Unusual Circumstances

There are no limits to the new challenges you will face or the unusual circumstances that will arise with each day's responsibilities as a new truck driver, or even as an experienced driver.  It is in how you handle them that will often determine both your success and/or your contentment with this job.

Allow me the liberty to insert a little story here that goes all the way back to 1978, during the days when I started college.  This story comes to mind because I realize that I often use the word success in here, and I want you to understand how I define success.  I still remember the look of bewilderment on a certain young college student, who was leading a small group of us in an orientation class, as they read my response out loud to the group of us whom they had asked to give a one word definition for the word "success."  Most of the respondents had used some such word like "wealth," or "affluence."  I put down the word "contentment," which was something I had already thought through, and aspired to have this one attribute as a firm foundation in my life and future career.

Now, if you have been around many truck drivers you have surely come to realize that most of them are far from being "content," in fact many of them are much like the recent Knight driver I came across while picking up this current load I'm under at the SAPA plant in Cressona, Pennsylvania.  He felt compelled to come over to me and start slamming the company that I am very satisfied with and telling me how they were a bunch of Bozos who can't seem to get anything right.  He was at the SAPA plant to pick up a load to get him home, and he wasn't happy about some ridiculous detail about the load that was not even remotely related to Knight's ability to run a successful trucking operation.  He actually sent a message on the Qualcomm to weekend dispatch telling them he was not going to take the load, and he was heading home on their fuel and coming back on their fuel because he didn't like this one small (insignificant in my opinion) detail about the load they gave him.

If you are new to this, you might as well be prepared to encounter these types, they are everywhere.  I took a minute to ask him a few questions, one of which was, "How long have you been with the company?"  I thought maybe his answer would establish the fact that he had little knowledge of the company and he might reconsider his authoritative declaration of their incompetence.  Boy, was I right!  Two weeks was his response!  I also found out that he was going to drive a total of 1,260 miles to get home and back without being under a dispatched load.  I advised him against it, and warned him that he might not be there much longer than the two weeks that he was already complaining about, but he left in huff anyway, looking at me as if I were some sort of an idiot who puts up with all the nonsense that these trucking companies will dish out to the fools who will take it.

Okay, back to my subject of unusual circumstances.  I picked this load up on Saturday.  It is an assortment of different shaped extruded aluminum pieces with six different stops on the load.  Four of the customers that I should deliver to today, Monday morning, require a 48 hour notice to schedule an appointment, impossible to do when they are not even there on Saturday.  I'll let you know on my next post how that turns out, but I can tell you now that I am going to put to work my good customer service skills and see if I can get myself into those four customers and deliver today.  Here is a look at the load...

Recently I ran up on an unusual circumstance while making a delivery in Houston, Texas.  The final customer on my load was on a very narrow residential street (houses on one side, and businesses on the other) with no place to put a big truck on their property.  I had to get unloaded while parked in the street.  They had to get product off from both sides of the truck because their fork lift only had four foot long forks.  I parked facing one direction on the street so they could get their stuff off from the safety of their parking lot, and then I had to go down the road and find a place to turn around so I could come back and park facing the other direction so they could get the final part of their load off.

Here's a look at what we did...

This current load will deliver to the following places...

✔O'neal Steel in Mobile, Alabama

✔Aluminum & Stainless, Inc. in New Orleans, LA

✔Ryerson Procurement Corporation in Saint Rose, LA

✔Samuel Son & Company in Baton Rouge, LA

✔Aluminum & Stainless, Inc. in Broussard, LA

✔AFL Telecommunications in Lake Charles, LA

Six stops on a flat-bed load is an unusual circumstance on it's own, but serving this dedicated customer requires this type of delivery often times.  There is additional pay for each stop you make, and once you get the hang of how to handle these multiple stops it really can go quite well.

Of course some of the unusual circumstances we come across are very pleasant ones.  This sunrise scene from the parking area that I slept in at Yarde Metals in Connecticut last week was a pleasant surprise to witness as it took shape, and it is unusual for most folks who work a "normal job" to enjoy just such a sight as this while they are out there making a living.