the Chicago area where I dropped the load of paper.

WATER IN FUEL – BAD

But I wasn’t done fighting the cold on that trip. I picked up a load of medical supplies (heating pads and frostbite remedies, I think) and drove back north to a northeastern suburb of Minneapolis. On I-94 between Madison and the Minnesota border I started feeling the diesel miss as it climbed the hills. My delivery was scheduled for 04:30 so I kept on trucking and figured I’d get the truck looked at after I made my delivery.

As a quick aside, the trip to Minnesota wasn’t a total loss in that I connected with my old friend Ty. He picked me up at the warehouse that evening and we had a nice reunion dinner at an Embers restaurant. Way back in my second job out of the U of M, I worked at an advertising and public relations agency and one of my assignments was writing and editing the employee newsletter for Embers. I remember the owner’s mission statement for our agency: “We need you to recover our seats with a$$holes as many times a day as possible.” Ty and I had a delightful visit, and the Emberger Royale with their special sauce was just as good as I remembered.

Back at the truck I turned in for the night. At 03:00 I heard a knock at my door and instructions to back up to door number 4. They had me unloaded within an hour, and after another couple of hours my daily 14 reset and I was able to head south for my next reunion (with a couple of babes from my high school graduation class) and pickup (not a chick but a freight pickup).

Not half a block from the warehouse I had just left, my truck started missing worse than ever. My smartphone indicated 12 below zero. I called in to see how Roehl wanted me to handle things. The maintenance guy then talked me through 45 minutes of “Try this. No try that.” It was pretty evident that my fuel system was frosty and the “Try this” that finally worked was for me to take inch and a quarter cap off the top of  my fuel filter, stick a screw driver in and puncture the top of the paper filter inside the glass dome. That hole was enough to introduce enough diesel to the injectors to get me to a repair shop and get the fuel filter replaced. After 45 minutes working under the hood in sub zero temperatures with a stiff wind I was officially FROZEN.

I cranked the heat up as high as it would go and made my way to Lakeville where I finally put in my contact lenses, brushed my teeth, and met my high school friends at the McDonalds next to the truck stop. Yeah, we were high rollers. I hadn’t seen either one of them in more than 25 years. They both looked GREAT. We agreed that none of us had aged a bit.

After our visit, I picked up a load of breakfast cereal in Northfield. Only trouble here was my fifth wheel wouldn’t unlock. It was another drop and hook, so if I couldn’t drop my empty I wouldn’t be able to pick up my loaded trailer. I had had this problem earlier on this tour. The tractor I drive, a PDN (pretty darn new) International ProStar Plus, has an automatic fifth wheel release which means I can lower the landing gear manually, disconnect the lines to the trailer manually and then jump in the cab and push a button to decouple the fifth wheel (where the kingpin of the trailer attaches to the tractor). Another neat feature of the tractor is the fifth wheel is teflon coated which means I never have to put grease on the fifth wheel. (I know you’ve seen tractors without their trailers, running around with grease snaked around the top of the fifth wheel. ) Unfortunately, some idiots still put grease on them and the grease gets down into the innards of the fifth wheel mechanism. When it gets cold, the grease gets especially viscous (sticky instead of slippery) and the auto unlock, is not able to actually unlock the mechanism. I still have the manual pull-lever, of course. Unfortunately, I am not strong enough to manually unlock it.  THREE TIMES I have had to call on truly manly men to help me out. The first time it was another trucker. The second time it was a yard dog driver (the guy who drives the little boxy tractor in warehouse operations where they have to move the trailers around the facility). That’s who did it on this occasion. And the third time it was a mechanic at the Appleton Roehl terminal. I finally had a mechanic scrape the excess grease off the fifth wheel mechanism and then spray it down with a degreaser. I’ve had a couple of problems since, but I’ve been able to handle them myself, without having to reveal to the trucking world that I am, indeed, a 150 pound wussy.

Finally – I was able to mosey on back to Texas where it was a balmy 45 degrees and cloudy. By this time my blood was thick enough that 45 degrees made me feel like getting out my Speedo and jumping into Lake Conroe.

THE ILLINOIS “HIGHWAY OF DEATH” (Apologies to Saddam Hussein, may he rest in eternal misery)

After three days in the semi-tropics I picked up a load in SE Texas bound back to the Chicago area. I knew it was going to be nasty but by the time I got to southern Illinois I thought perhaps the worst had already passed. Silly boy. Silly boy. After fueling up at the Loves in Ina, I was back on I-57 and after passing north through Mt. Vernon (did you know there is a Mt. Vernon in just about every state I’ve been to?). There was a significant increase in the number of vehicles in the ditch. There were more and more patches of ice and snow on the roadway. It wasn’t long before the traffic started slowing and the roads got even worse.

