Taking Sarah Along

Some of you who have been around a while will remember when I documented my travels with my oldest daughter. This week my middle daughter took some time off from her job to ride with me and I thought I would repeat that little exercise for the sake of any new lurkers and regulars that may be interested in what life on the road is really like.

I came through the house with a load of plastic pipe welding equipment that I picked up in Gallatin Tennessee that was headed to Katy TX. The receiver had such a tight spot I had to turn around in to get backed into a bay that was really only designed for something like a one ton truck, that I had to jack-knife the truck hard enough so that I could get the trailer to move forward with the tractor moving in reverse. Here's a photo of the load I had on the truck when I picked up my daughter at the house.

My daughter Sarah and I delivered that first load and then promptly got another load to pick up in Vidor Tx that was headed for Abbeville South Carolina. I surprised Sarah with a pink hard hat that I had ordered for her in anticipation of this event. Here she is decked out in her PPE (Pink Protective Equipment)

Well, it was interesting that we start out our journey together in exactly the same place at Vidor TX. Do you remember the place that had the sign warning us about the alligators? That's where I started my travels with my oldest daughter, and this is where Sarah and I started also.

Just as soon as we got loaded up with these slinky coils we got rolling on into Louisiana where we spent the night at Breaux Bridge.

I try to make these trips with my daughters special for them so we managed to view some of the local artwork...

And sample some local cuisine,,,

All at the same place!

Well, we rolled 615 miles the next day to get to Madison Georgia, where we set ourselves up for a 34 hour reset because my hours are running low on my 70 hour clock. We cooked a jambalaya in the crock-pot while we were rolling down the road and enjoyed the smell on the road and the flavor at the truck stop when we finally stopped for the night.

It's spring time in the south and we've been enjoying scenes like this down here where the wild flowers are in full bloom.

It sure beats looking out your window at scenes like this - these kind of views got a little bit old during the long winter.

I'll keep this thing posted as we move along, I hope you enjoy coming along for the ride!

It's Official - I'm Pathetic

Yes, I am officially pronouncing myself as a pathetic blogger - of course since there is absolutely no one following this thing anyway I guess it really doesn't matter.  I actually enjoy posting stuff about what I do, and I think it could be helpful to someone wanting to become a professional truck driver, but the main reason I even started this was to inform my family of my whereabouts and my goings on, which now seems kind of unnecessary since I talk to my wife every day on the phone.  Then there is also the fact that I left my last post almost 5 months ago saying I would tell how I ended up in California tomorrow, and here it is almost five months later and I don't even remember how I got over there anymore.  Also after looking at my blog today I realize that I didn't even understand that if I removed a photo from my photo bucket account it would also remove it from my blog!  I'm so lame at this techie stuff - now I've got photos that have been deleted from the blog pages.  There are probably ten thousand other reasons I can be declared pathetic, but I'm thinking I may just persevere anyway and see what becomes of this officially pathetic blog.

Recently Sarah (my second daughter) took her vacation time from work to ride along with me, and we had a great time together.  I tried to document it on a web-site that I do some work on for new truck drivers coming in to the industry, but there again I fell behind and had to catch it up after skipping out on them a few days.  I'm going to copy and paste it here for others to read about it, and realize it may not be as personal as if I were just blogging about it here because it was done in a different environment originally.  Also I will follow up that post with another copied and pasted post from Trucking Truth about where I'm at this weekend.

I'm saying all this to say that I'm going to try and give this one more shot and see how it goes.  I really do enjoy putting my thoughts down here for you to read, but I find that my time to do it is not always convenient.  This job is very demanding as far as time goes and you have to sleep at all different times of the day to make your schedule work out in the most efficient way, so it's not always conducive to blogging.  But since the main thing that doing this accomplishes for me is the cathartic effect of writing out my thoughts, I will try it again, even if it is a completely selfish reason for doing so.

Pocket Knife Lost (my apologies to the great Milton for this title)

I've had a long and healthy relationship with the lowly pocket knife.  I have quite a collection of pocket knives.  Most of them were given to me by friends.  One of them was given to me by Jeff Abt from one of his trips abroad.  If I remember correctly it was from Tibet.

