Trucker Teeth

Quick, cute(?) story from my time in the shipper’s office in Salinas, California. Some truckers can be quite talkative. I’ve walked away from several conversations that I started up with an innocent remark at a truck stop or shipper or receiver’s waiting area. Sometimes other truckers will just strike up a conversation with me. Guess I look like a listener. I’ve walked away from several of these encounters with my ears bleeding.

Well another driver had evidently pent up a good deal of conversation over his trip to Salinas because I learned in a matter of minutes that:

1. He was sore because he had been working out at a health club owned by his brother.
2. He had just started driving truck again because his construction job in Utah went away.
3. He’d driven truck before but “had some problems.”
4. He had to wait a bit to get his CDL again this time around because of legal issues that he had to wait on.
5. He made do by dealing drugs. “Thank God I didn’t get caught this time.”

Okaaaay. Fortunately it was my turn at the window so he redirected his life story to the next guy in line.

As for the title of this post, I have noticed that a goodly percentage of truck drivers have bad teeth. I’m not passing judgment. Just making an observation. I can also say that when I am dealing with my contact lenses and brushing my own teeth in truck stop men’s rooms, more often than not there is another trucker brushing his teeth as well. Teeth issues range from lotsa spaces (missing teeth) to discolored or rotting teeth. I just can’t help but notice these things.

Well the guy who was giving me his life story / rap sheet had, as far as I can tell, two teeth. All I could see were his two front top teeth and they the bottom formed an upside down V kinda like this:

[_/\_]

It wasn’t quite that pronounced, but you get the idea. The guy he was talking to after he finished with me had all his teeth except his two front top teeth. So between them, they had one good (give or take) set of teeth.

Hey, it tickled me.

Back to the Midwest

Had a miserable loading experience in Salinas. I had been given the wrong loading time and had to be shoehorned into the rotation. It took more than seven hours(!) and the personnel were a$$#@!@$. As an added bonus, my reefer unit was acting up. So as soon as I was loaded I drove half a mile to the Thermo King dealership.

Because I had traveled such a short distance at a speed of less than 25 miles an hour, even though I had driven a couple of miles, my QualComm had not registered any actual driving time. Plus, I went to “Off Duty – Break” status shortly after arriving at the dock, I was only a short tfew hours from having my 10 hour break completed and my 11 hour driving clock reset. So, after the TK technician replaced the alternator on my reefer, I just pulled out into the parking area in front of their building and crawled into the sleeper. It was 10:30 p.m.

After a few hours of sleep I woke up, scaled my load and got a coffee refill at the Pilot down the street and set out for Cedar Falls, Iowa. Since it was still quite dark, I was able to slip by San Francisco without experiencing any traffic problems. I was taken aback by the toll for the Congressman George Miller Benicia Martinez Memorial Bridge over the Carquinez Strait north of Oakland – TWENTY FIVE DOLLARS! But hey, wasn’t coming out of my pocket.

I passed through Sacramento with the predawn glow brightening in the east. The climb up into the Sierra Nevadas was a bit taxing on my Kenworth, but gloriously beautiful. I stopped at a rest area just short of Donner Pass to take a bio-break. The smell of the mountain forest was almost intoxicating. It took me back to the first time I visited the Black Hills – dry, fresh, piney goodness. Rejuvenated, I continued through Reno and fueled up at Loves in Fernley. I had swapped a load there in my second week with Dudley, my first trainer.

Towards the eastern side of Nevada I saw low grade mountains with snow near the top. I had already seen plenty of snow through Donner Pass and that was much higher. But this snow was shrouded in clouds.

Passing by the last of the casinos in Nevada I entered Utah at the Bonneville Salt Flats. Aptly named because IT. IS. FLAT.

Here’s the view to the southeast from a rest stop off I 40 near the Bonneville Salt Flats.

Another shot at The Flats. Evidently people who hike around in the salt don’t want to track it back to their cars.

The road across the salt flats is painfully straight. Evidently  a lot of drivers fall asleep and run off the road (and sometimes die!) because there are signs every couple of miles warning you not to drive fatigued. I was too late to get a shot of it, but around one of these signs there were ruts running off the road into the muck just in front of the sign mirrored by ruts of the same vehicle (I would assume) that had been towed out of the muck on the other side of the sign. This driver was evidently too tired to read the sign.

I love driving through Wyoming. W  I  D  E    O  P  E  N    S  P  A  C  E  S. I saw several herds of antelope. I got as far as Rawlins, Wyoming, before I ran out of hours.

The next day I continued on through Cheyenne, where I hit the literal high point of my trip – 8,200 feet. The skies were threatening as I entered Nebraska. Curiously, the most common animal I saw was turkey. Bet I saw a dozen flocks pecking in the broad ditches alongside the freeway. By the way, did you know that Benjamin Franklin lobbied to have the Turkey named the national bird instead of the Bald Eagle? He thought the eagle was as beautiful creature but was a scavenger as much as anything. He thought the turkey better represented the clever, effective, strong character of America.

A less than excellent shot of the hail in western Nebraska.

About midway through my turkey spotting, traffic slowed and I noted that there were dozens of cars and trucks pulled off to the side of the road. Hmmm. No sign of a chain-reaction accident. A half mile down the road I saw the reason – hail. Evidently just short of the hail, which ranged to quarter- sized, these drivers experienced rain so torrential, they pulled over and stopped. I heard my trucker brethren on my CB cussing the wussy four-wheelers for slowing things down.

