Inglorious

Adventure

When their business went belly-up, two softwaredevelopers thought it would be a lark to drive a semi.

By: Merlin Sprague

Inglorious AdventureBy:

Merlin Sprague

Dedications

To Dale and Edith – Finer friends one could not have. Thanks, guys, forstanding by us through the rough patch.

To Rabbi Harley – For putting the idea in my head.

And to Jo.

Author’s Notes

Appearance of the Text. This publication has been tailored for Amazon’sKindle reader. In displaying text, Kindle uses the HTML format, the sameas used to display text on the internet, which means it’s not the kind offeature-rich text you see coming out of WordPerfect or Word, or see in ahardbound book – or a paperback, for that matter. However, italics, boldstrikes and underscores, which are used when needed, should displayproperly.

What’s more, there are no page breaks in HTML text; everything flows inone unbroken stream from beginning to end. However, I’ve used doublelines and large, bold-struck text to indicate chapters.

Another thing. Because this in an ebook and doesn’t consume paper, I’veseparated the paragraphs with an extra, blank, line – just the waynewspapers do with their on-line editions. It makes, I believe, for an easierread.

Finally, the manuscript was written in WordPerfect and prepared withWordPerfect’s HTML editor where my habitual use of outlines and bullets,super- and sub-scripts, odd fonts and dingbats, caused no problems. However, recognizing the limits of the HTML, I made every attempt to catchany that didn’t convert correctly. For any I missed, you have my apologies.

Jargon and Buzz Words. Also, to help you understand the argot of trucking(“Put the hammer down, good buddy, but do leave your Jake switched on`cuz therze hills a-plenty up ahead and Smokey’s taking pictures.”), I’veprovided endnotes rendering the jargon and buzz words in plain and easilyunderstood English. No reader should have to cast this book aside, snarling“I can’t follow this shit!”

Rights. Inglorious Adventure, by Merlin Sprague, © 2010. Your humbleauthor reserves all rights to Inglorious Adventure. Which means you can’treprint it, republish it, copy from it, or derive other products from it withoutmy written permission. The good folks at Amazon know how to reach me.

Hope you enjoy the book.

Introduction

Behold the semi. Eighteen wheels, a bellowing diesel and, at the helm, alone stalwart figure: A trucker. When – if – one ever bothers to think abouttruckers, it’s the Mike Nomad character from the funny papers who comesto mind; a resourceful man of steely mein whose steadfast gaze surveys theroad out to the horizon beyond. His handsome jutting jaw and ripplingthews cause distressed damsels to swoon and throw themselves at his feet. When one thinks of a long-haul trucker, one thinks of someone drawn to thecalling by a fierce spirit of independence and an unquenchable thirst forhigh adventure on the open road. One also thinks of truckers as paragons ofAmerican clean living and virtue who will stop in the middle of blizzards tohelp pull incautious motorists from the drifts and ditches. One thinks too oftruckers as being sagacious in an avuncular and earthy way and fonts ofwisdom and wily in the ways of the road.

Think again.

As the 2000s dawned, my wife Jo and I owned a software developmentbusiness, complete with a rural home and a Mercedes-Benz. We builtsophisticated telemanagement programs that were bought by America’s toptechnology companies and life was good. Then along came the .com bust,Y2K, cancer, the first Bush recession with its associated Tech Wreck, theoutsourcing epidemic, a perfidious customer, a faux Angel Investor and, ofcourse, the enormities of 9/11.

With prosperity and financial security becoming distant memories, and asbroke as stones, we needed to put food on the table. We found driving along-haul semi to be a suitable solution: Age is irrelevant, advanced degreesare not needed, experience is unnecessary and the pay for team drivers canactually be pretty good – far better than being a WalpMart hugger anyway. In mid-2005, Jo and I went to truck driving school then hired-on as teamdrivers at one of America’s largest nation-wide trucking companies.

Did we get a rude surprise – when it comes to long-haul trucking, thedisparity between mythos and reality is wide and deep. This book is a first-person account of how we got into trucking, and what the life of a trucker isreally like. That reality is so at odds with the ballads and legends that, ifyou read this book, you will never be able to look at a semi and its driver inquite the same way again.

—

Because a life that’s jarringly different from one’s past can make a guy getphilosophical at times, I’ve editorialized a bit. I hope you won’t mind.

Night Shift Driver

I want to play a game. Actually, I want you to play a game. It’s called NightShift Driver. It’s what I do; I drive our rig through the dark of night. I wantyou to play this game so you can get the true feel of that “call of the openroad” romanticized by country-western singers and teenie-bopper movies.

To play the game, you need to devote a 24-hour period beginning at about6:00 P.M. on a Friday or Saturday night as you’re going to need the followingday to recuperate. Also, be sure the night you select is one where you’ll be

1 FUEL Diesels use “fuel” while cars use “gas.” Say “gas” around a trucker and he or

she will know you are the newest of newbies. They will point at you and laugh with derision.

free of interruptions by family and friends – oh, you can make and receivecell phone calls, but no one comes to visit.

The best place to play this game is down in the basement where it will becompletely dark and you can achieve a feeling of being totally cut off – justas in a real long-haul semi. Also, the make-pretend “road” which we will bedriving this night will be I-94 from Miles City, Montana, east toward Fargo,North Dakota. I picked this stretch of I-94 because at night, you can driveon it for hours and never see a sign of life. Also, when you’re in easternMontana and all of North Dakota, the land is fairly flat and the road can beas straight as a stick for miles. Also, I-94, being an Interstate, is 4-lane allthe way so you never have to worry about oncoming traffic and head-oncollisions.

You will be driving a 10-hour shift, though eleven hours is the legalmaximum and the one your employer prefers you drive. Understand thatthis means ten hours behind the wheel, not just ten hours on-duty. Forexample, if you start driving at six P.M. and will need a half-hour forfueling1 and another half hour for potty stops, you will be going until fivethe following morning. If you choose to work the maximum allowed by lawof eleven hours, you won’t be getting out of that seat and turning off theengine until six in the morning.

Because I drive with my wife as a 2-person team, I’ll be sitting up with youfor a while, just as Jo does with me. You’ll find the company to be quitehelpful.

Now, you’ll need a few things to get set up:

• A chair upholstered in cloth, no leather or plastic. Don’t want to getyour hinder all sweaty and stuck to the seat. Also, the chair can’t be arecliner as it must keep you in a fully upright position and allow yourfeet to be flat on the floor. It needs to be a chair you can toleratesitting in for at least four uninterrupted hours. This will be your“driver’s seat.”

• A large screen TV placed three to four feet in front of the chair. ThisTV needs to accept connection to a game-playing machine like an X-Box™. The set’s screen should be placed at eye-level to simulate

looking out the windshield of a semi. This will be your view of the“road.”

• A video game that shows a road course which can be played in anendless loop; this will simulate your view out the windshield (HINT:Ask your favorite 14-year-old lad, he probably can name at least threesuitable games).

• A ladder back chair, one whose uprights you can grasp to simulate thesteering wheel. This should be placed at arms’ length between yourdriver’s seat and the TV.

• To the right of the driver’s seat, place a small table that can hold yournight’s essential supplies. They will include:

One non-alcoholic beverage, preferably two. Coffee issuggested.

Munchables - enough to keep your mouth constantly engaged tofend off sleep.

Smokes, if you use them.

A cell phone.

Something to make a constant, fatiguing roar at about 95 dB. Perhaps a large floor fan set on Hi. This will simulate engineand road noises.

Ready now? OK. Turn on the TV, pop the video game into the player andstart it up. Turn out the lights and take your seat. Now this simulacrumisn’t true in one vital respect: the road course of the video game willprobably be in daylight hours and may have other vehicles on the road withyou, but for our purpose tonight, that’s OK. Also, you will see far richerdetail on the TV screen than what is available to a night shift trucker on I-94.

Comfy? Good. Let’s begin.

First, getting a semi up to 65 m.p.h. takes less than a minute and onceyou’re there, you simply set the cruise control so don’t be worried about

playing with a shift lever and stuff. What you need to be concerned about inour little game is rolling down the road and staying awake.

—

I must caution you to keep both hands on the “wheel” as much as you can,for a semi has a mind of its own. In a car, you can be cruising along atfreeway speed and still watch interesting things as they pass by: “Gee,Blanch. Lookit that!” you say, pointing out the passenger-side window, “Abucking bronco trampling its rider.” Some seconds later, you return yourgaze to the road ahead and find you are pretty much where you expected tobe. Not so with a semi. They constantly want to go off the road – into theoncoming lane or over the side and into a ditch, it makes no difference – andthe wheel needs constant and massive corrections to stay in your lane.

Do you recall movies of the black & white era showing someone behind thewheel of a car? The driver is constantly thrashing the wheel right and left tocontrol the car? Well, that’s what it’s like in a semi. Except the thrashing asemi driver has to do is far more sudden and violent than the gentle rockingmotions we see in those old movies. Even with today’s power steeringsystems, it’s like wrestling a boa constrictor.

But this is only a game, so you don’t have to be flailing the ladder-back chairaround the room. Just hold onto the uprights, that’s good enough. Andkeep your eyes on the TV screen – remember it’s your road for the night. Taking your attention away from the endless pavement long enough to giveyour behind a good scratching can get you killed.

We will start promptly at six.

6:09 P.M. ==========

We’ve been cruising along now for ten minutes or so. How do you like it sofar? Good. I knew you would.

6:35 P.M. ==========

What’s that you say? The chair isn’t as comfortable as you thought it wouldbe and your back is starting to complain? No problem, just scrunch aroundand shift positions. It’ll be OK. Also, remember you are on cruise control soyou can move your feet around all you want.

2 RUMBLE STRIPE – A narrow strip of corrugation formed into the pavement just to

the right and left of the lane boundaries. When you start falling asleep and the truck wanderstoward the edge of the road, the wheels will roll over the rumble stripe and make a loudbuzzing that would wake the dead. And hopefully you, the sleeping trucker.

6:51 P.M. ============

HEY!! WATCH THE FRIGGING ROAD! {*Stomp* *Stomp*} Goll-dang it!You were looking at the goodies on the little table and took your eyes off theroad for three whole seconds. I told you that’s enough to send you out ofyour lane. You drifted off to the shoulder and if it hadn’t been for therumble stripe2 – that was me stomping on the floor as a sound effect – you’dhave gone into the ditch and probably rolled the rig. If you had drifted off tothe left, you’d have crushed that little red VW that was passing you, the onewith the two college kids inside.

OK, the kids are past. But that doesn’t mean you can inspect the table,looking for a particular morsel. You just reach over and feel around for thething you want.

Oops? What do you mean “oops?” Oh, you knocked the thing you wantedon the floor? No problem, when you stop for fuel and potty, you can pick itup then. Content yourself with Choice NO 2.

And keep those eyes on the road.

7:17 P.M. ============

What do you mean “It’s boring.” You mean the sameness of the road? Wellof course its boring; you’re on a lonely stretch of Interstate in the bowels ofthe night.

As I have often remarked to friends who ask about the driving experience,one mile of pavement looks pretty much like any other mile of pavement. True, isn’t it? Yes, and especially so at night. You can look out thewindshield and what you see could be anywhere in the country anytime ofthe year. All there is ahead of you are:

• The endless unwinding strip of pavement.

• The same mesmerizing dotted lane divider.

• The low undistinguishable stuff on the shoulders which could bewintertime snow or summertime weeds.

• The same little white posts topped with reflector tape,

• The same white-on-green signs and mile markers.

• The same inky black sky.

• The protruding hood of your rig.

Except, that is, for the bugs. Bugs are the big difference; your windshielddoesn’t get covered with bugs in the winter.

Have another slug of coffee.

7:36 P.M. ============

Are you sure you’re all right? I thought I just heard your wheels nickingthe rumble stripe again. Keep those peepers on the road now.

7:38 P.M. ============

What? Of course you can turn on the radio. Hit the scan button and let’ssee what’s playing tonight.

7:39 P.M. ============

Huh. Nothing on but that radio preacher. The one ranting about the“hummasexalls” ruining the institution of marriage. Out here on I-94, I’mafraid there isn’t much else.

Did you bring any CDs? No? Aw, too bad. Well, try the radio again in fiftymiles or so. You might have better luck further down the line.

7:56 P.M. ============

What’s that? You say your backside and thighs are starting to get hot andsweaty? Yeah, no doubt they are. I warned you. But, hey, I have a niftycomfort tip for you, though it won’t stop your hind end from sweating: Undoyour belt, unbutton your pants and pull down your zipper. It takes a realload off the guts. It also helps you fart – sitting in one spot like this tends to

retain the gas, and that gets to be uncomfortable. And it gives you theopportunity to easily twiddle your johnson, if you have a mind to do so. Oryour thingy, if you’re a girl.

8:13 P.M. ============

You say your feet feel like sausages? Yeah, sorry. I forgot to tell you to untieyour shoes. Better yet, kick them off and drive in your stocking feet.

8:33 P.M. ============

Got to pee now, huh. Well of course you do; we’ve been on the road close totwo and a-half hours now so it’s time. I was just looking at the road atlasand it looks like there is a rest area about seventy miles up the road. Youcan pull in there.

9:03 P.M. ============

Here comes the rest area and ... Oh, oh. Sign says it’s closed for renovation. Bummer. But the atlas shows another one in maybe half an hour or so.

What say? You don’t think you can hold it that long? Well, you have to. You simply can’t pull off on the shoulder and get out and pee. If a highwaycop catches you, you’d get two citations for sure. One for illegal parking andanother for public indecency. Just pull the puckering string; it’s onlyanother hour. Besides, the discomfort helps keep you alert.

9:10 P.M. ============

{*Stomp* *Stomp*} Hey, I heard that rumble stripe again. Mind whatyou’re doing.

9:49 P.M. ============

What? You say you feel like you’ve grown into the chair and that you arestiff and sore? Welcome to the club. And wait until you try to walk aroundand find out how wobbly your legs have become. But you’re new to the job. It’ll get better in six months or so.

10:03 P.M. ============

3 CB - Citizens’ Band. A scratchy, low-fidelity 2-way radio of limited range that does

not need an FCC license to operate. CBs let truckers to talk with one another. Onceubiquitous, CB has been marginalized by the rise of cell phones. CBs were once so popularthat songs were written about them. We don’t have a CB.

OK, you’re finally at the quote/unquote “rest stop.” Put the video game onPause and go hit the can. Stop by the kitchen for some refreshments too, ifyou’d like – after all, the rest stops usually have vending machines of junkfood and bad coffee.

10:12 P.M. ============

Got to get back in the truck now. We can’t be late for our delivery. Allcomfy? Take the video game off Pause and let’s log another 250 miles. It’llbe time to fuel then and you can also have dinner.

11:30 P.M. ============

Getting a bit sleepy after that snack are we? Well here are a few truckers’tricks for staying awake.

• Open the window and let in some fresh air. Works best in the winter.

• Play the radio way loud.

• Sing at the top of your lungs.

• Turn on a talk show and argue with the host.

• See if you can find someone to talk to over the CB3. Your chances arebest when you’re out east on the heavily-traveled I-95, but out here? All you’re probably going to get is static.

• Play mind games with yourself: relive old experiences; imaginebedding that hottie you saw yesterday at the Starbucks; role-play afavorite hero – Captain Kirk, maybe.

• Stamp your feet.

• Slap your face.

4 TRUCK STOP – A place like a gas station but bigger. Its specialty is selling diesel

fuel to truck drivers. It contains racks of trash food, a wall cooler full of soft drinks and milkand, frequently, a restaurant of dubious quality. Most times there is a store selling lots of junkmade in Red China. Of course there are toilets, a laundry room and, blessedly, showers. Usually there is a TV room and a casino. Often, there are one or more shops to fix problems. Truck stops also have large parking lots where exhausted drivers can park their rigs and sleep.

• Pinch some part of yourself. Hard. Or bite yourself – cheeks,knuckles, tongue. Whatever you can put in your mouth.

Remember, if you fall asleep you’ll get in a smash up. Game over. If youreally can’t fight it off any longer, find a place to pull over and nap – I dobelieve I see an exit ramp up ahead. You can pull off there. In this game,simply put the video game on Pause and you can snooze in the chair. Butbefore you take that snooze, turn on your cell phone alarm and set it for nomore than half an hour. You have a schedule to keep.

12:06 A.M. ============

There, that nap felt good, didn’t it? What? You say your eyes feel like twopiss holes in the snow? Yeah, I know; rub them around a bit. And if you’relike most people, you have to pee as soon as you wake up. I keep an oldCranApple® jug behind the passenger’s seat for this but you can get up anduse the toilet.

12:12 A.M. ============

Well, you seem to be doing pretty well now so I’m going over to the couch (itwould be the sleeper berth in a real semi) for a couple hours of shut-eye. You’re on your own. If you start getting sleepy again, though, just call andI’ll come up here and keep you company.

Meanwhile, take a caffeine pill and wash it down with some Red Bull.

What’s Red Bull? Dude, it is just the hottest thing to hit trucking sinceBenzedrine and you can get it at truck stops4 everywhere. Red Bull is anenergy drink that’s got some stuff in it to give you lots of vim and vigor –plus a good hit of caffeine. Chug one of these little suckers after a caffeinepill and it’ll keep your peepers wide open. It gets me through nights likethis. But it’s spendy; a little six-ounce can costs almost three bucks and totell you the truth, I think the caffeine is the real effector here. But the

combination works, so ... Of course there are other brands if you don’t likethe cherry taste of Red Bull.

Anyway, time for my nap. See you in a couple of hours.

2:06 A.M. =============

I’m back. Didn’t hear any rumble strips so you must be doing OK butremember, you still have a while to go so let’s think about taking anotherbreak. This one is for fuel but feel free to hit the head and go by the kitchenfor some grub. Of course the restaurants and deli counters in many truckstops will be closed at hours like this so all you can count on is preparedstuff – oh, there might be a lunch counter, but that gets expensive so it isbest avoided. But this is just a game, so, please, feel free to raid the ice box. Take half an hour.

2:36 A.M. =============

Dinner was good, wasn’t it? Nice of your beloved to leave us those turkeyand cranberry sandwiches. If this were a real truck stop, you’d have had astale precooked cheeseburger from the cooler that you’d have nuked for afew seconds to enhance its palatability. Maybe a Snowball for desert.

Did you get some more Cheetos? Swell. We truckers love Cheetos. Good-and-Plenties are nice too. Actually, we like anything that is sweet or salty. But never veggies or fruit. They’re too hard to keep. Besides, they’re likeall that yucky stuff mom made you eat.

2:37 A.M. =============

Conversation helps keep the mind alert. Want to talk about religion orpolitics? Politics? Good. Well, that ass-wipe Bush, he ...

JESUS H. CHRIST! Will you keep your eyes on the frigging road? Youwere looking at me and not the road and you drifted way over into the leftlane. Just about hit that other semi that was passing you. Yeah, I know Itold you there wouldn’t be much traffic this time of night but there’s some

and it sneaks up. Check your mirrors every minute or so. (Newbies. Honestly.)

2:52 A.M. =============

5 This is the starting pay at our company. Some companies pay more, others pay less.

6 OFF-TRACKING – The trailer, having a longer wheel base than the tractor, cannot

turn as tightly. This disparity in turning radii is called off-tracking. If you turn a corner so thetractor’s driver wheels will just miss the little girl standing on the sidewalk’s corner, thetrailer’s wheels will get her and squash her like a toad.

Well, I am glad to find you too think Bush was a destructive moron. Howabout we try religion next?

No? OK, fine by me.

3:00 A.M. =============

Bored out of your skull? Yeah, sitting in one spot watching the same-old-same-old for ten hours can get to be a drag but that’s how you earn your 39c|a mile5.

Tell you what, keep your eyes open until 4:30, then I’ll take over. Now,according to the Federal government’s Hours of Service rules, I’m notsupposed to do that; you’re supposed to drive the whole gig yourself but,hey, let’s be human about this.

3:30 A.M. =============

Well, here we are at a rest stop and, saints be praised, there’s a parking spotjust waiting for you. Hey. Watch it; you weren’t paying attention to thetrailer’s off-tracking6 and you just ran over a road cone that was set out by apot hole. Not a problem, though. Almost everybody hits them once in awhile.

4:32 A.M. =============

Ah, it is finally the end of your shift. Pull off on the next exit ramp and we’llswitch. Actually, I’ll be going home, but if we were in a real semi, I’d betaking the wheel for the next ten or eleven hours while you sleep. After youupdate your log book – it only takes maybe fifteen minutes or so – you’redone.

Why don’t you shut off the fan and the video game and I’ll get the lights. Then let’s us go outside to stretch our legs and get some air. The sunshould be coming up about now.

Oh, one final jolt of realism: instead of going off to your bed, go sleep on thecouch. It’ll be more like a semi’s sleeper berth.

Fun, wasn’t it? Want to do it again tonight?

I, Trucker

Looking like a grizzled 49er just in from the hills, I climb down from the cabof my semi and, in my halting, slew-footed gate, make my way to the truckstop’s restaurant. It’s still hours before dawn and I’m famished. All I havethought of for the last hundred miles is a plate of bacon, eggs, and well-buttered toast. I simply cannot stomach – literally – another day living onstuff that comes out of a cellophane bag.

This truck stop, like any truly worthy of the designation, is open 24/7/52 – asis its eatery – so relief is at hand. At this hour, all the choice parking spacesare full so I have to drive around to see if there’s a vacancy in the dirt lot outback. Ah, there is. It’s actually a mud hole of impossibly large proportions,which explains why it’s vacant, but it’ll do. I back in. The rig doesn’t sinkup to its hubs so I’m good to go. Leaving the engine on fast idle to keep thecab snug and warm for Jo, and so a sudden silence won’t wake her, I quietlydebark, lock the doors behind me and head on in. The night is gloomy witha chilling breeze. I zip up my jacket.

We’re running well ahead of schedule so we can afford this break. In fact,after I’ve supped, there will be enough time for Jo to chow down too. That isif she wakes up. If she doesn’t, I’ll get back on the road and we’ll stopsomewhere when she does.

—

Inside the restaurant, a place of harsh lights and cracked linoleum, access tothe booths and tables is blocked by a row of overturned chairs; “Closed,”says the hand-lettered sign taped to the chair in the center. This means theonly places available are stools at the lunch counter labeled “TruckersOnly.” I take a seat as far away as possible from a gaggle of truckers whoare pouring down Niagras of coffee as they swap stories and make jokes. I’ve got Jo out in the rig so I can’t dawdle and join the conversation.

I open the menu. Ah, yes, there it is: A plate of bacon and eggs with hashbrowns, along with my choice of toast or biscuits, all for $8.95. The haggardwaitress approaches with a glass of water. She’s like a zombie. She saysnothing as I place my order and after scratching it in her green order pad,she turns away wordlessly and shuffles toward the kitchen.

With my order being prepared, I head for the men’s room to wash the lastthirty-six hours of dirt from my hands. As I shake off the excess water, Ihappen to look up and there, in the mirror, I catch sight of an apparition:Staring back at me is a drawn face with a slack jaw, bloodshot eyes and asmudge of grease on the side of its nose – a trucker.

Debacle

Jo and I weren’t always truckers. In fact, on 1 January 2000, if you’dsuggested we might one day be earning our bread piloting a semi, I’d havesaid you were nuts. As the new millennium dawned, Jo and I were softwaredevelopers. We owned our own business and sold our products to thecountry’s biggest HiTech companies. We had installations all over thecountry as well as in Australia, England, Spain, Mexico, Canada and Korea. Sales were going so well that we were paying down the mortgage andputting some cash into a bond fund. I even bought a Mercedes (not a newone, but a Mercedes nevertheless). Life was good.

But shit happens.

Between May of 2000 and October of 2001, I’d had two major canceroperations, plus a third for a blown appendix and had a bout of peritonitis.

The recession of the early decade wracked our customers something awful,and, consequently, our business suffered as well. Within a thirty-dayperiod, from mid-March to mid-April of 2002, all of our customers cancelledtheir orders and all of our prospects turned into pumpkins. Of course wetried to sell the company but in 2002, software businesses were as popular assyphilis so there were no takers. Jo and I had a partner in this business, afellow from Chicago, but neither he nor I could see anything useful fromcontinuing the operation, so we called it quits and re-financed the house.

In mid-2003, I acquired a new customer. We contracted to develop a customproduct for him but as soon as we delivered the source code, he welched onthe deal and stiffed us to the tune of sixty grand. This was solid ground fora lawsuit but I had no money to retain a lawyer so the little turd got awaywith it.

Pounding more sand down the rathole, we decided to bootstrap a newprogram and, b`god, it looked like a winner. By late 2004, I’d even found anangel investor who promised enough money to do a proper product launch. Ah, but in late February 2005, our angel called with some bad news; he’dbeen planning this deal around OPM (other people’s money) and now theother people weren’t coming through. Without funding, the new productdied in the stinkhole. The completed code, which is ready for beta testing,now languishes on a CD stored in an old file cabinet.

By July of 2005, we had:

• Lost the house and had become renters again.

• Canceled the health insurance.

• Ate up the little nest egg we had managed to accumulate.

• Run up five credit cards to their limits.

• Sold the Mercedes, the home gym, the chain saw, the ... Soldeverything that wasn’t nailed down.

• Went on food stamps.

• Started buying our clothes at St. Vincent de Paul.

• Killed our old friend, Moe, the cat. He was seventeen years old andwas starting to pee in the house. Moe was unadoptable and wecouldn’t take him with us when we were put out on the street so ... SoI shot him. He’s now buried out in back of the old place, under amaple tree.

Life was no longer good.

—

7 H1-B VISA – A federal program beloved by the High Tech community where Uncle

Sam allows the community to hire foreigners in preference to Americans. Not because theforeigners do better work, but because the foreigners are willing to work cheap and in almostsweatshop conditions.

8 OTR (OVER THE ROAD) – Long-haul, as opposed to delivery, local routes and

construction (a.k.a. “Vocational”).

Yes, we were well and truly busted, but why did we opt for driving truck? You’d think that there must have been some kind of good-paying companythat could benefit from our experience in the software biz.

Well, you’d be wrong. For one thing, I was in my mid-sixties, not exactlywhat an outfit like Microsoft is looking for. For another, 2005 was still partof the Tech Wreck and people like Jo and me were a dime a dozen. In 2005,to get any self-respecting software house to look at us, we would either haveto be H1-B visa holders from India, or be able to raise the dead. We metneither criterion.

During the 2000s, as our software business sputtered on, I looked forrevenue elsewhere. First, I tried selling real estate and then cars, but sellingis selling and though I sold telephone and computer stuff for forty years, Iwas usually a sub-par performer and never really liked the work. Frankly, Ihad gotten into selling for the same reason most salesmen do: It is a placefor those without credentials but which can still provide a better living thanthe stoop labor to which we would otherwise be doomed.

Jo was in no better shape; American programmers are not in demand thesedays. They have to compete against the holders of H1-B visas7 whonormally work for about $7.50 an hour, no benefits. Income-wise, computerprogramming is now on an economic par with summer landscaping work. Of course Jo could easily make twice what programming offered by flying acash register up at Top Foods but with the crappy credit history, shecouldn’t get a bond, so ...

So there we were, one early spring night, contemplating putting drycleaning bags over our heads when her brother Bill happened to call. Earlier, Jo had phoned Bill to bewail our situation. Bill thought about it anddecided to call with a suggestion: Why didn’t we drive truck OTR8 for a fewyears? It often pays well and, in 2005, long-haul companies needed driverslike they needed a second breath. Bill said that the industry needed aroundten thousand more drivers and couldn’t find them. Bill had driven a route

9 TEAM – Two drivers in one truck. They split the work and the money 50/50. The idea

behind teaming is to keep the truck rolling as close to 24/7/52 as possible. While one drives,the other sleeps. Jo and I can pick up a load in south Newark at the close of business onTuesday and deliver it in L.A. by eight o`clock in the morning that Friday. We can roll 6,000miles in a week.

in the middle states for about ten years and liked it. Had not Becky, hiswife, put her foot down, he’d probably be doing it still.

Well, gee.

“How much can we make?” I asked.

“If you two drive as a team9,” Bill said, “Upwards of $100,000 a year – after afew years. But to start, maybe $50,000 in Year 1,”

Better than any available alternative. “What’s the downside?” I asked.

“Well,” said Bill, “For one thing, you don’t get home too awful much. Maybea couple of days a month.” We didn’t have a home any more, so no problemon that score.

“And for another?” I asked.

Bill paused for a second then said: “The hours – you are always on. Youtake bathroom breaks, food stops and sleep when you can fit them in.”

When you are stony-assed broke and facing an old age of penury and want,you’ll take anything. Promising that we’d look into it, we said goodby. Thenext day, I got on the internet and started doing research on Over The Roaddriving. I found that in addition to the driver shortage:

• Turnover is frightful. At most OTR companies, it’s about 125% eachyear. The pay is poor, so truckers quit and go to new companies at thedrop of a hat.

• Pay in 2005 is down and it still hasn’t come back up. In response tothe recession of 2000, OTR companies slashed their drivers’ pay. Dueto the pay cuts, truckers quit by the drove, hence the shortage. Now,though things are better, the pay still stinks.

10 CDL – Commercial Drivers License. Thanks to almost uniform standards nation-

wide, a CDL testifies that the possessor has a fair idea of what he or she is doing behind thewheel.

• Recruiting – and keeping – new drivers is tough. As the economy getsbetter, there are fewer desperate people willing to suffer the rigors,indignities and shitty pay of OTR work.

• There are new, unprecedented hiring restrictions. Since 9/11, securityhas become a big thing and potential candidates with less-than-sterling records are now being turned away.

For us, this was some of the best news we’d heard in years. Ah, but BrotherBill said that to get a job driving truck, one first needed a CommercialDrivers License (CDL)10. And that meant driving school, which I foundwould cost us between $4,000.00 and $5,000.00 each. As we’d sold everythingthat could be sold, I began to cast about for some sort of charity or aidprogram. After a bit of Googling, I found WorkSource. It’s a governmentprogram doling out money to retrain displaced or supernumerary workers. Most appro po to our situation, WorkSource also helps failed entrepreneursdown on their luck. Oh, and old people. WorkSource especially likes to helpold people, and having just turned sixty-three, that got me in the tent.

The next morning I grabbed my umbrella and headed up to pay a visit. AsWorkSource is all government money, there are oodles of restrictions,qualifications and exceptions, but the fellow with whom I would be dealingfelt we were within the pale. I took home a stack of papers a half-inch thickwhich told us Everything You Need to Know. Jo stoked the fire in the woodstove and the two of us spent the afternoon and evening reading.

The following Monday, Jo and I went up to WorkSource for an orientationsession and to fill out applications. The orientation was filled with peoplefrom every walk of life but with a plurality from small companies that hadfolded in the recession. We met bookkeepers, machinists, technicalspecialists, plus a goodly number of programmers and analysts from thedying software industry. Over the next weeks, Jo and I played footsie with WorkSource, only to find,at the beginning of June, that a niggardly congress was planning to shit-canthe program. However, wiser and more humane heads prevailed inWashington and in July, funding was restored. The only thing left to do was

choose a driving school and schedule a start date. However, the exactschedule of events depended on the hearing date for our Chapter 7.

Yes, bankruptcy was now a certainty. We had contacted a lawyer not longafter Gary (the angel investor) went a-glimmering. Thanks to the scut jobsJo and I had caged since then, we’d been making payments toward theattorney’s fee. Now, near the tail end of August, we’d scraped up the final$400.00 and the petition was filed. A couple of days later, our lawyer’ssecretary called: The hearing was to be held on 4 November 2005.

This hearing was a must. If we missed it because we were hauling a loadfrom L.A. to Boston, our petition would be summarily rejected. BecauseCongress had bowed to the credit card industry, a new bankruptcy law wasdue to take effect on 15 November and it was a whole lot tougher than thecurrent one. If we had to reschedule, the hearing would be held after thenew, harsh, law went into effect and we’d come out still owing almost asmuch as we did going in.

NOTE: For those of you who are repelled by Chapter 7`s and the people whofile them, I have some news for you. Our lawyer said over ninety percent ofthose who file do so only as a positively, absolutely last, desperate, resort. They’ve played by the rules all their lives but something came out of left fieldand hit them upside the head: Ruinous health care costs, the boss Enron-edthe company, the spouse divorced them, they got swindled by a crooked stockbroker ... Things like that. By the time people visit his office, our attorneysaid, everything is gone. The utilities are often disconnected and the poorbastards are living on handouts, eating fatback and beans from the foodbank. The only thing people haven’t yet done by the time they come to seehim, is resort to crime.

The congress’ boogeyman, the clown who runs up a bazillion dollars of debtwith the intention of stiffing the creditors, is a total crock. The people whoseek our attorney’s help are worn down to the nub from the strain of trying tocatch up on the bills and make things work. They’re distressed anddisheartened by the shame of bankruptcy and most have traumatized andimpoverished their families in an effort to avoid it. Many of these souls haveacquired nervous conditions or become actively psychotic. Depression is rifeamongst the cadre and a good number have seriously considered blowing outtheir brains. Many have.

Brother Bill told us that the trucking companies don’t like to see much timeelapse between passing the CDL examination and going to work. “A couple

11 YARD – Any open space where trucks are parked and moved about.

12 STRAIGHT JOB – A non-articulated truck such as a delivery van.

13 TRACTOR – The front, smaller, part of a semi. The tractor contains the engine and

power train, plus the driver. If the tractor goes OTR, it also contains the sleeper.

14 SLEEPER – The large boxy area behind the seats. It holds one or two bunks.

of weeks, yeah, OK” he said, so after checking with the school for availabledates, we picked the second Monday in September, 2005. We’d be finishedwith school the third week in October and, hopefully, have our CDLs. We’dhave about two weeks to kill before the bankruptcy hearing on the 4th ofNovember, and could report for work on the 5th.

Truck School

There are two truck schools in the north Puget Sound area. One is down inHooterville six or seven minutes away, the other is up in Everett, a halfhour’s drive. The one in Everett is in an old facility with one permanentbuilding for the offices and, for classrooms, two mobile units up on cinderblocks with a chemical toilet between them. The place has a potholed yard11

made of dirt with a chain-link fence students have hit at least a hundredtimes. Weeds galore border the yard and two elderly maple trees grace thefront.

The trucks, which were in various colors with the school’s name stenciledcrudely on the doors, looked beat up. An old straight job12 sat by itself alongthe north fence while against the eastern side sat the school’s two besttractors13 – the ones in good enough shape to safely leave the lot. Both wereconventional Freightliners out of the early 1990s and had sleepers14 wherestudents sat as they awaited their turns at the wheel. The white tractor wasa single axle unit powered by a Cummins engine. The black one, the nicerof the two, was a dual axle model powered by a Caterpillar engine. Both hadthe redoubtable Eaton-Fuller 10-speed manual transmission.

The people at the older school seemed a lot more on the ball. Besides, it’sbeen around longer and is part of a 7-city chain out of California. Therecruiter told me the reason for the hard times appearance is that theschools’ owner, the widow of the founder, is a cheap old battle axe who

doesn’t like spending money on anything but her Pomeranian. It soundedplausible, but just to be sure, I called our WorkSource guy and asked aboutthe two schools. He gave both a clean bill of health. I also called a recruiterfor one of the major lines. They told me both schools are fine; they’veproduced hundreds, if not thousands, of graduates and all got jobs. Jo and Ichose the one in Everett and after WorkSource coughed up the dough, westarted classes on our chosen Monday in the middle of September.