From the time I was a young man I have almost always carried a pocket knife.  It is something I use often, and when you have something so handy with you all the time you can kind of grow fond of it at times.  My late friend and one time employer Steve Spradley told me that I should never hire anyone who didn't carry a pocket knife.  He claimed that person was an impractical person and would never make a good employee.  I still remember him asking me if I carried a pocket knife before I went to work for him back in 1983.  It was years later that I found out why he asked me that question.

I one time loaned my pocket knife to a fellow that was working for me on a job site in Longview Texas so he could cut something or another, and it was later that night when I got home that I realized I never got it back from him.  So the next morning I asked him about it, and he couldn't remember what he had done with it.  After quizzing him a little he decided that he must have laid it down on the roof of the building where we were working and forgotten to pick it up when he came down.  It was one of those knives that I had gotten attached to and I made up my mind to drive the hour and a half drive back to the job site on the weekend and see if I could find my knife.  This particular knife was one that I had given to my father-in-law for a Christmas present and after his death the family gave it back to me when they were determining what to do with his belongings.  It was a dandy little Spyderco knife that really felt good in your hand.  I took an extension ladder with me, and leaned it up against the building where my friend had been working and as soon as I climbed up to the top there it lay - right where he had forgetfully set it down.  I can't tell you how good it felt to get it back, I know it all sounds kind of silly, but it really did give me a sense of relief.  That was years ago, and I'm only telling you all this so that you'll have an understanding about how disappointed I was when I recently lost the pocket knife that I've been currently carrying with me.

A week or two ago I picked up two coils of aluminum in Kentucky and carried them to a company called "Rexam" in St. Paul Minnesota.  Rexam is a manufacturer of the aluminum cans that soft drink companies use for their drinks.  So now chances are that you may have drunk something from a can which was made from the aluminum that I hauled on the back of my truck.  How about that?  Here is a photo of one of those coils.  That one coil weighs about 23,000 pounds, and that my friend represents a lot of cans!

Now if you're wondering why I all of a sudden changed the subject to aluminum coils, and it was such an abrupt change in the subject that inquisitive minds should be wondering such things, it is because it was on the day that I picked up these aluminum coils that I later realized my pocket knife was missing.  And, as you will soon find out, these aluminum coils hold the secret to how I lost my pocket knife that day.

Later that day when reaching for my knife I was quite surprised that it was not there clipped to my pocket as it always is.  I searched for it in all the possible places I might have left it, including my laundry bag just in case I might have left it clipped to the last pair of pants I had been wearing.  But after searching high and low I was left with that empty feeling that I had lost another perfectly good pocket knife.  That evening I exercised my mind in going through all the steps of the day and trying to remember when I used it last, but I just could not come up with a scenario which would help me solve the mysterious disappearance of a very functional and well balanced Gerber knife.

The last time I remembered using the knife was to cut some rope just before putting a tarp over the two aluminum coils I was hauling to Minnesota.  So while I was driving I finally came to the conclusion that I must have laid the knife down on the bed of the trailer and inadvertently forgotten it there before I started driving.  It kind of felt a little better thinking I had solved the mystery of how I lost the knife, but it still bothered me that I could be so forgetful with such a useful tool as my lowly pocket knife.  After a while it just settled in on me that it was lost and I might as well get over it.  There was no way it would have ridden on the bed of the trailer that far without falling off at some point in my travels.  I determined that as soon as I got a chance I would start looking for another knife.

When I got to Rexam the next day I backed my truck into their building and started getting my tarp off and preparing to loosen the straps so they could unload my cargo.  After I got the tarp off and folded back up and put away I began to loosen the straps.  When I went to the opposite side of the trailer from where I had been working what do you think caught my eye?  There was my pocket knife clipped to the protective plastic wrap that was covering the coil of aluminum!