I made it as far as the Petro in York before I stopped for the night. A Super Walmart walking distance away and prime rib at the truck stop restaurant buffet made it a better than average stop. I always get a to-go box at these buffets. They charge anywhere from $4.50 to  $6.00 per pound. Since I already had leftover veggies, I just got a small container of prime rib. It only cost $1.96! And the dude who was carving the meat cut it up for me!! Jackpot!!!

End cut. It was delicious.

I was able to sleep in the next morning since my drop in Cedar Falls wasn’t scheduled until 4:30 p.m. I almost slept in too long. My OptiStop (fuel stop) directed me to a Sapp Brothers station on the west side of Omaha. They were doing some construction at the station and while they had three lanes open, one was blocked by a truck that was sticking out of a service bay. It took more than 10 minutes to even get to a pump. Then, because Sapp Brothers is retro, I had to go inside to prepare to pump since they didn’t have that capability at the pump. So far, so mediocre. I ran into the real delay when I went back in to settle up. They couldn’t get my card to work. I wasted another 20 minutes waiting. Since I was going to grab a shower I suggested to the clerk that I do that while they sorted things out. No. They might need more information from me. Sigh.

I got them paid. Took a quick shower (below average). And put the pedal as close to the metal as I could. I got to the Target Distribution Center with barely a minute to spare. A short three and a half hours later I was unloaded and trying to beat the storms to a truck stop. This was the same day that Oklahoma City, rather Moore, got hammered with that Class 5 tornado. I knew weather was coming.

Knowing I wouldn’t get another load assignment until morning and knowing there was space available at a Flying J in Waterloo a dozen miles to the east, I hit the road. A mile down US 20 I got a message. I pulled over and retrieved the load assignment that would take me to  a Swift Meat plant in Marshalltown for a load that would take me to Atlanta. The pickup was in the opposite direction so I made a cloverleaf U-turn and headed back to the west. I knew of a truck stop about 12 miles back.

The darkening skies were continually lit up with streaks of lightening. The wind gusted with increasing velocity. By the time I pulled into the truck stop, the rain was blowing horizontal. Anything that wasn’t lashed down at the station was blowing across the lot. This included signs and trash receptacles. There were no regular parking slots left so I pulled up to a curb and made a call to the shipper. He indicated the storm was just hitting them an hour to the south so we agreed that I would not make that drive until morning. Good thing. Two-lane roads most of the way. It would NOT have been fun drive.

The wind rocked me to sleep. It was a pretty full day.

Lotta Agriculture and Oil with a Sprinkling of Excitement

I am referring to my trip from Los Angeles – Ontario, actually – to Salinas, about 80 miles south of San Francisco. I was empty so the climbs up the mountains allowed me to pass dozens of other trucks as they were struggling up the 4 – 6% grades. And the descents were a breeze since I didn’t have 40,000 pounds of cargo forcing me down the hills at potentially breakneck speeds.

Before I get to the geography lesson and the photos, let me recap my arrival in California. I finally got to Greater LA after the tools at TA Phoenix finally got my APU fixed. The downtime actually allowed me to score another 34 hour reset so I had lotsa hours to play with.

About 30 minutes after I was fixed I got a message saying that my delivery appointment had been pushed back 24 HOURS. Nobody could tell me why. I now had two full days to drive 54o miles. Since that was double what I needed I messaged in for a repower. Knowing that an electronic repower request alone had never once gotten me a new load, I followed up with phone calls. A NUMBER of phone calls. I think I made my fill-in Driver Manager cry once.

Be careful what you wish for. After I got to L.A. and was on I-20 about halfway through the metro area, I got a  repower.  I would have to backtrack 40 miles and do a local delivery, but at least I would be off my load and ready to pick up another one the next morning, so I found my way back to the Kenworth dealership in Fontana where the other guy was getting his truck repaired. I saw the other rig waiting near the service driveway.

The driver informed me that he was all fixed and would be able to complete his delivery. After listening to my expletive-laced response, he reevaluated, and decided we could go ahead and swap.

So we switched trailers. Turns out the trailer I was giving him had a flat, but other than a moment’s guilt, we completed the swap. Not wanting to wait for the official electronic instructions for getting to my new delivery, I just loaded the address on the Bill of Lading into my QualComm navigation. That was a mistake.

I was guided through a nice little lower class residential neighborhood to the back end of an industrial park. “We’re here,” said the Nav Chick.

I was stopped on the paved road and looked down the gravel road to the back end of a large industrial building more than a quarter mile away. I thought a minute and decided I had been down worse roads and turned onto the gravel road and went until it was clear that it would NOT lead me to a delivery. Sigh.

I called the receiver and got the correct address. It was 13.4 miles away. I told him I’d get there as soon as I could.

I got out of my truck and looked through the cloud of dust back up the gravel road. No way to turn around. Did I mention the gravel road was right next to a railroad track. So I slipped the transmission into reverse and backed up to the road, got out again and looked up and down the paved road, and backed across the paved road. I took a deep, dusty breath, let a car and a school bus pass (of course the school bus had to stop at the RR tracks and open its doors), and got started for the correct destination.

Delivery made (there was a $222 late fee – not my fault, the load was late because the other driver had broken down), I sent in my “Empty at Final” message and made my way back to the TA in Ontario. This was the same TA where I had called 911 for my trainer who was just sinking into his diabetic coma. My hope was that I would get a load before I was parked for the night.

Silly boy, silly boy.