— Week 1. Starting time was seven A.M. sharp. When we got there, the spotby the door was already taken by a new bright yellow Dodge Ram sportingHemi badges on the front fenders. It belonged to Jim, a thirty-somethingfellow who just moved down from Dutch Harbor, Alaska. Jim was possessedof intense brown eyes and a winning smile with a booming voice. Jim hadbeen a fisherman on a crab boat out of Dutch Harbor, a murderousoccupation if ever there was one, and after seeing one too many shipmatestorn apart by thrashing equipment in the pounding swells, or simply beingwashed overboard and pulled under by the heavy gear they wore, Jimfigured he’d pushed his luck far enough.

Alaska’s fishermen are well paid by anybody’s lights and, in Dutch Harbor,there isn’t much to spend the money on so Jim had amassed a good sizedwad over the years. Packing up the wife and kids, they’d moved to theEverett area three months previously. In addition to the yellow truck, heand his wife bought a home out by Granite Falls, writing checks for each.

In the black Buick that almost ran me down as it came rocketing into theparking lot seconds before classes were to start, was Immanuel. He wasfrom Somalia and had come to the U.S. in his teens. After graduating fromhigh school in Seattle, he had gone to work as a cabbie. Immanuel loved todrive – so much so that in his two-plus years as a cab driver, he amassedtwenty-nine traffic citations (!) and was forced to look for employmentelsewhere. He joined the Army and went to Iraq where he drove a Bradleyfighting vehicle. His was a 4-year enlistment so by the time he musteredout, most of the tickets had dropped from his record and he was good to gofor a CDL.

The last fellow to drive in was Craig with whom I became close. He’s a burlyfellow in his early thirties with a shock of light brown hair. His stance,posture and general bearing made him look like a retired NFL halfback. Hetoo had gotten into truck school on a government grant. But I believe

driving a truck would be a big mistake for Craig. I spent 41 years sellingstuff and I can tell you that one salesman can always spot another – even ifthe other guy isn’t selling. Like Justice Potter Stewart said of pornography,“I can’t tell you what it is, but I know it when I see it.” Craig has the It. Selling is an inborn talent; you either have it or you don’t, it cannot betaught. If you don’t have it, you can’t sell water to a thirsty man. If you do,you can sell Israel bonds to an Imam.

Were Craig to seek my council, I’d tell him to forget trucking – go calldirectly on some sales managers and offer his services. I’d bet dimes todoughnuts Craig would have a job offer before the day was out.

As we milled about in the cloudy dawn, we saw other students, studentswho’d been at the school for a week or better, congregating by the trucks. Presently we heard a starter grind and a roar filled the darkness as the whiteFreightliner came to life. Just then the door of the building in front of usopened and a fellow who turned out to be our instructor, stepped onto thelanding. This was Gary, the school’s manager and senior academician. Heoffered greetings and bid us enter.

Gary sat at the teacher’s desk and handled the introductions. That done, hepassed out copies of the state’s CDL exam, which he clearly wasn’t supposedto have but did anyway. This, Gary explained, was our course syllabus. Compared to public schools, where the idea is to flunk you if at all possible,a truck school wanted you to get your CDL – after all, that’s what yourpaying it for. The school’s job over the next four days, Gary said, was toteach this test so thoroughly that we’d all pass the state’s examination onFriday and get our learners’ permits. Once we had our CDLs and hired-onsomewhere, the finer points of truck driving would be taught by ouremployers.

15 TRAILER – The rear, larger, part of a semi that carries the cargo. Trailers come in

many configurations. The principal kinds are: Dry van - A fully enclosed, weather-tight boxwith doors in the back. Flat bed - Just a floor resting atop the wheels, they usually haul bigthings like bulldozers. Curtain side - A form of flat bed, a curtain side trailer has a solid roofand floor but canvas sides. It uses a framework over which tarps are draped like curtains tokeep the weather off the load. Refrigerator - A misnomer: These trailers are actually climatecontrolled - warm in the winter, cool in the summer. The climate control unit is mounted onthe front of the trailer and is powered by a small diesel engine. They’re used to shiptemperature-sensitive chemicals as well as groceries and illegal aliens. Tankers - These haulliquids. Most have internal bulkheads to prevent sloshing; those that don’t are called “smoothbores. Custom trailers - All the rest: grain trailers, car carriers, livestock trailers, those that totelarge earth moving equipment, to name a few.”

16 AIR BRAKES – A form of power brakes for trucks that use compressed air as the

actuating medium. Cars use hydraulic fluid. Truth be told, hydraulic fluid would be better fortrucks too but there is no way to couple and uncouple hydraulic brake lines when hooking uptractor and trailer without getting air in the lines. Hydraulic brakes don’t work well with air inthe lines.

Thanks to our sedulous efforts, we all went home Friday with officiallearners’ permits that included endorsements for hauling doubles15, tankersand, most important of all, the operation of vehicles with air brakes16.

—

Week 2. On the second Monday, we convened in the classroom where Garyintroduced us to the driving instructors. All these fellows have at least twomillion miles under their belts, with no accidents and damn few tickets. They’re an older crowd that no longer wants to be out on the road.

Two other students were waiting for us out in the yard; they were thesurviving members of the class preceding us – there had been a total of four,but two washed out. These two fellows were Denny Dimwit and Lenny theSpitter. Actually, Denny wasn’t the dullard he first seemed; it was thebeaked baseball cap pulled low on his brow that made him seem so. Thefact that he showed up every day in the same grayish green janitors’uniform didn’t contribute to an impression of mental agility either. Butafter riding around in the same truck with him during the second and thirdweeks, I found he was just a quiet sort of guy. I grew to kind of like Denny.

Lenny, on the other hand, was a total pain in the ass. Lenny stood about sixfoot five and weighed around two-fifty. He’d be a fairly good looking guy,were it not for the hair lip. At least we all thought it was a hair lip; actually,

the distortion in Lenny’s lip was caused by a wad of snuff the size of a man’sthumb.

Most guys stuff their chew in the side of a cheek a la baseball pitchers. Others put it loose in the center of their mouths as if it was shreddedcabbage and chew it like a cud. Not Lenny, he stuffed his load under hisupper lip and sucked it like a baby does a binkie. Of course it was tobaccoLenny was working on, not beef jerky, so the juice couldn’t be swallowed; ithad to be spit. Out in the yard, this wasn’t a problem; when he had a loadready to go, Lenny would turn his head slightly, crane it forward and squirta gobbet. He’d kick some dust over it like a cat covering spoor.

For those times when he couldn’t spit, like when he was in the classroom ortruck, Lenny kept a clear plastic soda jug close at hand. When he needed tospit, Lenny would unscrew the cap, hold the muzzle close to his bottom lipand slowly drain the stuff into the jug. I happened to watch this once: Thewad was voluminous. It was the color of maple syrup with darker flecks andhad the viscosity of 80-weight gear lube.

As it emerged from betwixt Lenny’s lips, it ran down inside the bottle like agarden slug and pooled with the older ejectamenta. This done, Lenny wouldwipe his lips with the back of an index finger, wipe the finger on histrousers, recap the bottle and place it again by his feet.

We tried our best to avoid Lenny. We couldn’t, but we tried.

—

School policy is to separate husbands and wives so they don’t backseat driveone another – that, after all, is the job of the instructor. Jo was put in withJim and Immanuel, while Craig and I partnered. The instructor to whomCraig and I were assigned was Vern, a tall thin fellow with craggy features,warm eyes and a kind smile. After he and Craig had a smoke, Vern walkedus over to the white Freightliner and had us perform our first actualinspection of a real live truck. After Craig and I misnamed half a dozencomponents and forgot a good dozen more, Vern stepped on the butt of hisWinston and bid us climb in.

To get in and out of a semi, there is a special way of climbing up and downthe three steps and using the cab’s handholds. Some drivers, Vern said,attempt to short cut this procedure and end up falling on their hind endsfrom five feet in the air and break their bones, so he ran us through the

17 DOUBLE CLUTCHING – To change gears, depress the clutch, move the gear selector

to neutral then release the clutch. Use the throttle to raise the RPM (if downshifting) or lowerit (if up-shifting) as desired. Depress the clutch a second time and move the selector to thedesired gear and re-engage the clutch.

procedure a couple of times. After we were safely inside, Vern had me goback into the sleeper and told Craig to ride shotgun up front. Vern then putCraig through the paces naming various interior components andinstruments.

With the pre trip inspection completed, Vern and Craig switched seats. Vern turned the key. An earsplitting rattle filled the cab and the wholebusiness began to throb and vibrate in synchrony with the engine. Vern putthe truck in 2nd and headed for the gate. A sly smile spread across his faceas he turned out onto Highway 99, heading north. Vern opened the throttleand started running the rig through the gears without using the clutch – atechnique called “float shifting.” Vern shifted that old sucker as smoothlyand quickly as an automatic.

Before Craig or I knew it, Vern had the Freightliner doing 45 m.p.h. ineighth gear. “Now,” said Vern, “Don’t you two try that float-shifting whileyou’re in school; it’s a big no- no. But once you are out on your own, you’lllearn how. Hell, you’ll have to; nobody wants to keep pumping that clutch ifthey can avoid it.” The technique of choice for shifting semis, in-so-far asthe school was concerned, was double-clutching17 and that’s what we’d dofor the next weeks.

I hadn’t been in the cab of a semi since 1966 when my neighbor, DickDickson, took me along on a two-day trip through southern Minnesota andnorthern Iowa as he delivered dry ice. It’d been almost forty years and I’dforgotten the view from up in a semi – cars look so little and ... well,crushable. NOTE: At this time I would like to advise all drivers of cars,SUVs and pickups to mind what parts of your anatomy you scratch whensemis are around – we can see down into your passenger compartments andwatch everything you do.

Up the road we went, the diesel bellowing and all the machinery whirringand humming. A few blocks up, Vern turned onto Seaway Avenue, apleasant road designed with trucks in mind; all the corners are shallow andthere’s a center lane trucks can use pretty much for their own purposes. Onone of the straighter stretches, Vern pulled into the center lane, stopped andpopped the parking brake. Turning to Craig, he said “I want you to just let

the engine idle – don’t feed the throttle – and shift through the first fivegears, then come to a complete stop.”

Craig and Vern traded seats.

Sweaty palm time.

Some instructors can make a guy nervous but not Vern. He just sat in theshotgun seat with a Cheshire Cat grin as Craig put the transmission intosecond (1st is reserved for starting on steep grades, or in mud). Slowly,Craig let out the clutch until it began to engage and took the slack out of thedrive train. The truck started to move and Craig slowly let out the clutchthe rest of the way. Craig ran it through all five of the lower gears and, asVern instructed, came to a stop and did it again. All in all, Craig must haverun the gears half a dozen times before Vern told me it was my turn.

Craig and I switched spots. After checking my mirrors and putting on myseat belt like the good professional truck driver I was hoping to become, Igrasped the shifter firmly with steadfast resolution and depressed theclutch pedal – good lord. It was like something off a Nautilus machine. Iwas used to the clutches in our old MR2 and SAAB, which required about athird of the effort, but I got it down and moved the gear shifter into 2nd. Griiind. I eventually got the shifter into 2nd and ever so slowly, let up on the clutchpedal. I felt it start to engage. The load on the engine caused more fuel tobe injected and the sharp diesel rattle increased in volume.

HOT DAMN. The beast was moving. Jesus Christ and General Jackson.

Grasping the huge 20-inch diameter steering wheel with both hands, Iendeavored to keep the rig in the center lane. “Better shift to 3rd,” Vernreminded me. Oh. Yeah.

By the time Craig and I had each run through the drill half a dozen times,the morning session was over and Vern drove us back to the school. As weheaded back, Vern told Craig and me that the two of us seemed to have anatural talent for working clutches – better than most of the students he’dhad. High praise indeed and a real confidence builder. Before the day wasup, my thigh was shaking from fatigue and was as sore as a boil the nextmorning. So it went for the rest of the week.

—

18 SHOTGUN SEAT – The passenger’s seat, so named in honor of the place where a

guy with a shotgun sat on an old stage coach.

19 FREIGHTLINER – A popular make of truck.

Week 3. October has a holiday that screwed up the school’s scheduling andso the next day, Denny Dimwit was put in with Jo, Immanuel and Jim, whileLenny the Spitter – and a new instructor, Frank – was put in with Craig andme. Frank had retired from OTR back in 2004 due to advancing arthritis.

When the trailer was secured, Frank walked over and peered at Lenny (theyhad a history). Fixing Lenny with a less than enthusiastic look, he snarled“OK, hot shot. You first.” We all climbed aboard as Craig and I moved intothe sleeper. Lenny got us out of the yard and successfully turned ontoHighway 99 but when Lenny tried shifting from 2nd to 3rd, I thought we musthave been struck by a train; there was a loud clang and the truck jumped. Iwas tossed into the air and came down hard on the bunk while Craig wasspilled onto the floor. Frank had on his seatbelt but was jostled enough toelicit a string of oaths. Lenny had dumped the clutch.

Dumping the clutch is what hot-rodders do to get their rear tires spinning. In a semi, dumping the clutch can be disastrous: The drive shaft connectingthe transmission and axles can snap like a twig and, in the process, wreckthe axles, the brakes and the transmission. Unable to move, the truck mustbe towed to a repair shop and the fix isn’t cheap. You try to never dump theclutch.

But this time the drive shaft held and Lenny nailed the throttle. With theengine screaming at its redline of 2,300 r.p.m., Lenny tried shifting again. There was a gawd-awful gnashing as Lenny tried mashing it into gear fiveor six times. Finally, Frank reached over from the shotgun seat18, grabbedthe shifter, and pushed it up into 4th. Lenny turned red. Craig and I agreedwe needed to keep some pillows and kidney belts in our cars and bring themwith us when we had to ride with Lenny.

One day, with Frank as our instructor, Lenny was to take the wheel. Asusual, he brought along his spit jug. Freightliners19 have an storage binabove the windshield and Lenny put his companion up there and started theengine. By this time, Frank had no use for Lenny: “Don’t put that damnedthing up there,” he growled, pointing to the overhead bin. “I told youbefore, this truck doesn’t have a security net up there and your bottle ofspit’s probably gonna fall out.”

20 YELLOW KNOB – On the dashboard of every semi, and within easy reach of the

trucker, is a bright-yellow, diamond-shaped knob. Pull it out and the parking/emergencybrakes come on. Push it back in and the brakes go off. With a semi, there is no “hand brake”or “parking gear.”

Rolling his eyes, Lenny assured Frank that his spit bottle was too small toroll over the bin’s lip. “All right, smart ass, have it your way” Frank replied,“You know best; I’m only the goddamned instructor.”

Looking smug with his victory, Lenny adjusted his baseball cap, cracked hisknuckles, put it in gear and, as usual, dumped the clutch. The poor oldtruck gave a bang and a lurch and we were off. We had gone maybe a half-mile on Highway 99 with Lenny thrashing the gears when he made anespecially bad botch of shifting into 5th. The truck gave a mighty jump andtossed Lenny’s spit bottle over the edge of the storage bin and down ontoFrank’s head. From there, it bounced over to Lenny’s side of the cab whereit hit the floor and rolled under the brake pedal, wedging itself in.

Realizing something had happened, Lenny took his eye off the road to lookfor whatever it was that had rolled around his feet. When he looked up, thetraffic ahead was all brake lights. Lenny tried to jam on the brakes, but hisspit bottle was wedged tight and the pedal wouldn’t go down far enough. Craig, Immanuel (who had joined us for this session) and I started to hollerour Oh, Shits when Frank leaned across and pulled the yellow knob20. All 18wheels locked up and the truck stopped dead. “Goddamnit!” Frank yelled,shaking a finger under Lenny’s nose. “I told you that fucking thing wasgoing to cause you problems, didn’t I?”

Lenny sat there and blinked.

“Well,” yelled Frank. “Didn’t I?”

Lenny nodded wordlessly.

“Now that we are stopped in the middle of the street,” Frank said, pointingat the pedals, “would you mind getting that goddamned bottle out of there.”

Lenny reached down between his feet and rummaged around for a moment,then sat back up: “Um. Where should I put it?” he asked, holding up thebottle.

21 WHIZZ QUIZ – A urinalysis conducted by the cops and the company to see if you are

taking naughty stuff.

“Damned if I can tell you, but somewhere where it’s in no danger of rollingunder the pedals again.” Frank was beyond exasperation. The three of us inback were looking at each other and biting lips to keep from laughing outloud.

Swiveling his head, looking for a place to deposit his companion, Lennyfound none so he simply tossed it in the back with us. There it rolledaround and around between our feet until I could stand the sight of it nomore. Picking it up by the cap with thumb and forefinger, I was going todrop it in the storage compartment on my left when Lenny dumped theclutch again and his spit bottle dropped in my lap. Acting as if I werehandling an asp, in one smooth motion, I grabbed it and flung it back atLenny, beaning him and knocking off his baseball cap. Frank caught thisand laughed: “OK, hot shot, stop the truck. Pick up your little bottle andput it somewhere safe. And don’t bring that thing on the truck again,” hesaid.

—

Week Four. Part of our deal with the school was that, while we werelearning the ropes, they would find jobs for us. Because of the industry’shunger for OTR drivers, Dick, the director of admissions, said Jo and I wereassured of jobs, “Even if you had one eye in the middle of your foreheads.” Actually, this is wrong. According to law, a driver must have two eyes, butthere is no stipulation as to where they’re located.

By mid-week, all of us had received “pre-hires.” These are basically lettersof intent in which a company says that if you graduate, pass the whizzquiz21, pass the physical and have a criminal record containing no worsethan misdemeanors, you have a job. At least they will bring you down totheir indoctrination center for orientation and further vetting. If you passmuster there, then you have a job. These companies promised bus tickets,meals and some chump-change to spend at indoctrination.

Jo and I got pre-hires from three companies, one of which looked especiallygood. It was an OTR company whose propaganda avowed “90% drop-and-hook, no-touch freight.” This meant that, in nine out of ten loads, we’dsimply hook our tractor to a loaded trailer, haul it, then drop the trailer at

22 BILL OF LADING (BOL) – A document disclosing what’s in the trailer, who is

shipping it and who is receiving it. By law, every load must have a BOL.

23 LUMPER – a day laborer employed to handle cargo, as fish or timber. A member of

the lumpen proletariat. (Note: “lumper” is a real word, not trucker slang.)

24 45 – A backup technique where the driver positions the rig at a 45O angle from thehorizontal plane on the driver’s side, relative to the hole (see footnote below). In a 45, thedriver gets to look out his or her window to see exactly where the trailer is going.

25 HOLE – Any space into which you back your truck. Examples of “holes” are the

doors of shipping docks and the spaces between yellow lines in parking lots.

the consignee. The trailers would be sealed by the shippers so we’d nevereven see the freight, much less handle it.

In those rare cases – the other 10% – where we backed an empty to a dock tobe loaded, the shipper’s people did the work – the most we’d do is count thepallets, matching them against the bill of lading22. When a trailer had to beunloaded, either the shipper did it, or we hired lumpers23. We liked this. The last thing we wanted to do at our ages was shlep fright.

—

On the way home one afternoon, we spotted of one of the company’s rigsparked in the lot of a motel on Highway 99. After we saw it there for twodays in a row, Jo suggested we find the driver and get his or her opinion onthe company. On the third day, I saw someone at the wheel and turned in;it was a woman trucker and her cat. We spent about a half-hour chattingand came away feeling pretty good about the outfit. We felt our putativeemployer would be no worse then most and probably better than most, so weaccepted the company’s pre-hire offer and here we are.

Friday, Graduation Day. The biggest problem I had all through truckschool was learning to do a 45O back-up24 into the “hole”25. Though westarted practicing backups in the second week, on graduation day, with thestate examiner scrutinizing my every move, I just barely passed. I didn’t hitany of the barrels, which would have been an automatic flunk, but I used allof my eight permitted pull-ups. Craig, bless him, stood behind theexaminer and surreptitiously gave me the clenched fist, the signal to stop,just before I was to smack a barrel. Whew.

On this morning, the instructors failed to check the fuel level in the ancientFreightliners so when Jo was taking her test, it ran out of fuel. Jo told methat just before the engine quit, she’d had trouble shifting the gears. Itseems that as the fuel tank starts to run dry, some bits of air will get suckedinto the injection system, causing the engine to slightly misfire. You can’treally feel this when the truck is in gear and under load, but the air willcause the engine to stumble a bit when there is no load, such as whenchanging gears. The examiner told Jo he was about to flunk her because ofher bad shifting.

The Spitter was the last one tested and, to my chagrin, he used only twopull-ups and got a higher overall score then me, despite his atrociousshifting – as did Jo, Craig, Jim and Immanuel, but them I don’t mind.

—

By noon the tests were over. We all piled into our cars and trucks andheaded for the DOT’s office to get our pictures taken for our permanentlicenses. Later, we went to the steakhouse across the street from the truckschool for our first and last breaking of communal bread (Lenny was notinvited). With the smell of smoking ribs, grilling burgers, and steaks beingcooked over an open fire, the place had constantly tormented us. We’dagreed that after graduation, we’d go over and have dinner.

While sitting around the table sharing aspects of our lives, Immanuelmentioned that he spoke fluent Arabic. All conversation stopped and, asone, we turned to look at him. Craig broke into an incredulous smile andsaid “You speak what?”

“Arabic,” Immanuel replied as if this were to be expected.

All of us began to chatter – the general gist being: What the fuck are youdoing here? I said that if I knew how to speak Arabic, I’d be getting a jobwith the State Department or Boeing or Haliburton and charging ten bucksper word for translation services.

“Shit,” said Jim, “Seeing as you can speak both English and Arab, you couldgo to work for some sheik translating English for him. Hell, maybe he’deven let you into the harem once in a while.”

No, Immanuel said, he wanted none of that; driving a truck around thedocks down on the Seattle waterfront was all he was looking for now. I

suspect his life in Somalia, plus his stint in Iraq, had cured Immanuel ofany desire to flirt with things Arabic.

After our early dinner, we took our leaves of each other and scattered to thewinds.

Leaving Town

We had our bankruptcy hearing on Wednesday at ten o`clock. Our oldfriend, Dale, came along to give us moral support. We met him, along withour attorney, in the meeting room of the Red Cross building where thisweek’s crop of bankrupts was to undergo examination.

Eventually, our turn came and our name was called by the trustee, anattractive middle-aged woman with the gentle demeanor such workdemands. Jo, our attorney and I arose and gathered our papers. Dale gaveme a supportive squeeze on the shoulder and a thumbs-up.

We walked to the table at the front of the room and took our seats. Thetrustee opened our folder, thumbed through some sheets and asked for arecital of our debacle. After all, if we were asking Uncle Sam to jettisonalmost seventy thou in sour bills, some explanation was due. The wholeordeal took less than fifteen minutes, for when you’re flat-assed busted,there isn’t much left to pick over. The trustee smiled, closed the folder, setit aside and hollered “Next!” Our attorney kicked my foot so I took Jo’selbow and we skedaddled.

Out in the foyer, our attorney said things had gone well, opined that therewould be no complications and that the whole thing would be duly rubber-stamped by the federal bankruptcy judge in sixty to ninety days; we shouldexpect the official discharge notice sometime in January. We shook hands, Ithanked him for his help and we said our goodbyes. So ended our careers inthe telephone and computer biz.

—

Dale, bless him, lightened the mood by offering to buy lunch. We went to aBar-B-Q joint down by the railroad station and had sandwiches. We’d beleaving in two days and had some packing to do as well as prepare the house

for its next resident, so we cut short the lunch and headed back to ourformer place in Clearview. We had the rest of that afternoon and thefollowing day to put things in order.

On the morning of Thursday, November 5th, the day after bankruptcy, I gotup early. I took part of our meager hoard of cash and the food stamp cardand went to Top Foods to buy a pot roast and all the fixings. Edith, Dale andthe kids were coming over that night for a Last Supper. After everythingwas stuffed in the crock pot, I walked over to Dale’s place for our traditionalmorning espresso. It would be the last one for who knew how long –perhaps forever. It was a tradition that would indeed be missed.

—

After all the trips I made to the pawn shops, plus the big garage sale we heldthe month before, there wasn’t much left so the windup could be slowpaced. By afternoon, Jo and I had three old soft-siders packed with our stuffand Dale and I made one last trip to the dump with what was left. The fewbits that were usable we left behind for the next occupant.

After our friends headed home that night, Jo and I did the dishes, cleanedup, then piled the bags of our tattered rags by the door. Jo sat down in herrocker, contemplated our heap of belongings and slowly shook her head.

“This really sucks, doesn’t it?” I asked. Jo looked at me with a sad smileand sighed. We sat quietly in the dark, drinking the last of the wine. Around eleven o`clock, with nothing more to do, we hit the sack.

Neither one of us slept well so when the cell phone chirped its five-thirtywake-up, we were both on our feet in seconds. Rain was falling. What ashameful and ignominious day this would be. Busted and homeless, wewere going to slink out of town on a bus, a couple of suitcases under ourarms and our tails between our legs. We were just like the Okies out of the`30s or the DPs after WWII. I had to wonder how many of our neighborswould be peeking out from behind the drapes, clucking their tongues at ourdisgrace and watching as Dale hauled us off to the bus depot.

At this point in our lives, Jo and I should be looking forward to retirement,but here we were, starting all over from the goddamned bottom.

—

Dale pulled his blue pickup into the driveway at seven-thirty sharp andtooted his horn. In a small Styrofoam cup, he’d brought a final espresso. Truly, a guy never had a better friend. After we stowed our gear in the backunder the canopy, Jo and I climbed into the truck with Dale. As Dale pulledout of the driveway and headed down the road, I stole a final look at the oldplace.

It took about half an hour to go the ten miles to the bus depot up in Everett. Dale swung into the loading zone. Jo and I unloaded our shit and dragged itthrough the lobby, piling it on a bench near the ticket window. Thecompany had arranged passage to their California indoctrination center soall we had to do was identify ourselves with our brand spanking new CDLsand when the bus pulled in, climb aboard.

While Jo went to the little girl’s room and Dale went back out to find aparking place, I stood guard over our pile. Trying not to be too obvious, Ibegan to assess our traveling companions. As I was giving this bunch theonce-over, I had a sudden, jarring realization: Jo and I were now part ofAmerica’s underclass. Three years ago if you’d have asked me when I nextplanned to take a bus for two blocks, let alone from Washington toCalifornia, I’d have laughed. Now here we were, standing in line with:

• A scrawny septuagenarian with a full beard and shoulder-length hairthe color of dirty sweat socks that looked like something dragged outof a vacuum cleaner bag.

• An enormous fat woman whose arches had collapsed under the weightand who now walks on the sides of her feet wearing little black slip-ons, puffing and sweating with every step.

• A weaving, tottering drunk with indescribable breath.

• A young mother with a steel stud through her nose and a tattooshowing above her low-rider jeans – a tattoo that competed forattention with the stretch marks memorializing the two squallingchildren clinging to her legs.

• A young man in dread locks all duded up in clothes that obviouslycame from St. Vincent de Paul or Goodwill. But hey, who am I to castaspersions. That’s where the stuff I was wearing had come from. Joand I’d been some of their best patrons these last months.

• A stout, middle-aged woman with her grown idiot son. Gad, I surehoped he wasn’t like the one over in Seattle’s Greenwood districtthirty years ago; the one who lived in a home for the mentallychallenged who, along with his minder, got on my bus two or threemornings a month. That guy, if he saw a female that tickled hisfancy, would whip out his unit and jerk off.

• A heavily muscled man with a crew cut who was well enough turned-out but who hadn’t seemed to have washed his hands in three years.

No, I was not traveling with any captains of industry, august professionals,admired celebrities or other swells. Not anymore. I was now traveling withthose into whose company fate had forced my descent. The underbelly ofAmerican society – the lumpen proletariat. These people were now mypeers.

Jo and I milled around for a couple of minutes when Dale showed up. Hecame not only to see us off, but he had brought a gift – one which wouldprove invaluable in the coming weeks and months: a blanket suitable for thebunk in a semi’s sleeper. We couldn’t bring one of ours as they are all forqueen-sized beds and Dale suspected as much.

—

The terminal building was rank with B.O. and cigarette breath, so the threeof us decided to wait outside under the canopy in a rain being driven by astiff southerly wind. Shivering and with teeth chattering, I looked about tosee if any more people were queuing for the bus when a tan Ford pulled upand discharged two young men dressed in tan pants, tan shirts, white socksand flip-flops. The one with a shaven head was round and fat in a menacingway. The other, a slight fellow, had filthy, stringy hair with a thin, mattedbeard and never looked up.

The fellow driving the Ford got out, opened the trunk and invited the two tofetch their boxes, which they did, placing them next to a pole out of the rain. Who were these young men? Can’t remember their names, but the labels ontheir boxes were 8 ½ x 11 sheets of paper with lines labeled “Inmate Name,”“Inmate Number,” and “Release Date.” The values for each were filled inwith a blue marker. Well, I guess that answered that. Evidently, our SheriffBart gave them until dark to get out of town and here they were.

—

Presently, the bus appeared and glided to the curb. When the engine died,the door opened and the driver stepped out, followed by a few passengerswho’d gotten on earlier. An older man in a dirty red hat like that worn byrailroad porters came out of the terminal building, pushing a cart loadedwith luggage. The old boy lifted the bus’s baggage doors and began to dragout the arriving passengers’ bags, then stuffed in the bags of thosedeparting. While he was thus occupied, the driver positioned himself by thedoor to collect tickets as we boarded.

Time to go.

The bus had come from Bellingham, Washington, and some riders weregoing to places beyond Everett so some seats were already taken. Jo and Ispotted a pair of vacant ones about halfway back and headed for them. Thiswas a bus so there was none of this seat selection and “pre-boarding”business you see with the more dignified modes of transport. On a bus, it’severyone for his- or herself and if someone stepped on you to get the seat hewanted, tough.

After we were seated, Dale popped in through the door to give a finalfarewell. As he did so, a wizened claw shot out from a right-hand seat andgrabbed his forearm. “Where’d ya come from, boy?” rasped the elderlybearded man whom we’d spotted in the depot. Dale gave a start. “I said,‘Where’d ya come from, sonny?” the old fellow repeated. Dale offered thathe came from Clearview. “I said, ‘Where’d ya come from,’ sonny?” queriedthe old buzzard, who was obviously enjoying himself. Dale, always one toplay along with things like this, offered Lynnwood, Seattle, WashingtonState and etc. Each time, Dale got the same question in reply: “I said,‘Where’d ya come from,’ sonny?” Finally giving up, Dale said that he hadrun out of answers. A smile full of yellow teeth spread across the man’s faceas he pointed at Dale and barked “Ya come from your momma, ya dummy.”and began to roar with laughter.

Dale told me later that he just about told the fellow: “See that guy backthere? The one that looks like Santa Claus? Well I know him and I can tellyou that he just loves good jokes. You two should get along real well.” However, Dale knew it was going to be a long trip and, out of mercy, saidnothing. Like I said, Dale’s a good friend.

All too soon, the driver shooed Dale from the bus, closed the door and pulledaway from the curb.

—

At last, the old life was behind us. Heavy rain was falling again; it streameddown the windows as the driver left Everett and pulled out onto I-5, headingsouth. I was plain wrung out. While Jo busied herself with a Sudokupuzzle, I put the seat back as far as it would go (which wasn’t far) and closedmy eyes. My job now was to purge from my mind, all thoughts of my old lifeand try to forget that it ever existed, for were I to dwell on it, I’d probably gopostal.

—

Ever take an intercity bus? No? Well avoid doing so if possible. For onething, they have that bus smell. It’s composed of effluvium, B.O., vinylupholstery, straw ticking and diesel exhaust. If you ride a bus for morethan a hundred miles, that smell will get in your clothes and you’ll have totoss them in the washer.

For another thing, buses are uncomfortable and cramped beyonddescription. If you have ever flown coach in a 737, you know about feelingcramped, but believe me, a bus is far worse. The chief culprits are the seats– they were designed by the same guy who designed the rack.

• The thing that holds your rump (I hesitate to call it a cushion), has athick, hard ridge along the front edge. This serves to cut off the bloodafter about half an hour.

• The seat backs are normally bolt upright like the pews in an oldPuritan church but if you can find the little release lever (it’s down bythe floor and covered with spilt pop, crumbs and boogers). You canrecline about 15O – just enough to tease your spine into believing theload and strains have been removed, but not enough to do any realgood. Result? Lumbago within a hundred miles.

• The foot rest is a real piece of work. It’s designed for a foot no largerthan a 1st grader’s and is normally held in position by a spring. If youuse it, you have to hold it down with the kind of force you can onlyapply if you’re awake. Should you doze off and relax the pressure, thething will snap back to its retracted position, barking your shins inthe process.

• The seats have no head napkins, which the airlines and Amtrakprovide as a matter of course. On a bus, the head rests are leftuncovered and, consequently, are stained with pomade and greaseand are homes to cooties and heaven knows what else.

—

Near Eugene, Oregon, the sky broke and a few rays of afternoon sunshinecame through the tinted windows. I was still in a rainy day mood so Iturned away and went back to sleep. Night came and the bus rolled on. Legcramps and a screaming back finally roused me as the bus hurtled pastLake Shasta. I turned on my little overhead light to do some reading. Thenmore fitful sleep.

Evening and a first day.—

The gray of dawn began to show as we went past Redding, California, andthe passengers began to groan and stir. In Sacramento, we changed busesand got another driver: A swarthy fellow named Manny. Short and witharms too long, he had a low hairline and spoke in a rasping monotone. Holding the bus’ microphone close to his mouth, he growled:

• There will be no smoking or chewing or spitting on the floor of thebus. If you are caught smoking or chewing or spitting, you will be putoff the bus.

• There will be no swearing or cursing or you will be put off the bus.

• You are to remain in your seats at all times, unless you have to use thelavatory in the rear of the bus or you will be put off the bus.

• You will not use the lavatory except in an emergency or you will beput off the bus. The bus will stop often enough to accommodatenormal bathroom needs.

• There will be no kicking of the seat in front of you or elbowing theperson in the seat next to you or you will be put off the bus.

• Do not toss garbage and trash on the floor of the bus or you will be putoff the bus. You can toss garbage and trash on the floor of your home,but not on this bus or you will be put off the bus.

With that, Manny spun about, took his seat, started the engine and away wewent.

Evening and a second day.

—

I’d brought a book to pass the time, a dumb horror story that fit my mood,and now it helped to distract from the cramps that were taking hold. Theoverhead reading lamps gave a feeble yellow light barely sufficient to readby and eyestrain soon set in so I gave up. I stuffed my old jacket betweenthe seat back and the window, snuggled up to it and dozed. No good;cramps woke me so I started reading again.