I was so surprised I laughed out loud.  All the mental calisthenics I had been doing the day before to try and solve the mystery and I never even realized that while I was getting the tarp on these coils I at one point had to climb up on top of them and had kind of slid my way back down to the trailer bed and when I did somehow the clip on my knife dug into the plastic wrapping and slipped right off of my pocket as I slid downwards, and there it rode all those many miles up to Minnesota without ever coming loose.

Pocket Knife Lost and Pocket Knife Found, all in a few days work.  Man it sure feels good to have that knife clipped on my pocket again.

I'm in Thousand Palms California tonight.  A pretty little town in a desert valley surrounded by mountains.  I'll tell you about how I ended up here and show you some pictures tomorrow night.  I've got to get myself in bed now so I can get up early tomorrow and get on over to El Paso Texas with 44,000 pounds of aluminum in another form.  This is a load of aluminum billets and they have already traveled a long ways before I got them.  They are engraved with a stamp that says they were manufactured in Dubai.

I'm Loving this Job

This week I ended up going through the state of Indiana three times.  My first time through was during what was an early winter blizzard.  It was actually a little scary, and I saw a lot of big trucks that didn't make it through.  Lots of cars and trucks in the ditches and medians, along with several accidents involving multiple vehicles.  I try to be extra cautious and careful when traveling in the snow and ice, but as a truck driver you have to be not only watching out for yourself but everyone else around you also.  It can be stressful at times.  The other drivers around you are constantly getting in front of you when you are trying to maintain a safe following distance between you and the vehicle ahead of you. The truck driver puts up with a lot of craziness from the other drivers around him.  They don't want to be behind him because they can't see, then when they manage to get past him they cut over into his lane causing him to have to adjust his following distance which angers the next car behind him.   The drivers behind him complain that he's too slow, and the ones ahead of him complain that he's too close on their tail.  He does the best he can but still everyone wishes he were not there at all.

I know that is a strange way to start a post about how I'm loving this job, but those thoughts are also on my mind tonight.  It's amazing how many people come racing up around me to pass me and then they blow their horn at me just as they are about to get past me.  I'm paying attention to them the whole time and I know I haven't done anything to warrant them honking at me.  It happens so often that I wonder what the deal is, as it can be startling at times.  I can only assume that they think I don't know where they are and they want to warn me so I don't change lanes.  I know where they are and I usually have figured out what they are about to do even before they've decided to do it.  Anticipating the actions of the other drivers around me has saved me from an accident a considerable amount of times already.  When driving something that is like a building on wheels (over 75 feet long and up to 80,000 pounds) you have got to be on your guard constantly.

My first trip through Indiana I got stuck there for two days because the highway department closed the highway that I was traveling on.  I stayed at the first truck stop I could get in.  The temperature never got above zero while I was there.  It stayed around 15 below for several days.  I came up from Roanoke Virginia that first trip and after spending my first night there I woke up trapped in the snow at the truck stop.

Truck driving is more of a lifestyle than it is just a job.  It takes some getting used to a life of being on the road away from the comforts of home, the routines of a home life, and the warmth and affection of those you hold dear.  I see a lot of people living this lifestyle that really don't belong in it. I'm not sure why they got into it, maybe they just needed a job. It's a great job for those who are up to the challenge, but it is demoralizing for those who just jump in thinking "hey I know how to drive, and I love to travel, I might as well get paid for it."

It takes a special person to fill the shoes of an American Truck Driver. We work long hours in all kinds of weather, we take considerable risks accomplishing our daily tasks, and we do it with little thanks from anyone other than the modest paycheck we receive from our employers. I feel a sort of sadness, or maybe it's more a feeling of compassion, for the many people I come across in this field who just shouldn't be in it. I was in Roanoke VA securing the load of steel I hauled into Indiana and noticed another driver from my company beside me working on his load. The poor fellows shoulders looked like they were hanging down below his knees. It was pretty obvious he hated what he was doing, and after talking with him a few minutes he made it clear that he was completely demoralized by his choice of career. He told me that trucking was sucking the life out of him. He clearly needs to be doing something else. This is not a cushy job for the faint of heart, but sucking the life out of you?