There was no preplan. Nor was there a preplan in the morning. Nor was there a preplan at noon. I had had several direct conversations with the fine Stevens personnel in Dallas. My DM, who had been on medical leave for the last month, was his typical non-helpful self. “Freight is slow,” he messaged.

That led to several emails to the Lead Counselor who I had begged to release me from the company. My begging was for naught, but I promised that she would be hearing from me again.

I wrote,”If freight is slow and I’m not driving, it obviously means you have a surplus of drivers. You can ease the surplus by letting me drive off into the sunset.” I reported the lack of miles and all the BS they were shoveling my was. “Awww. That’s too bad,” she thoughtfully replied.

That made my first phone conversation with my newly returned DM rather heated. If his stitches weren’t fully healed, there might have been some seepage from his incision.

At about 2 p.m. I got a load. I talked to produce and hit the road for Salinas shortly thereafter. I would get the actual pick appointment time the next morning. So I had a delightful drive. I’ll tie up this trip to and from hell below but for now, check out the photos:

Saw clouds from a long way off. Turned out to be smoke. A wildfire off I-5. This explained all the news vans passing me on the freeway.

I finally reached the source of the smoke and saw the burning landscape. The little speck on the right of the photo is a helicopter.

A few miles down the road, I saw where the helicopters were coming from. They were sucking up water from a lake and transporting it to the fire. I continued north of I-5 and hit the flatlands. Another 50 miles up the road and I was routed off the freeway and a onto a sometimes 2- and sometimes 4-lane highway west.

I saw fruit trees, almond trees, large fields of undetermined vegetables, and a huuuuge cattle feedlot. While I would have expected free range cows, and saw a lot of them, this was one big feed lot. I hit the recirculate button on my A/C just in time and avoided the stench.

And then I came upon another surprising sight:

I’m from Texas so I’ve seen more than my share of pump jacks. But I had never seen such a large densely packed collection of pumpers. I estimated this field covered two square miles and had hundreds of pumps. (Apologies for the photo)

I continued west on CA 46 and got into some serious wine country. It was getting dark so the photos just didn’t work. Paso Robles was as far as I went on 46 and it was beautiful and jumping. The two RV parks I saw were packed. More than 90 percent of the occupants were tipsy from all the wine tasting, I’m sure.

I reached Salinas just before 10 and found a slot at “The Big Dirt Lot” a quarter mile north of the produce processor I would be visiting in the morning. Good night.

So Here I Sit – Part Infinity – Salinas

I had a moderately good attitude – at least for me – working for this POS company – and then I went into the shipping office here in Salinas, California, to check in for my  2 p.m. appointment to get my load of produce. I had tried to check in at 1 p.m. but they wouldn’t allow it. “Come back at two,” the clerk said in his accented English.

So at 2 o’clock (and I was the fifth guy in line), after significant discussion behind the bulletproof glass, I was told that my appointment was, in fact, at noon. I was late. But we can work you in at 3:30. Now I acknowledge that I have a moderate tremor (I shake for no apparent reason), but at this point I was trembling with rage.

My initial thought was the home office sent me the appointment time for Central Daylight Time. I was in the Pacific Time Zone, which would be two hours earlier. Appointment times, it had been drilled into me, was always LOCAL time. So I had a direct conversation with our produce department. I had tried to reach my Driver Manager but once again got his VM and am fully aware that he does not return phone calls. The produce dude was apologetic and made a call which resulted in a 3:00 checkin so I will save 30 minutes. Big Whoop.

How is it possible that one company can screw up almost everything that touches me? I have the answer. Since I have been the squeaky wheel, they have elected that rather than grease, they should provide large quantities of SAND! And the rub it in.

And I had such a nice ride up here from LA. Will cover the trip in my next post.

A Pit Stop En Route to CA

Note the empty crawler. No part even though it was ordered from only 30 miles away five hours ago.

Still sitting at the TA in Tonopah, AZ. I was at the service counter at 7 a.m. when they ordered the part. That was FIVE STINKIN’ HOURS AGO! I was just informed that either my part went to the wrong TA or the courier got the wrong part, I couldn’t understand which. Bottom line: somebody is going back to get it and it will be an hour and a half before they can begin to complete my simple repair. HAH!

The airbag goes somewhere in the top center of this photo … eventually.

There is so much that is beyond the control of a truck driver. If it was just driving truck, this would be a great, if low-paying, gig. As it is, being a truck driver is an ongoing lesson in patience and attitude control. Unfortunately for me, for most of my life I have been an impatient jerk. I thought I had made remarkable progress on this front over the past ten years. I am now reverting to my old impatient self.

I gotta find a trucking gig that pays a day rate or hourly wage, or pays me enough to float me through these lulls. As it is, it is impossible for me to be blase about other jerks interfering with my ability to earn a living.

For the record, I have only had one decent experience with service work performed by TAs. That one event was the simple removal of a trailer skirt that had been damaged before I picked it up. The job required a workman with a wrench. He didn’t have to do anything except remove a (rather large) part. He did it expeditiously and didn’t screw it up. That was at a PETRO (same company as TA) in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Setting out for California

After an interesting trip to Laredo, where a meat drop at a forwarding facility took six times longer than the last time I had visited the exact same place only three weeks earlier, I dropped light load of Mexican produce in Broussard, Louisiana (although I repeat myself since Broussard shouts LOUISIANA all by itself) and was unloaded by 6 a.m.