It was about midnight when I noticed a small thing, smaller than a ricegrain and dark brown in color, suddenly appear on the top of the page. Then it disappeared only to reappear an instant later in a different place. Itdid this three or four times. I thought it was nothing but a dust moteresponding to some current in the air. Then it began walking. Six little legscarrying it in a straight line obliquely across the page from the edge to thespine. Then it did another disappearing act only to appear again at a distantremove. Now we’d had cats for almost thirty years so I knew there’s onlyone creature on earth that can move like that: A flea. One of our fellowpassengers was infested and one of his little companions was now on themove, looking for a fresh host.

I began to look around for a likely candidate but as I surveyed thisexcrementary mass of humanity I realized to my dismay that it could be anyof them. Hell, it could be all of them. I slammed the book *BANG* withevery erg of energy I could muster. Jo and those around me gave a start andlooked in my direction. “Just a bug,” I explained with a smile. For the restof the trip, I felt the little bastards crawling all over me. The one I saw mayhave been the only one to abandon its host, but I was sure there were nowmillions loose inside the bus with us.

Worse was to come.

Now we all know that a fart and a turd are produced by the same fooddigesting in the same alimentary canal and passed from the same orifice butwe all know they smell totally different. And so it was that about three A.M.,I was awakened by that certain smell – shit.

No! It couldn’t be. Surely, not on the bus.

Yes, it could. The smell was unmistakable.

Soon others began to sense it too. A woman across the aisle from me satupright, cast off her blanket and began to swivel her head, searching for theoffender. Raising her voice to almost a shout, she announced: “Someone onthis bus has shit his self.” Indeed someone had. Soon everyone in thecenter of the bus was awake. The little reading lights were coming on andeveryone was looking around for the culprit.

“I smell shit,” said one. “Did somebody not close the toilet door?” askedanother. “Jesus H. ...” volunteered a large man who then stood in the aisleand began looking for the perpetrator.

Surely, the guilty party would soon reveal him or herself as he or shehurried to the toilet to clean out his soiled garments, but no. Well, perhapsit was one of those now bitching about the smell – after all, blaming anotherfor your own faux pas is a time-honored ploy. But even if it were, theperson would have to do something about the reeking, foul clothes and thesodden mass within them. Still, no one moved.

Never had anything like this happened on an airplane.

Then, as suddenly as it came, it went. Gone. The air cleared of shit-smell. Doubting their senses, the passengers continued sniffing the air like bearssearching for spoor. Eventually, we were satisfied that whomever wasresponsible had gotten the situation under control and, one-by-one, thereading lamps went back out. Manny, up at the controls, was oblivious tothe whole thing and the bus rolled on.

But we let down our guard too soon; about forty-five minutes later, the smellwas back. Not as strong as before, but there was no mistaking it. Thewoman across from me felt it too and, again sat up bolt-upright: “Someone’sgone and shit his self – again.” she cried out.

The lights started coming on once more but this time the mutterings weredecidedly angry. A young, shapely woman with a ponytail got up andstomped forward to see Manny. I could see her bending down to speak tohim while her left forefinger stabbed the air in our direction. The busslowed a bit. The P.A. came on and Manny’s flat voice intoned “If anyonehas a toilet emergency, please use the emergency toilet at the back of the

26 SHOWERS – Those things you used to take every day to keep yourself smelling good

and not get itchy. They come infrequently to truckers. When you have the time to take one,none are available; when one is available, you don’t have the time. After a while, you sort ofbecome resigned to this and tolerate dirt like you never thought you could.

bus or you will be put off the bus. Thank you.” No takers. A few momentslater, the bus resumed speed. Then, just as before, the smell went away.

My theory is that someone on the bus had a colostomy. The poor soul had astoma in his or her side and wore an appliance to collect the output. Somehow, perhaps from thrashing about in his or her sleep, the collectionbag worked lose and its contents began to seep out. Awaking to this socialdisaster, the person had immediately readjusted the apparatus and coveredany escaped matter with part of the rubber belting. Having had to wear acatch bag after my cancer surgery, I could empathize. I would say nothing.

Morning, and a third day. The bus rolled on.

—

Late afternoon Saturday, it pulled into Los Angeles and we transferred forour journey’s final leg to an older bus heading for east L.A. Just aboutmidnight, we finally reached our destination, an old Ramada Inn on IndianHills Boulevard where the company was putting us up and whereindoctrination would begin the following day.

Sore and aching, we dragged our bags fifty yards or so to the front door andchecked in. Both of us took long, hot showers26 to wash off three days ofgrime and inspected each other for flea bites. Finally, we kissed goodnightthen collapsed between the crisp white sheets and fell asleep.

§

Indoctrination

At six Sunday morning, Jo’s cell phone alarm went off and the two of usstaggered from the bed to peer out the curtains and see what kind of day layahead. Couldn’t tell much as it was still pitch black, though I could makeout a few bright stars shining through the smog. At least it wasn’t raining.

We’d been promised something to eat so while she attended to her morningtoilette, Jo dispatched me to scope out the facilities. I found them in anadjacent building and went in to see what was what. It was a “continentalbreakfast” which consisted of day-old bagels, soft bleached bread, littlethingies of jam and a butter substitute the consistency of chassis grease. Warm skim milk and thin, watery, coffee rounded out the bill of fare.

The company really puts on the dog, huh?

I came back and warned Jo of what lay in store. Jo, ever the one to beprepared, had anticipated something like this so she’d squirreled away asmall jar of Skippy in one of her bags. She said this would take care of her –not only would the peanut butter provide protein, it would kill the taste ofthe stuff in the breakfast room. However, there was a Denny’s in the samecomplex as our motel and I heatedly urged her to join me in some eggs andsausage – we hadn’t had any decent food since leaving Everett, but her mindwas made up. And besides, we were flat broke. Point taken. However, ourfriend, Debbie, had given me a Starbuck’s gift card with a fifty-dollar creditbalance as a going away present and, as fortune would have it, there was aStarbuck’s right next to the Denny’s. While Jo contented herself with themotel’s offerings, I went to Starbuck’s and treated myself to a doubleespresso and a prune Danish. Much better.

—

The whole stay was bottom dollar. It was little as the company could get bywith and still say “all expenses paid” with a straight face. But who couldblame them? Even though all of us in today’s Indoctrination session hadCDLs, we were still unknown commodities and experience said a few of uswouldn’t make it through the next three days. The physical, the eye exam,the whizz quiz and a couple of other things would surely thin the herd.

When we checked in the previous night, we found thick packets of papersaddressed to each of us waiting in the room. After breakfasting, we still hadabout an hour before Indoctrination began so we started going through thepapers. It became clear this Indoctrination session was to be like aminiature boot camp. There was a rigorous schedule from which nodeviation would be tolerated. Big bold letters on every page set forth awelter of Thou Shalt Nots and promised a fast bus ride home totransgressors. The general tone of these documents was, in the main,condescending and aggressive. Not a good augury. In my forty-one years inthe phone and computer biz, I’d always been treated with a degree of respect

and consideration. It looked like driving a truck might be a whole lotdifferent.

—

After sorting the papers and highlighting things about which we wanted toknow more, we headed downstairs. An A-board on the sidewalk announcedthe location of the room. As we approached, a van bearing the company logopulled up; two women got out and headed for the suite – our indoctrinators,no doubt. At the same time, we spotted two other fellows carrying similarpackets coming down the walkway, heading for the door. Fellow classmates.

Inside the main room were three rows of green molded plastic chairs andnarrow tables covered with sheets of white paper. While the instructorswere in the adjoining room making coffee and jabbering, Jo and I took stockof five nascent truckers who were gathering by the door. The one fellow ofwhom we took special note was a young guy maybe twenty-five. He wasnoticeable for his cigarette habit which was prodigious: Each drag was adeep lunger which he held until he was ready to turn blue and lit eachsucceeding cigarette with the glowing stub of the last. Standing outside theroom, talking with another of the group, he took a drag, turned, walked intothe room and exhaled. “Hey!” barked one of our indoctrinators as sheemerged from the anteroom, “Didn’t you read your information packet? There is absolutely no smoking in the classroom.” The young fellow beat ahasty retreat. He contented himself with standing out under a tree to finishthat cigarette and light up another. A fellow smoker, a fellow with a shavedhead and a mean 5-o`clock shadow, joined him.

Jo and I took seats up front and spread out our papers. We sat there partlybecause my hearing isn’t so hot, and partly to brown-nose; teachers likestudents who sit close and are attentive. Others arrived and took seats.

The first Indoctrinator woman, a butchy-looking blond with a Patty Pagehairdo and a foghorn voice, strode in from the next room and barked: “Classstarts in thirty seconds. Anyone who isn’t seated by then takes the next bushome.” Her voice carried out to the tree where the two smokers quicklydropped their cigarettes, stomped on the butts and scooted into the room. Asecond woman, a blowsy, unhappy-looking creature, moved behind us anddrew the door closed. School had begun.

—

The first part of the day was spent filling out forms. These forms were notcomplicated but they still drew questions from the class – especially fromthe young smoker and a curly-headed fellow who just seemed to havematerialized out of nowhere. In response, the lead instructor, who hadidentified herself as Billy, would glower and bark an answer, often rollingher eyes or shooting smirks at her companion as if to say, What a schmuck.

Lunch came early and Billy passed out chits for a chicken-and-rib jointbehind the Denny’s. As with all groups of strangers thrown together, webegan to divide into cliques defined by ... Well, I’m not sure what. Something to do with personalities I’m sure but just what that mechanismis and how it works I have no idea. In any case, Jo’s and my table consistedof us, a tall fellow who reminded me of James Carville, the commentator onCNN, plus the guy with the 5-o`clock shadow. A fellow who pulled up achair to make it a fivesome had something going on with his left eye – it hada peculiar metallic glint in the lower part of the pupil like Vin Diesel had inthe movie Pitch Black. Only Vin’s glint was a special effect, this guy’s wasreal.

About the other table, I can’t recall much except that the space cadet wasamong them. After eating as much of my Quesadilla as I could, I excusedmyself and headed for the Starbucks and a double shot. I needed a dose ofcaffeine to keep me going throughout the afternoon.

After lunch, more paperwork followed. Eventually Jo had a couple ofquestions and they were of such a nature that Billy immediately recognizedJo as a kindred spirit and the two got into a friendly and animateddiscussion over the minutia. Having a student actually appreciate what formost was dull paperwork, put Billy in a better mood. She actually smiledand answered other students’ questions without snapping. For this, Jo wasthanked by everyone.

The second day, Monday, the company set about weeding out the defectives. We were taken to a nearby clinic where we were poked and prodded andasked to, again, pee in the cup. Jo’s blood pressure was, by that time, undercontrol so both of us passed with flying colors. Not so for the fellow with theodd glint in the eye; he failed the vision section of the exam and wasmustered out when we got back to the classroom. Billy asked how, withsuch an obvious vision defect, he’d gotten through truck school, let alonepassed the state CDL exam. All he could do was shake his head and shrughis shoulders. He was now out some five thousand dollars for truck school

27 HOS – Hours Of Service. Federal rules governing the number of hours you can be in

service, i.e., working.

and had nothing to show for it. He may as well have taken out his CDLright then and there and burnt it.

The second casualty of the exam came the following morning when classwas interrupted by a round, dark-haired fellow who asked to see Billy andthe curly-haired fellow outside. Only Billy came back. Later we learnedCurly had enough pot in his system to stone an amphitheater of DennisCrosby fans. They didn’t even let Curly come back in to get his belongings;the sour looking woman gathered them up, took them out and left them bythe door.

The rest of the day was spent learning how to do logs. We’d covered thisback in truck school but the company has its own customized forms and asthe new Hours of Service (HOS)27 rules were to take effect the followingmonth, the company wanted to make sure we got it right.

—

On day three we were treated to presentations by a highway cop and thecompany’s local safety director, the same fellow who had come by to bootout Curly the day before. The general theme of these two harangues was“The Cops Are Out To Get You” and “So Are We.” We were left with theimpression that there was a cop lurking behind every billboard in hopes ofsnagging truck drivers who picked their noses at the wrong time. Thecompany, we were sure, would be combing our logs in hopes of uncoveringsome trespass for which we could be summarily fired.

Perhaps the most telling comment Billy made in those three days was areminder that though the company beats its breast about being a “fineChristian, driver-oriented company,” we should remember that it is,nevertheless, a business. If I read between the lines correctly, she wastelling us that if it comes down to a choice between Our Precious Lord &Savior and good old Mammon, Mammon has the edge. A word to the wise.

—

Our evening meals were taken at a pizza joint across the street. Nice greasypizzas with hot bubbling lasagna and sides of garlic bread, all washed downwith refillable cups of soda from a fountain that offered everything from

28 ROAD TRACTOR – Those that have sleepers. They’re designed for long hauls.

Tractors without sleepers, the kind for hauling stuff around town, are called Day Cabs.

Pepsi to Gatorade. All on the company cuff, of course. The place wasdefinitely downscale so it was crammed in the early hours with a mass ofnoisy kids with snotty noses, soiled diapers and haggard, harried parents. To avoid them, our group decided that after class, we’d all catch a nap, dothe laundry or watch some TV, then convene at nine. By then, most of thelittle monsters would be at home in bed.

We sat around these evenings, talking about our lives, our families and thecircumstances that drove us into the “profession” of trucking. I suppose it’sno big surprise that for everyone in our little group, money was the keyfactor. To a soul, our financial states were messes and we had all run out ofoptions. In our little group of five, there were three Chapter 7s, one Chapter13, and the last guy just walked away from his place, leaving no forwardingaddress.

One of OTR’s biggest attractions is that the road tractors28 are big enough tolive in. I admitted Jo and I were no longer in possession of a home sohaving a place to live rent free was a big factor in our decision to truck. Itturned out no one in our group had a home anymore either.

What a bunch.

—

On the last day of Indoctrination, we were assigned trainers. As Jo and Iwere a married team, we were assigned to a special squad that trains twopeople in one tractor at the same time. However, these trainers were fewand far between so it would be back on the bus for a ride to Dallas, then upI-35 to Oklahoma City where we’d rendevous. Class was adjourned at noonand the company popped for one last meal at the chicken joint. Jo headedfor the motel room to pack while I indulged myself in a last espresso.

Jo had everything packed when I got back so I helped her haul it down tothe curb where the company van would soon pick us up. We were to betaken to the company’s east L.A. terminal for final processing before beingdropped back at the bus stop at which we had arrived in the dead of nightalmost four days before.

§

Fearless Leader

After another miserable bus ride, we arrived in Oklahoma City about 1:00A.M. A call to the company got a cab dispatched to pick us up. We werehauled to a C-class motel near a strip of franchise restaurants and gasstations on the outskirts of town. Being late fall, the temperature wasn’t anytoo high and a fierce wind cut to the bone. Morning came and Jo got right on the phone. She got the name and cellphone number of our trainer and tracked him down. When, she wanted toknow, could we expect him? Our trainer, who I came to call Fearless Leaderout of pure affection, told her he had a load to deliver in Florida, then wouldbe right up. In the trucking business, very little seems to take place ontime.

Fearless called the following day with news that the trailer he was pullingwas damaged and needed immediate attention to prevent rain from spoilingthe cargo. Fearless said that he’d be by later that day and told us to go catcha movie or something. The next morning he called again with news that abroken fan belt on his engine was causing another twelve hours delay. Because the company had given us meal chits, we would eat, but therewould be no movie.

Beseeching Jo for spare change, I gathered up five bucks, put on my oldleather jacket and headed out into the wind. An AM/PM two blocks awaypromised some reading material and maybe a snack. I bought a copy ofTime and a bag of M&Ms, headed back to the motel and spent the rest of theday curled up on the bed, catching up on the news and snoozing. In theevening, we lingered over dinner until prime time came along, then wentback to the room and the TV, taking plates of apple pie with us.

The following morning, Jo was on the phone again, this time to the companyheadquarters. We had been paid a small salary while at Indoctrination butnow we were stranded in OKC with no trainer so, she demanded to know,would we continue to get the little bit of change called training pay? Yup,came the answer, so we decided to splurge and had the motel pipe in amovie from HBO. Close to one o`clock, Jo’s cell phone rang. It was thecompany. Fearless Leader had just pulled into the terminal. We were to getpacked up, the van was on its way.

—

The driver let us off by the terminal’s main entrance and we hauled ourbags into the vestibule. I announced our presence to a fellow sitting behinda large wooden desk, gazing absently at a computer monitor. I told him whowe were, why we were there, and for whom we were looking. He gave methe fishy eye then nodded to the door behind me. “In there,” he said andwent back to whatever he’d been doing. Jo and I looked at each other, thenI turned the knob and in we went.

The windowless room, the drivers’ lounge, was shabby like most drivers’lounges we would see in our careers. Old yellowed posters and bulletinscovered the peeling walls, discolored tiles covered the floor and a cracked,dilapidated vinyl sofa sufficed as furniture. Over in the far corner, a TV setwith a totally red picture was playing in the background. To round thingsout, there was a flickering flourescent light overhead with a half pound ofdead flies in the shade.

A lone figure sat on the sofa’s edge.

I strode over as he rose. We introduced ourselves and I called Jo over tomeet our trainer. He delivered a bone-crushing handshake, but theunaffected kind you get from a man who, literally, doesn’t know his ownstrength. Fearless Leader is a retired Marine Corps sergeant and thanks totwenty years of rigorous discipline, he is probably one of maybe ten OTRtruckers in the country to be in good physical shape. He looks like he couldeasily flatten a Packers lineman. We hit it off immediately.

Fearless is about my height (five foot ten) and about my weight (190-200pounds) but closer to Jo’s age (fifty-six) than mine (sixty-three). Fearlesswears his iron-gray hair in a military brush cut and sports a military kind ofmoustache. From years of barking orders, Fearless has acquired a heavyvoice that would be right at home in any beer joint near a Marine Corpsbase.

Looking at the pile of bags we had with us, Fearless smiled and asked if weexpected to bring all that along? We were, after all, going to be together,three people in a two-person truck, for forty days and nights. We could,Fearless suggested, cull – leave behind for the Good Will, unnecessarythings such as two of the four pillows Jo’d brought. She wouldn’t hear of it. She said everything she brought was absolutely vital to life so Fearless

bowed to the inevitable, helped me pick up the bags and we walked out tohis rig, a Freightliner Columbia.

This truck has a 2-story “condominium sleeper” with bunks top and bottom. Inside, there’s ample stowage for personal stuff, plus room for some thingsthat make a house a home; Fearless had installed a TV set, a refrigeratorthat made ice, a vacuum cleaner, and a little electric cooker. There was alsoa damn fine factory stereo. Like a Marine Corps barracks, Fearless’ rig wasspanking clean and neat both inside and out, looking like it came right outof a show room, not like the dirty things I was used to seeing on the roads ofWashington.

The engine was idling.—

Fearless explained that the trailer was loaded with freight destined for theSouth Bay area in California. We were due at the consignee in two days andwould be traveling along I-40 to Barstow, California, then on Highway 58 tothe Bay Area. Because time was a factor, Fearless said he’d be taking thewheel for the first night. Jo and I would be able to get some sleep and befresh for the following day.

Sleeping arrangements would be tight: The three of us would take turns inthe lower bunk when the truck was in motion; whose ever turn it was tosleep would get the bunk leaving the other two in the seats up front. Whenparked, Fearless would use the upper bunk leaving Jo and me to double upbelow, sleeping foot-to-head. (It’s against the rules to be in the upper bunkwhile the truck is in motion.)

—

Fearless and I became friends. I have seldom met anyone whose company Ihave enjoyed more. His interests were broad and his knowledge deep. Inthe seven weeks we were together, Fearless and I must have discussedevery subject under the sun. Like all red-blooded American males, Fearlessand I shared an enthusiasm for firearms. Not only were we able to discussthem at length, but Fearless introduced me to Cabela’s, an outfitter withstores along the freeways and ample parking for semis and RVs.

Near Thanksgiving, Fearless pulled into one on I-86 in Pennsylvania wherewe spent over three hours inspecting every weapon they had while Jo sleptout in the rig. Fearless, being an ex-Marine, favored shoulder arms,especially .223 caliber rifles as used in the Corps. Me? I like handguns and

found one that really made my little light shine – a Smith & Wesson Model500, a five-shot .50 caliber revolver with an 8 & 3/8

ths inch barrel. It will dropa moose. Fearless told us that while company policy forbids firearms, anyOTR driver with a lick of sense is packing.

—

Fearless said that in addition to teaching us to drive, he’d occasionallylecture us on the realities of OTR work. While dining at a truck stop inNebraska, Fearless opined that truckers are, of necessity, preoccupied withanswering three questions. In descending order, they are:

1. When and where can I go to the bathroom?

2. When and where can I get some sleep?

3. When and where can I get something to eat?

Fearless said that all other questions – is my kid doing smack, is themilkman shanking my wife, is the lump in my side a cancer – pale. Initially, we thought he was saying this just for shock value, but before weleft his tutelage, we’d learned that he was in earnest, and learned to plantrips around these questions.

To that end, Fearless kept a road atlas identifying all the roadside rest areasin the USA, plus a truck stop guide listing the amenities at each. Heinsisted we buy copies of our own and use them. The moment we’d get adispatch, Fearless had us consult these books and plan the trip aroundanswering the three questions.

—

As Thanksgiving approached, Fearless Leader volunteered the use of hislittle cooker to do up a game hen with fixings. On a cold and cloudyThanksgiving morning somewhere in Arkansas, Fearless had me pull into aWalpMart where we bought the game hen and some little red potatoes, plusmilk, salad, fruit parfait, dinner rolls, butter and even a sweet potato. Forgotthe cranberries, though.

We had a delivery the following morning so we’d be cooking dinner on thefly. Jo and Fearless got out the cooker and went to work. Fearless knew of aquiet spot half a day’s drive away where we could pull off and have our

dinner. By noon, when my shift was over and Fearless took the wheel, wecould start smelling the little hen. Jo made up some place settings out ofFearless’ supply of paper plates and the plastic cutlery she’d filched from aWendy’s.

It was a half hour before dark when we got to the pull-off and the drizzle hadturned to steady rain. The road we were on was a rural secondary that, evenon a busy day, was lightly traveled but being Thanksgiving, when normalpeople were with their kin, there was nothing. Quite lonely, really.

After we parked, we turned on all the interior lights and made ready. Jo’dbrought along some CDs, half of which were Christmas albums and put onein the truck’s stereo. Fearless opened the little cooker and stuck a fork intothe hen; it was indeed done and smelled like heaven. We dished up ourrespective plates and dug in. The three of us sat around listening toChristmas carols and picking apart the game hen while being careful not tospill the grease – imagine the smell of boiling chicken fat soaking into awell-used truck carpet.

Of course we each took a moment that Thanksgiving day to offer thanks for... Well, for whatever. I was still smarting from the last five years but I wasnevertheless thankful that we could live in a semi instead of a crate under abridge, or a homeless shelter with a bunch of winos. I was also thankfulthat we had this nice little meal of wholesome food as opposed to a hobo’scauldron of road kill stew. And the truck was warm and the bunk was soft. And we were making a living again. It could be worse, and for many people,it is.

—

We were heading down US-54 across the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles toTucumcari where we were to catch I-40. Jo was at the wheel and I wassitting up with her as Fearless sawed logs in the sleeper. A light drizzlebegan to fall shortly after Jo got underway and it had gone on nonstop eversince. As darkness approached and the temperature dropped, I began tohear clacking sounds; the drizzle had turned to freezing rain and ice wasbuilding on the wipers. I looked out at the mirror brackets and their leadingedges were covered with ice. “How’s the road?” I asked.

Jo gently rocked the wheel to test the steering responses: “It’s still wet. Noice yet,” she said. We pressed on. About thirty miles out of Stratford,Texas, Jo said “Merl, look at this.” She was turning the wheel forty-five

29 SHUT DOWN – Pulling into the first safe spot you come across and parking because

of weather. As in: “I’m shut down here near Butte `cause of the frigging blizzard.”

30 QUALCOMM™ – A 2-way, text-based communications service operated over a

satellite network. It is accessible anywhere in the USA, 24/7/52. It also works with the GPSnetwork so your location is always known. In the cab there’s a keyboard with a built-in screenand a bright red lamp in the upper right corner that comes on when a message arrives, alongwith a beep. You soon learn to rest the keyboard on the steering wheel so you can read andtype responses.

degrees from right to left and nothing was happening. “Now we’ve got ice,”she said. “Better wake Fearless.”

I immediately beat on the curtain separating the front seats from thesleeper. “Got problems, Fearless. Ice.”

He was out of the sleeper like a shot. “OK, Jo,” he said. “You gotta stop thetruck.” Checking the mirrors, he saw no traffic behind us. “Right here inthe middle of the road. Don’t pull into either lane until you’re almoststopped; if the road’s got too much of a crown, we might slide off. Now, turnon the 4-ways and put it into neutral,” Fearless ordered. Going into neutraltook the engine’s drag off the drive axles, evening out the loads on allwheels and let Jo slow the rig. We were only going forty or so but it took Joa quarter mile to get stopped. Every time she even looked at the brakepedal, the wheels locked.

Fearless then took over and announced we’d be shutting down29 inStratford, just up ahead. Fearless went no faster than thirty-five the rest ofthe way. When we got to Stratford, it was totally dark and semis wereparked everywhere. Fearless spotted one remaining slot up by somerailroad tracks and made a bee line for it before another trucker got there. We pulled in with a flatbed on our right and the roadway on our left. Fearless told me to get on the Qualcomm30 and tell dispatch we wereshutting down for the night.

I’d seen an all-night gas station cum deli about a block behind us. A “pizza”sign glowed prominently in its front window. Thinking a slice or two mightbe nice, I told Jo and Fearless I was heading there, and did they want sometoo? No, they said, so I donned my parka and climbed out. I fell right onmy ass. Every horizontal surface was covered with ice over a quarter-inchthick. How Fearless got the truck into the parking slot I’ll never figure out.

During the night the freezing rain stopped and some warmer air moved in. By sunup, clear spots could be seen on the pavement. After breakfasting,Fearless again took the wheel and we were off. Before we got to Tucumcari,we passed three semis in the ditch, two that were rolled over and two thathad jackknifed. We also saw three school buses off the road and one car thathad slammed into a tree. I was more than happy to ride shotgun.

—

Fearless Leader likes to drive. In fact, whenever Jo or I were at the wheel, itwas all he could do to keep from having us pull off the road so he could takeover again. One day close to the end of our training, I asked Fearless whathe planned for retirement; after all, he and I are not too far apart in age. Fearless looked at me out of the corner of his eye for a moment then startedto laugh. “Well,” he said, “I guess I’ll be taking three-week trips everycouple of weeks.”

Fearless wasn’t quite sure how he was going to react when he couldn’t driveany more. I pressed the matter: “What happens if, say, you mangle a footand the state yanks your CDL?”

Fearless grew pensive. “Not sure,” he replied.

I asked: “Don’t want to sit in one place too long, huh?” He shook his head:“No, not really.”

—

One night while Jo was riding shotgun and Fearless was laying in the bunk,I pulled up in some stopped traffic on I-81 in Virginia where the DOT waserecting a new electric reader board. It was fairly early in the evening sowithin minutes, a monstrous queue of idling semis built up. Fearlessalways keeps his CB switched on and listens to the background chatter withone ear. He heard something that caught his attention so he told us toshush and turn up the volume.

It was a conversation about the sorry state of trucking. One fellow said:“Well ya know, the industry don’t like to talk about this much, but outtaevery seventy-two guys what’s gets a CDL, only one’s gonna last out a year. The rest? They packs it in.”

Jo and I both turned to look at Fearless. “Turn it back down,” he said as hetook a sip of coffee.

“Is that guy right?” Jo asked.

“Well, he’s pretty close, anyway, that’s for sure.” Fearless said that he’d hadmany trainees quit even before their six weeks were through. In fact, onefellow jumped ship at the first truck stop he and Fearless visited. Thesefolks weren’t simply going to another trucking company; they were gettingout completely. “Some `a these guys have dumped five or six grand intogetting their CDLs,” said Fearless, “And they’re through before they evenbegin so, yeah, I think that guy,” he said nodding toward the CB, “is right. In fact,” Fearless said pointedly, “more OTR drivers are quitting than arehiring-on so the driver shortage is real, and getting worse.”

No wonder the truck schools are always full.

—

One day near the end of our time together, Fearless looked me in the eyeand asked: “OK, no bullshit now. Why trucking? Why are you and Jotossing aside the software business for driving a truck?” Prettyincongruous, I guess – two late middle aged people giving up supposedlyglamorous careers in the mighty software industry for the dirt and grit ofpiloting a semi. Maybe he thought I was slumming – he never said and Inever asked. In any case, I told him what had happened, how our softwarebusiness died an inglorious death and all the rest but I don’t think that tothis day Fearless totally buys the answer. I guess I don’t blame him, really. If someone told me a story like ours, I’d have trouble buying it too. Fearlessand I keep in touch by cell phone and every once in a while he will tweakme about the software business.

—

While riding with Fearless, I acquired a vice: A pipe. Alone at night, Ineeded a little extra something to help me keep going and nicotine was justthe ticket. I bought it one afternoon while we were laid over in Alabama asFearless took care of some business at home. Jo and I had hiked over to thelocal WalpMart to replenish supplies and I spotted it behind the checkoutcounter; a cheap, ugly little thing for $13.95. It stays on the dashboard, closeat hand, for those times when my eyes start losing focus and I need a quickjolt.

31 DISPATCHER – Your best friend or your worst enemy. Your dispatcher is the one

back at headquarters who decides what loads you will get and which ones you won’t – or if youwill get any at all. If you and your dispatcher get along, you’ll stay busy with one long-haulload after another. If you don’t, you will sit in your rig for days before getting a stinking littlelocal haul. You are always nice to your dispatcher.

32 BOBTAIL – When used as a noun, it means a tractor operating without a trailer.

Example: “Go park your bobtail over in the third row.” When used as a verb, it meansoperating a tractor without a trailer. Example: “Ya’ll bobtail `t the shipper where ...”

What other job but trucking could prompt a sixty-four year old man to takeup smoking?

Heading Out on Our Own

Three days before Christmas, 2005, Fearless Leader brought us to the eastL.A. terminal for our road test. We were still a week and a half shy of thefull training period but Fearless wanted to be home for the holidays and ifhe were to make it, he needed to be rid of us.

The east L.A. terminal is where the zone safety officer hangs his hat and it ishe who must be satisfied we pose no unacceptable risks. To that end, theterminal’s yard is set up just like a truck school with orange cones markingareas to be used for 45`s, straight-backs and stop lines. Fearless gave us afew practice runs. Jo did well but I still overcorrected on my 45`s and Ismacked a cone. The L.A. sun’s warm and I was sweating. If we didn’tpass, Fearless wouldn’t get the bonus trainers are paid for each successfulstudent and Jo and I would have to go out with another trainer for anothersix-week stint. But, Fearless told me, I’d have seven pull-ups before I flunkso if I took it easy and didn’t get rattled, I should do OK. We both passed.

After Fearless had me park the rig, he told us to unload our stuff and pile itby the old picnic table next to the driver’s entrance – the same place wepiled it while waiting for the bus to Oklahoma City. That accomplished,Fearless walked us into the office and turned us over to the day shiftdispatcher31. Fearless had a load going to Little Rock where he would dropthe trailer and bobtail32 home.

Fearless and I really enjoyed each other’s company these past weeks. Evenliving 24/7 in that tiny animal warren, we never got out of sorts with each

other. I truly wish we could see more of him but he lives in Alabama and welive in Washington (sort of) and the trucking business being the truckingbusiness, we’ll probably never see each other again. After saying ourgoodbys, Fearless climbed in his rig, waved, tooted the air horn and wasgone.

And now it was time to see the safety officer and find out when we can getour tractor.

The Rig

We filled out five or six forms, were given log books, credit cards for fueland a pad of checks to pay for lumpers, repairs, and wear-out items (wiperblades, tires, filters ...). With that done, hands were shaken all around andwe were welcomed to the club. A driver was rounded up and told to bring usto the company shop where our tractor awaited.

And there it was, sitting along the back fence with thirty or so other newtractors – a 2006 Freightliner Columbia with 6.3 miles on the odometer (iteven had that new car smell). Decked out in the company livery, it wasidentical to Fearless’ rig. (To see what a Columbia looks like, go tohttp://www.freightlinertrucks.com/trucks/find-by-model/columbia/)

There are many brands of long-haul tractors sold in America – Mack, Volvo,Kenworth, International, Western Star, Sterling and Peterbilt – but thelargest selling brand is Freightliner. It is the General Motors of long-haultrucks, selling more than any other brand, and by a large margin. Like GM,Freightliner produces several models, the cheapest being the Columbia andthe darling of fleet managers everywhere.

Our company buys its Columbias with a complete set of aerodynamicfairings that run from the front fender back to the drive wheels and coverthe fuel tanks, air cleaners, storage boxes, compressed air tanks and otherstuff seen protruding from the sides of more traditional designs. Thesefairings, which I think attractive, insult traditionalists, but they make theColumbia aerodynamic, and that helps the fuel mileage. For a fully loadedsemi weighing 80,000 pounds and driven at freeway speeds, they improvethe mileage from 2% to 3%.

33 DRIVE-BY-WIRE – There is no mechanical linkage from the foot-feed to the engine,

just a potentiometer (like a dimmer switch) wired to the computer. It tells the computer howfar the driver is depressing the throttle.

Unlike a car, where almost every component is made by the same company,with a semi, you can order a whole panoply of parts and components frommanufacturers the world over. Let me tell you about our Freightliner:

The engine is a fourteen liter (854 cubic inches) Detroit Diesel Series 60 witha nominal horsepower rating of 430. Jo, who likes to keep track of suchthings, measured the fuel mileage on a 2,250 mile trip with the truckweighing in at 77,200 pounds. She found it to be 7.2 miles per gallon. Notbad.Modern diesel engines, like the Series 60, are 100% computer controlleddrive-by-wire33 systems. Not only does this provide the best fuel mileage,but it makes the truck a lot easier to drive. Unlike the old mechanical fuelinjection systems where throttle response was mushy and you were alwaysgiving the engine too much or too little, the throttle response these days isimmediate and accurate – more like a car. Cruise control is so good withthese engines that most drivers keep them engaged all the time turningthem off only for slippery conditions.

The downside (there is always a downside) is that the engine sometimes hasa mind of its own. Such as when accelerating to freeway speed in 7th and 8th

gears. Normally, the engine will keep pulling right up to 2,300 but once in awhile, the computer thinks otherwise and causes the engine to suddenly fallflat on its face right when you need the power the most. It’s not that theengine’s in any danger of blowing up; the falloff in power is done to savefuel and it’s going to get someone hurt or killed one of these days.

The engine is equipped with a Jacobs engine brake. Known simply as aJake, this device makes use of a diesel engine’s compression to slow thetruck. The Jake is responsible for the BRAAAPPPP you hear when dieselpowered trucks slow down. When the driver takes his foot off the throttle,the Jake opens the engine’s exhaust valves at the top of the compressionstroke. If you want to know more about Jakes, please visithttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jake_brake.