It was such a contrast to the way I feel about this career. I love this stuff, I can't wait to get started each new day and show what I'm made of. I love being challenged. I get a charge out of coming up with creative solutions for the difficulties staring me down. I'm energized when a plan comes together and the obstacles are conquered and vanquished. I don't ever really think about my pay in connection with the amount of hours I work, I look at the accomplishments and the victories, and if there are defeats along the way I commit to learning from them and facing them square on the next time I'm up against them.  I hit it hard each day and make my way through the obstacle course of what is a rewarding career for some and a demoralizing defeat for others.

I came up from Roanoke through the mountains of West Virginia on I-77 and I-64. There was a beautiful carpet of snow on the ground, and bits of it lying heavy on the bare limbs of the trees. I've got to tell you it was simply beautiful. I was hauling a 47,000 pound precarious load of flat steel up through there and I felt a certain degree of pride rise up in me to be doing this job while commandeering my rig through those mountains.  I love what I do.  This is a great job.  I only wish that the loveliest woman I've ever known wasn't having to keep the home fires burning all alone.  I am grateful for God's provision for us, and I rest in the solid fact that He knows best.

Amish Country

In my travels I often get the chance to pass through various pockets of Amish country.  It's not at all like I had imagined it.  I always thought I would see areas where only Amish people lived, sort of a community to themselves separated from the rest of the world by their antiquated ways and customs.  It's more like there are pockets of Amish people mixed in with, perhaps, encroaching neighbors, or maybe over the years various Amish folk have sold their farms to "foreigners", people who are not sticking with the old and simple ways of the traditional Amish.  I really don't know about all this I'm just trying to explain the way it appears to me as I pass through these areas.  There is one Amish community in Ohio that I go through fairly often that is littered with oil field trucks and equipment.  Now those Amish folks have got some really nice barns and houses, and I suppose that they were financed by the mineral rights of their properties.  Imagine that, Amish folk bank rolling money from the rest of us consumers who are burning gas in our SUV's and moving freight right through their neighborhoods with our eighteen wheelers!  Life has it's comical ways of working things out sometimes.

Today I'm waking up in Plymouth IN and it's 16 degrees on a beautifully clear winter morning with some light snow flurries gracefully dancing on the breezes here at the truck stop where I slept last night.  Here is a photo of the load of Steel I picked up at a NuCor Steel mill in Wallingford CT.

This load is all concrete reinforcing wire in various forms and sizes.  My delivery papers tell me that I have two different places that I am delivering to and they have loaded me in such a way that the first stop will unload their quantity of goods without having to disturb the other portion of the load.  My first delivery is in the small town of Grabill IN which is just outside of Fort Wayne.  I've been over in this area before and remember seeing Amish buggies on the roads there, so I know I'm headed for Amish Country.  My first delivery is scheduled for Monday Dec. 9 at 8:00 am, and then my second delivery is scheduled on the south side of Chicago at 10:00 am.  That will be ridiculously hard to make that second delivery time if there is any kind of delay at the first one, plus you can always count on getting hung up in traffic in Chicago.  Murphy's law was basically discovered by truck drivers, so we have to do our best to combat it's effects.  I figure out that if I really get on with it I could get to the first place by 3:00 pm on Friday and that will give me the chance to get my 34 hour break in over the weekend, reset my 70 hour clock, still make my delivery on time in Chicago and have a fresh start on a new work week.  So while I'm steaming down the road I make some calls and get my first appointment rescheduled with a gentleman on the other end of the line who has a distinctive but unfamiliar accent.  Then I go ahead and call the second appointment just to see if I could schedule them for Saturday morning, which can't be done, but they offer to move it from 10 am to 8 am on Monday which I gratefully accept because that will make it that much easier for me to get on to something else Monday when I get unloaded.