We all slowed to 30 – 40 miles per hour. EXCEPT for the occasional idiot that was still doing 60 and the BIGGER IDIOT that was toodling along at the mind numbing speed of 5. On roads like this there was usually one lane that seemed to be passable, usually the right lane. The passing lane was a crapshoot. But you can’t stay behind somebody doing 5 STINKING MILES AN HOUR! For one thing, 5 mph doesn’t give you enough momentum to get up even a modest slope. So, many of us used the passing lane to get by these BIGGER IDIOTS.

And I was running out of driving hours. I figured if I averaged 30 miles an hour, I would make it to Effingham with enough of a cushion to find a place to park at one of the four major truck stops.

Silly boy. Silly boy.

It got worse. The little lady in front of me did a graceful 270 and ended up just off the paved surface into the right side ditch. I was maintaining enough of a following distance so I didn’t get involved but make no mistake, this was my first butt clenching moment. By this time and place you couldn’t drive a hundred feet without a car, truck or semi in the ditch. Some were rolled onto their sides although most had four or more wheels in contact with a frozen surface.

Not much farther on, an SUV swirl into the ditch in front of me and made it all the way to the tree line where it introduced itself to a poplar. A 30 mile an hour average for the next two hours was pure fantasy. I was already thinking of excuses for my hours of service violation. There were times when we all stopped (What was all this traffic DOING out here in the country on a day like this???) and I changed my status from On Duty-Driving to Off Duty-Break.

I was tense but kept  my big rig on the road, and I was still creeping past the 5 mph bigger idiots. My next butt clenching moment came when I saw a moderate incline up ahead with traffic stopped in the left  lane. I eased back into the right lane and saw that a highway department PLOW was trying to PUSH a TANKER up the hill. Yes. The plow was up against the back end of the tanker and trying to push it. All their wheels were spinning and I say again, you gotta have some momentum to make it up a hill. Once you stop, you’re dead.

I barely had enough of the Big M (momentum) to make it to the top of the hill, my drive wheels slowly spinning all the way. My rig was trying to slide towards the ditch. It was a few minutes before I got my butt cheeks unclenched after that experience. The traffic would ebb and flow after that. I finally made it to Effingham, but my troubles were not behind me.

I pulled off the freeway at an exit that had two of the four truck stops. I put myself off duty. It was semi gridlock. I don’t mean sort of or halfway gridlock. I mean it was big rigs, one behind the other, every direction you looked.

I crept the last third of a mile into the Flying J. It took four stop light cycles just to get onto the city street at the end of the freeway off ramp. It took a solid 20 minutes to get into the lot and tuck myself behind another truck that was improperly parked. Hey, I was out of the traffic lane and other trucks could get by me. I was done for the night and wishing I had the makings for a Brandy Manhattan.

I got out of my truck and walked further into the parking area to see if there was a more legitimate place to park.

Let me here say, that when it comes to truck stops, I am one of the good guys. I never park illegally. Well maybe twice when I was totally out of hours and could NOT drive another mile or another minute – once at a Loves just south of San Antonio where I pulled up to the pump between the outermost fuel lane and the scale (remember, I wrote about backing into the truck that was hidden behind me at 3 a.m. when another driver woke me up to tell me a legit spot had opened up) and the other time at a Pilot on I-30 near Sulfur Springs, Texas, when I was three deep beside the scale. Other than those two times, I have been a model truck stop parker.

Back at the Effingham FJ, after seeing one impossible spot (for me) and watching another driver crawling under his trailer tandems to loosen up his frozen trailer brakes I walked back to my truck where I was greeted by an Effing FJ employee asking if this was my truck. Yes. Well you gotta move. Why? It’s impeding traffic. No it’s not, trucks are moving through this lane with no problem. You must move now. What? You’re going to call a wrecker to tow me out of here? 

Look, I said. It’s still light out and every space is taken. It’s only going to get worse. If I leave, somebody else is going to pull in and you’ll spend all your time kicking people out of this spot. And come morning, there’s going to be a truck parked here anyway.