The transmission is a manual 10-speed from Eaton-Fuller. It has a normal 5-speed shift pattern but has two ranges. After shifting through all five gearsin the low range, you flip a little toggle on the front of the shift lever to put itin the high range, and start all over – what was 1st is now 6th and so on. And

shift a lot you do: The engine has a useful range of only 800 r.p.m. – from1,000 r.p.m. to 1,800 r.p.m. Drive around the hill country of Kentucky orWest Virginia and your right arm will get a right good work out. Also, trucktransmissions, unlike those in cars, are not synchromesh. You must takecare to match the engine rpm to the truck’s speed and the gear you want, orthe transmission won’t shift and all you’ll do is gnash them. It takespractice.

Ah, but out on your own, you’ll try float-shifting, and once you’ve masteredit, you’ll seldom miss a shift or grind the gears again. To float-shift up agear, accelerate to the speed you want, then keep it there. With no torqueholding the gear, the selector lever can be effortlessly moved into neutral. Now ease off the throttle, letting the rpm fall to where it would be if youwere already in the next gear, and move the selector lever toward that gear –it will slide right in. Apply throttle and away you go. To downshift, simplyreverse the process. If you’ve a manual transmission in your car, it can befloat-shifted too. Try it.

The drive axles and differentials are from Dana Spicer and the brakes arefrom either Meritor or Bendix, I’m not sure which.

All three axles, the one up front and the two in back, use air springs – theold kidney-killing coil and leaf springs are things of the past. These airsprings are stout rubber bags inflated by the same engine-drivencompressor that supplies the air brakes. There is also a self-levelingmechanism on all three axles so no matter how lopsided or off-center thetrailer’s load, the truck will sit level in all respects.

The driver’s and passenger’s seats sit atop their own air springs to absorbbangs and shocks and are fully adjustable, including up and down. Theseseats also have an “anti-chugging” feature. The seat is centered fore-and-aftby springs that allow it to slide in response to the violent whipsawing(chugging) when the truck passes over the joints between road surfaces andbridges. You can spend 11 hours in these seats and still be able to walk. Can’t say that about too many cars.

Unfortunately, the Columbia has its weak points, i.e.,

The windshield is a 2-piece affair with a 1½ inch bar running down thecenter. Dad’s 1948 Plymouth had such a windshield. Is this throwbacknecessary? It just gets in the way.

Instrumentation sucks. Specifically, the position of the instrument clusterwith respect to the steering column (there’s a picture on the dust jacket). They’re mounted so low that you have to take your eyes from the road toread the dials.

More upscale tractors, like cars, have their windshield wiper and cruisecontrols built into the turn signal arm or the steering wheel. On theColumbia, the wiper control is a wee little 2-button 4-position travesty that’shard to operate and, located on the panel around back of the steering wheel,is impossible to find when it’s dark.

In general, the tractor’s control switches are hard to reach, being either onthe vertical panel to the driver’s right, or along the bottom below theinstruments where they are obscured by the driver’s knees. The legends areso tiny and poorly lit that they cannot be read while the truck’s in motion. The controls for the stereo are no better. To further confound the driver, thestereo is placed right above the cup holders so you can’t change CDswithout knocking your beverage to the floor.

Noise. Our Columbia is a noisy contraption. We can’t carry on aconversation without shouting at each other. The noise comes not onlyfrom the engine, but the whining tires and the poorly made gear shifter,which rattles constantly. This persistent loud noise is fatiguing. It is alsohypnotic and sleep inducing. The only noise suppression measure I couldspot is a tacky rubber mat thrown on the floor when the tractor left thefactory. On our first home time, I went to a carpet store and got somescraps. These I tailored with a box cutter, laying them atop the ugly rubbermat. It really helped.

The massive floor board in the Columbia is like an enormous drumhead,amplifying all the roars, knocks and groans a truck can make and theymake plenty. Further, because the cab and sleeper are so poorly made, windnoise can be a problem. On our new tractor, wind noise on the driver’s sidedoor was so bad that after the first 1,000 miles, I had to stuff socks in theyawning gap between the door and jamb, and seal the outside seams withduct tape. Until we got to the company’s body shop for repairs, Jo and I hadto get in and out using the passenger side door.

Power door locks. I wish we had them. A Columbia is eight feet wide so itis quite a stretch to reach over to lock and unlock the passengers’ door.

Power windows. There is one, but it is on the passenger side only. That’sbecause you might have to roll that window down to speak with a cop orsomething so you are given that convenience. But the driver’s window isstill operated manually by a hand crank that is poorly positioned and hard touse.

Power adjustable outside mirrors. The mirrors on the passenger’s side aremotor-operated by a little joy stick on the driver’s door, but the driver’s sidemirrors are manual. You have to crank down the window and reach out intothe snow, the rain, the cold or the heat to make an adjustment.

Ah, but things are changing. Companies like our employer want to attractteams, especially hubby/wifey teams, so they’re switching to automatictransmissions. Many women – and not a few men – who’d like to take a shotat driving truck, are put off by manuals. A lot of people who are excellentdrivers have spent their whole driving lives in vehicles with automatics andthey blanch at the prospect of shifting a manual. Remember Lenny theSpitter? While old-guard drivers foam at the mouth over the prospect ofautomatics, most large carriers are switching over. But like Jo said, if theyever took away the 10-speed manual, they’d be taking all the romance out oftrucking.

Of course the biggest improvement in equipment would be getting awayfrom the diesel engine and using turbines or fuel-cells instead. Though theold guard would again raise a howl, drivers could finally hear themselvesthink.

Finally, there’s the Qualcomm, the service that keeps truckers and theirdispatchers in constant contact. I mentioned the Qualcomm earlier, but afew more words are in order, for when tied into the truck’s main computer,Qualcomm is quite the big brother.

• Did you speed? Qualcomm automatically sends information aboutyour speed back to the company without your knowing it. I havesitting on my table a letter from the Fleet Manager stating that on the20th of June, I was going eighty in a seventy-five m.p.h. zone. Hewants to know why. (Answer: I was going down a long hill on I-80 inWyoming.)

• Where and when did you park? The Qualcomm sends in the date,time and geographic co-ordinates every time you pull the yellow knob.

34 GOVERNOR – A device that operates off of the speedometer and interacts with the

engine’s fuel management system. Its job? Limit the truck’s top speed. Our employer usesgovernors all the time and normally sets them at 66 mph. Kind of stupid though; with agovernor set at 66, a driver can’t go75 mph where it is legal (unless he’s going downhill) butcan still do 66 in a 20 m.p.h school zone. I guess insurance companies demand them. Independents never countenance governors on their rigs.

• Did you sleep too long? The Qualcomm tells the company when youhaven’t moved for a while. Your dispatcher then sends you urgentbeeps and flaming messages asking WHY ARE YOU STOPPED? WHY AREN’T YOU ROLLING?

• Maybe you got lost, or maybe you just wanted to catch dinner withyour sister, but in any event, you went off-route. Pretty soon yourdispatcher is flaming you again: YOU ARE OFF-ROUTE. WHEREARE YOU GOING?

• Did you over-speed the engine? Qualcomm knows that too and tattlesto the Maintenance department.

• One carrier is even using the Qualcomm in lieu of paper logs. Driversdetest this because it’s difficult to cook the books the way you canwith paper logs. A driver told me that this carrier even uses theQualcomm to shut off the truck when drivers exceed their allottedtime behind the wheel.

• And here’s the one every driver absolutely hates: Qualcomm tattlesabout the length of time your engine’s been idling. If our companysees you’re idling more than 30% of the time, they’ll reset your truck’sgovernor34 to a lower speed – down from sixty-six to sixty m.p.h.,killing your income. The company says idling engines waste fuel andthey have a point. However an idling engine keeps a drivercomfortable. It heats the cab in the winter and cools it in the summer. If you turn off the engine, you either freeze or roast. Drivers havequit over this issue.

Good old Yankee ingenuity has come to the rescue, though. Truckowners can now install auxiliary HVAC (heating, ventilating and airconditioning) systems that are powered by their own wee little diesels. These units, mounted in back of the sleeper, let drivers shut off thethirsty main engine while parked, saving wads of dough. Of course

these things aren’t free so companies like ours won’t buy them,preferring to simply bitch.

Qualcomm is a bitter pill to swallow for those drivers who love the “freedomof the open road.” With the Qualcomm’s umbilical cord of tying them to thecompany, truckers may as well have dispatchers riding shotgun.

—

NOTE: Auto makers are putting similar black boxes in their new cars. Theyrecord everything your car does and the fuzz can interrogate them when youget into an accident. But not only accidents: If a cop wants to know if youbroke the speed limit, he pops your hood, whips out his hand-held datascanner and plugs it into the data port. Yup, ten minutes ago you weregoing ninety-seven in a sixty zone. Here’s your ticket, have a nice day.

Also, insurance companies are making noises that, before issuing a policy,you must present your car for a scan so they can see how fast you go andwhere. They then set the amount of your premium according to what theysee, or cancel you out if they become too unhappy. There is a movementafoot to give car owners the option of turning these recorders off, though theinsurance companies are fighting to make their use universal andmandatory. Write your Congressman today.

—

The first thing we did after picking up the tractor was provision the rig:Food, mostly canned good, plus an ice chest and sleeping bags. The lastwere really important. It was, after all, winter in most of the country and ifthe rig broke down, we could be in serious trouble without a warm place tohunker down. Once satisfied we had enough stuff, we took turns drivingthe bobtail around the local streets for practice – Fearless never let us drivearound in the tractor and we wanted to see how one handled without atrailer (not good).

But I’ll tell you this, a bobtail can be quick – get it in seventh gear at 1,200rpm and nail the throttle and there are precious few cars that can keep upwith it. Of course the company doesn’t like truckers doing this as it wastesfuel, so they’ve programmed the engine’s computer to back off; once ineighth gear, the bobtail accelerates no better then it does with a loadedtrailer.

35 LIVE UNLOAD – Where human beings unload the trailer while the trucker sits and

waits. Sometimes the trucker participates in the activities.

We spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying being by ourselves for a change. Then dinner, then bed. The company’s terminal has toilets and showers(more about this later) so the following morning we cleaned up and awaitedour first dispatch. On the twenty-third of December, at about one in theafternoon, the Qualcomm beeped.

First Time Out

So. Jo and I were now going out on our own. We’d received all the trainingwe were going to get from the company and if we were going to make it astruckers, the burden was now on us. With this first dispatch, the companywas handing us a quarter of a million dollars worth of equipment and cargo,and telling us to hit the road, totally unsupervised.

Fearless once said that we could drive for ten years and never talk to amanager or see our dispatcher face-to-face. Compared to the in-your-facemicro-management to which most corporate peons are subjected, truckingwas pretty easy going. Of course the Qualcomm monitored everything wedid and if we did anything outrageous, someone would be on our backs inabout three seconds. If we really fucked up, the company could call thecops and give them second-by-second updates on our location until they ranus down. I guess when you think about it, the company’s risks are reallyminimal.

Christmas in Vail. We got our first dispatch and it said that on ChristmasEve, we were to pick up a sealed trailer at the south L.A. terminal and bringit to Salina, Kansas, for a live unload35. The cargo was 46,500 pounds of leadingots, which put the truck at a gross weight of 77,200 pounds – a scant 2,800pounds below the maximum permissible gross of 80,000 pounds; a veryheavy load. We hooked up, assembled the paperwork, and were underwayby 6:00 P.M. While our families and friends were just starting the Christmasfestivities, Jo and I were hauling a load out of L.A. and, for the next twodays, wouldn’t be stopping for anything but fuel.

To get to Salina, we took the Interstates across the Sierras and the Rockies. In this one trip, we’d get more mountain driving than we’d gotten in all ourtime with Fearless.

I took the first leg and drove through the night, turning the wheel over to Joshortly after dawn on Christmas Day, just east of Las Vegas on I-15. I thenretreated to the sleeper and pulled the curtains for some shut-eye. When Iawoke somewhere in Utah, I made fresh coffee in my little electric pot andjoined Jo up front. Hopping into the shotgun seat, I drank my coffee,smoked my pipe and watched the winter landscape pass by as Jo and I madechitchat. It was bright and clear; as perfect a Christmas Day as one couldwant. As we passed by farms and hamlets, I could just imagine kidssquealing with delight at the goodies they discovered under the tree as thesmells of the roasting turkey and candied yams filled the house.

The whole world seemed to be shut down for this singular holiday andindeed, it seemed we were the only truck on the road. Of course this wasour first Christmas as dispossessed vagrants, so I was full to the brim withspleen and choler – which I did a good job of hiding from Jo who, when itcomes to Christmas, is irrepressible and I hated to piss in the soup.

We had just crossed the Colorado state line when I happened to steal a lookat the fuel gauge. We’d taken on fuel the night before, but pulling themountain grades at 77,600 pounds, the rig had a ferocious thirst. It wasdown below half. Oh, oh. With the Rocky Mountains yet to come, I fearedthis wouldn’t be enough to reach our scheduled fuel stop in Commerce City,east of Denver. Jo and I consulted on this. She, being more optimistic thanI, didn’t think there was a problem but I remembered what Frank said backat truck school – Freightliners have notoriously inaccurate fuel gauges. Jodeclared me a worry-wart and pooh-poohed the whole thing.

But not a problem: I grabbed the Qualcomm and asked for a re-plan of theroute. When you do this, the company’s computer asks for a reading of yourfuel gauge and gross weight. It then gets your current miles-per-gallon fromthe engine’s computer, your position from the GPS locator and, based onthese factors, gives you new fuel stops, if any are needed. Works real well,except this was Christmas Day and all normal people – pump jockeysincluded – had the day off. I called the number the computer gave us inGrand Junction, Colorado, and got a ring/no-answer. Back to the Qualcommfor another try. The best the computer could come up with was the originalone east of Denver. No good. We needed a fuel stop now – the gauge was

touching the quarter mark when we were on level ground and sank belowthat when we went up a grade.

At some rest area along the way, Jo and I switched. When we got closer toGlenwood Springs, I decided it was time to call the fuel desk and talk to ahuman being; the computer wasn’t getting the job done. I pulled off onto anexit ramp and dialed. I told the gal on the fuel desk of our predicament andflat-out declared: “We are not going to make it to Denver. If you can’t findsome fuel for us, we’ve gotta stop right now. If we can’t find a motel, there’sstill enough fuel to keep the engine idling through the night so we won’tfreeze to death.”

No, she said, we must keep the load moving. She promised to scout upsomething and asked me to call back in fifteen minutes. I got back on theroad. Ten minutes later, the Qualcomm beeped. The fuel desk knew of aplace just ahead in Glenwood Springs – Black Dick’s Full Service TruckStop and Waste Water Dump. I was to go there and fill the tanks. Thankheavens.

I took the Glenwood Springs exit ramp only to discover a roundaboutwaiting for me at the foot. To get the seventy-foot semi around it, I had tokeep the right steer wheel rubbing on the curb so the trailer wheelswouldn’t ride up over the curb and take out the city’s Christmas creche. Ofcourse the fuel desk hadn’t bothered calling Black Dick so when I got there,I found he too was at home enjoying Christmas. I spyed a vacant parkinglot at a supermarket, pulled in and called the fuel desk: “Sit tight,” said ourclerk, “I’ll think of something.” To make sure Jo and I didn’t get our tits inthe proverbial wringer later on, I grabbed the Qualcomm and memorializedthe whole business and asked for written confirmation that, the fuel gaugenotwithstanding, the company wanted Jo and me to press on. Fearless toldus to never trust verbal communications with headquarters: “Cover yourass. Get `em to put it on the Qualcomm. When the shit hits the fan, you’llhave a permanent written record of who said what.”

Word soon came back. Yes, we were to press on. The company found afellow who, for a stiff fee, would leave the turkey and pumpkin pie, don hisparka and boots, and fill our tanks. All we had to do was make it to exit 195where he’d meet us, and all would be well. I put the rig in gear and got backon I-70. It was dark now and Jo was finally tired. “Wake me if you needme,” she said and went into the sleeper.

The grades were steeper now and the truck was really grunting. I was downin fifth and sixth gears going fifteen to twenty miles an hour with theaccelerator flat on the floor. I’d switched on my 4-way flashers to warnovertaking drivers that here was a slow moving rig ahead. Outside I couldsee the cheery lights of the little ski towns as they passed by. I could justimagine all the happy, well-fed people spending a glorious evening in theirtimeshares, glowing with the warmth of a happy and prosperous Christmas. Dad got a Rolex, Mom got a mink. Junior got a new Jeep and Sissy got ... Well, Sissy got something a hell of a lot nicer than I got my daughters, letme tell you. Assholes.

On we went.

As we came into Vail, the needle was starting to bounce off the empty mark. We were only about twenty miles from our promised fuel stop so maybewe’d make it after all. We passed by the downtown area and headed upanother killer grade, the throttle flat on the floor. The engine was turningabout 1,400 r.p.m. with the turbosupercharger screaming as it sucked at thethin mountain air while the radiator fan roared, trying to shed excess heatcaused by the climb. Fuel was pouring into the engine by the bucket – Icouldn’t take my eyes off that gauge.

As the grade steepened, I needed to downshift but for some reason, thetruck wasn’t cooperating. All I did was gnash the gears. “Piece of shit,” Ibellowed as I tried vainly to jam the selector lever into fourth. Grind,crunch. &%@#$&)@!!!

Behind me, the curtain flew open. “It’s running out of fuel!” Jo shouted. Yes it was; difficulty in downshifting is a key symptom, as she discoveredthe day she took her CDL exam. I whipped over onto the shoulder. Justahead of me was a bridge abutment but at my snail’s pace, I had enoughroom to get clear of the traffic lane and straighten out.

Once properly positioned on the shoulder, I killed the engine, for I didn’twant to run the thing completely dry – if I did, someone might have toprime all six injectors to get the engine going again. While that someonewouldn’t be me, it wasn’t something any mechanic would appreciate doingout in the sub-zero cold. The truck would be towed to a garage and thatwould only happen after the start of business the following morning. Thecompany, being as cheap as it is, wouldn’t pop for a motel so Jo and I wouldhave to await our rescue shivering in the rig. I called the fuel desk. “Wellthis is a fine kettle of fish,” I said. “We’ve run out of fuel, just like I said we

would. According to the mile post in front of me, we are at mile 183, twelvemeasly miles from our fuel stop.” Profuse apologies were given, along witha promise that the fellow waiting for us up ahead would now be dispatchedto fill our tanks where we sat.

Our first stinking trip and, here we were, fetched up on the side of the road. I bundled up, got out and set up the three red emergency warning triangles. As I did, I could smell the hot engine.

By the purest serendipity, the sleeping bags Jo and I bought on ChristmasEve morning were winter-grade. We now unrolled them, climbed in andzipped up. The inside of the truck was soon cold enough to freeze water andby the time a highway cop stopped to see if we were OK, thick frost hadformed on the inside of the windows. Three hours later, the man from thetruck stop showed up. He pumped thirty gallons of Number 2 diesel intoour tanks and had me sign the chit for a bill that came to more than $400. With that he tipped his hat, thanked me for the business, wished us welland went home to bed.

And so, just like the ostentatious snots we used to meet at cocktail parties,Jo and I now can brag that we too have spent Christmas in Vail.

Runaway Truck. There’s one thing every trucker who drives the mountainsdreads: A runaway, and on this, our first trip, I almost had one. Underwayagain, we crossed Vail Pass and at the first 6% downgrade, I slowed to 50m.p.h. By rights, I should have gotten down into at least 7th and slowed toaround 25 m.p.h. but I was new and inexperienced and bent out of shape atrunning out of fuel. About two seconds after I began the descent, I lookedat the speedometer and, oops, I was now going 55. By the time I said “shit,”I was going over 65. By the time I said “Damn it” and got on the brakes, wewere doing over 70. By the time the air brakes overcame their lag andstarted to engage and I said “MOTHERFUCKER!” we were pushing 80. Gaea was calling to all that lead in the trailer: “Come back to Mama” shesaid and the lead answered by pushing our rig down the mountain as if thetruck were in free-fall.

I was pressing on the brake pedal harder than I’ve ever pressed on thebrakes of a car in a controlled stop. At first, when the brakes started to takehold, all they did was reduce the rate of acceleration so we actually gainedanother mile-an-hour or two. Then, blessedly, the rig began to slow.

I knew that trying to overcome gravity and get the thing to below 50 m.p.h.was going to be problematic so despite the general rule against using Jakeson mountains in the winter, I hit the switch for all six cylinders. Immediately the harsh “BRAPPPPP” of the Jake was heard. Thetachometer was a whisker from the red line and the engine would soon pukeits guts all over the road but Providence was kind that night; the Jakeworked and the engine held. Between the Jake and the brakes, thespeedometer began to drop. The Jake was taking care of things so I got offthe brakes and let them cool in the air stream. I looked in the mirrors andsaw smoke coming from all wheels. I kept the Jake engaged until we cameto the bottom of the grade and I could get back on the throttle. Later, whenwe pulled into a rest area for a biffy break, the smoking was over but I couldstill smell the hot linings. Fortunately for me, Jo was sacked out in thesleeper and missed the excitement.

—

Since that night on I-70, I’ve imagined what it might be like to have a truerunaway. You’d be a driver like me, coming over the crest of a long shallowclimb in the higher gears only to face a sudden steep downgrade, miles long. It’s late at night and you’re tired so, like me, you didn’t slow and gear downsufficiently. Suddenly you realize you’re going 80 when you should begoing 45. But unlike me, your Jake went on the fritz yesterday and youdidn’t bother going to a repair shop. You have to rely on the air brakesalone.

Now you’re wide awake. You tromp on the pedal and are relieved to feel thetruck start slowing from 80 down to 75, then 65, then 55. But then younotice that instead of continuing to slow, the truck is creeping up again. First to 56, then 57 then ... Oh, oh, the brakes have faded – the linings haveliquified – and you cannot stop. Smoke’s pouring from all eighteen wheels. With no better options, you stand on the break pedal will all your might. Nothing.

Eighty, then 81, then 82. Eighty-three, then 84. You see a ruddy flicker inthe mirror; one of the brakes on the trailer caught fire. Soon, another on thepassenger’s side lights up. When you hit 98, the engine blows. A cloud ofsteam and smoke envelope the cab and shrapnel from the explodingmachine goes everywhere and now the last thing holding back the truck isgone. You are now a free-rolling runaway. Without an engine, the powersteering is out and the truck is all but impossible to control (if you have

36 RUNAWAY RAMPS – On mountain roads, designated places where runaway trucks(and cars too) can pull off. Often looking like ski jumps, they’re beds of large, soft gravel inwhich trucks can sink up to their hubs and be slowed to a stop.

37 JACKKNIFE – An accident where the tractor and trailer collapse against each other

like a closing jackknife. There are two kinds of jackknife. In one, the trailer swings out to theside and continues around until it smacks the tractor. In the other, the rear of the tractor (thedrive wheels) swing out from under the head of the trailer and the tractor closes around on thetrailer. Both are preventable by not going faster than existing road conditions permit.

power steering in your car, switch off the engine at 100 mph and you’ll seefor yourself).

You start to scream.

The old recapped tires on the trailer can’t take these speeds so one or twoblow out. Another brake catches fire. At 110 m.p.h. the steering wheel isshaking so bad you can hardly hold on and the truck’s almostuncontrollable. You soil yourself – this is, after all, an existential momentand the outcome, you clearly understand, may not be to your liking.

You come up on a sedan in the right lane. You hit the high beams, pull thecord for the air horn and hope for the best. The unsuspecting driver isstartled and jinks to the right so your monstrous seventy-foot apparition cango whooshing by at double speed with its tires exploding, smoke andflames pouring from its wheels and gook spewing from its evisceratedengine.

Your mind is racing at top speed; you recall that at the top of the decline yousaw a sign advising truckers of a runaway ramp36 some distance ahead, justhow far you can’t remember but if the gods are gracious this night, it won’tbe far. Then you see it: Up ahead, a diamond shaped sign reading “SharpCurves” and below it, a small square one reading “45 m.p.h.” You let out asob: The goddamned fools! They should’ve put the ramp in before thefucking curves, not after them.

A preternatural calm settles in as you realize you cannot possibly make thecurves. Even if you could manage to fight the wheel and turn it full over,you’ll just go into a straight-line skid as if you were on ice – the best you canhope for is to jackknife37 the rig and hit the retaining wall sideways. Buteven at that, you’ll hit at almost three times the rated speed so you’ll plowright through and hurtle through the air, down onto the little town below. There is no way you can live through that.

The retaining wall approaches. You’ve just enough time to regret your follyand to form the thought: “I wonder what comes next?” Then you hit. Thewall bursts and you’re airborne. Mercifully, the shock of the impact stunsyou into semi-consciousness and before you can refocus, your rig – with youstill in the cab, still sitting behind the wheel – buries itself in a littleoutbuilding behind some millionaire’s getaway.

The runaway truck has come to a stop.

What’s left of you can be buried in a shoe box.

Never – ever – again did I play it fast and loose with mountain grades.

Home Time – at Last. Close to midnight on January 30th, we pulled into thecompany’s Atlanta, Georgia, terminal. Since delivering the lead to Salina onthe twenty-sixth, we’d been to Denver, Ft. Worth, and Byron, Georgia, wherewe unloaded, then brought the empty here. The guard, an old guy wholooked like he needed a walker, told us to drop the trailer up by the shop,then drive down to bobtail row and find a place amongst the other rigs tospend the night. We found a space next to a nice, shiny Volvo on the rightand, on the left, a Freightliner even more filthy than ours. A large sign inthe yard forbade the idling of engines for more than five minutes but it wasdown in the 40’s that night and though we like to bend to the company weal,we don’t want to freeze, so we joined the throng of idling trucks.

Jo and I had been gone since the first week in November. There wasenough novelty in the job to prevent homesickness but two months was twomonths and we needed some down time. Waldo, our dispatcher, hadpromised us a Seattle-bound load and now we waited for the dispatch.

Bursting bladders woke us both around nine o`clock in the morning. Aftergetting dressed, we walked to the terminal building in the hunched over posture of people who desperately have to go. This was our first visit to acompany terminal since meeting Fearless Leader. What a dump – anancient, weather-worn building set on a chest-high slab of concrete, it wasmostly warehouse space with a wing of dingy offices off to the side. A dimhallway stretched the length of the building and down near the end, juttingfrom the wall were the “Men” and ‘Women” signs. The toilets were tiny andsmelled. Two thundermugs sat next to each other in stalls sized for gradeschoolers.

38 TRIP/PACK – A service for truckers that lets them get paid A.S.A.P. TripPack

consists of special envelopes in which a trucker stuffs all the paperwork from the trip anddrops said envelope into a special yellow TripPack box. These boxes can be found at anymajor truck stop across the country and are usually placed near the fuel desk. The envelopesare collected each day and ovenighted to the addressee, which in our case, is the company’sheadquarters.

39 REFER – Short for “refrigerator,”it’s truckers’ slang for a trailer having a diesel-

powered refrigerator unit mounted on its front. Refers can be set from -25FO to +85FO so theycan keep the cargo cool in the summer and warm in the winter.

After relieving ourselves, we looked around. A teller’s window in the wallopened into the office. Grubby and cluttered, the office was windowless andpaneled in the same ugly wood as the hallway and toilets. The speak-hole inthe glass was scummy with skin grease and spittle. I announced ourpresence to the man inside and turned in our TripPack®38. Jo told a guy wholooked like Nero Wolfe that we could be reached on our cell phones,numbers such-and-such, then we went off to explore.

We spotted two loads of produce on the dock; spinach and red grapes thathad been damaged in transit – the reefer39 unit had been set too low and thestuff froze. The customer refused the shipment so the driver brought it tothe terminal to await collection by the garbage company. We were advisedthat while the spinach was a lost cause, many, if not most, of the grapeswere still good and were told to help ourselves. Which we did, hauling aboutten pounds out to the truck and putting them in the ice chest.

It was on this dock that I first saw something that’s almost come to defineOTR truckers: personal uncleanliness. A young married team had joinedme in plundering the grapes. After saying our howdies, they bent to theirwork. As the man looked down on the grapes, the fat rolls in his neckopened and in them, I saw ... clean skin. What I thought to be a deep suntanwas actually a patina of grime. His missus was no better. My daughters,when they were three or four years old and spent a summer’s day playingoutside, would get necks like that, but these were adults. I spotted Jo andtold her to have a look. She was equally appalled.

Back in the truck, we snacked on junk food and grapes. Then, it beingmidday, we took naps (we’d learned to take any and all opportunities tosleep). It was dark when we heard a beep. Jo hopped out of her bunk,grabbed the Qualcomm and began to read. Yup, we were to take apreloaded trailer of rugs from the terminal up to Kent, Washington wherewe were to drop the trailer and head home on our break. It was about six

40 BROKER – Shippers who don’t have regular daily orders call a broker when they

have a load ready to go. The broker then finds a trucker to haul the load. Being a broker, thisperson is serving the interests of both shipper and driver. Good brokers make sure neitherparty gets shafted. Our employer, large as it is, still gets a lot of its business through brokers.

41 DOLLY – A carriage that holds both of the trailer’s axles. The dolly moves fore and

aft on a set of rails to redistribute weight, or to set the wheelbase to specific lengths, per statelaws. Also useful for maneuvering – move the dolly forward and the wheelbase is shortened,reducing the turning radius. I always keep the dolly as far forward as possible.

42 5th WHEEL – The horseshoe shaped plate above the drive wheels of the tractor, it

connects the trailer to the tractor. It is also a swivel permitting the semi to turn. It also teeter-totters on its moorings so the rig can go over dips and bumps. It can be moved fore and aft.

o`clock Friday; we had until 1 A.M. Monday to make the delivery – a drive ofover 2,500 miles in 56 hours. We secured our gear and made ready to go. Jo,who insisted on taking the first leg, was in such a hurry to get out and gethome that she damn near ran down the fence.

—

Waldo’d said that when hauling rugs for this customer, we should alwaysweigh at the nearest truck stop. This shipper, he said, has a penchant foroverloading trucks and if we got busted for being overweight, Jo and I hadto pay the ticket – the driver is legally responsible for making sure the truckis within limits. If you’re curious, the weight limits for a semi are: 12,000pounds on the front axle, 34,000 collectively on the two drive axles and;34,000 pounds collectively on the trailer’s two axles. Total: 80,000 poundsgross.

When loading trailers, shippers often just guess at the weight. Later, whenthe poor trucker pulls into a weigh station and gets a citation, neither theshipper, the broker40 nor the drivers’ companies come to the rescue. Andthe fines can be stiff. Some states charge as much as a dollar a pound foranything over the limits. In response, most truck stops have installed scalesand charge truckers a few bucks for an honest reading. If you’re over limiton one of the axles, you can fiddle around with the placement of the trailer’sdolly41 and the tractor’s 5th wheel42 to see if you can redistribute the weightand get back below the limits. Failing that, you drive back to the shipperand wave your scale ticket, refusing to move until the trailer is reloaded.

Today, highway cops know that most truckers scale their loads, so with revenue from fines declining, they’re shutting a lot of scales as unprofitable. Nowadays, if a driver with an over-grossed truck gets a little cooperation

from the brotherhood over the CB, he can dodge those that are open. Ofcourse, deliberately going out of your way to avoid a weigh station is likesmuggling untaxed booze – it’s a crime. Ah, but the cops have to prove anintent to dodge. A guy can always claim he took the side road where hiswife asked him to look for antique bedsteads.

But the cops never say die: They now build automated scales right into theroad and weigh your truck on the fly. If you drive the interstates, you’vepassed over such scales many times. Buried in the right-hand lane is ametal plate that’s part of a strain gauge. As a truck passes over, thepressure on the plate generates an electric signal that displays the weight toa cop up ahead. About a quarter-mile further on is a pole with red and greenlights. If you get the green light, you’re OK; keep going. If you get a redlight, you’ve got to pull in at the nearest scalehouse and get weighed on theofficial scale. Now to make sure you don’t pull any funny stuff, the polewith the lights is often equipped with high-resolution TV cameras to recordboth your license number and your face.

We scaled our load at a truck stop about a mile from the terminal and werewithin limits. Jo turned back onto northbound I-75 and headed for home.

—

The route from Georgia took us up I-84 through Utah and Idaho, which arefilled with mountains. We hadn’t yet settled fully into the Merlin-drives-at-night protocol so Jo offered to take the evening leg north from Ogden. Shesaid she’d go as far as she could while I got some sleep. I’d been out for afew hours when I heard a plaintive little voice: “Merl? Could you pleasecome up here? I need some moral support.”

Something was up. Jo normally wouldn’t ask that. Her usual practice is tomuddle on until she gets totally jammed up and then ask for help. “Be rightthere,” I said as I flung open the curtain and stepped into the cab and ... Jesus H. Christ, SNOW. White and thick and coming down like a waterfall,the flakes were the size of half-dollars and so dense we couldn’t see morethan twenty feet. It was wet and sticking to everything. The trees andbushes were covered with snow, and the road was covered with slush. Everything was getting buried. “Good god,” I exclaimed. “How long’s thisbeen going on?”

“Oh, maybe an hour,” Jo replied, not taking her eyes on the road. “But,” shesaid, “It only gets bad when we get up high. As soon as we crest this

summit and go down, it’ll turn back to rain. I’d just like some companywhile I go through this shit.” I couldn’t blame her. This was her firstmountain snow as a trucker but Jo did a fine job.

—

We made it to the rug dealer with a couple of hours to spare. After droppingthe trailer, Jo got on the Qualcomm and signed us out for a week’s hometime. Around one in the morning, we headed up old familiar I-405 towardClearview. Only it didn’t seem so familiar: Not only had we been gone fortwo months, I’d done such a good job suppressing memories of my old lifethat I hardly recognized anything.

About 3:00 in the morning, we parked in front of our rental and killed theengine. We hadn’t been out of earshot of a diesel engine for eight weeks andthe sudden silence was startling and my ears would ring for the next twodays. We undid our seat belts and, heaving sighs, slumped in our seats. After a few moments, we opened the doors and let in cool country airredolent of fir trees, moss and the mephitis of night. The two of us sat therein the dark, not saying anything.

After a bit, Jo looked at me and with raised eyebrows asked: “So, Merl, whatdo you think?”

I puffed on my pipe for a moment, choosing my words: “Well, it is

interesting work.”

—

Before we got home again in March, we’d make pickups and deliveries in:

Auburn, WA, Rockford, MI, Kentwood, MI, Tracy, CA, Stockton, CA, South L.A., CA, San Pedro, CA, Oklahoma City, OK, Oceanside, CAAmarillo, TXLynnwood, CA

South L.A.West Point, GA Arlington, TXDenton, TXHutchins, TXChickasha, OKOntario, CABuena Park, CAManchester, CTSpringfield, MAToledo, OH Morton Grove, ILRipon, WILewiston, UTSalt Lake CitySpanish Fork, UTPayson, UTRogersville, MOWest Memphis, ARLittle Rock, ARShafter, CA, Fresno, CAAllentown, PABridgewater, NJMomence, ILSalem, ORVancouver, WAPortland, OR

At least once each day, we stopped at rest areas, truck stops, companyterminals and, occasionally, a WalpMart for provisions.

Terminals and Truck Stops

Now’s as good a time as any to talk about company terminals and truck stops. Because there are so few places hospitable to big rigs, these are the only placestruckers can rely on to stop. As you might imagine, some are better thanothers.

