Hey there, sorry I haven't been in here lately, but to tell you the truth I have been just giving it all I've got here lately and I just have not forced myself to muster up the energy at the end of my work day to sit down and write any thing out. My working hours have been so erratic of late that sometimes I'm working all night, and other times I'm starting at 3 a.m. and finishing up at 5 p.m. I'm still enjoying what I do, and am having considerable success in this crazy career.
Today is exactly two years from the day that I was assigned a truck and made an official employee at Western Express, my first employer in the trucking industry. What a ride it has been!
Just two years ago I was given the opportunity to prove myself as an over the road truck driver. I was still trying to figure out how many wheels were on an eighteen wheeler when they handed me the keys to my very own truck, but I took off running and haven't turned back since. I have criss-crossed this country I don't know how many times, and logged approximately 250,000 miles since I started. I have traveled in all of the lower 48 states with the exception of Montana and Washington. These days I mostly stay in the Eastern portions of the country running dedicated loads for SAPA aluminum.
The thing that stands out to me the most is the incredible diversity of things that one sees when they spend most of their time on the road. It is like living three lifetimes in one. Trucking is a pleasure to me, I enjoy the daily challenges of making everything work out right, and there is an element of it that requires you to be savvy enough to make things come out in your favor. There are strategies that you learn and practice each day that help you to succeed. Things like making sure that you are the first one in at a receiver so that you can get unloaded and on your way before they get too busy to handle you expeditiously. There are sacrifices involved to do these kind of things, but I find that there is a small number of people out here willing to do it like I do so that makes your success come that much easier.
It is a competitive environment, and folks sometimes get there feathers ruffled, or sometimes unscrupulous folks will try and bluff you to get the advantage over you. Here's an example: This load that I am parked at Beaver Dam, Kentucky with tonight was picked up at the SAPA plant in Cressona Pennsylvania. They have a complicated system where you drive inside a very large building and hook up to your trailer which is pre-loaded for you and then you have to back into one of only two tarping stations to put your tarps on your load. This is a safety feature which, when you are backed into these spots, provides safety platforms on each side of your truck so that you can not fall and sue them for damages. You are not allowed to tarp your load without being backed into one of those two spots. Problems occur in here because there may be eight or ten trucks in there all waiting to get into the tarping stations. I'm always careful to make sure that I am paying attention so that I know when it is my turn. Yesterday I put my truck into position so that I could be the next one in and I had to block others out so that they would not cut in front of me. If you are not proactively aggressive like this you will never get your turn. Well, as soon as one opens up I start backing into it only to be interrupted by some burly angry truck driver coming over and jumping up on the steps of my truck and screaming into my drivers window "Hey, there are other trucks ahead of you!" Only I left out a few of the expletives he spiced up his complaints with. So, I swung my door open, thereby forcing him off my truck steps and putting a little space between him and me. Now, I wasn't interested in getting myself into a fight, but I also wasn't willing to give up my slot of time very easily to this fellow who I knew was trying to bluff me into letting him get ahead of me. I probably would not have been so bold except for the fact that I had noticed a SAPA supervisor watching this whole ordeal, and he and I had already agreed that it was my turn to get in there. He quickly stepped in and told the other fellow that he came in well after me and if he expected to keep getting loads out of their plant he would have to abide by the rules. Well, as you can imagine, burly angry trucker dude was all politeness then as he quipped "Oh, my bad, I thought this was another guy, sorry." Yeah, some days are just interesting like that. I have heard truck driving described as "endless hours of pleasure, interrupted by moments of sheer terror."
That description of trucking reminds me of the time in Colorado when I was travelling down the interstate on a beautiful clear day and a little old lady in a Subaru wagon is slowly passing me on the left when all of a sudden something goes wrong and she starts doing three sixties in the highway. As hard as I am trying to avoid her she ends up directly in front of me turned sideways sliding down the highway so close to me that all I can really see is the top of her vehicle. My tires are boiling smoke and I'm praying as fervently as I know how while steering this way and that to hopefully keep from killing someone in a freak accident. Miraculously our vehicles never struck each other and somehow the folks behind us managed to keep from hitting us from the rear. It was a terrifying few seconds that seemed like they would never come to an end. She eventually went uncontrollably back across the two lanes and got tangled up in the guard rails. By the time I got parked on the shoulder and got out to check on her she was walking around and apologizing to me for getting in my way! She was fine, but could not understand what had just happened.
I've got a whole barrage of photos I want to share with you - some of the many "interesting" things I see that I was talking of earlier. But, I need to get to bed now for an early start tomorrow. I have got to get this load delivered in Cadiz, KY tomorrow so that I can point this truck in the direction of Texas. I've got a daughter getting married this weekend, and I've got to be there to give her away. If I can get the time tomorrow night I'll do another post with the pictures, and then I'm going to enjoy a wedding, and some much missed time with my family.
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