Day four

I know I said I was going to take a short break, but when I woke up this morning and thought about this thread I remembered that my purpose in starting this was to show what a truck drivers daily life is like. Many of you will remember me referencing my first experience with an over-sized flat-bed load in some other posts. I had kind of saved the story to put it in the blog section of this site, but since I made that blunder yesterday that has caused me to have a break in the action on this thread I've decided to throw it in here because it is so illustrative of the things a rookie truck driver can quickly get himself into. So, as an added bonus here's the story about my first over-size load that I had to take across the George Washington Bridge and through the Bronx area. Just a word of warning here, it's a long story and will probably take two parts to fit within the text limitations of the forms format, so here's part 1.

This story begins down in Mobile, Alabama where I delivered a load of I-beams from Midlothian, TX to the port of Mobile.

After about two hours at the port I'm unloaded and have all my tarps and chains and binders put up and I'm ready to roll again. So I send dispatch a message saying I'm empty. It takes a little longer than usual for them to respond so I go to the truck stop and wait on them. I'm there about thirty minutes when I get my orders which are for my very first "oversize" load. Now an oversize load is one that is not legal to drive on the highways without having special permits issued to you by each of the various states you'll be travelling through. I'm going through about nine different states to get this load to Greenwich, Connecticut. I pick up my load in Greenville, Alabama. As it turns out this load is some laminated wood trusses and beams built for a timber frame structure being constructed in a Greenwich park. I had to take special care with this load by providing rubber padding between the pieces and putting special foam padding under my straps where they made contact with the beams because all this wood is to be exposed in it's final resting place. What a challenge! But if you know me, then you'll realize that this is just the kind of thing I enjoy.

The load is 12' wide, and I've got to get all the way up into Connecticut without letting it get bumped or scratched on the way there. Another thing about these permitted loads is that you can only drive during daylight hours for obvious safety reasons. Also you have to travel on the route that the different states you're going through assign you to. Well, my route takes me across the George Washington Bridge in New York! I know you're probably not familiar with this, but the first time I had to cross this toll bridge I got hit twice by another eighteen wheeler, but there's no way you can stop and check on the damages, it is the craziest flow of vehicular traffic I've ever experience and to top it all off the lanes are really narrow and there must be ten thousand pot holes in the pavement. My New York permit also requires an escort. Well, apparently my company missed that part and after I tried to get on the bridge and found out I don't even fit through the toll gates I had to call 911 to get the police out there to stop the ridiculous traffic so I could back up and get out of the way. They have some special Port Authority Police for the George Washington Bridge because it spans on both the New Jersey side and the New York sides of the Hudson. About thirty officers showed up! I'm not kidding, it was like a circus, and they were not real happy with this rookie truck driver for making them come out there and deal with this problem. The first one on the scene was not nice at all and told me he was going to throw the book at me and starts naming off all these violations that I'd committed. It was from him that I learn that there is a special way to get on the bridge when you have a wide load - gee whiz! - somebody could have told me about this ahead of time and saved a lot of trouble. This same officer tells his commercial vehicle inspector underlings to look my truck over really good because he is going to write me enough tickets to make sure I never forget all the trouble I caused him.