Truck Stops. A good one is the Bosselmans at the nexus of I-70 and I-135outside Salina, Kansas. It’s clean, well maintained and has a restaurant thatoffers top-notch food. There’s even a store selling the odd bit of apparel,smokes of every sort and, most unusual, magazines and paperbacks. AtBosselmans, the showers are spacious, well ventilated and have lots of hotwater. Like other good stops, Bosselmans has an immense parking lot which,because this is a good stop, gets filled with trucks every night by four or fiveP.M. Moreover, the folks who work here are friendly and helpful.

Contrast this with the dump at which we fueled, ate and showered off I-94 inIndiana.

The yard, while large enough, was full of axle-breaking potholes that would betough for a tank to negotiate and mud was everywhere. The card readers andfuel pumps were unreliable and some just plain didn’t work. As to therestaurant, the bill of fare was the same as at all members of the chain: Greasy,heavy with animal fats, and poorly prepared. (After dining, we both fartedcopiously for three hundred miles.)

While there, we decided to shower. We went to the services kiosk, swiped mycard (a gift bestowed on regular customers, it accrues points for each gallon offuel and these points can be cashed-in for showers and discounts on the junkthey sell) and selected one shower each, then waited for the reader board todisplay our assigned stalls. And waited. And waited some more. As there wereno other drivers hanging around, I couldn’t figure out what the holdup was, soI went to see the clerk. She told me, in no uncertain terms, that showers werenot her problem; that I should take my case to the “porter” who took care ofsuch things. I found him leaning on the handle of his mop, making eyes at afrumpy woman with a sagging bosom.

“Any chance our showers will be ready soon?” I asked.

He turned to me and snarled “When I can get to it, buddy. I gotta do everyother fucking thing around here so hold onto your shorts.”

“Look, chum,” I replied with equal ill humor, “We have a deadline to keep andwaiting for you to get off your ass isn’t helping us get there. How about youput your shoulder into it?” He gave me an ugly look. “You get cracking andI’ll go watch the reader board,” I said as I turned and walked away. I couldhear him muttering and slamming around his mop and pail.

The shower stall was a disgrace. It was small, cramped and rank with steamyB.O. The door closer was missing and the door, which was warped and peeling,was impossible to shut without lifting on the doorknob to take up the slack inthe loose bolts. I availed myself of the thundermug but when I hit the flusher,nothing happened. I couldn’t just leave it like that so I took off tank top anddiscovered that the chain connecting the flush handle to the valve had beenrepaired with a coat-hanger wire, and it had rusted through. I reached into theblack and slimy tank, grabbed the stub of the chain and flushed the toilet byhand (yuck). At least the shower water was hot, though it turned coldwhenever another “guest” flushed.

I was so put off by the general state of dilapidation that after getting dressed, Isought out the manager and brought him to the shower room to see things forhimself. As we walked in, the porter was hosing down the stall but the foolhadn’t yet put the top back on the toilet’s tank so the problem hit the managersquare in the face. It was too delicious for words: “There, see what I mean?” Isaid pointing to the toilet. The porter stopped and looked out at me and hisboss. I turned my back on the porter as if he were no more than a fly andcontinued my recitation: “Now look at this door ...” Finally, giving me hispromise of better, and offering a free dinner, I shook hands with the managerand walked out.

I’m going to bet the porter had trouble sitting down for the next few days.

Company Terminals. The company has over a dozen terminals. You alreadyknow about the one in Oklahoma City where we met up with Fearless Leader. Well, there’s another south of Sacramento, California.

Our first time there, we arrived at two in the morning. We chose this place sowe could sleep unmolested and, after awaking, take showers and do thelaundry for free. Let me tell you what we found.

The drivers’ lounge is inside a squat concrete building. It’s furnished withhard plastic chairs and inexpensive folding tables whose Formica® tops arechipped down into the particle board and peeling off in great sheets. There’san old vinyl sofa the company got at a garage sale when Reagan was in theWhite House; half the stitches are pulled loose and tufts of stuffing are comingout. Next to it sits a neglected potted plant dying of thirst (they should at leastput it outside so it can have a chance to get peed on by the dogs many truckerskeep for companionship).

The interior walls haven’t been painted since the place was built back in the1960s and they’re papered with the same slogans, admonitions and reminderswe saw in Oklahoma City. Over half the lights were burned out. An ancientpay phone hangs on the wall in a singularly inconvenient place where there’sno privacy, no place to write, and no comfortable way to sit if you have to use it– the earpiece is absolutely caked with ear wax.

The company has, however, generously provided a microwave oven. It sits atopa credenza next to a doily on which are placed containers of fake cream andfake sugar. The microwave’s cooking cavity is covered with spatters and thestuff is as hard as cold lava. The coffee, which is provided gratis, is so thin itlooks like tea.

Oh, yes: The room smelt of vomit. The week before, some poor trucker tossedhis cookies onto the filthy indoor/outdoor carpet glued to the slab floor. Someone stomped a roll of paper towels over the mess in an attempt to sop itup but that served mainly to pack the gook even deeper into the fibers. Thecompany’s too cheap to call in the Rug Doctor so the truckers just open thewindows and endure.

In an adjoining room is the TV. To prevent a repeat of the vomiting exercise,food is no longer allowed so if you want to watch the tube, you do it with nosnacking. The room contains three identical vinyl sofas, all newer and in bettershape than the one in the lounge proper, but they have hard wooden ends thatjut up as high as your hip so there’s absolutely no way you can stretch out onthese things and rest your head. As for the TV, at first blush it looks like a nice42-inch high-definition plasma unit. Then you turn it on and find out it is anold projector unit whose picture has been stretched horizontally to fit the newwide-screen concept. The distortion is so bad a basketball looks like a footballand a football looks like a flying saucer. The fuzzy image it displays has apermanent green cast that complements the smell coming in from the otherroom. To prevent truckers from fighting over what to watch, the terminal’smanager keeps the remote locked in his desk. Unless a trucker has asked toplay a movie, the VCR runs an endless tape of company propaganda. To watchsomething else, you’ve got to ask the boss man to set it up.

The yard is some 5+ acres of dirt – a fine, dusty dirt that, when it rains,becomes a sea of viscid mud. Of course being made of dirt, the yard is full ofpotholes, some of which are wide and deep enough to swallow a small Hyundai. A morning’s visit by a road grader and a couple of dump trucks of gravel wouldgo a long way to ameliorating the 3rd World character of the place, but thatwould cost money. Arriving truckers drop their trailers in the back, then park

up by the building in Bobtail Row – a special area reserved just for them andeasily identified by the piles of cigarette butts truckers have dumped fromtheir ashtrays. There’s also a lot of dog shit.

Sleep is problematic. The terminal is next door to a switching yard run by theSanta Fe and day and night, seven days a week, fifty two weeks a year, the airis rent by the honk of train whistles, the clang of warning bells and the roar ofhuge 12-cylinder diesel engines – not to mention the crashing noises as railroadcars are slammed into each other when trains are assembled. Truckers puttheir engines on fast idle so their roar can drown out the rail road’s.

—

While this is bad enough, there’s worse: The laundry and the showers. They’rein twin single-wide house trailers to the rear of the main edifice. Both arereached by rickety iron stairs that quake and squeak with every step.

The laundry was recently updated with new washers and dryers. The old onesgave up their ghosts and stopped functioning so there really wasn’t any choice. Of course installation was the usual slipshod affair; the feet haven’t beenadjusted so when the loads are the slightest bit off balance, the washers jumparound the floor and tear out their hoses.

There used to be a sorting table in the corner of the room but it’s among themissing (probably removed along with the dead washers and dryers and it’ssorely missed). It’s removal uncovered a pile of debris, the kind in which micemake nests.

Then there are the shower rooms. Good lord, the shower rooms. Actually,they’re toilets-cum-shower rooms, and there’s one for the guys, one for the gals. These horrors haven’t been cleaned in years, if ever. In the mens’ room, whichstinks like an open sewer, the toilet is filled with black mildew and a rind ofindescribable mung calks the toilet’s base to the linoleum floor. On thismorning, a rich brown skidmark graces the inside of the bowl. There is nobrush. While sitting astride the throne, I took notice of the floor; it’s litteredwith human hairs – pubic hairs mostly, but head and body hairs are included. There’s probably an eyelash in there somewhere too, who can say. These hairsexist in such profusion I originally thought they were part of the linoleum’spattern. One straight brown hair directly in front of the toilet is about two feetlong. I touched it with the toe of my shoe; it wouldn’t move. Over the months– or perhaps years – it’s become welded to the linoleum by the heat, humidityand detritus in this squalid room.

From the ceiling, cobwebs and dead bugs hang like crepe. The window isalmost opaque with filth.

There are two shower stalls in this trailer, but only one works. The bum unit’sbeen broken for longer than anyone remembers. I drew back the curtain of theworking unit and peered inside. It is a fiberglass shell held to the wall by threescrews from which trails of rust descend. In the middle of the floor is anungrated drain hole, the inside of which is black as sin. The shower curtain,stiff with age, was way too large for the stall so it’s folded back against itself. As I moved this curtain, it wouldn’t unfold so I pried it apart and quicklydiscovered why: Thick red scum, running from top to bottom, has glued thefolds together.

Well, in for a dime, in for a dollar, I always say, so I doffed my duds, reached inand turned on the water, letting it warm as I fetched my soap, shampoo andcomb. Then I looked at the floor in front of the stall where laid a small red-ishrug. This “bath mat,” which has been dripped on by scores of naked truckersstepping out of the stall, was as sodden and foul this day as when the firsttrucker finished with it and a splotch of white fungus had grown from thecenter out. I put on my clogs and kept them on throughout the whole ordeal. Even so, when I got back to the truck, I sprayed my feet down with Lysol.

That a shower room could be so evil is inexcusable but I knew complaining tothe manager would do no good. Even if he were disposed to care for the driverswho come into this shit hole, I’m sure he couldn’t get funds for a cleaningservice. If these conditions were to be remedied, corrective action would haveto come from an outside agency. So I called OSHA and the public healthdepartment and blew the whistle.

The Foot. While companies and truck stops provide showers for the grimy,road-sore truckers, these places are often home to the fungus that is Athlete’sFoot. In the course of a day, there can be a hundred dirty truckers passingthrough each unit and some will be cursed with The Foot. Red, weepingcrevasses between the toes, the principal manifestation of The Foot, shedspores by the billions and, when flushed out by the shower water, they sprayand spatter everywhere throughout the stall – floors, mainly, but walls and evenceilings are contaminated as well. As the stalls never have a chance to cooldown and dry out, they are perfect incubators.

The Foot’s spores are hardy forms of life, killed only by strong astringents andultraviolet light sufficient to burn the hide off an elephant. Few truck stops,and fewer trucking companies, take the time or expense to sterilize their

shower facilities so most novice drivers become infected within six weeks time. Of course, The Foot is not always confined to the feet – indeed any warm, moistand airless part of the body is fertile ground for infection. Let’s consider twosubgroups of The Foot (these are by no means the only ones, there may well beothers):

Trucker’s Pecker. This is acquired when you braced yourself against theshower stall to wash your feet, then decided your gefoffinator needed a jolly-good scrubbing, and used the hand you placed against the wall to do the job. Or perhaps while turning about in the cramped little stall, your memberaccidentally brushed against one of the pestilent walls. Within hours ofexposure you’ll swear you had the clap. The violent burning and oozing willsend you to the nearest doctor. If need be, you’ll park the rig on the mayor’sfront lawn to get there, but to the doctor you will go. Several shots in the rumplater, and with a tube of ointment to squirt down your unit, you are back on theroad, sadder but wiser. (I’m sure there is a female version of this malady, butJo didn’t get it and I haven’t had the guts to ask any women about it.)

Trucker’s Anus. Whether at a truck stop or a dingy company terminal, theshower stalls usually have someplace for the newly washed trucker to sit andput on socks. Of course, some previous occupant will have put a diseased footon the seat to scrub the corruption from between the ravaged toes and leftbehind 85,956,785,212 spores. The incautious trucker who neglects to firstdisinfect the surface, or at least lay a clean towel on it, will place the warm cleftof his derriere smack dab on this pile of spores. They will quickly work theirways into the trucker’s unmentionable spot, and take root. An hour or two laterthe poor bastard is going down the road, writhing and squirming and diggingin his britches, attempting to get some relief from the vile, burning, itch. Again, a stop at the doctor’s office is needed.

One trucker I spoke with thinks that around 50% of all OTR drivers arechronically infested with some form of The Foot. In fact, Your Humble Authoracquired ... Never mind.

Poor, Poor Chickasha

There’s pain in America’s heartland. When I was a consultant and softwaredeveloper, I really didn’t see much of life in it’s broader terms. Jo and I livedin a middle-class, semi-rural community and hobnobbed with those in like

43 FOREIGNIZING. A neologism of your author’s creation. It means the process of

rendering an American job to a foreign person or organization. As in “The boss, that son-of-a-

bitch, foreignized my fucking job!” [Render: To surrender or relinquish; yield. From www.dictionary.com]

circumstances. In my work, I dealt with the chieftains of telecommunicationsand data processing who occupied the same socioeconomic station as Jo andme. Once in a while I met someone from a loftier station, say a pooh-bah frommahogany row or (*gasp*) an investor, but until I became a trucker, I seldomdealt with the people in lower stations. Now, on our second time out, we got toactually meet some of these folks, and I started paying attention to theirstories.

The U.S. of A. got where it is (was?) through manufacturing, but things havechanged. Thanks to a mono-maniacal focus on management compensation,individual businesses – and whole industries – have been foreignized43. Consider the case of a faucet factory in Chickasha, Oklahoma, where Jo and Ipicked up a load headed to L.A. Chickasha is a small city with a fairly broadeconomy. There’s farming, of course, along with the industries and businessesthat support it. In turn, these businesses support Chickasha’s barbershops,repair shops, restaurants, funeral homes, churches and Tarot parlors.

Our shipper was on the outskirts of town. When we checked in, the honchotold us to back into the dock and drop the trailer; they’d load it and get it readyto go by ten that night. That left almost six hours to kill so I asked if we couldbobtail into town for dinner; after all, without a trailer, what we really have isnothing but a very big car. Sure, he said and pointing to a large expanse ofdirt, told us that if things weren’t ready to go by the time we got back, parkthere and take a nap. After a slow cruise down the main drag, we turned into agrill & buffet and after dinner, drove around for a bit and saw some of the town– nice place.

As we’d be driving all night, a nap seemed like a good idea so we headed backto the shipper and the parking lot. Setting the engine on fast idle, Jo and I gotin our respective sleeping bags and turned out the lights. A little past ten therewas a knock on the door; the load was ready. The boss said we could hook upanytime, no hurry. The paperwork would be waiting inside the walk-in doornext to the dock where the trailer awaited, just come on in. After puttingourselves back together, Jo drove the tractor over and backed under the trailer. When the 5th wheel’s latch clacked shut, I got out to connect the air and electriclines, then went in to get the paperwork. Another semi began to back in next tous on the driver’s side.

44 LANDING GEAR – These are the two little legs near the front of the trailer which

bear the weight when the trailer is disconnected and parked. Landing gear are lowered andraised by a crank. However, some of the more with-it firms are buying trailers with motors todo the work.

—

The paperwork took a while but I finally got it. Once outside, I walked up thepassenger’s side to raise the landing gear44. As I began to turn the crank, Icould hear Jo, over on the driver’s side, talking with someone. With thelanding gear up, I walked around to join the conversation. The person withwhom Jo was talking was a trucker for the faucet company. Seeing meapproach, Jo stopped to introduce me and to explained that the driver was justtelling her this would be one of his last loads. The faucet factory was beingmoved, for cost reasons, to guess where? “Don’t tell me,” I said. “It’s gotta beRed China.” The driver smiled sadly and nodded. By the time the 2006football season starts, the trucker told me, the faucet factory will be closed andhe and several scores of people will be out on their ears.

We stood there in the dark while this trucker told us of the impendinghardship. It would be grim. There would be over a hundred people dumped inthe unemployment pool all at once and there were simply not enough vacantjobs in this part of Western Oklahoma to absorb them. The ones who couldleave had already gone but those with mortgages and kids in school couldn’teasily do that so they would be taking the severance checks and ... Well, hedidn’t know what. Some, he ventured, are too old to readily find other gainfulwork so they too would eventually call it “retirement;” they’d sell their homesand move away. By the distracted expression he wore, I suspected he wastalking about himself .

There would be others with equally problematic futures. For example, themanagement cadre. Who in town would need another plant superintendent? What will that poor bastard do? (Maybe bus dishes at the buffet?) The rippleeffect would be felt through all of Chickasha. With the loss of some 150 jobs,the number the driver gave, there would be a lot less money spent in thecommunity. Fewer new cars would be sold. Fewer clothes bought. Cheapermeat would be purchased as against the premium cuts. Certainly the plant’sbowling league would dissolve with unpleasant consequences for the local beerhalls and bowling alleys.

This kind of thing happened a few decades ago in Allentown and Bethlehem inPennsylvania, when cheap Japanese steel was allowed to flood the country.Based on their dismal experiences, here is what is in store for Chickasha:

• “For Sale” signs will sprout like weeds in the lawns of distressed andforeclosed homes. There will be few buyers. The real estate market willtank.

• The economic chain of “you pay me so I can pay her and she can pay himand he can pay you” will be broken and people will stop paying theirbills.

• Some men will crack and start beating their wives and kids. Somehousewives will start screwing the milkmen. Kids will see their parentscoming unhinged and start having problems of their own.

• Lawyers will be filing a lot of bankruptcies.

• Psychiatric problems will burgeon. Watch for suicides.

How can the poor folks at the faucet plant compete with foreign workers whoare in fact, slaves? Consider how employees for the new Chinese faucet factorywill be recruited and paid. On a sunny afternoon, One Swung Lo, a farmer inmiddle China will be out tending the rice paddy when a car emblazoned with abig red star pulls up. It is the local Party Commissar. “Oh, shit,” Swung Losays to himself as he puts down his hoe and heads toward the car. The reardoor opens and a fellow in a snappy green uniform steps out. “Good afternoon,comrade Commissar,” gushes Swung Lo as he doffs his hat and holds it to hischest.

“Good afternoon yourself, One,” smiles the Commissar through a cloud ofcigarette smoke. Walking over and putting his arm across One Swung Lo’sshoulder, the Commissar says that the Party has need of his services. “You,”beams the Commissar, “have been chosen by the Committee on LaborRecruitment to be honored with a position at the new faucet factory the YankeeImperialist Swine are building over by the river.” A nasty knot forms in the pitof One’s stomach. “You,” the Commissar continues, “Are to report there forwork assignment at six in the morning, two days from now.”

One about fills his knickers. Two hooches down, the oldest son was “recruited”to work in a shoe factory where, for twelve hours a day, he breathed glue fumesthat softened his brain. When management sent him back home this past

spring, he could hardly find his own rear end. The poor lad spends his timesitting outside in a lawn chair, drooling and making odd little noises. Onestammers, “But comrade Commissar, I know nothing of factories. I’m afarmer. I plant rice. I shovel shit ...”

The Commissar holds up his hand to cut off One in mid-sentence, his eyespopping with outrage. “Are you telling me you want to decline this great andsingular honor the Party has bestowed upon you?” he roared.

Remembering that his grandfather was shoved into a ladle of molten iron at abackyard smelter during the Great Leap Forward, and that his uncle wasbeaten to death with a garden tool during the Great Proletarian CulturalRevolution, One swallows hard and says: “Of course not, comrade. The honoris indeed mine. But can you tell me how much the job pays?” This last heasked with great trepidation.

But he was off the hook, for the Commissar said: “I was just coming to that. You get full room and board, which consists of an excellent cot in a top-qualityyurt outside the factory gates, plus all the corn slop you can eat, thrice daily. Inthe evenings there will be entertainment provided by the singing group,Chairman Mao is Our Light. On weekends there will be classes onMarxism/Leninism as well as on Mao Thought. Who could want for more?”

Who indeed.

“Yes, I see. Wonderful. But my family,” says One nodding toward the hootch,“They need my labor here and ...”

“Fear not, comrade” the Commissar interjected, smiling broadly: “The Partywill provide for your missus. And besides, she’s free to come visit you onceeach year on the anniversary of our Revolution. Now, go pack your things. Wehave a long drive ahead.”

How can any American compete with that?

—

Then there was Middlebury, Indiana. Not long after hauling the load offaucets, we found ourselves in Indiana where we picked up a load of prefabwindows at a factory that looked like a prime candidate for foreignizing. Iasked the guy running the forklift if the plant were in any danger of being

45 BLACK ICE – When a thin layer of clean water freezes on asphalt pavement, it is as

clear as crystal. The blackness you see is the asphalt showing through. A lot of peoplemistake patches of black ice for puddles of water.

relocated to Red China. “Oh, Christ, I sure hope not,” he said shaking hishead. “But there’ve been rumors.”

Later, we got the same response from a fellow at a glass factory in Illinois. Ditto from people at factories in Utah making safes and machine tools.

As we roll through America’s small cities and town, we see a lot of homes andcommercial buildings – especially manufacturing plants – for sale and goingrapidly to seed. It’s unnerving.

Clearly, happy days are not here again.

Fearless Leader said we would learn a lot driving truck.

Marooned.

Ah, Wyoming. This little-known, sparsely populated state is home to ourformer Vice President, Dick Cheney, and to some of the wildest weather thelower 48 states have to offer. Blizzards, gale-force winds, torrential rains, hail,and even the occasional twister – Wyoming has it all. One time, back in lateFall of 1976, just outside of Laramie, Jo and I’d come across a bad wreck – asemi hit some black ice45 in a ground blizzard and ran over a camper with a guysleeping inside. A cop and I fished the poor devil out but his head was bustedup pretty good. Ever since, Jo and I have had a respect for Wyoming.

On St. Valentine’s Day, a large winter storm was predicted and we were pickingup a load of processed potatoes in Idaho Falls. We were going to take them toChicago via I-80 through, of course, Wyoming. On our way up from Salt LakeCity, the sky belied the storm; it was almost clear, save for a few puffy cumulusoff to the north and some very high, very thin cirrus. Still, a prediction was aprediction so we’d keep an eye on things. Besides, it was early in the day andthe storm wasn’t supposed to hit until late in the afternoon or early evening.

Unfortunately, we were late getting loaded and didn’t get back across the Utahborder until about two in the afternoon and by that time, a high, thick, cloud

46 PAY LANE – It can take truckers quite a while to settle accounts at the fuel desk. To

keep other truckers from waiting unnecessarily, truck stops provide a “pay lane” directly infront of the island. After fueling, you are expected to pull ahead into this pay lane before goinginside. This gives the trucker behind you an opportunity to pull up to the pump and take on a

(continued...)

bank was moving in from the Northwest. We listened to all seven of theweather channels provided on the Freightliner’s radio, and all promised aserious blow with lots of white stuff. As dark came on, we were on I-84 headingsouth through Utah. We took I-84 around the back of the Wasatch mountainseast of Salt Lake City and connected with I-80 heading into Wyoming. As wecrossed the Utah/Wyoming border, it was totally dark and the overcast wassolid.

Not far into Wyoming there is a port of entry and weigh station and per the“open” sign, we pulled in. In Wyoming, like New Mexico, you have to pull in,park, and let them examine your papers. I pulled around to the parking lot andpopped the yellow knob. As I walked to the building, I saw the first snowflakeof the long-promised storm. By the time I came back out, no more than tenminutes later, the fall had grown heavy. But these weren’t the big wet flakes ofWestern Washington, the kind that stick or melt when they hit the ground. These were tiny little dry ones that blew around like feathers.

No fools, Jo and I took a few moments to scan the weather channels. Wedecided to press ahead; we still felt we had time to drive out from under andget in the clear by Rawlins, leaving the snow behind us. Well east of Evanston,we pulled in for our scheduled fuel stop at Ft. Bridger, where, by then, we wereseeing some serious snowfall. And when I got out to fill the tanks, I couldsmell it: Snow was on the way, lots and lots of snow. My ears are bad and myeyes aren’t so hot, but my sense of smell seldom lets me down and this night, Ismelled snow. (NOTE: Did you know that all forms of weather have their own unique smells? It’s true, and if you pay attention to what your nose is tellingyou, you can smell storms hours before they appear. Believe me, a deepattentive sniff of the morning air can prevent a lot of ruined picnics.)

The wind had picked up since we’d left the port of entry and it bit hard enoughto make my eyes water. The old parka felt good. Besides fueling up, I checkedthe oil and made sure the windshield washer tank was topped off. Jo had beenlistening to the NOAA station again and was now expressing concern – gonewas the sure confidence that we could drive out from under. To make room forthe Kenworth waiting behind us, I pulled the rig out of the fuel island andparked in the pay lane46. We both got out and sniffed and looked and pondered

46(...continued)load of NO 2 Diesel while you haggle with the clerks.

47 AXLE INTERLOCK – Normally, only the first of a semi’s two drive axles are under

power – the rear one just freewheels. Throw this switch and the rear one engages; you now

(continued...)

the ink-black sky. In just the time it took to fuel up, the snowfall hadincreased. Small drifts were already forming on the lee sides of stationaryobjects. Jo made hints about hunkering down in the truck stop and waiting itout. There were, she pointed out, still plenty of spots out back where we couldpark away from the lights and noise – plus the place had a fast food joint, astore full of nosh, bathrooms, showers and a lounge with a big TV. All we hadto do is park and tell the company we were shutting down because of icy roadsand bad weather. No one would say a peep. The company would rather see aload of freight be late than not get there at all. Rightly so.

But I had made a commitment, hadn’t I? The load must go through and allthat rubbish. Besides, we were driving this truck to make money and I didn’twant Jo to think I was jeopardizing that by wussing out over a little snow. I’ma native Minnesotan, after all. Nah, we’d press on. Back on the freeway, thesnow was building on the left lane’s surface; it looked to be three inches deep,maybe more. Fortunately, there was enough traffic moving along in the rightlane to blow the surface clear. Well, mostly clear. Then, in a little bit, not soclear.

Still, on we went.

The road was now getting pretty hard to see. I kept the truck on the road byusing those little posts off on the shoulder as guides.

About twenty miles further on, while half way up a 3%-4% grade, I felt the rearwheels break traction. We had a heavy load that didn’t want to go up that hilland a 430 horsepower engine that did. Something had to give and it was thedrive wheels’ traction; I looked in my mirror and saw the rear wheels of thetractor were slightly askew. I’ve driven in enough snow and ice to recognize aserious problem – the rig was in danger of jackknifing. Jo felt it too: “What wasthat?” she asked with a start in her voice.

“Trouble,” I replied. I got off the throttle and the rig snapped back in line. Wewere soon down to 35 m.p.h. and slowing. When I got down to twenty-five, Ithrew the axle interlock47 switch to maximize traction. If I didn’t crest the hill

47(...continued)have tractive power at all eight drivers, not just four. Good for going through snow. Mud too.

before hitting zero m.p.h., we would fetch up on the shoulder where we couldbe smacked in the rear by some other fool out on this winter night. Judging bythe way the snow was coming down now, the idiot would be almost blind, sothe chance we’d get rammed was pretty good. I asked Jo to keep an eye out forsomeplace to park.

Jo spotted it first: A rest area for trucks only. It was just past the crest of thehill we were ascending and maybe a quarter- to a half-mile ahead. I saw the taillights of two other rigs who’d already gotten off and parked. I put thetransmission in neutral and coasted in, using the brakes as little as possible.

Safe at last.

When in snow and sub-freezing temperatures, there is a special procedure forparking a semi (you might want to do this for cars and pickups too; it can’thurt):

• After stopping, drive the rig back and forth several times. Do this over acourse of 20-30 feet. This cools the tires. You want cool tires beforeparking otherwise the dissipating heat from the tires will melt the snowbeneath and later, when the heat is all gone and the melted snow freezes,your wheels will be frozen fast to the pavement. To make sure the tireshave actually cooled, back onto some fresh snow and see if it melts. If itdoes, keep moving around to keep cooling the tires. If it doesn’t melt,you’re OK to park.

• When you park, use only the tractor’s brakes. Do not engage the trailer’s. Engine heat blowing back under the tractor, as well as the residual heatfrom the gears churning away in the drive axles, will dry the tractor’sbrakes and keep them from freezing. Not so with the trailer. As theydon’t get warm air from the engine and heat from gears, they’ll freezelong before they have a chance to dry. If they’re in the “on” positionwhen they freeze, that is where they’ll stay. You’ll have to get someonewith a blow torch to crawl under the rig and thaw things out. That, orwait for warmer weather.

Jo sent the notice we were shut down because of snow and I put the engine onfast idle and loosened my shoes. About three minutes later the Qualcomm

48 Diesel engines don’t produce carbon monoxide. You can sleep in a semi with the

engine running and be sure of waking up.

49 ALBERTA CLIPPER – A snowstorm coming down from Alberta, Canada. A Clipperis characterized by gelid winds and sand-like snow. Alberta Clippers can last for days.

beeped: It was a mandatory shutdown notice that applied to all companydrivers on this stretch of I-80. Under pain of getting canned, we were forbiddento move our trucks until the company sent the all clear. I guess we shouldhave stayed back at Ft. Bridger.

We took stock of our situation. We had just fueled up so we could sit here withthe engine running for close to a week48. We also had shopped at a WalpMartin Idaho before picking up the potatoes so we had a lot to eat. Jo had insistedon stowing three gallons of store-bought water under the bunk so we had noproblem there either.

After a while, I pulled on my boots and parka and got out for some air andnoticed that, in these last couple of hours, it had gotten colder and the snow,which had continued unabated, was making drifts around the wheels that were9-12 inches deep. This was no average winter snow, but a dreaded AlbertaClipper49.

Well, there we were. Jo decided to call Edith and Dale to tell them of thisnewest adventure but we were in the Wyoming outback and our cell phonesdidn’t work – unless we put them on Roaming, but five minutes on Roamingand we could pay down the national debt. We listened to some John Denver fora while, then hit the sack for a good night’s sleep.

Remember back some ways when I said one of the three prime questions on atrucker’s mind is: Where can I go to the bathroom? Well, this was ourpredicament: It’s now mid-morning and the old bowels have taken care ofyesterday’s breakfast and lunch. The urge to go has hit with an urgency thatcan’t be ignored.

What to do? We’re pinned down not only by the snow storm, but by thecompany policy against driving on icy roads. I first thought about getting outand squatting behind the same bush I’d watered a couple of hours ago butsince then a Kenworth driven by a woman has pulled in and she’s directlyfacing the bush. Since last night, lots more drivers have come in off the roadand the parking area is filled up; there’s no longer any place safe from pryingeyes. Another, option comes to mind: Get out on the driver’s side (which is

facing the Interstate) and do it on the ground right there. It’s possible, butthere is still some bit of traffic passing by on the Interstate – road crews,mostly. If some prig – or worse, a highway cop – catches me in the act, therewill be repercussions. Besides, with that northerly wind, I’d freeze my ass off.

By now, several more minutes have passed and I’m in a sweat. I’m afraid thatany sudden movement could break my concentration and result in an explosiveeruption right there in the tractor. Too horrible to contemplate. With allacceptable options foreclosed, I must turn to an extraordinary measure: TheWag-Bag. When we were home, our old neighbors, Brad and Sheila, who areavid outdoor people, told us of the Wag-Bag®. This estimable product is usedby those, like campers, who must carry away what they would prefer to leavebehind. Often used inside a port-a-potty, the Wag-Bag is made of tough plasticfilled with some dry chemical that disinfects urine and feces, and kills odors. It comes with its own storage sack in which the filled bag may be placed anddouble sealed.

With Brad and Sheila’s, imprimatur, Jo had gone to a local outfitter and laid ina supply. Initially, I had poo-poo`ed the idea (no pun intended) of carrying astash of these things but now I was damned glad Jo had ignored my derisivehoots – who knew how long we’d be stuck.

The protocol for using a Wag-Bag is as follows:

• Lay the Sports section of USA Today on the bunk and the floor, just incase you’re off target – remember, you are inside the truck and shouldyou make a mess, you’ll be living with it for the duration. Doff yourpants and socks to ensure there are no obstructions to get soiled, shouldyour aim be off.

• Hitting the target will be important, so make the target as big as possible. To do this, stuff one edge of the bag between the mattress and the lip ofthe bunk, crouch, straddle the bag, reach down to grasp the front edgeand drag it forward between your legs.

• Squatting athwart the yawning bag, brace yourself with one hand on thefloor and use the other to pull your cheeks apart – this last is an absolutemust. Then close your eyes, pray for luck, and let `er rip! Oh, sweet,sweet relief.

50 RELIEF VALVE – This valve prevents the air brakes from being ruptured by too high

a pressure. It’s like the relief valve on a kitchen pressure cooker.

• When the magma chamber has emptied, grab some tissue and reachunder yourself to wipe up. Dropping the soiled tissue(s) into the bag,dismount and quickly twist the bag shut and tie it in a knot.

• Go to the dumpster and pitch it in.

As you and another driver approach the trash bin, knowing winks areexchanged. You both toss in your bags, grin, wish each other well and headback to your respective rigs through the howling storm. Back in the tractor,with this unsettling and degrading experience behind you, you know yousurvived. More than that, you have succeeded; succeeded at something younever imagined you’d never, ever have to do. Still, that knowledge will bring adeep sense of satisfaction. Sort of like having survived a night alone in thenorthern woods.

Now you know the trucker’s little secret. Smart drivers always keep a supply ofWag-Bags, or something like them, in the rig. It’s all part of a trucker’s life.

—

I-80 was now drifted over in spots and there was no traffic to be seen. It waswell into afternoon when a snowplow came by, followed by a few intrepidtruckers with chains on their wheels. But no cars. We brunched on cold ChefBoyardee noodles with sauce and, to have something to do, walked around theparking lot and chatted with other truckers.

The day wore on and in the afternoon, Jo and I decided to nap. When we awokeseveral hours later, Jo told me she had started to hear a “p`too” sound comingfrom the front of the tractor every few seconds. I listened. Sure enough:“p`too,” clear as a bell. “Oh,” I said, “That’s just the air governor’s relief valve50

cycling.”

“But every fifteen seconds?” Jo asked.

She had a point. “I’ll go out and have a look,” I said as I got back into myparka and boots. The valve is on the bottom of a tank mounted just behind thebumper on the passenger side. As I approached it, I could see that the constantventing had blasted a crater in the snow clear to the pavement beneath. P`too. P`too.

I kicked the valve. No change. Got out my hammer and smacked it. Nochange. P`too. P`too. I got back in the truck. Jo had gotten into the driver’sseat to cook the log books and as I climbed in, she laid them aside and, indoing so, happened to look at the instrument panel. “Shit. Look at the airpressure gauges,” she exclaimed, pointing. “We’re down to less than ninetypounds in both tanks” (normal is 120). She was right. The relief valve’sfrequent venting was more than the compressor could satisfy, even with theengine on fast idle. We were running out of compressed air. When thepressure dropped past the safety point of 20 pounds per square inch (p.s.i.), thebrakes would be impossible to release and we would be marooned.

As we watched, the two needles, one for the main tank the other for the reserve,fell toward 60 p.s.i. This is the danger point at which a warning buzzer willsound – and stay sounding until either the engine is shut off (something thatwas out of the question that day) or the air pressure goes back above 60.