Since I had been having APU problems YET AGAIN, after I dropped the produce I headed over to the Baton Rouge Thermo King dealership for a fix. I was low enough on hours that I needed a 34 hour reset, and I chose my reset location as a Pilot in Denham Springs, just east of BR. When you’re going to be sitting for a day and a half, minimum, you don’t want to be stuck at a truck stop that sits by itself, miles from civilization. This Pilot was situated in area that boasted multiple restaurants, a bingo hall, Bass Pro Shop (!), and a Sams Club (!!!), all within easy walking distance.

And the frosting on this commercial cake? An old friend from my BP Oil Spill days lived within a few miles and hosted neighborhood cookouts every Wednesday night. AND it was Wednesday. To complete the trifecta, he was in town and would be delighted to come and pick me up. I love it when a plan comes together.

I took a nice nap in order to be ready for a later than average night. I’d been packing it in between 8 and 9 p.m. for the last 10 days or so because I had been hitting the road at 4 or 5 a.m.

There were three tables full of DEEElicious crawfish. Spicy delectability. Took my contacts out before eating.

Dirk McGuyver (my name for him since he struck me as a guy who could go anywhere in the world and blow something up) came. We got caught up. We feasted on boiled crawfish. And since he was pretty well in the bag when he and a friend came to pick me up, he had a friend carry me (that’s southern-speak for “give me a ride”) back to my truck at about 10:30. A great, though long day. A successful delivery, a repaired Auxiliary Power Unit, a nap, and a feast. One of my better all around days in the trucking business.

They foolishly kept following me around. Not a great photo.

The next day, I slept in, spent part of a leisurely day strolling around the Bass Pro Shop. Saw a ton of stuff I wanted including boats, ATVs, guns, shoes, and various articles of clothing. The ducks that were wandering the aisles looked like they might have been tasty. But I left empty handed. I did score some protein bars and trail mix in my trip through Sam’s.

I snagged some Mexican food that evening and turned in early since I’d been assigned a load that required a 4 a.m. pick up of refined products (not food?) on the west side of the Mississippi at an Exxon Mobil refinery in Port Allen. Well I’m glad I enjoyed my day because the pickup was really not at 4:00 although that’s when I got there. I was told at the gate that the load wasn’t quite ready. ELEVEN HOURS LATER!!!

So after a 34 hour reset I drove about 30 minutes and got to take another 10 hour break. With a fresh clock I drove as far as Baytown, TX. I did not want to get into a cycle of driving all night every night. Shutting down the truck for the night, I heard a hissing from under my tractor. Crap!

That brings us to the present. Here I sit (you knew it was coming) at a TA repair shop in Tonopah, Arizona, just west of Phoenix. I got here at around 2:30 p.m. local time yesterday. They crawled around under the truck and found that one of the air bags that serves as suspension for the cab had a hole in it. How it got there I’ll never know. This is not a part the TA keeps in inventory. So they had to wait until this morning to get the part from Kenworth in Phoenix.

Could be worse. This TA has a Country Pride restaurant with nice dinner and breakfast buffets. So I got a cheap take out dinner last night and a nice breakfast this morning.

We’re waiting for the part right now. Since I am waiting, I am not driving. If I’m not driving, I’m not making money. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on the viewpoint), my appointment to deliver to a Walmart Distribution Center north of Bakersfield isn’t until 4:30 p.m. tomorrow. I should be able to make that no problem (famous last words). Trouble is, by the time they complete the repair and I get to hit the road once again, I’ll be getting into greater Los Angeles at the beginning of rush hour.

[Heavy Sigh] I’ll let you know how it goes after the delivery or repower, whichever comes first.

Laredo – Part Ocho

So here I sit at Palos Garza Forwarding in Laredo, Texas. Not sure if this is my eighth trip to Nuevo Laredo, might be double digits by now. I got here at 7:00 a.m. for an 8 o’clock appointment. the first time I came to this receiver I had a 7 o’clock appointment and was out of here by 8:00. Ain’t gonna happen this time.

Laredo is one anthill busy kinda place. On the way in you see nothing but 18-wheelers. There are warehouse complexes everywhere and each one of them have seemingly hundreds of empty trailers parked and dozens of trucks waiting to get in.

Today for example, the street Garza is one was parked full, both sides with trucks. The lot inside the gate is parked almost full. I’ve been here for just under an hour and trucks are streaming in and streaming out. By rough count there are 180 trailers sitting on the lot and a couple dozen rigs waiting to be directed to one of the eight doors.

It really is like an ant colony. Only the ants each weigh 40 tons.

It looked like this only the sky was much lighter. Almost daytime.

An astronomical aside: On the way in from the Loves at Exit 39 this morning I saw meteor. First I’d seen for a looong time. It was dawn, perhaps 50% light, and I saw a bright streak to the south. It flamed out very quickly. It only covered a distance equivalent to a few diameters of the moon.

A mechanical aside: I’m having more Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) problems. The system is beeping like it’s not charging the truck’s batteries. I’ve had the problem before, less than a month ago. It definitely makes life inconvenient when you have the air conditioning on, are trying to sleep, and you get beeped awake at 1 a.m. Had to lean way forward and start the truck so I didn’t wake up to dead batteries. Will call Stevens “Road Rescue” this morning and see if they can schedule me into a Thermo King dealer later this morning.

My next pickup isn’t until mid-afternoon – Interglobal Solutions (produce) – so there is a chance I’ll be able to get it fixed before I hit the road again.

Rebranding: SWOHAWK

Shake was a nickname I took on during my three months selling Vacations to Go. The company would only allow one of each name for its sales force so I had to pick a new one. Since I shake like a leaf due to a medical condition (not the DTs), Shake it was. 