He was adamant and said he would call my company and raise hell, so I gave him some not very nice words to pass along and got into my truck and left vowing to do vile things if ever I had to return to this armpit of a truck stop. It took me another 20 minutes just to get through the FJ lot and on my out again and guess what I saw? A truck parked just where I had been and the Effing FJ punk was nowhere to be seen. I was trembling with rage. After another 10 minutes I was backtracking south on I-57 to the Petro at the next exit west. It was the biggest truck stop in Effingham and the reason I didn’t stop there first was because I foolishly thought I would be able to grab a shower at the FJ where I had a shower credit. I didn’t have a freebie coming at Petros or TAs. Well, there would be no shower tonight. As it turned out, I wouldn’t even see the inside of a men’s room until midmorning the next day.

As I turned right onto the street leading to the Petro, I waited patiently in the line of trucks headed to the end of the street where I would make a left into the lot. Unfortunately, when I got there, a cop car blocking the way into the lot. Petro was evidenlt parked full. I rolled down my window and the nice policeman what he suggested that I take a right and drive a mile to a lot down the street that might have a space. If there was no space, he said to just pull to the side of the road and stay there for the night. I found a truck repair shop the seemed to have the welcome sign out. I walked to the office and politely asked if I could spend the night if I promised to be gone by the time they got there in the morning. He nodded. I parked, took out my contact lenses without washing my hands for the first time maybe ever, peed in my half gallon plastic bottle, and, it now being dark, shut down for the night.

I woke up just before 4 a.m. My alarm hadn’t even gone off yet. I wanted to hit the road before the BIGGER IDIOTS started moving. Trust me when I tell you that I was one of the VERY few human beings moving at that hour. As I made my way back to the freeway, there were semis everywhere. There was barely room to drive down the street. Semis were double parked along the shoulder of the freeway for a mile or so past truck stop row.

The roads were bad, but since I was about the only one out there, I was able to keep moving, averaging perhaps 40 or 45 mph. By the time I got to Monee, the roads were much better. I had a few hours before my load was due in Chicago, According to the local radio stations, Chicagoans were staying home today so the traffic should be light (PLEASE!). So I pulled into a Loves and took the shower I didn’t take the night before. The hot water felt extra good.

The last negative experience of this day was getting back to the freeway. The loves was situated at the bottom of a modest slope. That meant you had to drive uphill to get to the street leading back to I-57. Cross traffic on that street didn’t stop. So trucks were having a very hard time getting onto that street. After watching a couple of semis try (they ended up backing down the hill) I took my turn. With my fat drive tires, a perfect touch on the accelerator (if I do say so myself), and a mix of luck and assertiveness at the stop sign, I got up the hill, made the turn and finished my route without incident.

NOT WHERE I WANTED TO BREAK DOWN

On my next trip north, it was perpetually cold. I shivered a LOT. Normally I like drops and hooks. No waiting around to get loaded or unloaded. But with a drop and hook you spend more time outside. Being outside in below zero, windy conditions is something I normally avoid. On this particular morning I was delivering empty cans I had picked up in Wisconsin to Indiana. I spent an icy cold night at a Pilot just north of Indianapolis and had a 07:00 delivery at a tomato canning operation near the Indiana – Ohio border. That was a bit over 100 miles. I then had to boogie to southern (remember that word, southern) Ohio for a pickup, another 100 miles. I got there around 10:30 and had just pulled into their shipping lot to see where I would drop my empty and where I would find my loaded trailer. They told me, kindly, where to go. As I was moving my empty trailer to where I would drop it, my truck died. It would start and run for a few seconds and then die again. It was perhaps 50 feet beyond where four semis were backed into their doors and pretty much right in the middle of all the coming and going truck traffic. This would be, shall we say, inconvenient for everybody.

A quick question: How is it that I could get rolling first thing in the morning. Drive 120 miles and then park for a couple of hours. Start my unit up again, drive another hundred miles. Then park for 10 STINKIN’ MINUTES, and have my fuel system freeze up???

I called in to our road breakdown line and the ordeal began. Not being a diesel mechanic, I certainly did not have the final answer in this case, but with the temperature at 12 below and the wind blowing a steady 20 miles an hour with gusts up to perhaps 30, and the engine exhibiting signs of being starved for fuel, I would have bet at least a week’s pay that my fuel system was FROZEN. The road rescue folks didn’t necessarily disagree, they just wanted me to “try a few things.” So I tried for the better part of two hours. Not a continuous two hours, but in 10 minute stretches. I had my battery unit keeping the truck warm, at least for the time being, so I would work until I couldn’t feel my fingers then hop in the cab to thaw them out again.