Eighty-five. Eighty. Seventy. Sixty. BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE ...

The pressure kept dropping and when the gauges hit 20 p.s.i., the trailer’s redemergency brake knob automatically popped out, just as it was supposed to do.

Now we were well and truly stuck.

“Let’s see if we can kill the frigging buzzer,” I said. Fat chance. The buzzerwas one of those irritating high-pitched things that are the Devils own businessto locate. Turn your head one way and there it is. Move an inch or two and it’salmost – but never quite – gone. We searched for that buzzer for hours, evenpulling out the fuse box and some other guts, but no luck. The accurst thingwas going to screech until we got the truck fixed. Admitting defeat, we simplyturned up the radio to drown out the noise as much as possible.

I got a weak roaming signal on the cell phone and decided to call theBreakdown department. Maybe they could tell me how to silence the buzzer. With my description but halfway delivered, the guy on the other end cut me offwith “Yer brakes is froze. Ya got water in the lines.” I pointed out that ourtractor was just over two weeks old, had only twelve thousand miles on it andcould not possibly have water in the lines.

“Ya got water in the lines,” he insisted.

“Well, whatever.” I replied. “Listen, we’ve been stuck in this shutdown sincenine last night. The snow is still coming down, it is as cold as the bowels of

Hell and we could be here for days. I’d like to know how to kill thatgoddamned buzzer.”

“I cain’t do that,” he said with a fine Tennessee twang. “It’s a safety device andya cain’t fiddle with no safety devices.”

“Thanks for your help.” I hung up.

—

While sitting staring out at the blizzard, a young couple in an SUV pulling a U-Haul went whizzing by and spun off into the ditch. I saw the young man whowas driving get out in a short sleeved shirt, break out a shovel and dig in. Hehad to dig through at least two, possibly three, feet of snow to reach ground. Poor bastard – even if he managed to reach the ground in front of the wheels,the belly of his SUV would still be hung up on the snow beneath. Still, helabored on. And in summer clothes yet.

I got back into my boots and parka and went over to see if I could help, or atleast dissuade him from getting frostbitten out there in the wind – his skin wasalready a splotchy red. He was having none of it. He and his pregnant wifewere on their way from northern California to a new life in Vermont and thesnow and the cold were not going to get in his way. I offered to call a cop andhe agreed. After phoning 9-1-1, I wished him well and headed back to theFreightliner. Well, I did my part. For the next couple of hours, Jo and Iwatched him shovel snow then inch the SUV around so it was facing forward. For an hour after that, we watched him shovel some more, then inch forward afoot or so, then get out and shovel some more. The fool.

Finally, contrary to all expectations, he got the SUV and trailer up out of theditch and onto the shoulder. Walking around to the back, he put the shovel inthe trailer, got back in the SUV and off they went. We waived and wished themwell; a plucky, determined man like that should have success.

—

While puffing on my pipe and gazing out the window at the storm, a rig fromour company went lumbering by. We were in the middle of a mandatoryshutdown; what was he doing on the road? I Qualcommed Waldo: “Whatgives?” The driver, Waldo replied, had to be in Toledo for a bankruptcy hearingso he’d been given special dispensation by the Fleet Manager. Ah, another

51 REPOWER – When a trucker can’t complete a run, he drops the trailer at an agreed-

on location and another trucker bobtails over to hook up and haul it away.

busted trucker. I wondered if it was a new-hire like Jo and me, or an old-timerlike Fearless?

—

At noon the following day (now thirty-six hours into the ordeal) the Qualcommbeeped. Waldo said another team of drivers were on their way to repower51 theload. Really? I reminded Waldo that because I was out of air, all brakes –tractor as well as trailer – were locked up tight and couldn’t be released. How,exactly, did the company propose I get the trailer and tractor uncoupled andmoved far enough apart so the new team could back under and hook up? Gee,nobody had thought of that.

Well, shiiiit.

“We’ll get back to you on that,” Waldo answered. Waldo later told us a wreckerwould be on its way sometime the following day. Jo and I were busy cursingour fate when she stopped, held up a cautionary finger and turned her ear tothe front. She listened for a while then turned to me with a smile: “It stopped –the ‘p`too’ sound. It stopped.”

Both of us scrambled to the instrument panel. Sure enough, both air pressuregauges were heading back up. In less than a minute, they reached the magic60 pounds and the damned buzzer fell silent. Jo reported this salutarydevelopment to the Breakdown department. Maybe we could continue to ourdestination? No. Breakdown decided that, with all that (supposed) water in thelines, our tractor was unreliable. The repower would be made as soon as theother team arrived and, first thing tomorrow, we were to bobtail to theFreightliner dealer in Salt Lake City and have things checked out. To be at thedealer by eight o`clock, we’d leave our parking spot around three the followingmorning.

With the brakes working again, I got out and dropped the trailer while therewas still some daylight. Jo moved the tractor off to a place where it wouldn’tget in the way of the two guys coming to relieve us. By sunset, the snow hadstopped and the sky had cleared, which meant that by 3:00 AM it would be ascold as sin. Just after dark, the other team arrived, hooked up the trailer andaway they went. When we awoke, the local radio station said was -13O F in Ft.Bridger. Man, if our engine had died ...

52 Trucks with air brakes have manual dump valves. These are supposed to be opened

frequently to drain any water that might have accumulated in the tank. However, newertrucks have air driers so this venting is usually not needed – but Jo and I opened them everyday anyway.

—

We got to the Freightliner dealer the following morning at eight sharp. Afterlooking at our problem, the service manager said the relief valve was indeedbum and replaced it. When I went in to sign the chit, I saw a “remarks” sectionof the work order. It had a note to the effect that my company was sure I’d letwater accumulate in the lines52 and the mechanic was to look for incriminatingevidence. This really pissed me off. The company has a reputation for tryingto hang maintenance problems on “driver error” so they can charge the truckertwenty-five bucks a week until the bill’s paid back. I also saw the servicemanager’s note that there was absolutely no water anywhere – the air chamberand lines were as dry as dust. It must have galled those assholes atheadquarters to find out the problem was genuine.

A Week with Jo and Merle

One day Dale called. While we were chatting, he asked what a typicalworkweek is like for a long-haul trucker. I told him that, beginning with ournext dispatch, I’d keep a diary of a week’s activities and show it to him the nexttime we were in town. Here it is. It’s nothing unusual.

Tuesday. We’d completed a trip this morning in L.A., having gotten up at 3:00A.M. from a truck stop on I-15 in Barstow, California, to make the trip’s last leg. We got to the consignee a half-hour late, about 6:30, having sat on the street for30 minutes while a driver in a red Peterbilt made an excruciating backup intothe loading dock of a brewery. The street was old and narrow and by the timethe guy in the Pete made it, traffic was backed up onto the main road in bothdirections. Most facilities built before the mid 1990s, like this brewery,contemplated semis with a no more than a 48-foot trailer. Now that 53 foottrailers are the norm, back-ins can be iffy.

53 SEAL MANIFEST – A document our company employs that records the history of atrailer’s seal. It dissuades crooked shippers and receivers from filing bogus loss claims.

54 BRIDGE LAW – To avoid destructive harmonics as trucks go bumping over bridge

joints, many states have bridge laws that specify the allowable distances between the tractorand trailer axles. California is especially tough on enforcement.

When we finally got to the consignee’s premises, Jo hopped out with the bill oflading and seal manifest53 and headed for the door marked “Drivers Only.” The receiving clerk took the papers and told Jo to move the trailer’s dolly allthe way to the rear, back into door six, and chock the wheels. Moving the dollyback stabilizes the trailer. Were it to stay forward, driving a fork lift onto thetrailer would be like jumping up and down on the business end of a divingboard. With the dolly directly under the hindmost part of the trailer, it’s assolid as a rock. It took almost three hours for the lumpers to unloaded and ataround 9:30, the honcho came out with our paperwork and told us to hit theroad. I closed the doors and moved the trailer dolly far enough forward tocomply with California’s bridge law54.

Our company has a terminal just a short distance away so Jo decides to headthere; we could clean up, eat, and do some laundry. L.A. traffic being what it is,we didn’t get to the terminal until about 10:30. Mind you, we’d already put in afull eight-hour day by this time, but there’s still some work to do – the terminalmanager tells me to go back out, inspect the trailer, checking the air in all eighttires, then fill out an inspection form and turn it in – then we can park ourbobtail and sleep. While I take care of the mechanicals, Jo fills out thepaperwork and turns it in at the window.

By the time we finish it was well past noon. We get out some of ourmicrowavable food from the cupboard, go into the driver’s lounge and havelunch. Jo couldn’t stand watching another old Cops rerun so she took her foodand went back to the truck while I watched the show.

We’re both sleepy so we decide to get some Z`s while awaiting a dispatch. Remember now, we’re in a busy truck yard where there’s diesel engines,shouting drivers, honking horns and barking dogs to contend with, so sleep isnot restorative. Though I log a solid ninety minutes, poor Jo only manages afew fitful dozes.

At about 1:00 P.M. we’re aroused by the Qualcomm’s beeping. We have a newload and we have to bring an empty to the shipper. While Jo set up all the

paperwork for this trip, I go to the terminal office to get a trailer assignment. Naturally, the manager gives us the same trailer we just finished dropping off.

By 1:30 or so, we’re on our way to the shipper’s office a few miles away to getthe bill of lading – we’re to pick up the load itself at a warehouse some tenmiles distant. When we get to the address, there’s no place for a semi to parkon the premises so I just stop in the middle of the street and put on the 4-wayflashers, the motoring public be damned. Jo goes in to get the BOL while Imind the truck. She’s gone for almost half an hour.

The BOL says our load is five huge double pallets of plastic paperclips fromRed China and haul them to Winchester, Tennessee . With papers in hand, wehead to the warehouse. It turned out to be one of those general for-hire placesused by people who have only small quantities of goods to store and ship.

The guard inspects our papers and tells us to pull through the gate, then goaround back of the warehouse and await instructions from the yard boss – this,he says, will be a fellow in a blue coat and yellow cowboy hat with a policewhistle hanging around his neck. The yard boss acts as a traffic cop, makingorder out of the chaos created by there being half again as many trucks as thereare places to park, and docks at which to load them.

At long last, gesticulating and jabbering in his broken English, the yard bossputs me in a queue with a dozen other trucks. I kill the engine and wait. It’sanother ninety minutes before he has a dock for us. Finally, at about fiveminutes to three in the afternoon, the trailer’s loaded. It takes less than tenminutes.

It’s drawing nigh onto the evening crawl when we get under way. Our karmamust be good, for Jo gets directly onto the I-215 freeway and the freeway ismoving at speed. If we can get past the I-215/I-15 nexus in Pasadena beforequitting time, we will beat the rolling traffic jam of L.A.’s rush hour. To thatend, Jo blows off our first scheduled fuel stop on Millikin Avenue and makesdirectly for the one in Barstow, California. Just outside Victorville, Jo wantsme to take it into Barstow but I demur: I’m the night shift driver and I needmy Z`s. I crawl into the sleeper for some badly needed shut eye, leaving Jo tofend for herself.

I awake when Jo pulls the yellow knob in the Barstow truck stop. She’s readyto call it an afternoon so after the fueling, I take over and pull the rig into aparking spot behind the repair shop. Watching the sun go down, Jo and I eatsome more of the generally miserable food we truckers keep in our rigs. By the

55HAMMER – As in “Put the hammer down, good buddy.” It means go as fast as you

can for as long as you can. The term came about in the days before cruise control whendrivers, to prevent terminal leg fatigue, would lay an eight-pound hammer down on the footfeed to keep the throttle open. (On I-5, near Stockton, California, there is an off-ramp to astreet named Hammer Lane. True.)

time we’ve finished, the sun’s set and the first stars are coming out. I start theengine, thread my way through the thicket of trucks queuing at the fuel islandand get back on I-15. A couple of miles up the line, we come to I-40, the road toTennessee. I hit the brakes, gear down to 9th and take the on-ramp. Jo wasalready asleep in the back. We’d driven through the Mojave Desert manytimes, usually in the dark, and tonight was more of the same.

Once past the little Barstow/Douglas airport, I bring the rig up to 60 m.p.h. andswitched on the cruise control. To get comfortable, I undo my belt, kick off myslippers and settle in for a long evening’s ride. California has a 55 m.p.h. limitfor trucks but it is roundly ignored. A trucker can safely go 60, and probablyeven my governed max of 66 and not get a ticket. As I drone on in the dark, theindependents in their ungoverned rigs roar past on my left. When they drawfar enough ahead so they can safely pull in, I flash my high beams, giving themthe all clear; most flash their running lights in thanks. Such are the courtesiesof the road.

Considering that neighboring states like Nevada and Arizona let trucks goanywhere from 65-75 m.p.h., California’s truck limit is too low by at least 5m.p.h. None of us truckers believe for a second that this limit has anything todo with safety. Rather, the California double nickle is used as a veryproductive revenue source. And an example came up this night: About halfway across the Mojave, some bozo in a pimped-out Pete went flying by me likethe proverbial scalded cat. Bedecked with garish running lights, and withjeweled mud flaps swinging in the slipstream, he was going at least eighty(hell, this rig of ours would go eighty too, if the company took off the stinkinggovernor). He was so graceless as to not acknowledge my blipping theheadlights; he simply stayed in the hammer lane55 and passed everything insight.

Presently, I come up on another trucker about a quarter mile ahead who’dlocked his cruise control onto something in the high fifties. I thought about itfor a few moments and decided a speeding ticket would wipe out everything wewould make on this trip. I reset my cruise to 58, pacing the truck in front.

Later, as I come over a crest, I see a car from the oncoming westbound lanedart into and across the median and stop, waiting for me to pass by. As I drawcloser, my headlights catch the reflective insignia on the door: it was aCalifornia highway cop. As soon as I’m past and he’s in the clear, he pulls outinto the left lane behind me and nails the throttle. He’s soon by me and out ofsight. A few miles up, I come around a curve and see his red and blueclearance lights over on the right. He’s snagged someone. I move left as thenew laws rightfully require and as I come upon the scene, I see the cop’s felledquarry is none other than the hot dog in the Pete. Oh, joy and bliss. Feeling alittle less put upon by obeying the limit, I continue boring into the dark desertnight. It’s almost midnight and any normal person would be in bed soundasleep. It’s going to be a long night.

—

A few more miles down the road, I open the wing window for some fresh air. At fifty-eight miles an hour, the engine was turning 1,375 r.p.m. and itsdroning, accompanied by the rhythmic wink-wink of the dashed white line,had become hypnotic. The only things available to break the spell are theoccasional signs. It goes on like this for mile after mile after mile after mileand I must find a way to stay awake. As evidenced by the girth of manytruckers, a lot of them use food. At your next opportunity to do so, look at thedashboards of some OTR rigs. You will see them buried under piles of potatochip bags, candy bar wrappers, Big Gulps and empty buckets of ColonelSanders extra crispy. Judging by what I see waddling around in truck yards,eating appears to be the device preferred by most. Others abuse their cellphones shamelessly, running up huge bills. Others will haunt the airwaveswith their over powered 40-channel CB radios.

Some drivers will have imaginary friends with whom they carry onconversations. Like the fellow Fearless and I came across in a truck stop mens’room in Buttonwillow, California. We were washing up when this large fellowcame charging through the door, heading urgently toward a urinal. He wastalking to someone, though his interlocutor could not be seen – I assumed hewas using a little Bluetooth headset and yacking on his cell phone. Only whenthe pitch of his voice alternate with looks to his right and left did I realize hewas actually having a 2-way conversation with himself. Fearless and I watchedin amusement as the driver chatted with his alter-ego. Fearless said the mandefinitely needed some home time. Now that I’ve been driving for a while, Iunderstand. Were I a solo, and not trucking with Jo, I’d go bats from theisolation.

Others truckers have a box of tissue close by and spend their time twiddlingtheir dicks to the memories of sweet Betty Lou.

Me? I replay past events from my life, changing a factoid here or there to seehow things might have turned out differently. Jo? She counts birds. Thisweek it’s blackbirds. Last week it was red-tailed hawks. But she can do that;she drives in the daytime.

—

A bit of reverie gets us close to Kingman, Arizona. A short way out of town, theQualcomm beeps. It’s a mandatory weather shutdown. They had to be kidding– the sky’s filled with stars horizon to horizon and the road’s bare and dry. Butthey aren’t: Between Kingman and Flagstaff, a snowstorm has closed I-40. Fortunately, we find a place to park at a truck stop just inside Kingman’s citylimits. It has a restaurant, toilets and showers. We hole up for the night. Nothaving had much sleep since dropping off a load of prefab windows theprevious week, the break is welcome. I got into the upper bunk and am out inseconds.

Wednesday. Morning and the sky is clear. No doubt the shutdown will belifted soon so we decide to get breakfast and take showers before theQualcomm sounds off. If it beeped now, our good consciences wouldn’t let usignore it. After chow, as I’m heading back to the rig with a bag of ice for thecooler, I see three trucks from our line heading out. The shutdown’s obviouslyover and everyone’s rolling again.

We toss a coin to see who drives and Jo loses. My usual gig is the night shiftbut in cases like this when Jo and I both manage to get a night’s sleep together,there’s no hard and fast rules as to who drives and who sleeps. While Jo startsthe engine and makes ready to go, I undress and get in the sleeper. I’m prettywell slept out so I nap fitfully as Jo drives through Arizona and into NewMexico. Well inside New Mexico, I finally awake for good and join Jo up front.

In the late afternoon, about 20 miles outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico, theQualcomm beeps: It’s another shutdown. A second winter storm has closed I-40, this time from Moriarty, New Mexico, to Tucumcari. Jo and I look at eachother and in one voice declared “We’re getting off at the next truck stop.” Before we even go two miles, we come upon a portable electric sign thehighway department’s set out. It tells passing motorists and truckers that I-40is closed and to get off the road, and get off now. Jo spots it first – a very large

truck stop at milepost 123. She clicks off the cruise, hit the brakes and pullsonto the off ramp.

Word was out on I-40. As the truck stop came into view I’m looking at its yardand all I see are row after row of parked trucks. I tell Jo it doesn’t look good;the place seems packed and we may end up parked on a side street, blocksfrom the toilets. “Well,” she replies philosophically, “We still have a bunch ofWag-Bags.”

Jo turns from the off-ramp onto the road leading to the truck stop; there aretrucks parked along the curb already. Ever the optimist though, Jo pulls intothe truck stop anyway. The place is jammed. Were it me behind the wheel, I’ddrive back out, pull up at a convenient curb and called it a night, but never oneto say die, Jo drives through the yard looking and hoping and ... There – on theend of the second row – a vacant spot. Truck stops always have convenientspots like this one reserved for the handicapped (why, I don’t know becausehandicapped people can’t get CDLs) so Jo dismisses this spot as such andkeeps crawling along. But I take a good look and I see no stylized wheelchair. “No,” I blurted before she can move on. “I think it’s OK. Pull in beforesomebody else snatches it and then I’ll look to make sure. If it is a crip spot,you can always move on but if it’s not we’re home.” It wasn’t, so she parks,safe and sound.

While we’re securing the rig, I look in my mirror – a queue of semis a mile longhas formed just since Jo turned in. For the rest of the night, these truckerscruise through the yard, hoping against hope they can find a space.

It’s not evening yet and in the gloaming we see the dark, roiling, cloudshanging over the eastern hills beyond Albuquerque. The storm, no doubt.

We repair to the truck stop’s greasy spoon, stopping first at the lavatories. What a dinner: Jo orders a taco salad that’s wilted and so dry the hamburgermeat has a crust. I opt for a chicken quesadilla that arrives without thepromised guacamole and sour cream, though it does have a yellowed sprig ofbroccoli tossed on the top. My milk’s warm too. But we’re hungry so we eat.

—

When we emerge, it’s totally dark. We head back to the rig. Jo plans to catchup on the paperwork while I decide to peck around on the computer. While so

56 WESTERN STAR – The Bentley of trucks, highly prized by all truckers.

57 SPOTTER – Someone who will stand outside, watch where you are going when you

back up and signal you to stop or turn or whatever. My spotter is Jo and Jo spots for me.

58 BLIND SIDE – Like a 45 but the hole is on the passenger’s side and you only have

your driver’s side mirrors to guide you. Bad. You really need a spotter to do a blind side.

engaged, a black Western Star56 pulling an unmarked trailer idles down therow; the driver is craning his neck, looking for a parking spot. Across from us,there’s one that’s been open since we pulled in but it’s too narrow for thedrivers that have come by. Ah, but not for this guy. He stops his rig, gets outand walks to the back to evaluate the situation. I see him nod his head insatisfaction then climb in his rig and perform an immaculate back in with nospotter57 and only one pull-up. That took skill and talent. I put on my strawcowboy hat, get out and walk over to the front of his rig. When the driver looksout, I doff my hat and give a salute. I get a broad smile in response.

After an hour or so, Jo’s caught up on the logs and I’m tired of typing. We needto get some air so we decide on a quick walk around the yard to look at thetrucks. Up on the south end, in the opposite row, is a livestock truck. Weapproach and see a load of veal calves going to slaughter. Bad enough whenit’s mature cows on their way to the air gun, but calves? One of them moos andpokes his small snoot through the grating. He’s looking for a succor as he andhis trailermates stand in the cold surrounded by roaring engines and dieselstink. He and his companions will, likely as not, be dead inside 24 hours. I’mtempted to go over and give the nose a pet or two but I’m afraid I’d be moved toopen the trailer’s door and let them all out. We keep moving.

—

This isn’t turning out to be a very good run for us. Two nights in a row we’vebeen shut down and when we’re shut down, we make no money. On the brightside, though, we’ve gotten more sleep than we would have otherwise. I guessthat’s the truck driver’s dilemma: Make money but get no sleep. Sleep, butmake no money. About 10 o`clock, and after spotting for a driver making ablind side back in58, we hit the sack.

Thursday. A little after 3:00 A.M. the Qualcomm beeps with the news: Theshutdown’s lifted and we can get under way. I’ve gotten just five hours sleep,so I get out my plug-in cup and brew some extra strong coffee. I also lay outmy pipe, plus bags of burnt peanuts and Cheetos. This should keep me awake.

59 WHIZZ CALL - Stopping to pee.

Daylight sees us on I-40, heading east. I’m taking the first leg fromAlbuquerque into the Texas panhandle where, well after sunup, we park infront of an overcrowded truck stop and change drivers. As I’ll have to be at thehelm all night, I go back into the sleeper. When I awake hours later, Jo’s inOklahoma. The weather’s warm and great goobering quantities of bugs adornthe windshield – Spring has come at last. Jo takes it across the border intoArkansas where, with dark setting in, it’s time to switch. Jo pulls into awayside rest area where I clean off the bugs and take a crap.

I brew some more coffee and lay out a supply of Cheetos, Bits-of-Honey, Good-N-Plenties and Fritos. I toss a bottle of water onto the passenger’s seat toquench the almost-certain heartburn, and off we go. The night wears on, theendless strip of pavement passing beneath the wheels. Christ.

Because of the foul weather along I-40 the past few days, there’s a pent-upstream of trucks rolling down the Interstate. At close to 2:30 A.M. Fridaymorning, I’m ready for a pee and a snooze. I pull into the first rest area I seeonly to find it chock-a-block with trucks. I pull through and move on toanother 60 miles ahead. Shit; it’s packed with semis too. Ah, but as I’mpulling out on the exit ramp, I spot an opening on the shoulder. I pull in andpark, setting the engine on fast idle to keep the A/C running. Stopping’sawakened Jo so we both take whizz call59 – she in a Wag-Bag and me in my jug.

I ask Jo to set her cell phone’s alarm for three hours and I join her in the lowerberth where we snuggle up like spoons in a drawer. Believe me, were it not formoments like this, we’d have kicked trucking to the curb long ago.

We each get a few hours of good dream-filled sleep before the alarm goes off.When Jo awakes, she hops behind the wheel, leaving me to continue myslumbers and we’re off again. I could have had a good rest but for the spine-snapping bumps in I-40 that wake me up three times. NOTE: In 1956, semisgrossed out at 56,000 pounds and our Interstates were designed around thisnumber. Thanks to the 1980’s mania for “deregulation,” semis now gross out at80,000 pounds. This is about 20,000 pounds more than the roads were designedto take and is why the Interstates are so beat up. Remember this the next timeyou are asked to cough up the taxes to pay for highway maintenance.

Jo stops for fuel about 10:00 A.M. and asks me to drive – she’s beat. So was I,but we’re only going to Winchester, Tennessee, about three hours away, so I’ll

be OK. After taking on fuel, I pull the rig up into the pay lane and, aftergetting the receipt, mix a cup of very strong coffee and plug it in. I get behindthe wheel, fire up the engine and we’re off. It’s raining. We get to theconsignee at 1:30 P.M.

The receiving clerk checks the number of the trailer’s seal against the one onthe BOL then tells me to park the rig around in the back of the lot. He asks formy cell number and tells me he’ll call when a dock becomes vacant – this isgoing to be a live unload. After I get the rig parked, Jo and I split a salad fromthe cooler, pull the curtains to shut out the light, and take our respective berthsfor more sleep. I’m right in the middle of a dream when, at 3:30 P.M., the clerkcalls and tells me I’m to back into door thirty-six. Per our usual procedure, Ihop out, brake the seal, remove our padlock and open the doors. Jo backs inand kills the engine.

The lumpers are still emptying the trailer when the Qualcomm beeps. We havea new dispatch: At 4:00 A.M. tomorrow morning, we’re to pick up a highsecurity load in Nashville and take it to Secaucus, New Jersey where we’re tomake delivery at 4:00 P.M. on Sunday. With the trailer finally unloaded, wehead for the closest truck stop where at 6:00, we fuel, get some food, takeshowers and go to bed. To make the pickup, we have to get up aroundmidnight. We’ll both be rummy, so to make sure that we do get up, we set ourrespective cell phone alarms fifteen minutes apart.

Saturday through Sunday. The drive to New Jersey is uneventful. As we nearthe delivery point, the Qualcomm beeps. Our weekend dispatcher tells us thatafter dropping the load, we’re to head directly to the terminal south of Newarkwhere a short-haul load awaits; another trucker had pulled in, parked, and quit.

We pull into the company’s terminal about 8:00 Saturday evening. Jo goes in toget the paperwork while I putter around the truck. Jo’s almost dancing whenshe comes out: The load’s going to a drapery manufacturer in close-byConnecticut and delivery’s not scheduled until Monday morning at 6:00. Thismeans we’re not only getting Sunday off, but we’re going to get two solidnights of uninterrupted sleep to boot. We almost weep with joy.

—

The terminal building, as usual, is a dingy dump but the microwave oven andthe TV both work so after nuking some Dinty Moore beef stew and a bag ofpopcorn, we watch two hours of Law and Order reruns. Halfway through the

last show, we’re joined by another driver and the three of us watch Jack McCoyonce again nail the bad guy.

On Sunday, we arise late, bobtail into town, get a decent brunch, catch a first-run movie then have an early dinner at a steak house. We almost feel humanagain. As we must get up before 3:00 A.M. Monday, we decided to sack out assoon as we get back. I consider taking another shower – it’s going on threedays – but the shower room cum toilet has no ventilation fan and some creaturehad dropped an exceptionally foul load and not flushed so I take a pass. I’ll tryfor one on Monday or Tuesday.

Monday. The roads in the east are in as good a condition as the Appian Way. Were it not for the modern air suspension systems in today’s semis, youcouldn’t drive on them without a kidney belt. With all the tolls these statescollect, how can this be? Probably graft and corruption. Anyway, after a bone-jarring drive on I-95 through New York into Connecticut, we’re trying to findthe consignee but as usual, the directions suck. We’ve ended up on a road notdesigned for semis and have to work our way back to the freeway over narrowlittle roads serving a neighborhood of upscale homes and which specificallyprohibit vehicles with more then three axles (we have five). Oh well. At oneintersection the corner’s radius is insufficient to permit passage of a 53-foottrailer so I have to spend twenty minutes of the public’s precious rush-hourmoving back and forth in baby steps, maneuvering to get around the cornerwithout crushing or sideswiping anything. Passing motorists are honking,flashing their lights and giving us the finger. I mush on.

I’m cussing and sweating and ready to knuckle someone’s head when the littleroad we’re on suddenly widens and several large industrial buildings come intoview. Jo lets out a whoop: “Look!” she yelps, pointing to a road sign. “This isFarquart Street” – the road we’ve been looking for. Good Lord in heaven, we’ve found it by accident.

I pull in fifteen minutes ahead of our appointment time. At the gate, a sourlooking guard in a dirty blue uniform demands our papers. Flipping from pageto page, she inspects them, then walks to the back of the trailer to remove theseal. Coming back to my window, she thrust the papers at me: “Here,” shesnarls, “Open your doors and back into door number forty-five.”

“I shall, my dear,” I reply, “just as soon as you sign my seal manifest.” Shewrinkles her brow, heaves a sigh and holds out her hand with a flexing,grasping motion.

60 DROP & HOOK – Where you drop an empty trailer off at the shipper’s facility and

hook up to one the shipper has loaded and sealed. Then off you go. You can do a drop andhook in ten minutes. We love drop and hook.

Once backed in, I get out to stretch my legs and spot a couple of other truckersmilling about. It’s a nice day so I get out to join the conversation just asbanging noises start coming from our trailer. Unloading has begun. This wasa good augury; we may get out of this place early enough to beat the New YorkCity rush hour. After a bit, the other drivers have gone their separate ways andI head to the sleeper where I joined Jo for a little nap. By 11:00, I’m back at thereceiving desk, asking when they’ll be finished. The clerk takes umbrage atmy impudence: “Don’t get your drawers in a bunch, buddy. We got a lot a shitto do around here. We’ll get `t you. Just go back in your rig and wait.” Eventually, more noises come from the trailer and, finally, around 1:30, someguy knocks on the door, hands me the paperwork and tells us we were free toleave.

We’d sat on our rumps for almost the whole day and won’t make a single centfor our time. We head to a truck stop where I meet a fellow who drove tankersin Iraq (more about that conversation later).

Tuesday. Waldo sends a dispatch for another drop and hook60 job. We’repicking up a load of high-fashion clothes in New Jersey for a west coast retailchain. We’re to take our empty to the shipper where we’ll drop it and hook upto one the shipper’s already loaded and sealed. The shipper is on a side streetnear Exit15 from the Turnpike. Our appointment is for 4:00 in the afternoon.

While I’m driving, Jo gets on the Qualcomm and asks Waldo for directions. Though we’ve been to New Jersey often, our trips have always involved bigoperations on the main drags. Today we’ll be on the surface streets in an oldsection of town. Jo and I wonder how a 70-foot semi will do in such tightquarters. Waldo says no problem. We stop at a rest plaza on the Turnpikewhere Starbucks has a shop. I go for a double shot of espresso. Jo offers todrive the last leg so I can have my coffee in peace.

The Qualcomm comes back with directions. I call the shipper to confirm them:“I’d make sure yer dolly’s set all the way forward,” says the voice on the otherend. “Some`a these streets got pretty tight turns and you’ll want the shortestwheelbase ya can get. In fact,” he says, “Our place is a new building but theneighborhood dates from the 1900s and the streets ain’t never been improved. Trucks back then was horse-drawn carts,” he chuckles.

Getting to the shipper isn’t hard, but the roadway is like an old ally and there’sa few times I don’t think we can get a playing card between our rig and the carsparked along the curbs. Our radio antenna cuts through the branches of theold trees overhanging the street and twigs fly everywhere. Twenty m.p.h. is asfast as Jo dares go. The last 4-5 blocks are particularly bad; the street twistslike a slalom course but Jo makes it to the shipper’s place down at the end – anisland of modernity amidst a sea of ancient dilapidation.

There’s a very sharp, very tight curve leading into the shipper’s premises andJo’s sweating it as she made the turn. I get out to spot for her and she makes itthrough after executing a small backup. She does run up onto the curb, butthat’s acceptable under these conditions.

It’s near 4:00 P.M. when Jo pulled onto the shipper’s lot and pulled the yellowknob. I search for someone who knows what to do. A buxom young woman ina natty blue uniform with a glistening silver badge sees us coming and walksout to meet me. She tells me to pull around back, drop the trailer, then bobtailback and await instructions. At the dock immediately to my left I spot a trailerwith our company markings; the one we’d be hauling to L.A., no doubt.

This whole New Jersey thing is bad. We’re not enjoying ourselves.Everything’s too damned small, too damned narrow and too damned crowded. Jo bobtails back to where our chesty hostess waits. She hands us our bill oflading – yes, the trailer I spotted is ours. We’re soon hooked up and Jo’screeping back up the old ugly street.

The directions to I-80 that Waldo sent us called for getting on Highway 23 at aninterchange just a few blocks ahead. Thank God. We’d finally be out of thisnest of convoluted, icky little streets and back on a highway – the place wheresemis are supposed to be. I keep a sharp eye out for our turn. I see it. Threeblocks ahead: Highway 23 – it passes over the street we’re on and the atlasclearly shows the interchange Waldo told us to take.

But no. As we go the last half block to the interchange, I see problems: There’sno entrance ramp to Highway 23 – the interchange doesn’t exist. The map haslied. And, again, so have our company’s directions. Jo stops in the middle ofthe street. We sit there looking around like the lost souls we were. Now whatthe hell do we do? Traffic’s piling up behind us and people are getting angry. We’d already blocked the intersection for two minutes and rush hour is hardupon us. We can sit no longer. I let out with a string of oaths. Jo and I finallyagree there’s no way out but through, so she put the truck in gear and pulledthrough the underpass.

61 BUTTON HOOK – A turning technique used to get onto a narrow street to the right. In a button hook, you approach the intersection hugging the curb then, just before reachingthe crosswalk, you swing out to the left consuming both lanes. When traffic is clear, you pullstraight ahead into the intersection. When you reach the middle, you crank the wheel all theway to the right. Once onto the new street, you keep the wheel turned and head for the curb,straightening out only when the trailer’s wheels have cleared the curb. The button hook turngives you enough room to avoid dragging the trailer’s wheels over the curb and preventscretins in small cars from passing you on your right as you execute the turn.

On the other side, the surface street is menacing: Narrow, kinked and filledwith parked cars. I break out in a clammy sweat. So does Jo. We go up the hilltoward the next traffic light. Christ, what to do. WHAT TO DO??? ... –Ah, ha. I spot a small sign saying “truck route” with an arrow pointing left: “Go thatway,” I tell her. When the light turns, she cranks the rig onto the southboundlane and we lumber on. The snorting of our diesel causes people to lookaround. When they see us, they give a start: There probably hasn’t been atruck this size on the road in twenty years. We go on for one block, thenanother and in the third, I spot another “truck route” sign with an arrowpointing right, up a narrow 2-lane street westbound. When the city fathersdeclared this a truck route, I think they had in mind delivery vans, not 70-foottractor-trailers. But the sign does say “truck route” and we are a truck, so withmy concurrence, Jo takes the turn. To do it, she performs a super-widebuttonhook61, blocking both southbound lanes behind us as she waits for theside street to clear. Even with the buttonhook, and using every inch ofpavement, the trailer’s wheels kiss the right hand curb.

