Getting 'Er Done

Keeping your word, or doing what you say you will do is important to me. I like to think I've learned some of life's hard lessons by not doing that very thing. I never intentionally have not kept my word, but when I was self-employed all those years and was trying to meet the demands of so many customers at once, I would some times promise something to someone and then not be able to accomplish it when I said I would. Then it could quickly begin to escalate or “snowball” from that point on. When I left the SAPA plant for Corpus Christi, TX the other evening the man in the shipping department asked me point blank “Dale, can you get this load to our customer on time?” I said “Yes sir, I am well rested, and have a clean slate on my available hours – I can do this.” He smiled, but then he pressed it further and queried me as to what was I going to do if I got sleepy on the trip. I told him not to worry, I was prepared both mentally and physically to make this run. He then told me that his supervisor had told him to start looking each truck driver that makes this particular run in the eye and make sure they know how important it is that they don't mess around and cause them to lose this customer. I've already garnered a lot of respect here.  They know they can trust me, but I still felt a bit of pressure on me to make this happen.

I actually arrived at the customer at 5:45 – one hour and 15 minutes early, and still had about twenty minutes left on my available driving hours. In this environment arriving early is considered being on time. As demanding as this customer is about us being there at seven in the morning, they are also equally relaxed about not bothering to get you unloaded very expeditiously. I remember the last time I made this run I didn't get emptied out until around 11:00 – this time they did a little better, my truck was empty by 10:00 am. Here is the kicker though: at that point, if you do the math, I started my clock at 6:00 p.m. - so now I'm past that 14 hour window in which I can drive. I can't even legally leave their facility to go to a truck stop for my rest, and they do not allow you to park here.

A truck driver has to be aware of his surroundings all the time, and one of the things I'm constantly doing is looking for places I can park when I'm pulling into a receiver when I'm out of legal working hours. I had already spotted at least three possible locations that I could try to park at right here on the same block. One of them was a little privately owned Mexican restaurant named Daniella's with a fairly large parking lot. I rolled over there and spoke with Daniella herself who very kindly allowed me to park in her lot while I slept. I also discovered a great place to eat – their homemade corn tortillas were exceptional, and the carne guisado that I rolled up inside them was as tender and tasty as it could possibly be.

This load was on a regular flat-bed trailer so it had to be tarped. I've had almost exclusively “Connestoga” trailers lately and I had almost forgotten how challenging these tarps can be. Here's my load as I'm removing the tarps.

Then I've got to lay them out on the concrete so that I can get them folded up properly. This step is important so that they unfold just the way you need them to be next time. You don't want to have to wrestle with these things unnecessarily, they weigh in at around 135 pounds.

Once they are rolled up properly I put them on the trailer and strap them down. If you are wondering why I have them separated like that, it is so I can reach them while standing on the ground from each side of the trailer. One of the strictly enforced rules at the SAPA plant is that the drivers are not allowed on top of their trailers.

I am now back in Delhi Louisiana on my ten hour break awaiting my next marching orders – or I guess I should say “rolling orders” - Let's roll! I arrived back here at around 4 this morning and have been sleeping very well since then. This flipping of your sleep patterns back and forth is a challenge.