I put diesel anti-get in each tank. I messed with the fuel filter, although in this case the punching a hole in top of the filter cartridge trick wasn’t an option like it was back in Minneapolis because there was plenty of fuel in the fuel filter dome. I stuck my oil dipstick into each of the tanks to make sure there was fuel in both of them. That meant I had to wipe off the dipstick real good and find the one big hole in the strainer in each tank. I could find that big hole on the driver side but not the other side. My numb fingers just couldn’t make it happen. I mean, I shake anyway, but in these conditions, I was SHAKING pretty violently

My hands got so cold I finally told road rescue that I had tried everything I was going to try. I got in the truck and almost cried my hands and especially fingers hurt so much. It’s painful to have your fingers get cold, but it hurts a lot worse when they start thawing out again. Dayyum.

So road rescue made arrangements for me to get towed in. The tow truck came a couple of hours later. I spent those hours first in the warehouse directly under one of their industrial heaters, trying not to get mowed down by forklifts, and then in their guard shack which was toasty warm except when they foolishly had to open the door to enter or leave the shack.

To condense the ending of this story: I got towed. To Dayton. They backed my tractor into their garage and put four heaters to work. (I stood in front of them too.) When I finally got back to a 98.6 degree body temperature, I nuked up some food in their break room while the mechanic did his thing. Shock of shocks, the fuel lines were frozen. He replaced the filter and put a double dose of diesel conditioner into the fuel tanks. By this time of course my 14 hour clock had expired so I drove to the front of their property and parked for the night. I did NOT get a load from where I had broken down but instead picked up a load of paper from another plant in the same town and drove south with all due haste.

My hands got back to normal except for one spot on my right index finger. I’m pretty certain it had been bitten with frost. The pain lasted for three weeks until now, I can’t feel the pain anymore. However, my hands now get colder faster.

COLD WEATHER PRELIMINARY EPILOG

I was hoping that was the extent of my Arctic running for the season. Unfortunately, I did not get the regional position (I guess) and I am in Gary, Indiana, as I write this. It just dipped below 20 degrees and it is lightly snowing. And blowing. I’m at our terminal waiting to get my tractor in the shop. My auto-start has been malfunctioning. You see, most companies don’t like their tractors running just to keep the driver cool in the summer or warm in the winter. Uses too much fuel. When I worked for TWCITW (the worst company in the world – AKA Stevens) my truck had an APU (auxiliary power unit). It heated or cooled and provided ample electricity and was powered by a glorified lawn mower engine. It used maybe 15-20 percent of the fuel that an idling diesel tractor engine would use. In my current ProStar Plus, I have a battery-powered comfort unit. It will run the heating, cooling and lighting for four to six hours before the dedicated batteries run down and the main diesel engine has to kick on to recharge those batteries. The engine kicks on automatically. All by itself. Of course it wakes me up, but it’s a comfort to know that I am being taken care of.

This is the comfort solution. And might I add that I am not able to idle my truck for long periods of time. It is configured to idle only for five minutes or so and then it will shut down automatically.

A couple of nights ago, it was only 20 degrees or so and when the time came to recharge the batteries, the dashboard lit up and I heard all the clicking and hissing sounds that signal an imminent auto start. But. It. Just. Didn’t.

So I had to get out of my bunk, get behind the wheel, start up the truck by depressing the clutch and turning the key all the way to the “start” position, let it run for a few minutes, shut it down, and then flip the appropriate switch to set the auto start system. This time, I turned the ignition key back to the “on” position. I had accidentally learned that when I would turn the truck ignition key on in the morning, the truck would auto start. Magically the auto start restarted the truck. When the auto start starts the engine the engine will run long enough to suitably recharge the batteries – typically an hour. The auto start feature is also temperature sensitive so when the temps drop to 10 degrees, the engine will idle longer than five minutes. It will actually idle until further notice.

So here I sit at the Gary terminal waiting to for a mechanic. I’ve been here for more than seven hours already. They just have the weekend crew, doncha know? And since I’m heading to MINNESOTA, I don’t want to get stuck at a truck stop and FREEZE TO DEATH IN MY SLEEP. Temperature in Bloomington tomorrow night is predicted to be 11 below. Hope they can get me shipshape before I head to the frozen(er) tundra.