Dogs scatter and children cry as we lumber up the little street, the enginebellowing near the red line and the 13’6” high trailer ripping off low hanginglimbs. No, this truck route was not built for semis. Crashing through the treeslike an elephant in musth, we press on, block after frightening block.

—

It dawns on me that we haven’t seen any more “truck route” signs for a while. This is not good. It means that at some point along the way, we’ve gotten offthe path and are traveling in a no-man’s-land. While the street has a yellow linedown the middle, it looks awfully residential. We’re both peering anxiously outthe windshield and watching the mirrors like hawks. Getting desperate, Jooffers an ill-considered suggestion. Seeing a residential street with a dashedyellow line down the middle, she concluded it must be some kind of localthoroughfare and says she wants to try going down it to see where it may lead. Maybe it’s a way out of this rat’s nest. “Oh, Christ no!” I blurted. “You godown that thing and we’ll get so damned stuck they’ll have to send in a

wrecking crew to cut this rig into pieces and haul them out one-by-one.” Joaccepted this and pressed on.

The only thing we came across that might have pointed a way out was a signsaying the New Jersey Parkway was nearby. But our hopes were soon dashedas Jo recalled that trucks are forbidden on Parkways – Turnpikes, OK; butParkways, never. As we crested another rise, Jo made passing note of anapproaching overpass – an old thing made out of stone. A dim recollection of ...something ... causes me to look up from the atlas. Yes! New Jersey, along withNew York, have a whole shitload of low bridges and most are not signed normarked on maps. Hit one of them with a 13’6” trailer and it’ll rip off thetrailer’s top like an anchovy can. A blotch of yellow on my right catches my eye– I snap my eyes over. It’s a low bridge sign warning that the thing aheadoffers but 11’6” clearance.

“STOP!” I shriek. Jo stabs the brakes. Smoke comes from all 18 tires and westop with the rig’s nose half way through the intersection.

There’s only one choice, and that’s to turn right. As bad luck would have it, thecross street has a 3-foot high barricade down the center so there is no way Jocan make a buttonhook. This whole thing was starting to get to her just as itwas getting to me but she’s doing the driving and that makes it worse for her. “Now what are we going to do?” she wails as looks at all the backed up traffic. She pops the yellow knob, parking our semi athwart two major roads in themiddle of rush hour.

“Well,” I say, “Make the turn. And don’t worry about the 4-wheelers. Theyaren’t going anywhere until we get out of here.” I get out to spot. I go up frontto watch the driver’s side’s nose to make sure Jo doesn’t bang the bumper. While I keep an eye on that part of the rig’s anatomy, Jo is checking themirrors; there is a street lamp right at the curb next to the crosswalk and it’ll beall to easy to crunch it. As I was motioning Jo to come forward, she stops andtoots the horn. I look up and she is pointing to the right side of the truck. I goover to have a look. Crap, if she pulls forward any further, she’ll wipe out thatlamp post – she is but inches away from it now. Jo’s going to have to pull abacking maneuver, here on the street. We’re blocking all four directions andpeople are becoming agitated. We get ugly looks and horn toots. I shrug.

I tell Jo to watch my hand signals then trot to the back of the trailer. Jo followsmy guidance and within a couple of minutes of backups, pull-ups, turns andmore backups, she’s gained enough room to make the turn. Jo cranks thewheel hard to the right and creeps forward as I run to catch up. I hop in as she

straightens up. We trundle down this alien road for three blocks until Jo spotsan extra-wide shoulder and pulls over. Popping the yellow knob, she vows tonot go another inch until she knows exactly what to do, and how to get on thefreeway. She wants to call Waldo but I scoff; it was his poor directions that gotus into this fix in the first place.

“OK, tell you what,” I say. “You stay with the truck and call Waldo. I’m goingto walk up ahead and see what I can see.” There’s a lot of traffic on this streetso I know we’re not on a dead end, but a little way up, the street curves off tothe left and goes downhill. A little reconnaissance is in order – could beanother low bridge awaited, just out of sight.

A block up, I spot a neighborhood tavern on my right. Due to the trees, Icouldn’t see it from the truck, but I see it now. Surely there must be somelocals inside who know their way around. I’ll go in and ask. I walk into thedriveway just as an off-duty cop is getting out of his personal car. I put on mybest ingratiating smile and spread my hands in an expansive gesture: “Goodafternoon,” I say, announcing my presence. “I don’t suppose you could give astranger a little advice?”

This cop is right out of a TV show. Barrel-chested, pants riding low on the hip,pendulous belly hanging over the belt, late forties and with close-cropped saltand pepper hair. His features are large and angular and his dark complectedskin is rough, thanks to a long-ago bout of acne. When he speaks, his voice is agravelly baritone with a heavy Joisey accent. “You must be looking for I-80,”he says with a grin I’m sure is reserved strictly for off-duty hours.

I have to laugh in return. “Does it show?” I ask.

“I saw the semi,” he says, nodding in the direction from whence I’d come. With that, he gave me directions to I-80. It turns out we aren’t that far away butin this maze of little streets that intersect oddly, we’d never have found our wayout by ourselves. Not ten minutes later we’re on I-80 and heading west. Neverhave I been so happy to see an ugly, beat-up old freeway.

—

Well, there you have it. A typical week. I have to say that driving a semi acrossthe land eventually becomes routine. You’re doing the same old, same old, allthe time. You become practiced. Soon, your only adventures come in drivingto a new customer in a new city. Moreover, our company, like most OTRcompanies, has a base of repeat customers and you spend most of your time

hauling their loads. In truth, after six months on the road, driving a semi is asadventurous as a morning commute. Now I’m not minimizing the risks, forthere are risks aplenty in trucking. But I am saying that, basically, after half ayear behind the wheel, the thrill is gone.

Headlights

Truckers, most of them, hate high beams. Not me. I like to see where I’mgoing. But many of my colleagues positively come unglued at the thought ofusing high beams. Say the words “high beams” and they’ll pull their hair,grimace and screech “High beams? He said ‘High beams.’ HIGH

BEEEEEEAMS!’” Their eyes roll like a cow’s at the slaughterhouse.

This hatred of high beams goes way deep with some. Not long ago, I saw aspiffy red Peterbilt in a truck stop whose high beam lamps were cracked anddiscolored and full of water and rust. It looked as though they had been thatway for years. The outboard low-beam units, like the rest of the rig, were cleanand neat. The driver could not fail to know his high beams were out. He’d seethem when he opened the hood to check the oil. Or when he washed the rig –which it looked like he did quite often. No, I think he was making a statementto the world: I hate high beams so much I won’t even replace mine when theydie.

Fearless Leader was one of these. One night, on I-80 about 1:00 in the morning,as we were heading to Salt Lake City across the empty, trackless waste fromLas Vegas, I clicked on the high beams. There was no one in front of me and amedian a good 50 yards wide separated us from the oncoming lane, which wasalso unoccupied. Fearless was snoozing in the shotgun seat and I was enjoyingthe blessed light when he erupted: “Turn those damned things down,” hebarked in his best drill sergeant voice. “You’ll blind another driver.”

“But Fearless,” I said gesturing out the windshield, “there are no otherdrivers.”

“Makes no difference,” he growled. “There will be and you don’t want to blindthem.”

Blind another driver? Hey, on a 2-lane road with head-to-head traffic, sure,high beams will dazzle an oncoming driver. They will also impact the driver

62 34-HOUR RESET – This is the number of federally mandated consecutive off-duty

hours a driver must get after a 70 or 80-hour work week. Uncle Sam is thinking of doing awaywith the 34 so truckers can be worked endlessly Perhaps by press time, he will have.

ahead of you with the intense reflection in his rearview mirror. But on anempty road? One time, Fearless was at the wheel on I-81 when we heard somechatter on the CB and he turned up the volume. It was a conversation betweentwo truckers – or should I say the rant by one against another: “Goddamn it,”spat the overwrought male voice, “You call yourself a trucker? I told you toturn down those high beams, SO TURN THEM DOWN AND TURN THEMDOWN NOW!” he shrieked, the voice murderous with rage.

“Hey, peckerhead,” retorted an angry female voice, “I told you I don’t have myhigh beams on. Here are my high beams.” Up ahead there was a truck, closeenough so I could still resolve the tail lights into separate red dots and see thereflective tape on the trailer’s upper corners. Further ahead was a dim redspeck I would have missed if I hadn’t been looking for the action. Immediately, the high beams of the truck ahead came on. “Satisfied, youasshole? Now shut the fuck up,” she said, and clicked her lights back down.

Fearless grabbed the CB’s mike and addressed the aggrieved first driver: “Heythere, good buddy, sounds like you’ve been on the road too long. Best findyourself a nice motel and take a 3462.”

—

I think part of the truckers’ general antipathy to high beams comes from ourmirrors not having the same kind of attenuation features as found onautomobiles – no day/night setting. It’s true that when some thoughtless turdcomes up on me with his high beams going, they are indeed dazzling. But all Ido is either look away or hold up my hand to block them – I sure don’t stare atthem in the mirror until I’m blind.

Out on the freeways in the dark of night, I leave my high beams on all the time,dipping them when overtaking another vehicle and when passed. Ninety-ninepercent of all oncoming truck drivers, seeing by my marker lamps that I’m atruck, automatically assume I am using my low beams and never flash. For theother 1% who catch on, I simply ignore them. Am I being cruel and rude? Don’t think so, a lot of 4-wheelers come at me with the high beams on andwhile I can tell the high beams are on by their more glittery appearance, they don’t bother me. If theirs’ don’t bother me, why should mine bother them?

—

I suspect the reason so many truck drivers run down so many animals is theirrefusal to use high beams when it’s appropriate to do so. Here are somepersonal stories (and no, I never hit an animal).

One night in Idaho, I came upon a small herd of Antilope grazing along theedge of the road. I had my high beams on so I caught them soon enough to geton the air horn and scatter them with a long honk. If I’d just been cruisingalong with the low beams, their dun-colored fur would have made themindistinguishable from the surrounding landscape until I was right on top ofthem and wouldn’t have had time to get on the horn. If one had turned andcome out onto the road, I’d have hit him.

Just recently, while coming down the western slope of Vail Pass on I-70, I camearound a tight curve that wound around a hill and, thanks to my high beams,caught some motion to my right that would have been invisible with lowbeams. Whatever it was, it was close, so I got off the throttle and moved myfoot onto the brake pedal. Then the shape bounded onto the road. It was adeer.

I hit the brakes hard; Jo went spilling out of the sleeper bunk onto the floor,letting out a yelp. The deer, poor creature, didn’t know what to do and actuallystarted moving toward our rig. By the time he changed course, he was so closeI could no longer see his legs over the hood. Had I not caught that firstglimpse of him in my high beams, I would have run him down for sure. Aseries of blasts from my air horn finally focused his thoughts; he turnedresolutely to my right and bounded off the road.

A close call. Had I hit him, an animal of that size would have wiped out thefront of the truck. The turbosupercharger’s intercooler would have beenruptured, as would the air conditioner’s condenser. The engine’s radiatorwould have been holed as well. The truck would have been out of commissionand Jo and I would have had to wait for hours until a wrecker could be sent toour rescue.

Of course it would have been a lot harder on the deer. If the impact hadn’tkilled him outright, it would have broken his bones and torn up his innards. As I hadn’t brought my magnum with me, I couldn’t have put him out of hismisery with a couple of shots to the head: Jo and I would have had to standhelplessly by, listening and watching as the poor thing thrashed and cried inhis death agonies until succumbing to his injuries.

The deer and I are both grateful for high beams.

—

Then there was the consummate ass of an Amish man, out in his horse-drawnbuggy at three in the morning on the shoulder of a quiet Missouri secondary. The company had routed us over this highway as a shortcut between twoInterstates. For several miles I’d been seeing yellow warning signs depicting ahorse-drawn buggy, meaning an Amish community was somewhere close by. Naturally, I assumed that none but a pluperfect fool would be traveling alongthe shoulder of a high-speed road in a jet-black buggy at three A.M. on amoonless night with naught but a red reflector to signify his presence. Butthere he was, an Amish dude in one of their trademark buggies, flogging hispoor horse for all it was worth, hoping to get off the road before someone likeme ran him down. (At this hour, he was probably heading home from anassignation with the town trollop, but that’s his business.)

As usual, I had on my high beams and they saved the day. At first, I took thething I saw on the shoulder to simply be a dead truck or perhaps an abandonedbox that might have fallen off a passing flat bed. But, wait. Was it moving? Itseemed to be. And swaying from side-to-side a bit too. But it had no lights,just a red reflective triangle. Odd. I began to slow.

Then I saw the horse as it clopped along at a fast trot, made visible by the glintfrom his steel shoes in my high beams. By that time, I was down to about fortyand hit the brakes. When I was going around thirty, I was still safely behindthe Amish fool and pulled to the left, giving ample clearance as I passed.

I say that if God had meant for humans do go about in the dark, we’d have eyeslike an owl. The high beams stay on.

Trucking in Iraq

Jo and I pulled into a truck stop in New York state where we spent the daydoing laundry, cleaning out the rig, resting, and schmoozing with othertruckers. One of the fellows with whom I struck up a conversation had just runover a curb in the yard and torn out the brakes on his flatbed. While heawaited repairs, we began to shoot the breeze. It turned out he’d driven a

tanker in Iraq a year or so back and had a revealing story to tell about thenative men.

Now, as we all know, Muslim men are as misogynistic as hell. For example,they force their women to wear those hideous black death shrouds in thesweltering heat of the mid-east while they get to go around in loose fitting shortsleeved shirts open at the collar. If their school-aged daughters are raped, theymurder them for having “brought shame on the family,” for having had sexoutside marriage. Women are gladly denied not only educations, but medicaltreatment as a doctor might see some skin, shaming the family. Women whoseburkas are caught by the breeze and luff to show a smidgen of ankle are beatenby the morality police with hunks of rebar. Single women who spurnunwanted advances are liable to have glasses of battery acid thrown in theirfaces. Women cannot leave their houses without a male escort, and this malemust be her husband, brother or father. Speaking of fathers, they feel free toforce their daughters, through beatings or worse, into marriages the daughtersdon’t want. Women, married or single, who take lovers and are found out, aredragged to soccer stadiums and shot in the head by the morals police – or,alternatively, beheaded, as was done to the Saudi princess several years back.

As I said, we know all this.

Why, though, are these things done? Muslim men say they commit theseenormities out of “love” and “respect” for their women. But how can suchincongruous and paradoxical thinking be possible without the mind going intoa meltdown? Well, there is an explanation and it makes fine sense when youthink about it. The trucker explained it to me.

—

When he was in Iraq, this fellow worked for an outfit that had a mix of Iraqiand American drivers, delivering diesel fuel here and there. Each afternoon,convoys would form up. The drivers would sleep in their rigs overnight and, atthe crack of dawn, the convoys would make their runs.

After a few months, our American trucker got promoted to something likestraw boss. Part of his job was rousing the drivers before first light so theycould attend to their toilettes and chow down before departure. This he did bysmacking an open palm on the driver’s door and hollering something like “let’sgo.”

One morning, our boy came up to the rig driven by Mustafa and Abdul, twoIraqis fresh from Baghdad. There was movement within the truck so our guystepped up on the running board to say good morning and peeked in thewindow. There, lost in a heat of passion and oblivious to our hero’s presence,were the two Iraqis in flagrante delicto – Mustafa was pumping Abdul in theseat and giving him a reach-around in thanks. Aghast at what he saw, our boyquietly stepped down and walked away. After giving the Iraqis enough time tofinish, he approached loudly and banged sharply on the door. “We’ll be rightthere,” chirped one of the paramours.

Later that morning, our boy mentioned this experience to another Americanwho hooted with laughter and said: “Shit, man, they drill each other in the assall the time. Get up `bout four ay em and look around at the rigs; the ones’ thatgot Iraqi drivers will be jumping all over the goddamned place.”

A few weeks passed and our American was burning with curiosity. Aboutthree-thirty in the morning, he quietly stole up to the Mustafa/Abdul rig, one ofseveral rocking furiously and, as before, he climbed onto the running boardand peered in. Yup, there were these two fine specimens of Muslim manhoodgoing at it again. Only this time Abdul was doing Mustafa who, on noticing ashadow pass over him, looked up and beheld our guy’s grinning face framed inthe driver’s window. The two Muslims broke off and hitched up their drawerswhile muttering something in Arabic.

Mustafa and Abdul avoided our guy for the next day or so but eventually, ourAmerican straw boss came upon Abdul having tea under one of Iraq’s fewtrees. Taking a chair from the adjacent table, the American swung it over toAbdul’s table, then sat. “Hey,” he said to the discomforted Muslim, “I didn’tmean to bust you guys’ karma there the other mornin.”

Abdul raised his hand in acknowledgment, nodded, and kept his gaze firmlyfixed on the ground: “I’m so ashamed,” he said with trembling chin.

The American said “Hey, a guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do. Not a problem. But, hey, Abdul, I thought you was married. Why ain’t ya home pouring thepecker to your wife?” then made an obscene gesture – an index fingerthrusting repeatedly through an “OK” sign.

At the word wife, Abdul gave a start as if he’d been stung. He began to fidgetand turn funny colors. “Women are precious,” he said, wringing his hands. “Women to be worshiped and have babies. Women must not be subjected to ... To sex. Only have ... sex ... with woman is to have child.”

“Oh, bullshit, Abdul,” said the American, “You’re a young dude. If I was yourage and had a wife, I’d go home, rip that fucking burka offa her, lick her `tilshe screamed, then fuck her brains out. Maybe have her blow me too.”

Hearing this, Abdul became agitated. He bolted from his chair and, throughclenched teeth, hissed: “Not to talk like that about women! Is against Allah’swill. Only BABIES with women – BABIES!”

The American was dumbfounded: “Ya mean ya don’t diddle yer women just forfun? Hell, me and my old lady ...”

“Fun? FUN?” shrieked the Iraqi as he tore at his hair. “Is not for fun. Funwith woman is not Allah’s will. We do not touch woman. We do not look atwoman. Woman is for making children only.” spittle was forming at thecorners of his mouth. He took a few deep breaths and continued. “If womanenjoy sex she is devil’s own work. She is bad and must be stoned!”

The American sat back in his chair, nonplused. “Abdul, buddy, that ain’tnatural. Whaddya think your hang-down is for? It’s not just for takin a piss,you know.” The American trucker shook his head, then continued: “Christ,Abdul, you’ve gotta be hornier than an eight-peckered goat, gettin no ass likethat. No fuckin wonder you’re didlin your chum.” Abdul blinked hard,swallowed, then hurried off.

—

“That’s quite a story,” I said to the flatbedder.

“Yeah, no shit,” the trucker laughed. “Those old boys are so screwed up in thehead, the only way they can get their rocks off now is to hit each other in thestinkhole. They’re madder `n March hares.”

I would agree. No wonder they fly airplanes into office buildings.

Joan Claybrook Is a Horse’s Ass

A self-appointed savior of the world, Joan Claybrook made her bones workingfor Ralph Nader and later served Jimmy Carter as Secretary of Transportation. Joan has been out of the public eye for a while but retains much influence in

63 Point of Interest. In Dachau, the infamous Nazi concentration camp that killed its

inmates through overwork, the workday was also eleven hours. Makes you think, doesn’t it?

those places where regulations are concocted. Joan’s latest affront to commonsense are the new Hours of Service (HOS) rules.

The HOS rules tell drivers how much sleep to get and how long they can staybehind the wheel at one time. To enforce the HOS rules, truckers, under painof humongous fines running between $1,000.00 and $1,500.00, must keep logbooks and present them to the cops when asked. If there are discrepancies inthe logs, or, worse, the log shows you drove too much or didn’t spend enoughtime in the sleeper berth, you get not only a ticket, but possibly an Out ofService tag slapped on your truck. Should the latter happen, you are forbiddento move it until The Man removes the tag. If you do move, you lose your CDLfor a while and can take a nice vacation. The government takes HOS veryseriously.

The government has been trying to fine-tune the HOS rules since forever andthe rules are in a constant state of turmoil. One iteration will be in vogue for afew months or years only to see Joan and the nabobs come breathlesslyrunning forth with a new improved version. I recall the photo in USA Today(circa 2005) of Joan with a smug, self-satisfied smile talking about her newrules and holding up a sample log book as if it were a pearl of great price.

The HOS rules with which we are currently saddled contain several evils,especially for team drivers. Let me state that I believe Joan’s goal isworthwhile: it’s to ensure that truckers get enough sleep. It’s the rules’execution I find troubling. Joan’s new rules mandate all drivers confinethemselves to the sleeper for the eight uninterrupted hours, plus two more forgeneral down time. (And yes, the rules actually say “sleeper.” I guess Joanforgot there are motels.)

Well, the industry, shrewd operators that they are, came back with a rejoinder:OK, Joan, you’ve got your eight hours of sack time so let us have the driverbehind the wheel for eleven straight hours with an additional three hours onduty (“on duty” meaning such things as loading your trailer and scribbling inyour log book). Joan bought it. So, now in 2006, here are our new Hours ofService, for both solos and teams:

• Up to fourteen (14) hours may be spent working, of which only eleven (11)hours63 can be spent driving, followed by at least ten (10) hours rest, ofwhich eight (8) consecutive hours must be spent in the sleeper.

64 MEAT MACHINE – A truck driver. Like any good machine, say a diesel engine,

meat machines are supposed to start up and shut off on command and run flat out for as longas the management wishes with nary a complaint. We are supposed to need nothing in theway of “maintenance” except our legally mandated eight hours of sleeper berth time each day.Requests for home time, sick leave and other such are considered by management to beequipment failures. If a meat machine takes time for showers and goes shopping for food – letalone sneaks in some time for movies and dinners – the company thinks it got a lemon.

• In any 7-day period, a trucker can work no more than eighty (80) hours.

Jo and I’ve worked under Joan’s new HOS rules for these past months and Ican tell you they are plain inhuman. Now the industry realized that underJoan’s plan, it could be accused of running rolling sweat shops so it agreed to aformula in which after a 70- or 80-hour work week (a choice left to the trucker),the trucker gets 34 consecutive hours off – wow. Ah, but unless you’re verylucky, you will most likely spend those 34 hours hooked to a trailer, sitting in atruck stop, listening to idling diesels, feasting on heart-plugging food andplaying video games. Just four times in 2006 have Jo and I been able to take34s.

The idea that we meat machines64 could ever deserve some down time isunacceptable so our dispatches are planned in a way that precludes as many34s as possible. Under the new rules, a trucker’s work week is a perpetuallymoving window and you can be kept driving without any breaks until theInfernal Pit freezes over. Here’s how it’s done: When you’re updating the dailylog with your hours, you keep a running total. Each day you look back over theprevious eight, and total the hours. You add in the hours you drove today andsubtract the hours you drove nine days ago – those are now “expired hours”and drop off. If you hit the 70 or 80 hour limit, you must park the rig and take34 hours off. To make sure you don’t accidentally get a 34-hour reset, thecompany insists you send in each day, via Qualcomm, the hours you worked,including the number of hours since your last 34-hour reset. Using these data,the company can jigger around with your dispatches to ensure you get enoughtime away from the wheel to avoid timing out, but no more. If you had severalbig days, your next dispatch will let you stay parked until 00:01 the nextmorning so one of those days can drop off.

Of course a driver can demand a 34-hour reset when his or her hours are closeto the magic number and, in most cases, the company will grant them. But inour company, with its policy of forced dispatch, if they think you could still geta load in before the hours are up, you get the load and bye-bye 34-hour reset.

—

Let’s talk a bit more about the sleeper, that focus of Joan’s ardor. Rememberwhen I said there were three things that occupied the minds of truck driverseverywhere and that NO 2 on the list was: Where and when can I get somesleep? Well the industry’s answer is: In the sleeper berth. The sleeper is acreature begotten circa 1940 as an answer to a lady trucker’s plight. Legendhas it that some poor gal out in the wild and wooly west had become a truckerwhen trucking was seen as an exclusively male preserve. Her intrusion wasresented by many – so much so that male truckers would hector herunmercifully, threatening assault, rape and worse.

Motels were then a novelty so when truckers needed sleep, they just laid aboard across the seats and stretched out, but for this poor woman, that invitedunwanted attentions. So one day she got hold of a large wood packing crate,cut a door into its side and, after putting the 5th wheel at its rear-mostextremity, strapped it onto the deck, right behind the cab. In it she keptbedding, food, clothes and a shotgun, and when she got tired, she’d stop, gointo her sleeper, lock the door behind her and rest unmolested. Soon otherdrivers began to see crates as not only a way to get some comfort (screenedwindows kept out the mosquitos and biting flies while letting in the cool nightbreezes) but also to beat the high costs of restaurants, truck stops and motels. It didn’t take long for the truck manufacturers to spot the trend and before youcould say nighty-night, they were offering sleepers as extra cost options.

Today we’ve achieved the zenith of sleeper design in line-haul trucks, the“condo sleeper,” like our Freightliner (covered earlier). While no larger then a2-man cell at Sing Sing prison, and even dingier, today’s sleeper has becomethe OTR trucker’s primary residence. A team can live in the truck for a weekwithout ever setting foot on solid ground except to fuel.

However, I have to tell Joan that getting eight hours of solid uninterruptedsleep in a roaring, howling semi that is jouncing down our rutted, pot-holedfreeways at 65+while intermittently slowing and stopping for roadconstruction, potty stops, weigh stations and inspections, is outrightimpossible. It’s like trying to sleep while Patton’s Third Army troops throughyour bedroom with solders occasionally stomping on your face, shining lightsin your eyes and kicking you in the rump hard enough to leave bruises. Despite what Ms. Claybrook believes, eight hours of uninterrupted, restorativesleep is only obtained in a bed in a dark, quiet room, not in a sleeper.

—

I think Joan is an arrogant, conceited twit who dabbles in things she doesn’tunderstand. Joan needs to spend some time living our kind of life and thensee how she likes her rules. To that end, I know of a two-woman team thatwould be delighted to take Joan with them for a seven-week stint. The rulesare:

• Joan gets to choose which gal will be her partner, but whichever one it is,Joan has to keep the same hours.

• When her partner is driving, Joan sits in the passenger’s seat and staysquiet. After all, in real life, the driver has no one to talk with so whyshould Joan?

• Joan must stay awake. If she nods off, her partner gets to jolt Joan with acattle prod.

• When it’s the other driver’s turn at the wheel and Joan and her partnerare to sleep, Joan gets the sleeper berth. For the satisfaction of havingJoan aboard, her partner will gladly sleep in the passenger’s seat.

• Joan has to eat when and where the other drivers eat. While theteammates are stoking up on truck stop food, Joan can’t call a cab and goto the closest Outback for prime rib.

• When it’s her partner’s turn to drive, Joan gets to do the dirty work –Joan has to get out and do the fueling, clean the bugs from thewindshield and check the truck.

• When Joan has to poo or pee, she must hold it until whoever is drivingcan stop. There won’t be any of this nipping off to the nice warm toiletnext to the master bedroom, or down to a cushy rest room in a federaloffice building. Joan will have to use a Wag-Bag, a SaniCan or a stinkingbush by the side of the road – whatever is available – just like us.

Joan Claybrook, I think, will not be happy. My bet is she’d have a good cry andthrow in the towel after three days. However, with her consciousness thusraised, perhaps Joan will no longer look upon truckers as villainous knuckle-draggers who need constant minding. Maybe she’ll even come up with somegood ideas that will actually help us. One can hope.

—

Here’s something that’ll make Joan chew the carpet. Like truckerseverywhere, Jo and I have found it impossible to live within the HOS rules –specifically the idea that a human being can spend an eleven-hour shift behindthe wheel every day and remain sane and functional. Consequently, we baggedthe rules early-on. Like every other hubby/wife team we’ve met, and we’ve metlots, we decided that each will drive no more than is comfortable and safe, be ithalf an hour or twelve, then the other takes the wheel and to hell with theHours of Service. As far as our log books go, we do what all other red-bloodedAmerican truckers do: We simply cook them.

And it’s easy to do. As we go down the road, we accurately record on a yellowtablet, exactly when and where we stop. Later, we transcribe the cheat-sheet’sdata onto our logs. Jo and I may have split an eleven-hour shift 50/50 with eachof us switching off every two hours, but as far as our log books are concerned,they’ll show one of us has driven the whole gig, just as Joan specifies.

Should we get pulled over, we don’t want to get jammed up so we always makesure the logs never fall farther behind than what can be entered in 30 seconds. Should we ever see blue lights behind us, or be directed into an inspectionstation, that half-minute is sufficient to update the logs, for stopping a semi isnot like stopping a car – it takes a while and you have to find a suitable spot.

This did, in fact, happen one night at a weigh station on I-5 in northernCalifornia. As I crossed the scale, an overhead red light went on instructing usto pull in for an inspection. I hollered for Jo to get up and while I slooooowlydrove around from the scale to the inspection shed, Jo made the bogus entries. By the time the guy in the inspection shed asked for our logs, they were spic-and-span and cooked to well done.

Of course there’s a Plan B: Should we be unable to make our fraudulent entriesbefore Johnny Law sticks his nose in the window, I’d explain that I’m drivingbecause Jo has the screaming crud and I had to take over; I’m simply trying tofind a safe-haven for us.

We don’t get too cocky about cooking the logs. We know there’s a good chancewe’ll get caught someday. To avoid that day as long as possible; we payattention to what we’re doing and keep the logs as current and correct as wecan.

65 For obvious reasons, I’ve changed the location.

A Sad Event

We were hauling a load of computers to Newark, New Jersey. The trailer wasfull from the head end right to the doors. The street value? Who knows, buthijackers love loads like this: Shoot the drivers, haul the rig to a warehouse afew miles away and unload the loot. Within 24 hours they’d, have sold everyunit.

This is a high security load and the protocol says we can’t stop for two hundredmiles unless a cop or the DOT pulls us over. The two hundred mile figurecomes from three factors: 1). Most highjackers aren’t too smart and will haveforgotten to fill their gas tank and will run out of gas before the two hundredmiles have passed; 2). Most jackers will have forgotten to go to the bathroombefore following us (something all high security drivers make sure to do) andwill have to stop to take a leak, and; 3). Following a semi for that long tends toget noticed (going two hundred miles takes almost four hours). If we spot a carfollowing us for more than an hour, we’re supposed to get in touch withSecurity and they’ll deal with it.

Twenty-odd miles outside Nashville, Tennessee65, we were the only thing onthe star-lit road. Even when we finally did see headlights behind us andgaining, it turned out to be just another truck; some independent in hisungoverned rig sailing along at near eighty.

NOTE: Sometimes, a shipper will hire off-duty cops to accompany the truck inan unmarked car. One driver told me a shipper did so, but neglected to tell thecompany about it. After seeing the same nondescript sedan following him for ahundred miles or so, the trucker notified Security and they called the highwaypatrol – who promptly busted the sedan of off-duty cops and a merry time washad by all.

On this Monday morning, dawn was breaking behind some thunderheads andheat lightning flashed a dull red in the east. I was cruising along at sixty-twoor sixty-three with Jo zonked out in the sleeper. Puffing on my pipe andspeculating on the chances of rain, I saw a solitary car come onto the freewayfrom the on-ramp we’d just passed, and close in. Mindful of the high securityload we carried, I kept an eye on it. As the car drew abreast, I saw it was aMitsubishi Eclipse maybe ten years old. I looked down into the passenger seat. It was empty; the driver was alone. The Eclipse moved on ahead and was soon

a dim red speck and I went back to watching the lightning and thinking aboutrain. The thunderheads were now visible in the growing light. Soon, trafficbegan to build as more people headed for work.

Then up ahead a mile or more, I saw a fast jumble of lights in the median andin a moment or two, some of the cars ahead hit their brakes, began to slow andhead toward the shoulder. More road construction? Probably, for I saw dustover in the median as well as other lights moving oddly. I killed the cruise andbegan to slow. Then the cars directly ahead began to stop and as they did, Isaw that the dust was actually smoke and steam coming from several wreckedcars The jumble of lights I’d seen was an accident taking place.

As I put on my 4-way flashers and parked on the shoulder, I saw a white FordF-350 pickup lying on its left side in the median. Up ahead maybe twentyyards, and also in the median but facing back in the direction from which ithad come, sat a maroon Buick with a torn up front end. Three or four cars hadalready stopped when I popped the yellow knob. I told Jo to call 911 – to tellthem there was an accident and a bad one. I got out of the truck, and joinedthe two other fellows who were already running to the median.

My first stop was at the Buick, whose driver was sitting on the hood andshaking like a leaf. He was talking on a cell phone. He looked OK so I ran tothe overturned truck which, at first blush, looked to be the vehicle in the worstshape. The window was either rolled down or broken out so I called out toanyone who might still be inside. A fellow behind me said he was the driverand he was OK, but he wasn’t so sure about the occupant of the little car (theEclipse) he’d just hit.

I turned and looked up onto the westbound lanes, and sure enough, there it sat.

The Mitsubishi was demolished. The passengers’ door was ripped off and awoman from one of the cars that pulled up had come over and was leaninginside, ministering to the driver. I ran up out of the median to the driver’sside, which was closest to me, and looked in to see if I could help.

I saw the poor devil behind the wheel. The man, a fellow I took to be in hismid- to late-thirties, was splayed out like a rag doll. The back of his seat wastotally sprung and laid so far back it resembled a recliner. The woman leaningin the passenger’s side was holding his head so it wouldn’t fall back over hisshoulders. The driver’s feet were buried under the collapsed dash and were notto be seen so I had no idea as to their condition. His right forearm, however,was so badly broken it seemed to have another elbow right in the middle and

the hand was wrapped around the gear selector. The left hand was draped overthe bottom of the steering wheel as if the driver were cruising lazily down acountry road.

The driver was semiconscious and immobile. He lay there, jaw agape, makingsome odd sounds but I couldn’t tell if he was trying to talk or groaning withpain and shock. His eyes were closed. I saw no blood.

The young woman holding his head didn’t seem to be enjoying herself so Icame around what was left of the Eclipse and leaned in beside her. As thepassenger’s seat was torn out, there was plenty of room for us both. I asked ifshe’d like me to take over to which she replied with a vigorous Yes. She washolding his head in a compress she’d jury-rigged as blood had been coming outof the guy’s right ear. His head, she said, had been lolling about so she’d raisedit to be in line with his torso, which was reclining back and to the right. Withgreat care, we traded positions and I took hold of the compress making surenothing moved. The blood continued flowing from the ear.

The driver was still making those odd little noises so I began to talk to him,offering assurances that help was on the way and he would be all right. Otherobservers came, looked and went. A minute passed, maybe two. Then he tooka turn for the worse – the noises stopped and he became very quiet.

Presently, a fellow in a white shirt with a logo embroidered on the left pocketleaned in. He was wearing latex gloves and seemed to know what he wasdoing. We acknowledged each others’ presences with direct gazes and quicknods. This fellow began to ask questions about the driver’s condition but I cuthim short, saying I had just gotten there myself and knew nothing. With that,he reached in and began to gingerly examine the driver. After a bit he told mehe could find no pulse in either leg or in the left arm. He said that because thedriver’s legs were jammed under the crushed dashboard, there was no way oftelling if the driver was bleeding from leg fractures or traumatic amputations.