As I have been driving all over the country my eye has naturally been drawn to the flora and fauna along the road. The creature that has captured my imagination, and really always has, is the hawk.

To wax poetic for a moment, (and don’t take this as some expression of my huuuuge ego, which is not undersized, I admit, but in this instance is coming from a near inferiority complex), I see raptors, of which hawks are but one branch, as solitary, elegant, regal, strong, persistent and patient. Those of you who know the real me, know that I am none of these, except the first one. This is confirmed by the fact that I am an over the road truck driver and like it. I am especially NOT the last one.

I have observed thousands of hawks over the past six months. I have observed that they are all these things. To me the most impressive of the traits is Patience.

Most of the hawks I have observed have been elegantly perched, alone, at the top of a tree, on power pole, on a fencepost, in a bush, on a powerline, on a billboard, on a highway light pole. They sit quietly, scanning their turf on the lookout for their next meal. I rarely even see them move, unless they are trying to stay still in a big wind.

I have never been one to just sit and wait for good things to happen. And look where I am now.

I usually observe hawks perched alone. I rarely see them closer than half a mile apart down the road. I have witnessed what must have been twins sitting on the same branch, but looking in different directions. And once along I-80 in Iowa I saw more than half a dozen perched next to each other on fence posts. Must have been a polygamous Mormon hawk.

I have observed hawks jumping from their branches, alighting on their branches, and soaring.

I have observed hawks diving and clamping onto prey and launching into the air with prey gripped in their talons.

And while they may be patient, they evidently push the envelope from time to time because I have seen more than a few crumpled hawk carcasses laying by the side of the road. I’m guessing they get hit by my trucker brethren as they swoop across the roadway to nail a snack.

A quick digression: I have also seen thousands of crows, and while they lack the traits of the hawk, I don’t recall ever seeing a crumpled crow on the side of the road. They evidently take fewer chances and are overall more safety conscious.

To wrap up this little soliloquy, I admire the hawk. I admire it’s ability to find its perch, day after day, and wait for an opportunity / meal to present itself. I admire it’s strength, bearing, and persistence.

I am no longer Shake. I am Swohawk. 

 

An Unhappy Camper

In case I’ve been too subtle in my posts let me come out and say in standard English:

I HATE DRIVING FOR STEVENS TRANSPORT

It started in training, when they treated me and everybody else in class like mentally retarded, diseased sheep. Here’s why I can make that statement:

• They kept us in filthy pens (America’s Worst Motel).
• They herded us into cramped livestock haulers, and made us fight with each other to get a seat.
• They transported us to class an hour early where they made us wait outside until they were good and ready to let us in.
• They preached how important it was to stay healthy and then fed us high carbohydrate crap for lunch and supper.
• They brought in a steady supply of staff, most of whom humorlessly pounded us on their various specialties. They metaphorically barked at us as if they were Australian Sheep Dogs.
• The rare speakers who actually seemed to have a personality and made their presentations semi-interesting, were all show in that when you encountered them in the hall during a break, they would look right through you as if you were a retarded, diseased sheep.

Once you make it through the classroom training, they put you with a trainer who probably isn’t really interested in training. He is interested in making money off you. I was actually lucky in this regard since my first trainer, Dudley, actually taught me stuff. The downside was he acted like a drill sergeant. This is probably due to the fact that he gets so many zeros as trainees.

As a mature, educated, intelligent and disciplined adult, I do not respond well to drill sergeants. But, since he was the first real world driver I spent any time with, I couldn’t help but learn a lot from him. I actually called him once with a QualComm question. I’ve bumped into him a couple of times at The Yard. And once we actually swapped loads.

Dudley goy me all the way through Phase I. From the stories I heard from my classmates, I hit the jackpot. Several of them encountered really bad trainers.

In Phase II of training we were supposed to spend three weeks with another trainee, ergo the name Dumb and Dumber. After being rejected by my first partner, the second partner lied himself into a critically important trip back to Houston. So we both had to do Phase II with what are referred to as finishing trainers. My first finishing trainer was almost less than worthless. I learned nothing from him other than what he taught by bad example. I learned to:

• NOT stop along the side of a freeway to pee. 
• NOT dump my pee jug out the window at a truck stop.
• NOT ignore the warning signs of diabetes. (This is the one I had to 911 at a TA in Ontario, California.)

He spent so much time in the sleeper berth that it was almost like driving solo, so from that standpoint, I made it into a positive experience.

The second finishing trainer was decent and entertaining. But didn’t have all that much to add. I’ve actually talked to him a couple of times too. Nice guy.

The third finishing trainer came about because FT #2 had to return to The Yard for medical reasons. I only had a day and a half left in my Phase III training and had to spend it with a trainer. He was an old hand who was kind of a dick. I wasn’t with him for long enough for him to have a positive or negative effect on me. All in all he was pretty much a waste of time. I heard he left the company. Hope I didn’t trigger something in him.

The four days in class preparing for grad fleet was also a waste of time. They trotted out all the same presentations we had seen at least twice before. Getting a truck on Thusday afternoon and Friday was retarded, diseased sheep redux. Wait in line and deal with dickheads. The guy who’s in charge of assigning trucks took dickheadedness to new heights. If he went to school, he obviously majored in Surly.

After a first truck, a Freightliner, electrical / light system was apparently possessed, I ended up with a mechanically sound but totally and completely grimy 2011 Kenworth. It’s been in the shop for repairs at least monthly and I still haven’t been able to get all the dust and dirt out of the vents. Every day I find a new layer of particlates covering every surface in the cab.