I made it into my first delivery at Graber Farm and Building Supply at 2:30 where the first thing that catches my eye is an Amish buggy being loaded with lumber, and then I notice a small structure over to the left of the driveway that has about four buggies with horses tethered to them sitting there peacefully in the shade of the loafing shed.  I assume that is the parking area for the Amish employees working here.  And sure enough next thing I see is a fork-lift flying out of a warehouse with a bearded gentleman in a typical flat-brimmed Amish hat at the wheel.  He comes over to my truck, tells me where to park and says they will start unloading me as soon as I can get the straps off my load.  Then out of the office comes the Boss Man in a very simply tailored grey suit sporting a full Amish beard and the same hat, but this guy has a cell phone to his ear!  There are sweet looking Amish ladies, wearing their traditional head pieces and simple dresses, inside sitting at computers, and I am in culture shock at this irreconcilable conflict in my mind over what the Amish people are really like!  I visit with the gentleman whose name is James (a Bible name of course), and even ask if I can take a photo with him to send to my daughter Abigail.  But as modern as they seem they still don't want any photographs taken.  It seems that they justify using modern conveniences when it comes to making their living, but try to stick with the traditional ways of the simple life in their homes, at least that was the way with this particular group I encountered.  James seemed very soft spoken and kind as he queried me about how other places unload this stuff from my truck.  It seemed he wanted to make sure he was keeping up with the rest of the modern world in the ways that he ran his business.

It was such an interesting, but brief, encounter.  It's these little unexpected pleasures that keep this job so interesting, and of course it always makes me wish one of my children, or my dear wife,  were here to share it with.  But I do what I can to share my experiences with you here, and I hope they bring to you a little bit of the pleasure they bring to me.

Simple Redneck Pleasures

What can be more fun than going to the dump?  Well, I'll tell you the answer.  It's going to the dump in an eighteen wheeler!  Now if you've never gone to a trash dump when the weather isn't so good you don't really know about the simple pleasures of slipping and sliding all over the place in your vehicle. They generally pack the roads in the dump with clay so they will hold up to the traffic, but that also makes them very slippery (and fun, in a redneck sort of way) when it's wet.  I delivered a trash load to a very large trash dump in Amsterdam OH yesterday where they have had quite a bit of snow lately. Well, the melting snow and slush wed together with the clay roads made it interesting to say the least!

First off let me show you what these trash loads look like.  This is a load of trash from Stratford Bailing in Stratford CT.  This is called construction debris and it is bailed up tightly and enclosed in these huge green bags.  What you are looking at here is about 48,000 pounds of trash.  It doesn't smell too great but it's not near as bad as the trash loads I some times pick up in West Babylon, that is more like household trash. Here's what it looks like loaded and ready to roll across the five states it takes to get it to Amsterdam.  Isn't that a crazy way to make a living?  I went through five states today just trying to get my job done.

There's nothing like going mudding in an eighteen wheeler!  You can lock in your extra drive axle and you aren't just in four wheel drive, you're in eight wheel drive!  Oh, I'm being silly, this is some serious driving, and I saw more that one truck end up in the ditch.  Some of the trucks had to be pushed, with a bull-dozer, up the hill to the dumping site, but you'll be glad to know that I made it under my own power.  Here's a photo of the site.  If you can see the equipment up on the side of the hill that is where we had to get so we could get unloaded.

I forgot to tell you about the seagulls, or maybe they should be called dump gulls that are at both the place where they bail the trash and at the dumping site.  I guess these are gulls that have an aversion to fresh seafood or something, or else they are too lazy to make their living at the sea - I don't know, but they are always hanging about gathering bits of food from the trash that is being processed.  I always throw them a few crackers from the cab of my truck.  I don't know why, I guess I feel kind of sorry for the dumb birds, surely some little fishes from the sea would taste better than these cast off wastes from the rest of the world.  Birds and people act strangely at times, sometimes life causes us to settle for so little when there is an abundance available.  "If you seek Me, you will find Me"

As I was headed over to Amsterdam and coming through the Susquehana Valley and then through the Alleghany mountains I was wishing Abigail or mom could be here with me to enjoy the beautiful scenes along the way.  This was the area that David Brainerd labored in with the local Indian tribes.  Here's a photo of a mountain pass I went through.  I don't like to take photos while driving, but I went ahead and snapped a quick one here.