Why did they ever have to invent the Polar Vortex. I always thought we had plenty of weather to discuss. We didn’t need any made up weather phenomena.

Roehl Trucking

Okay, I’ve been AWOL for a few months. So sue.

In September, having realized that HAZMAT tanker was just not gonna be my cup of formaldehyde, I hooked up with what appeared to be a fine upstanding trucking company named Roehl (pronounced RAIL). They paid 38 cents a mile to start, and although they also run flatbeds and curtainside vans along with the occasional reefer, I was going into the dry van end of the business. Like Schwerman, Roehl is also based in Wisconsin – in this case, Marshfield. It had to be run by good Upper Midwestern folk.

I attended the three day orientation in Grand Prairie, Texas, with one other new hire. Jean was in his mid-forties and had driven for a couple of years with a few different companies. I must say that the testing went beyond anything I had ever experienced. Of course we had to pass the DOT physical and pee in a cup. But they had a physician’s  assistant come to their facility and put us through a few extra exercises. We had to squat under a truck, climb into a trailer, and a couple of other transport gymnastics that are lost down the memory hole. After each, he would note our pulse rate and blood pressure. Obviously I passed and the kindly examiner added that I did better than a whole lotta younger guys he tests.

After a road test, which, obviously, I also passed we got into the classroom. Typical boring power point presentations and 60s era safety films.

On the last day I was assigned a truck. I got a new(er) International ProStar Plus – only 32,000 miles. Pretty dang clean. The other guy got a Freightliner, although it didn’t manner. A condition of his hiring was the use of a CPAP machine. Although he admitted he had a fat neck, he was not down with having a plastic cup strapped to his face every night so he opted out. He ended up going to work for Arnold Transport that did not require CPAP. We stay in touch.

I got my first load assignment back to Houston where I was able to load my personal stuff and take a couple of days off before I hit the road. My first trip? A nice little jaunt to Romeoville, Illinois. From there I picked up a load from John Deere in Janesville, Wisconsin (I grew up in Janesville … Minnesota) delivering in East Syracuse, New York, where I sustained my first on the job injury.

I had delivered three good-sized all terrain vehicles to a distributor. They were stapped down in my trailer and chocked with little triangular pieces of wood which were nailed to the trailer’s wooden floor with, at the very least, 16p (that’s pretty big) nails.

It was a drop and hook. If I haven’t described D&H before, it simply means that I deliver the load, unhook the full trailer, and, in most cases, pick up an empty trailer. Well, the empty had also delivered ATVs and was empty. Except for a few triangular pieces of wood and a whole lotta bent nails that were stuck in the trailer floor. It is one of my responsibilities to make sure the empty trailer is swept and ready for the next load.

I travel with a hammer, so I got my full-sized, Craftsman hammer and got after those pesky nails. They were beyond pesky.

The nails were big enough, and trailer floor wood dense enough, so that I could not extract a single the nail. Hmmm. Then I realized that I had also brought along a little pry bar that I used to thump the tires in my pre- and post-trip inspections. I retrieved the pry bar and took it to the first nail. My now puny arm strength just couldn’t get the job done. So I caught the head of the nail in the notch of my pry bar and then stepped on the other end of the bar. I had to jump on it before the nail let loose. And loose it did let. It shot free like a bullet, ricocheting off the ceiling off the trailer and ending up I knew not where. That was a positive development.

I found the next nail and tried it again. I put my full weight on the appropriate end of the pry bar and once again the nail shot like a bullet … into my face. I took a hard hit just above my chin, just above the crease between my chin and my lower lip. BAM! It hurt. I was stunned.

I first probed inside my mouth over my lower teeth. Tasted a little blood and felt a definite wound of some kind. Then I touched the pain. When I pulled my fingers away, they were bloody. Great.

I got a piece of napkin out of my truck and stuck it on the wound, as if it was a shaving cut. Then I finished extracting the nails. Only now I didn’t step on the end of the pry bar with the ball of my foot exposing my face over the would be projectiles, but with my heel exposing only the flesh of my buttocks to the rocket force of the nails.

Although I didn’t think my bullet / nail wound would be fatal, I  did worry that it might get infected so I called my “incident” in to the safety department. They listened patiently, and asked if I thought I needed medical attention. I replied that I didn’t think so but I wanted to document what had happened just in case. We were all okay with it. And I finished my  first tour of the upper midwest and northeast without further incident.

I even got home within two weeks. So far things were looking okay.