There are now three worst parts of the gig:

1. Having to make telephone contact with The Yard any time outside of normal business hours. My personal best is just over TWO HOURS on hold. You will ALWAYS be on hold for at least 10 minutes, which can be a long time depending on what you’re waiting for. My personal favorite was being on hold for 50 minutes at 4 a.m. at a truck stop pay phone in Canada (I did not choose to upgrade my mobile phone plan to include Canada minutes) only to have a representative from Safety (which is who we are instructed to call) tell me she didn’t know anything about Canada.
2. The long gaps between moneymaking activities. Whether they give you three days to deliver a  load that’s only 900 miles away, or letting you sit for more than 24 hours after you report in that you are “Empty at Final” before giving you a new load assignment, or sending you to pick up a load of meat and then requiring you to sit for two days before the shipper actually has a load for you. With rare exceptions, if I ain’t driving, I ain’t making  money.
3. The PAY! I recently got a raise to 28 cents a mile. You can get a job at almost any other trucking company and start at 32 cents. I’f found several that will start you out  in the upper 30s and as high as 41 cents a mile.

When you combine the lousy pay with the need for lotsa minutes on your cellphone plan and the lousy miles and downtime between loads, it’s triply troubling and frustrating.

And don’t get me started on going back to The Yard which is required every three months. It’s a full day or more of waiting in line to talk to all the people who have to check off on your sheet before you can leave. Total actual talking time? Maybe 30 minutes. I break out into a cold sweat even contemplating The Yard.

Stevens has positively beat any good attitude I might have ever had and there is no bringing it back. And if I leave within a year, I owe them for all the “training” they provided. That’s $6,000 worth of training. SIX THOUSAND DOLLARS! And word is, they are also collecting that amount from  the government because they are getting us poor scum off unemployment and into “good paying jobs.”

Let me leave you with a mental picture of a billboard I saw just north of Harrisburg, PA. Over a photo of a big rig it read : “Big Bucks – Big Career.” Tears were streaming down my face for the next 30 miles, both from laughter and a deep dark depression. I’m wiping away a tear as I write this.

And I’m writing this in my 27th hour at a Flying J in Phoenix. Granted, the weather is great and there are worse places to be, but it was 24 hours after I communicated that I was unloaded before my new driver manager (I asked off the Canada team. This is the DM that gets all the hard cases.) saw fit to provide me with a new load. Assuming this repower comes off, I’ll be leaving at about 10 p.m. bound for a 6:30 a.m. delivery in La Brea, California. Once again, I’ll be traversing all that beautiful countryside … in the dark.

Putting the best possible spin on it, as I’m listening to Coast to Coast AM, maybe I’ll see a UFO.

Mishaps & Incidents

Special Topics

All the trips are starting to run together even for me and I figure unless something special or exciting or excruciating happened … who cares. So from time to time I will do special posts on special topics. You can guess what this one is about from the title, right?

Unfortunately, I have had several mishaps, one of which was reportable. All were minor in nature although the reportable incident was pretty expensive. Let’s take them in chronological order. In fact, let’s include the one that occurred in training even though I wasn’t really responsible and I’ve already described it.

The BIG CLUNK

This was perhaps my second day driving out on the road in north Houston during training. I could barely shift and was generally Mr. Cautious behind the wheel. I did not have my CDL at this point.

I was on a side street in an industrial section of the city waiting for a green light that would allow me to make a right turn onto a busy road. There was a turn lane from the right. When I finally got my green, not wanting to appear too timid, I started out into the intersection when the Kenworth abruptly stopped. We heard a big clunk and we were dead in the water.

Gary, our big Limey trainer, knew, correctly, that with a little Pontiac in the turn lane, I would not be able to pull far enough out into the roadway to clear the trailer around a light pole at the corner. He had slammed on the trainer brake as I was accelerating and it tore something up pretty good. While the engine was purring, there was no way to get it into gear and move it either forward or backward. Actually, that’s not entirely accurate. Since there was a slight incline up to the main roadway, I could let it coast backward and thus get my rig out of the lanes of traffic, which I did after a couple of students got out to make sure things were clear to the rear.

Now Gary could have just said, “Bob, STOP. There’s no way you can make it, and I would have stopped before I got into real trouble. But ever the dramatic Brit, he thought it would make a bigger impact to stomp on the brake. I don’t know how much it cost to repair, but I didn’t lose any sleep over it. In fact, giving it another think, I’m not even going to count this as a mishap.

The Walmart Bale of Corrugated

During my time with Dudley, my first Stevens over the road trainer, he had to go pick up a prescription at Walmart on one of our trips through Fort Worth. Now this particular store wasn’t conveniently located facing a freeway like most of the Walmarts on the face of the earth. This Walmart was five miles off I-35W in the middle of a residential area. Getting back to the store wasn’t the issue though. Finding a place to park was. Dudley directed me to the back of the store where we would park like we were going to make a delivery. It was actually pretty dead behind the store, but the roadway was rather narrow. As I was navigating my way across the back of the store I had to make a rather sharp turn to the left and in making that move the rear of the trailer caught a large bale of boxes that had been compressed and loaded onto a pallet. I don’t know why they didn’t tuck it up against the building, but I moved the bale a couple of feet.