After I got this load delivered I found out I'm headed right back to Connecticut with a sheetrock load.  I'm going to have to go get my truck and my tarps washed because I don't think the people getting this sheetrock expected it to already have the mud applied to it before they hang it on the wall!  Here's what my truck looked like after I got this ordeal over with.

All in a day's work.  Fun, fun!  I guess somewhere deep inside I'm just a little bit of a Redneck!

Loneliness Goes With the Territory

I've really felt the loneliness that comes with this job lately.  I think part of it is due to the fact that I had Esther riding with me for a while.  It was such a pleasure to have her along and share with her my daily routines.  It was fun to get to show her what I do while at the same time enjoying her company as we toiled and traveled the country.  It's such a different type of job than most people ever experience.  In just the short time that Esther was with me we went from the Gulf Coast area of Texas and Louisiana all the way up into upstate New York and then down through the Smoky Mountains and back in to Deep East Texas.  I do this type of moving around so much it just starts to become routine after a while.  Another possible reason for this sudden influx of loneliness is just that I didn't go home for Thanksgiving.  I ended up taking a break parked in a bowling alley parking lot in Norwich CT.  I had completely used up my legal working hours - I had put in a little more than 70 hours in five days which kept me from being able to drive the seventy miles or so it would have taken me to get to a truck stop, so I was stuck at a local bowling alley which kindly granted me permission to park there.  I really missed my family over the holiday - you all know how much I enjoy preparing a big feast for friends and family to enjoy together.  It just wasn't the same being stranded in a vacant parking lot eating tuna and crackers knowing those you love are missing you just as much as you are missing them.  Also I've not been feeling well this week (just a nasty head cold) and I think the combination of all these things has provided me with sufficient circumstances to feel the blue-hoos lately.

The reason I'm up in the far North East parts of the country is because I pulled a high value high security load (HVHS) of copper up here from a mine in El Paso TX.  I then got a short haul load of lumber from Bloomfield CT over to a Home Depot in Monticello NY.  Now I'm back in CT where I will pick up a load of trash from Stratford CT that will propel me over to Amsterdam OH.  I don't really enjoy hauling trash, but it's not that bad.  The good thing about these trash loads is that they will generally get you over to Ohio where there is an abundance of better paying freight to all sorts of places.  In my next post I will provide a photo of my trash load, and you will see that it is nicely bagged in these huge green bags.  The trash from the particular place that I will be loading at is considered to be "construction debris" so it is not too stinky or messy.  It is usually dry trash and it is bailed up tightly by a huge trash compactor and then enclosed in these huge bags so that it doesn't get spread around as you are going down the road with it.

It's been really cold up here, but the weather has been clear for the most part.  It snowed on me a little in Monticello NY, but it wasn't too bad.  It's kind of funny because I left out of El Paso TX with this load and it's not a place known for it's severe winter weather.  But the weather down in El Paso was worse than what I've been experiencing up here in the North East.  While driving from El Paso to Midland TX I saw six eighteen wheelers in the ditches or medians - all of them jack-knifed after passing over the frozen overpasses.  There was an abundance of cars (four wheelers as the truck drivers call them) in the same situation - all of them immediately following an overpass.  So I took it slow and easy until I could get to the truck stop I was planning on spending the night at in Midland.
Once I woke in the morning I discovered they had closed the interstate that I had just traversed to get where I was.  I was fortunate to get out of there in time so I could keep moving toward my destination.  Check out this layer of ice that built up on my truck mirrors as I drove through that unusual Texas winter storm.

I kept having to stop every hour or so and break the ice off my windshield wipers because they would get so iced over that they wouldn't keep the freezing rain off my windshield.  I'm glad I pressed on to get out of there though because as I said I may have been stuck there for a lengthy and unnecessary stay.

I'm hoping I can get loaded early in the morning and make some good time on my way to Ohio, I'll let you know tomorrow about how that goes.  I'm looking forward to getting home for Christmas, until then you are all in my prayers and my hearts warmest affections.