Unless somebody had actually witnessed the incident there’s really no way anyone could know that the bale had been touched. There was certainly no apparent damage to the crushed boxes or the pallet. It was kinda out away from the building and not squared off or anything. So after checking that we hadn’t done any damage to the trailer – which we hadn’t – we went ahead and parked at the other end of the building. I was kinda sweating that there was a surveillance camera that caught everything on video, but you’d have to study the recording pretty closely to see that anything had happened and unless there was something else they were looking for, there would be no reason to study this recording.

In fact, we encountered a security officer as we were getting out of the truck and Dudley explained that we would just be there for 15 minutes and “That wouldn’t be a problem, would it?”

Naahhh.

Dudley went in and got his prescription. I picked up some junk food and a couple of bananas. We met back at the truck and found our way back to the freeway where we belonged. No damage. No foul.

For what it’s worth, Dudley, who is white, appears to  be the minority in his neighborhood.

A Flatter Flatnose

On one of my first solo trips, I had picked up a load of produce in Laredo and was hauling it Dallas. The pick up was delayed until after dark. By the time I got to my first fuel stop at a Love’s south of San Antonio I was almost out of hours and it was past midnight. I got my fuel but there was no place to park. And I didn’t have enough time left to drive to another truck stop, not that it would have had space available.

Well having seen truckers parked every which way but on top of each other at other truck stops, I pulled around and parked adjacent to the last fuel lane way out to the left of the building. There was actually another truck parked outside of me, so that gave me some additional comfort. The front of my truck was up pretty close to the fuel pumps but there was easily enough room for other trucks to pull up and get their fuel.

I stripped down and got into my bunk, but slept with one eye open since I was halfway expecting to get a knock at the door and instructions to move. Actually, tired as I was, I was sleeping pretty soundly when the knock came. It was another driver who, thoughtfully I presume, was calling my attention to a couple of legitimate parking slots that had opened up. I pulled on my boxers and slipped on my shirt, and cranked up the engine. I checked both rearview mirrors and started easing back when I hit something.

POOP! Some idiot had parked right behind me. Now why the hell would somebody feel they had to park behind me at that time of night. There were fuel lanes open. I pulled a few feet forward. My mind was running through all the trouble I was in as I scrambled outside and to the rear of my trailer to see what damage I had wrought.

It was in the low 50s, I was wearing boxers and a shirt. I was barefoot. There, a black dude with a cup of coffee was looking at the front of his old flatnose Peterbilt. Gawd, I was sorry. But he was all calm and told me he had just stopped in to grab a cup of coffee and saw me back into his truck as he was leaving the building., as he leaned down to study his front bumper. It was an old truck and in the dark it was hard to tell even what color it was. The bumper was a mean looking thing that did have a color – rust. There was no evidence that anything had happened. He touched me on the shoulder and told me not to worry, it would be okay We’ll just forget about it, okay?

SOLS!

I heaved the biggest sigh EVER, and after thanking him profusely, went back to my truck, waited for him to move, and then circled through the parking lot to put myself into the legitimate parking spot the first driver, the jerk, had called to my attention. I was actually able to get back to sleep, but as I was stripping down again, noticed one more thing. I had my boxers on backward.

Embarrassment, on top of humiliation, finished off with a total loss of dignity. But it was an incident that would not make it to my record. Phshew!

Entrapment – The Scammer in South Georgia

I’ll tell you up front, this one made it on my record and cost me some serious money.

I had dropped a load at a Walmart distribution center in Alabama at 4 a.m. and made my way to a produce grower in Moultrie, Georgia shortly after the sun came up. The Walmart facility had probably 300 doors and was the very picture of a large scale, well-designed warehouse facility. The produce grower had a 30’ by 50’ metal building with a single door on the back. And he wasn’t ready, even though I had busted it to get there at the appointed time.

His mini-warehouse was at the end of a 500 foot long gravel road off a two lane blacktop road (no shoulders) that was a mile or so off a two lane state highway on the west side of town. It could not have been more different than the Walmart facility.

Well since he wasn’t ready for me yet, I pulled into an open area away from the building and crashed for a few hours. I was tired. After couple of hours after I woke up I was notified that my load was ready and I could back up to his single door.

So I positioned my rig and started to back into place. I got out twice to scope things out. During the first look I opened my back doors. This would be a tight squeeze, not because there was a truck on either side of me, but because there were stanchions projecting out from either side of the door. Not sure why they were there but they were pretty substantial steel protuberances; I didn’t want to hit them. And I didn’t.

Almost.

So close. Too close. I only had a couple inches of clearance on the other side.

Even though I had cleared the stanchion on the drivers side by three inches it wasn’t enough to get me past the stanchion on the other side. As I looked out the passenger side into the mirror, I saw one of the workers looking at the stanchion on that side. This was not good. I shut down the truck and hustled around for a look. The dude was shaking his head as I approached. I didn’t hit the stanchion head on (rather rear on), but the door had slid into the space and, like a fishhook, it was in but wouldn’t come out cleanly. I got back behind the wheel and tried to gently pull forward.

Mistake.

I actually pulled the stanchion away from the dock.

We tried every solution we could think of that utilized human power. Nothing worked. I was really wedged in there. I finally made the call to road rescue. I provided photographs. They said they would dispatch a wrecker.

While waiting for the wrecker, the owner of the facility said this was not the first time this had happened. In fact, he said, he often advised truckers to back up to the dock with the doors closed first, and then after ensuring they were exactly in the middle of the two stanchions, to pull ahead a few feet, open the doors, and then back straight in.

Why the f*@& didn’t he tell me that before I started to back in.

After a couple of hours, the wrecker finally showed up. This was one of those wreckers that was Superman, The Incredible Hulk, and that liquid metal badass villain from Terminator 2 all wrapped up into one beast of a wrecker.

This was the biggest, strongest wrecker I had ever seen. And EXPEN$IVE.

They rigged a belt around the back end of the trailer, lifted it just a couple of inches and moved it over another couple of inches before setting it gently back onto the ground. Free at last.

Did I say Free? The wrecker alone was a $500 expense. There was a little damage to the seal of the door. Stevens insurance folks settled with the business. I don’t know what the total damage was, but I was informed that my share of it was ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS (picture my head swiveling 360 degrees like Steve Martin’s did in The Jerk).

I’m still paying for it – 50 bucks a week.

As I’ve thought about this even in the weeks since, I believe this farmer is running a scam. I think every other truck that visits the business does the same thing I did. The farmer hits the driver of the company up for damages. He pockets the money, doesn’t fix anything, and waits for the next sucker to back into his stinkin’ stanchion. I have vowed to never return to Moultrie, Georgia. At least not to pick up any of this guy’s cabbages.

A Bump to the Looking Glass

This one happened most recently when I was backing into a pretty tight spot at a truck stop in Florida. I got out once to look and everything looked cool. After I was in, the guy in the next truck was giving me dirty looks as he looked over the driver’s side of the tractor. I got out to learn what had happened and he told me he had felt me bump into him. But danged if he could see where. No harm. No foul.

After 20 minutes or so I looked over and saw him working on his driver’s side rear view mirror. I opened the window gave him a questioning look. He said I must have touched his rear view mirror frame because a zip tie had busted loose. No other damage, just the zip tie. He was trying to refasten the wiring that the zip tie was holding and having a hard time.

I gave him a couple of zip ties I had in my miscellaneous drawer and we both lived happily ever after.

This was a stop where I had made arrangements for the TA mechanics to work on my APU (Auxiliary Power Unit). I checked the oil on the unit – which wasn’t easy – and found only a few drops on the bottom of the cute little APU dipstick. They took three hours to do a simple oil change, and after all that, they still couldn’t get the unit to start properly. By this time, it was almost 1 a.m. I had been up since 3 a.m. the previous morning. I was without auxiliary power and would have to let the big tractor motor run all night to stay warm.

All in all, not a very fun day.  Poor Shake.

The Mississippi Parking Lot That Ate My Truck

In mid-January I had occasion to deliver a load to a grocery distribution center in central Mississippi. It had been raining pretty good for a couple of days. I had spent at least 24 hours at a truck stop about 40 minutes away and I heard the rain on the truck for at least 23 of those hours. I got the facility way before dawn and the actual delivery went fine. After the delivery, however, I had to park it for a spell to await instructions for my next load.

“Go park along that there fence,” the lumper told me, pointing across the large lot to the chain link at the north side of their property.

Here’s a shot of the innocent looking puddle looking back to where I was to park. That’s my truck in the middle.

So I went to park along that there fence. I made a sweeping turn in front of the two trucks that were already backed up to the fence and pulled ahead to get into position for a nice straight line back into my spot. In so doing I had to drive through a puddle:

Now it was dark when I was executing this move, and I had no inclination I was about to enter the Marianas Trench of Sunflower County (real name). But when I pulled into this cute puddle, I didn’t realize it was almost three feet deep. My steer wheels kept going down, down, down. I started but figured I needed to get through it. Once my steer wheels were coming up the other side of the chasm, I had second thoughts and was afraid it might just break my tractor chassis in half so I stopped and tried to back out of it. I was able to back out with no problem … I thought.

After I extricated myself from this watery grave and got situated at my rightful place back against the fence, I got out to investigate how dirty my rig got. This is what the Sunflower Trench had done to my tractor.

Believe it or not, the heavy metal bracing that held the bumper to the frame was torn completely away on the worst side and partially torn on the side that looked like it hadn’t been hurt.

On my way out, I informed the security chick of what had happened and suggested they might want to flag this puddle so other drivers might avoid even worse damage. She insisted on calling her supervisor out. I wish she hadn’t. This pot-bellied southern sheriff wannabee waddled out and spent 15 minutes on his cellphone not 20 feet away from me before even acknowledging my presence. Then he waddled over to me and asked me where I was from. Texas, I replied.

“Well don’t they teach you down in Texas not to drive into bodies of water if you don’t know what’s under them?” he inquired fatheadedly. I inwardly gasped, but kept my cool. This was a customer and I didn’t want to alienate a customer. So I said, I might have given it some thought if I was out on the road someplace, but didn’t have that kind of concern in a Super Value parking lot.

“Well,” he conceded, “maybe we’ll put a barrier around that puddle.”

Great idea.

The company couldn’t pin this one on me and it’s a good thing. Twenty five hundred big ones later and the rig was fixed.  I now avoid all but the tiniest puddles.

Miscellaneous

I’ve had two occasions where I have touched another trailer with my trailer – both times in drop and hook situations. In both cases I knew I was close and when I stopped to get out and look, I saw that a couple of molecules on my trailer were swapping spit with a couple of molecules on another trailer. After I got into the slot, I looked very closely and could see absolutely no damage, although there was a dab of saliva.

Again. No harm. No foul.

Conclusion

I ain’t gonna hit anything else, ever again. This is not to say that somebody else won’t have a mishap onto me. That’s fine. I will not be at fault. A $1,000 lesson is the only lesson I need.