Next, he held his fingers to the driver’s neck to check for a pulse in the carotidartery. Though he found one, he told me it was very weak and irregular. Healso said blood was now coming out the driver’s left ear. He advised me toeither move my hand or put on a rubber glove as the blood was running downover my fingers.

While the fellow in the white shirt was telling me this, the driver took anotherturn for the worse: he began spasmodic and irregular inhalations, his bodycontorting with each labored breath. It’s called “agonal breathing” and it’s

what you do just before shuffling-off your mortal coil. The mechanism in thedriver’s brain that regulated breath was going haywire. Observing this, thefellow in the white shirt withdrew from the Eclipse and spoke to someonestanding close by: “He’s dying,” he said.

“Yes, I agree,” the unseen companion replied. With that, the white shirt leanedback in and resumed his observations.

A voice over my shoulder announced the arrival of the highway patrol; I’dheard sirens in the background. “Sir,” said a young cop maybe in his mid-thirties, “The EMTs are on their way and should be here any second. Whydon’t I take over now?” It was a rhetorical question: Without waiting for myreply, he leaned in and took hold of the bloody compress, easing me out of theway. With as much delicacy as we could muster, he moved his hands in as Imoved mine out.

I stood and moved away from the ruined Eclipse. Through the broken rearwindow, I could see the driver’s shoulder continue to shudder with eachtorturous breath while the nice young cop held him as gently as a motherwould her babe. I went back onto the grassy median to watch events unfold. My left hand was damp and sticky with blood from the driver’s ear.

Within what seemed an hour but I’m sure was only moments, the medic unitpulled up followed by a ladder truck. Instantly, one medic leapt out andhurried to the Eclipse. For a few seconds, he talked with the highway cop andthe guy in the white shirt, then reached in to relieve the cop while two othermedics opened their truck’s doors and unlimbered a Gurney. The medicsbegan ministering to the driver. “How is he?” asked the man who hadwitnessed the accident. “Not good, I’m afraid,” I said and told him what little Iknew.

We noticed the driver of the overturned Ford and asked how he was doing. Thedriver said he was a bit rattled but thought he was OK. We’d noticed he wasrubbing his neck a lot so the witness suggested he go up and see the medics. The man hesitated at first, not wishing to admit he might need help, then said“Yeah, maybe I should,” and headed for the fire truck.

—

One of the witnesses told me the guy said the Eclipse had been doing betterthen 70 m.p.h. when he passed him, and then passed the Buick. After a bit, theBuick pulled into the left lane, accelerated, and began to overtake the Eclipse.

The Buick gained on the Eclipse and eventually began to pass. Then, for noapparent reason, the Buick began a lazy drift to the right and tagged theEclipse in the left rear fender just behind the wheel. Bumping a car in thisspot causes it to spin out. The Eclipse smacked the steel guard rail on the rightshoulder at 75 m.p.h. and ricocheted off like a rifle bullet. The Eclipse shotacross both eastbound lanes, rolled over twice as it went across the median,then went into the westbound lanes where it was struck obliquely in thedriver’s door by the aforesaid pickup.

The driver’s door of the Eclipse disintegrated and the driver took the full hit asthe big Ford’s bumper came into the passenger compartment. The Eclipsepretty much exploded. Coolant, oil and debris were everywhere. The rearportion had gotten so completely mangled that both rear wheels were torn offtheir moorings; one had gone off into the weeds, the other came to rest face upthree feet from the car.

The witness looked at me and, nodding toward the Buick, said: “I think he justnodded off. Fell asleep at the wheel.” Yes, that would be a logical surmise. The hours just before sunup – the time this wreck took place – are the worst forthat. In fact, these hours are so notorious for accidents caused by sleepingdrivers that our company forbids trainees from being behind the wheelbetween the 4:00 A.M. and 7:00 A.M.

The Buick’s driver looked miserable as other highway cops began to gatheraround him and press for information. If they find his driving at fault, if theydeem him to be the cause of the accident, he is in truly deep shit and he knowsit. Even if he doesn’t go to prison, he’ll be hit with a lawsuit that will cost himhis home, his savings, maybe his career. His wife might leave him, as manywives do when their husbands are ruined by their own follies. The Buick’sdriver raised his eyes to the westbound lane and the Eclipse. You could justhear him think to himself: “If only I’d pulled off the road for a fucking nap andgot some goddamned sleep.”

Then we noticed the medics had stopped working on the driver of the Eclipse. They were just milling about and talking while the Gurney sat unoccupied. Itdidn’t look like the guy in the Eclipse made it.

I got back in the truck and told Jo what I’d seen. I put the truck in gear and weresumed our journey east. Eventually, the rain started to fall.

—

One can only imagine what took place later that day and how the newsdisrupted lives.

• The wife and mother, who will now be alone, will eventually cope and goon to raise the kids by herself. But tonight she will sit up by herself,watching T.V., afraid to go to the empty bed. All she has of him now arethe memories and his scent on his pillow.

The memories will eventually fade and the scent will vanish. His clotheswill go to the Good Will, while his tools, rifles and fishing gear will go tofriends. The years will pass and one day she will look at an old photo ofhim and will wonder: Was he just a phantom?

• His mother and father will be bereft in a way that passes understanding. The grief will not only spoil their lives, but shorten them as well.

• The kids will find all sorts of bad things are happening. Their father isgone. There’s a vague but profound sense of unease in the home. They’ll begin to act out.

• Friends will often gather and drink too much when they remember him. There will be unfillable holes in their lives.

• The people with whom he worked will wonder who can possibly pick upthe slack? Sure, someone will be found to take his job, but the companywill have lost a lot of momentum.

Of course, it could just as easily go the other way.

• His wife could breathe a sigh of relief at the news of his death. No morebeatings. No more humiliations. No more fights. No more infidelities. No more worries about getting the clap each time he insists on hispeculiar brand of rough and nasty sex.

• The kids will no longer know dread – the dread they felt each time theirold man come roaring through the door with a snoot full.

• His parents will have release from the shame their loutish son hasbrought upon them.

• Friends? Well he never really had friends, but those who knew him willfeel the earth has been cleansed. And they will indeed drink to hispassing, saying “I know one shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but ...”

• At work the boss will say “Thank god. Now I don’t have to try to figure away to can his sorry ass without getting sued.” Co-workers will gatherthat night at the joint across the street and have a party.

Let’s hope, for the sake of the hearts and souls of those who knew the man inthe Eclipse, it’s this latter scenario which comes about.

Living the Load

Tiny, the Mississippi peckerwood, came through the door of the driver’s loungeand settled his ponderous bulk in a small plastic chair that almost screamedfrom pain. Tiny brought his evening meal with him in a shopping bag whichhe set on the floor beside him and withdrew, first, a family sized bucket ofextra crispy KFC, then a tub of coleslaw, then a large bag of pork rinds followedby potato chips, a doublet of Twinkies and, incongruously, a Big Gulp of DietCoke.

These he arrayed in a semi-circle in front of him and after looking at them withthe kind of lust and relish most men reserve for a nude woman, attacked themlike a starving dog. Stuffing as much as he could in each mouthful, he’d chewit two, maybe three, times, then swallow the mass with an audible gulp andwash it down with a big swig of soda. The effort soon had Tiny’s shaven headglistening with sweat.

Jo and I’d come to the company’s Texas terminal several hours before afterdelivering a load up in Ft. Worth. Jo had gone into the laundry room to do theweek’s wash while I repaired to the sofa to watch CNN – some Islamic deathcult was inflicting more barbarities on civilians in the Mid-East and war was inthe wind. In this half-hour segment, some nazi-like commentator, a scrawnyblond woman with a face like an axe, was spewing calumnies and slandersagainst a bearded fellow who just sat there and took it like a man.

However, the smacking and belching off on my right made it difficult toconcentrate. Morbid fascination drew the eye to Tiny and his dinner and thenews show soon lost its attraction.

Then a man/woman team came and in and, recognizing Tiny, gave a wave ofrecognition and headed toward his table. Spraying crumbs from his overfilledmouth, Tiny said hello and bid them sit. Soon, several more drivers drizzled inand joined the three; a conversation soon began. I managed to tune them outand refocused on the screeching blond.

Then suddenly, Tiny slapped a greasy palm onto the table and said in a loudvoice: “Well, Goll Dang it. You know what I hauled `tother day?” He swunghis eyes conspiratorially from one member of his little entourage to the other,leaned as far forward over the table as his belly would permit and hissed: “TVs. Flat-screen TVs.” A gasp was heard from all as Tiny sat back in his chair. “Yesser. And big-uns too – whole mess a forty-six inchers. Plus lots a little-unstoo, a-course. I knows `cause I done looked at the bill-o-lading,” and noddedwith a self-satisfied smile.

Tiny was Living the Load. A lot of drivers do. It’s like the lyrics of an old JulieAndrews song ... I’m the luckiest girl alive, for I danced with a man who dancedwith a girl who danced with the Price of Wales. Living the Load is a vicariouslife; you’re conflating yourself with what you expect other people value.

Living the Load keeps a lot of OTR drivers going. In fact, I think it’s one of thethings that attracts many to the profession. These guys become imbued with asense of self-importance that is directly proportional to the nature and value ofthe load. As if a little of the glory of what’s in the locked and sealed trailersomehow rubs off on them. Sounds stupid I know, but there it is.

These drivers are like many football fans, those flaccid couch potatoes whoidentify so closely with a team of robust and vigorous men they’ve never metthat they’ll break down in tears when a game is lost. Or run around in adrunken euphoria, trashing the neighbor’s property, whenever a game is won. These fans will cut their hair in the pattern of the team’s logo and even getvanity plates for the car in the form of the team’s name. Football fans and Tinyhave lost their own identities and taken on that of an idealized Other.

Drivers like Tiny envision how the load will be put to use, who will use it andthen pat themselves on the back for having been the key to making it allpossible. And if the load is something like TVs or computers, they dream ofhaving one of the items for their very own. Kind of like the guy in an ancientVW who just looked at a Lambroghini through the showroom window and nowplays a mind game with himself in which his clapped-out beater is a V-12wonder car. Walter Mitty himself.

—

While Tiny and his little group had been talking, another, older, driver hadcome out of the kitchen area where he had nuked a Box O`Noodles. This man,who was as dry and thin as Tiny was oily and fat, had taken a seat at anadjacent table and had been trying to catch what was on CNN too. But hearingTiny marvel at the load of TV sets, he joined in.

“Aw Jesus H. Christ.” said the older man as he turned to Tiny and threw downhis spoon. “What the fuck difference does it make to you what’s in thegoddamned trailer? It’s not like someone’s inviting you to reach on in and helpyourself to a free sample.” Tiny stopped in mid-word and more crumbs fellfrom his mouth. “Far as us drivers is concerned,” the thin man continued,“These fucking trailers may as well be stacked to the rafters with crates of dogshit.”

The conversation stopped. Tiny blinked with embarrassment and looked downon the pile of food and debris before him. The others looked away to avoidawkward eye contact. Tiny’s little fantasy world had just been dissed – and infront of his hangers-on to boot. Tiny’s face turned red and his small child likefeatures became distorted with rage. Tiny looked like he wanted to kill theother driver but before Tiny could struggle out of the chair, the other fellowwould be half-way to Galveston.

Perhaps the older driver did Tiny a favor: He brought Tiny down to earth andforced Tiny to face reality, breaking the spell. Who knows, maybe Tiny mighteven get out of trucking.

The First Snow

We were on hand for the first snow of the 2006/2007 season out in Utah.

We had a load to deliver in Salt Lake City on a drizzly Friday morning at 6:00. Idrove the last leg in from Ft. Bridger, Wyoming on I-80 through intermittentrain; it was definitely Fall. Color was coming in everywhere else. The Wasatchrange, the mountains one must pass through when coming in from Wyoming,is one of those areas where it can’t decide if it wants to be desert or forest. There will be thick stands of trees for a while, then it’ll turn arid with nothingbut weeds and dust. But the Wasatch are pretty and they make a dramatic

backdrop for Salt Lake City, jutting up as they do from the Great Salt Lake’splain.

We dropped the load at a terminal out by the airport then went to a truck stopfor some eats and minor repair work: after 115,000 miles, the windshield wiperblades were shot. Of course the manager had to call our company’s Breakdowndepartment for authorization and Breakdown decided it was time to have thetractor serviced, it being Fall and all. We didn’t get out of the shop until closeto 5:00, right in the depths of rush hour.

While waiting, we got a dispatch. Our new load was from a shipper abouttwenty-five miles north of Logan, Utah, and our dispatch said we could pick itup any time, but no later than 22:00 local time (10:00 P.M.). We were to take theload to our company’s East L.A. terminal – a run of some seven hundred andfifty miles – and had two days to do it. Plenty of time to get some quality sleepalong the way. The sleep was needed too, for the drive from Chicago to SaltLake City had been a real grind. Both of us had been fighting colds all the wayand the thing we needed most was some good sack time. (Oh, what wewouldn’t have given for a nice warm motel room with a soft bed and crisp whitesheets with the smell of bleach still in them. Ah, well.)

We got to the shipper with a half-hour to spare. We’d been there three timesbefore and once, when we were exhausted, they let us park the rig in their yardand zonk-out. Hoping the experience could be repeated, I asked the shippingclerk if we might park for a snooze and he said sure. We found a convenientplace in the sea of mud, parked and made ready for the night. After watching acouple of minutes of the Cold War thriller Thirteen Days, we turned in.

We awoke to a gray, cloudy dawn and after dressing I parted the curtains andgot out to empty my jug (hey, in the days before indoor plumbing, the chamberpot was a standard and accepted part of everyday life – so why does everyonelook at me funny when I mention my jug?). As I was pouring the contents intoa little mud puddle behind the trailer, I happened to look up and ... Gad, snow. White, fresh, clean, bright snow. The snow line, which looked as though it hadbeen inscribed with a ruler, was at about 1,500 feet and below that it was earlyFall. Higher up, the summits and crests were still wreathed in storm cloudsthat looked like boiling blue foam. The first snow of the season had arrived. To be sure, it would get warm later that day and most of the snow would melt. The heavy, lasting stuff wouldn’t come for another few weeks.

I suspect most of the kids thereabouts were tickled pink. But not us truckers. When we see snow – even when it’s far away on distant hills – we gnash ourteeth. Snow is the bane of our lives.

You have to go ever-so slow in snow. Not only will you be late for pickups anddeliveries, getting your rump chewed as a result, but it will take you longer toget where you’re going, so your income will suffer.

The accurst salty spray from the vehicles ahead will cover your windows andheadlights in a sticky film that can only be removed by a hundred-buck truckwash. If you happen to own your rig, you can almost hear it corrode as the saltdoes its mischief.

Accidents are more probable by two orders of magnitude. Jackknives,rollovers, head-ons ... Whatever it is, it’s more likely to happen in the snow andice.

And my favorite: Getting shut down or marooned – as happened to us inWyoming. This early Wasatch snow was a reminder to:

• Make sure the rig was stocked with at least three days’ worth of food andwater.

• Bring warm clothing. I’m talking parkas, mittens, insulated boots, furhats ... the works. To hold all this in the sleeper, you will probably haveto leave your summer stuff behind. Figure on needing winter clothingsuitable for spending several hours in -25OF temperatures.

• Bring a fully charged cell phone that can operate in the old analoguemode that still prevails in the outback, which is the most likely placeyou’ll be stranded. Also, bring a charger. A CB radio wouldn’t hurteither.

• Bring a gun, a .357 magnum at the very least. Bring enough ammunition to fully reload twice. You might have to shoot some food. Or shoot somebad actors that come upon you in your stranded rig. A couple of yearsback, my friend, Dale had a colleague murdered by just such cretins.

• Put additives in the fuel tanks that prevent diesel fuel from turning tojelly at temperatures below 41OF and others that emulsify water which might have condensed in warmer weather. (An interesting tidbit: thoughrigs used in the Arctic have fuel tank heaters, most of the ones in the lower

48 do not. Once winter sets in, to keep the fuel from solidifying and thecondensation from freezing, drivers leave their engines running 24/7. Fuel is taken from the tank and pumped through the fuel injection systembut little of it is actually used, so most goes right back to the tank. However, while this fuel is circulating through the engine’s injectionsystem, it gets well heated. On its return to the tank, this fuel imparts itsheat to the rest of the fuel mass, keeping it nice and warm.)

• Lay in a supply of starting fluid. Even in 2006, diesel engines prefer not to start when it’s below 32OF.

• Get a big can of WD-40 general purpose oil or something like it. Liberallyspray it on hinges, joints, bearings, latches ... anything that gets exposedto salt spray. And keep using it throughout the salty winter months. Oh,and don’t forget to squirt a bunch into your padlock or you might have touse a bolt cutter to get it off the trailer.

• Tire chains. To drive around in the mountain states, you are legallyrequired to carry them on the rig, even if you plan never to use them. These “chain laws” are in effect from the time the first snow can beexpected in the Fall until the last one in the Spring. Have you ever puttire chains on a semi? No? Hope you never have to. Each chain weighsclose to fifty pounds. Old practiced hands can chain a tire in fiveminutes while novices can struggle with one for an hour or more. If youare a novice it’s best to practice chaining up during warm weather. Andwhen you practice, be sure to wear heavy gloves because you’ll bewearing them when you chain for real in winter.

By the time we passed the exit for Bryce Canyon on I-15, the clouds were goneand the snow was a memory. But our time will come.

Sleep. Sweet, Sweet Sleep

Back a few pages, I mentioned that NO2 on a trucker’s list of concerns wassleep. I’d like to take some time now to talk about that, for sleep is not only asubject near and dear to the hearts of truckers everywhere, it lies at the heart ofall the regulations that afflict truckers and the trucking industry. Unfortunately, the same governments that beat their breasts about sleepytruckers do their damndest to make us sleepy in the first place.

Let’s say you’re a solo driver on an east-coast freeway. You have no team-mateto spell you so you’re driving the whole trip by yourself. It’s 3:00 in themorning and you’re in your eleventh hour behind the wheel. You’ve beendriving 11-hour shifts for seven days in a row and you are beat to the bone. Thefatigue is so bad that the tail lights of the vehicle up ahead are starting tobobble up and down as your eyes loose their ability to track – they’re aboutthree seconds away from snapping shut as you fall asleep at the wheel.

You must stop. You must sleep. The load and the company be damned.

To keep the sleep at bay thus far, you’ve been slapping yourself in the face andsinging old Beatles tunes at the top of your lungs. You’ve been looking for aplace to park since the Pennsylvania border and then there! Just ahead. Anexit ramp. You almost weep from relief – you finally have a place to park yourforty-ton titan and get some Z’s.

Within seconds of popping the yellow knob and killing the engine, you’vedropped into a sleep that’s almost a coma. You don’t even get out of thedriver’s seat or update your log book, you just lock the door, lean back andcollapse.

About an hour later, just when your sleep is the most profound, comes anurgent banging on the driver’s door. It rouses you from a sleep so deep youcan’t even remember your own name at first, let alone remember where you areand what you’re doing. You try to focus your eyes but they aren’t going alongwith the program; everything is blurry and their water pours down yourcheeks.

The banging becomes more heated: “Driver. Hey, you in there,” comes anangry bellow. The flash of blue and red lights ricochets around the cab. Yougrab the wheel and pull yourself upright and look out the window. It’s JohnnyLaw, come to run you off. You roll down your window.

“You can’t park here,” the cop announces officiously. “Get moving.” He threatens a tow and citation so you try to get the sand out of your eyes.

“Shit, where is it?” you wonder and you begin to search the dashboard for theignition key. “It’s here somewhere.” Finally you locate it and start the engine. The cop walks back to his cruiser, climbs in and waits for you to move off.

You’re still befuddled from being so rudely awakened but what are you goingto do? Tell the cop to go pound sand? You can’t afford to have your rig towed

away, nor get a ticket, and you surely don’t want the cop rummaging around inyour log book so, after a couple of missed attempts, you manage to get thetruck in gear and moments later, still woozy from lack of sleep, you’re rollingdown the freeway, in the dark, at seventy miles an hour.

Is it safe for you to be on the road in this condition? Of course not. You’re amenace to yourself and everyone out there. You won’t be fit to drive until youget some sleep, but the authorities have seen to it that you’ve no place of refugein which to do so. Like the Flying Dutchman, you’ve no choice but to keepgoing and hope for the best. Is it any wonder semis wreck so often?

—

I fell asleep at the wheel of our rig one time. It was just starting to get light inthe east. We were on I-81 and I was about fifteen minutes away from a truckstop where I’d finish this eleven-hour grind behind the wheel. When we pulledin for fuel and food, Jo would take over.

I’d started yawning an hour or so back and now things were dropping in andout of focus. The worst thing to do in such a condition is to stare fixedly at thehighway so, as there was some light, I looked about at the scenery fordistraction. It helped. But I still had to watch the road and was soon back inthat state where you think you’re awake but so dreamy that any little noiseseems like a cannon shot.

Then the next thing I knew I was jarred by some internal mechanism and saw Iwas farther down the road than I remembered – not much, about a hundredyards, probably two, but it was enough. I’d fallen asleep. I hadn’t hit anythingor run off the road, all I’d done was drift a bit to the left. But fall asleep I had. The shock of that realization pumped enough adrenaline into me to keep meawake until we got to the truck stop.

I was in such bad shape when we got there that, after I parked the rig, Jo had totake me by the hand and walk me in. I couldn’t even read the menu; Jo had toorder for me.

Ever since, I’ve kept close watch on myself. Once I start yawning, I beginlooking for a place to pull off, for I’ve got about an hour before Hypnos comes a-calling.

You simply can’t drive all the time, the meat machine concept and the HOSnotwithstanding. There are times when you simply must pull off the road,park, and get some sleep.

But if you are to sleep, you must first park. Ah, there’s the rub. Here are someof the ways governments and private agencies are thwarting sleepy truckers,forcing them to stay behind the wheel, rolling along.

• Truck stops and terminals. They’re great, but there simply aren’tenough and the ones that exist are too small.

• Rest areas. These the highway departments have built into theInterstates. Being brightly lit, they’re safe. They have amenities that areheated in the winter and cooled in the summer and cops come throughfrequently. They also have places where the weary trucker can get outand walk around in the fresh air. Unfortunately, many forbid semis.

• Parking areas of weigh stations and ports-of-entry. These are usuallyshunned by most truckers for they’re regarded as camps of the enemy. Smokey, with his trusty ticket book, lurks in these places. Actually,these are good places to pull in for they are seldom crowded. Also, if thestation is open, you can use their toilets. Further, because they are thedens of the highway patrol, they are pretty safe places even when closed. Bad guys tend to pass by places where cops can be expected to appearany second.

But too often, tired truckers are made to feel unwelcome. Nasty troopersharass and molest sleeping truckers, waking them to inspect log books orsubjecting them to random whiz quizzes and other indignities.

• “Truck-only” areas on the freeways. These are like super-sized rest areasexcept they are seldom lit, are often nothing but dirt and the toilets, ifany, are simply unisex chemical outhouses.

• Exit and entrance ramps leading to and from freeways. On mostfreeways, it is OK to use them for naps as well as all-night sleeps. Theseramps have broad shoulders to accommodate semis and are long enoughto let several semis park one behind the other. If you travel theInterstates by night, you’ve seen our comrades parked on these ramps,their marker lights glowing like some sort of deep-sea fish.

Unfortunately, in many states the authorities don’t want truckersparking on the freeway ramps. They’ve posted No Parking signs alongthe shoulders and send the cops by every few hours to ticket violators. Some are pounding heavy upright pipes into the shoulders so truckerscan no longer pull onto them, even to take a leak. (I guess they think welower property values or something.)

• Parking lots of roadside motels. They’re nice, but you have to be aregistered guest to use them.

• WalpMarts and shopping centers. They’re good, though not all welcometruckers. At the good ones, the manager will let semis pull in so thedriver can get some sleep. Of course the manager also expects a quid proquo; you’re to come in and buy something after you wake up.

At the bad ones, the manager posts signs saying “No Trucks” and putsiron bars over the driveways that are too low for your rig to pass beneath. It’s the tacky little strip malls where the manager bares his teeth whenhe sees you coming.

• Yard facilities of shippers and receivers. The white-collar types regardyou as something to be scraped off the bottom of a boot, so you must gosee the yard boss. He or she usually understands you need sleep ifyou’re to haul their stuff ,so your parking in the yard is usually tolerated.

• At the bottom of the list are vacant lots. There’s no national directory forthese; truckers just come up on them by chance and file the locationsaway in a mental Rolodex. Of course such lots are hard to spot so youcan’t count on finding one when you need it. Of course safety in theseplaces is problematic so unless another truck is already parked there (forthere is indeed safety in numbers), or unless you have a gun, you’d bestkeep going and find something better.

If you are a merciful person, and would like to do something for us poortruckers, call your Senators and Congressmen and ask for some stimulusmoney to be spent on making new safe and clean rest areas for semis.

I’m Packing a .357 Now

Here’s a story for you. One Wednesday afternoon in mid-summer, Jo and I hada load of building materials to deliver in Tampa, Florida . We had anappointment at 3:00 and were told to not be late. As per usual, the local drivinginstructions were bad and we crept along on crappy little surface streets forover two hours instead of taking the cross-town freeway which, as it turned out,had an exit one block from the consignee.

We pulled in and drove around back but, thanks to the bum directions, wearrived fifteen minutes after the boss had gone home. A guy at the dock saidnothing can be received without The Man’s signature; we had to lay over until7:00 the following morning.

Fine, but where to park? The closest truck stop was back across the causewayand up the freeway toward Tallahassee. “How about we just park here?” Iasked the guy at the dock. Not a problem, he said. And besides, he told us,there was a junk food joint a block down. With Jo’s acquiescence, I backed upto the loading dock and put the engine on fast idle to run the A/C in Florida’soppressive heat. The only problem was that, according to the Qualcommmessage we got from Waldo, Tampa is a hotbed of theft and villainy. So muchso that the company strongly advises against leaving loads unsecuredanywhere within the city limits. Many trucks have been hijacked and severaltruckers have been hurt.

Well.

Though I’d left my .357 at home, I did have a canister of bear-strength pepperspray so Jo and I decided to make the best of it and spend the night. On one ofour trips home, Jo’d bought a little DVD player and some movies so wewouldn’t want for entertainment. Besides, parked around in back, we were sofar off the beaten path that simpletons who go around hijacking trucks wereunlikely to have the wits to look there.

Later in the evening, after it had cooled down, we went over to the junk foodemporium for what was a totally vile roast beef sandwich but a not-too-bad rootbeer float. Sated, we returned to the rig to watch Frodo and his crew dispose ofthe ring. About 10:00, we were ready to call it a day.

—

Jo was dozing lightly in the passenger seat and I was gazing at the rising moonwhen I saw headlights illuminating the dumpster off to our left – someone had

driven through the construction yard and was coming around the buildingfrom our right.

Oh, oh!

I nudged Jo and barked, “Get down!” We squinched low in the seats. As I’dthe foresight to fetch the pepper spray, I now picked it from the floor andclutched it to my bosom. I was just able to peek beneath the rim of the steeringwheel and saw a late model Mercedes-Benz, black in color, come rolling slowlyaround the building’s corner. I could make out two occupants. The car I wouldexpect hijackers to drive was not a shiny new Benz, but a pimped-out LincolnMark-something-or-other or perhaps a jacked up Buick. But one never knows.

We stayed very still. All the little hairs on the back of my neck were standingstraight up. We were trapped.

The car trolled around the fence, swinging in a wide arc that brought it close tothe dumpster where it slowed to a stop. The two men seemed to have a specificpurpose in being here. I half expected them to get out, pull a body from thetrunk, lift the lid and toss it in. Were that to happen, and were the two guys inthe Mercedes then to discover Jo and me cowering in the idling semi, we’d endup in the dumpster too.

The driver then let the Mercedes creep forward again and turned the cartoward us. When he got even with the front of our rig, he stopped. He and isbuddy sat there for maybe half a minute. I could see them swiveling theirheads and craning their necks as they looked around. Then the light from asecurity lamp mounted high on the building’s corner glinted off the rims of thepassenger’s spectacles; Christ – he was looking directly at us. After a fewmoments, the driver took his foot off the brake, nudged the throttle and theMercedes disappeared around the building in the direction from whence it hadcome.

We didn’t even breathe.

—

Maybe it was all innocent – the building’s owner come to check on progress. Ormaybe it was a couple of gunsels looking to dump a body, but the idling semispooked them. You can just hear Vinnie saying “I don’t like it, Sal. I’m tellinya, there’s somebody in that fucking truck! I hear them over-the-road guyskeep sawed-off shotguns in the seats next to ‘em – that, or the guy’s got a

goddamned pit bull in there with him. Let’s find somewhereze else to ditch thestiff.” This time, the rough image truckers enjoy may have served us well.

On our next home time, I made sure I fetched the magnum from the dresserdrawer, along with a box of ammo. It now keeps us company here in the cab. It is always loaded and always within easy reach.

Enough Already

We’d come off of home time in early November and were hauling a load acrossNorth Dakota. Jo and I were in a hangdog mood. The bloom was off the rose. We were surfeited of the trucking life – the bad food, the chronic exhaustion,the sedentary work, the filth, the smells. We were sick and tired of going three,sometimes four, days without taking showers because the loads had to getthrough. We’d had it with being awakened at all hours of the day and night bythe damned Qualcomm, beeping with dispatches. We were done pissing andshitting into jugs and bags. We were done with athlete’s foot and diaper rashfrom the filthy showers. We were finished with making small talk with peoplewhose universe is the damned truck, the damned truck stop, the damnedhighway.

And the ennui, oh the fucking ennui. The deadly sameness of our days, allrolled into a seamless concatenation like those of inmates in the Gulag. UnlessI looked at the day and date on my cellphone’s display, I couldn’t tell if it wasMonday or Thursday. Worse, I no longer cared.

And our health was rapidly going downhill. Like 95% of OTR truckers, we’deaten so damned much junk trying to stay awake that – in just one year – we’deach gained over forty pounds. Jo’s legs were swelling and my shins werediscoloring. Jo had been taking blood pressure medication but it was beingoverwhelmed by the destructive, almost suicidal, life of trucking. Walking upjust one flight of stairs, I’d see spots.

Listless, apathetic and somewhat depressed, we sat quietly beside each other,listening to the northern wind whistling through the Freightliner’s yawningseams and crannies as we approached Mandan, North Dakota, and our nextfuel stop.

When we first started out, trucking was new and there was a lot to learn. Also,it was a welcome relief from dun calls, foreclosure proceedings and thegnawing dread over what new tribulation the next day would bring. But now, alittle more than a year into it, we’d reached the limit. You can hook up just somany trailers, back into just so many docks, pump just so much fuel and eatjust so much truck stop food before you realize that, in truth, you’ve done it all. The thought of spending unnumbered years doing this was not sitting well. We were both feeling blue. We were two lonely little specks wandering theroads in a dirty Freightliner.

As we left Mandan in the early dawn, Jo, who had been unable to sleep and wassitting up with me, turned and said: “I sure miss my kitties. I wish I washome.” She seemed close to tears.

I looked over to her: “Yes. So do I.” We then spent the hours rolling toBismarck listing all the things we’d do if we got off the road. By the time westopped in the rest area near Alexandria, Minnesota, we had reached anunspoken acknowledgment that we had to quit OTR and quit soon. I guess Iwas the first to openly voice the idea and by the time we reached Chicago wewere in total agreement.

It had been more than a year since we met Fearless and we were now amongthat scant number of new drivers who stick with OTR for more than 365 days. As such, returning to Washington and finding another kind of trucking jobshouldn’t be all that hard – after all, the driver shortage had only worsenedduring the past year.

A local or regional job would not keep me away from home for more thanmaybe three nights a week at most, and that would be fine. I wouldn’t mindcoming home to a hot dinner and, from time-to-time, an apple pie.

To assess the market, I grabbed my cell phone and called the Seattle local ofthe International Brotherhood of Teamsters and discussed the prospects forlocal and regional driving jobs. The prognosis was good. So good, in fact, witha year of OTR experience under my belt, I could have my pick. True, truckingdoesn’t offer the prospects of vast and sudden wealth as did the softwarebusiness, but the pay can be OK and might be enough to pay for a small home. Jo would like that.

Getting out of OTR would let Jo become a housewife for the first time in herlife. The road had been harder on her than me and she needed time to recoverfrom its destructive effects. While we were in accord on our need to quit OTR,

66 REMF – Rear Echelon Mother Fuckers. A Viet-Nam era expression for the non-

combatant drones back at headquarters who certainly talked the talk but most definitely didnot walk the walk. In the trucking biz, REMFs are the a-holes who have never even sat in asemi, much less driven one, but who proceed to dream up idiot policies.

we weren’t decided on just when to make the move; we’d have to think on that. The secret to getting home time when you want it is to put in for it early. Thecompany likes to have three weeks to chew on your request so Jo grabbed theQualcomm and put in for home time starting the 18th of December.

—

The week after Thanksgiving 2006, the Qualcomm beeped with anannouncement for the entire fleet: Effective immediately, the company wasclosing three-quarters of its terminals nationwide and converting them tosimple drop yards; a few terminals were to remain open because they haverepair shops. One of those selected for downgrading was the terminal south ofNewark, a place at which we’d stopped almost every time we had a run into thearea.

Though the Qualcomm didn’t explain why the massive downgrading wasnecessary, the grapevine told us that a few weeks earlier, in a effort to expand,the company bought another trucking line, but one loaded to the gunwaleswith debt. After finding out he’d bought a white elephant, our CEO hired ahatchet man from another carrier to come in and sort things out.

This new fellow’s charter was to find ways of cutting costs, so he took out hisred pencil and went to work. He couldn’t very well pink-slip any drivers as thecompany has too few of them in the first place, nor could he sell much rollingstock as there would be no vehicles with which to generate revenue. Nor couldhe (nor would he) recommend thinning the ranks of the REMF66s atheadquarters, for they were the hands that fed him, and biting them would bestupid. What to do? What to do?

Well how about firing everyone in the field who wasn’t a driver? Specifically,all those salaried people employed at the company’s terminals nationwide. That would certainly make for a tidy savings each month. Yes indeed; herewas a plan worthy of his MBA. Of course, the nature of the trucking businessmeans there must be places where trailers can be dropped and stored, so ourhired gun recommended downgrading the terminals to unmanned drop yards. To address customer concerns over security, these new “drop yards” would stillhave a guard 24/7, someone who could shoot hijackers as well as record arrivals

and departures of loaded trailers and the names of the truckers who hauledthem. As the company already had an agreement for rent-a-cops with anationwide security company, they were good to go. Let the pink slips flow. And so it came to pass that we all got the aforesaid Qualcomm message.

—

On a December afternoon, Jo and I pulled into the Texas terminal. We wantedto do the laundry and visit the repair shop to get our tractor fixed. When wearrived, the gate guard asked us for our drop number. “Drop number? Whatthe hell is that?” asked Jo, for we hadn’t been to a company facility since all theterminals were downgraded.

“New policy,” said the guard. Any time a trucker wanted or needed access to acompany yard – even just come in to park for the night – he or she had toQualcomm a dispatcher and get a drop number. “But,” he said, “seeing as howthis is your first time here since all the people got canned, and seeing as howyour dispatcher sent you here for repairs, I’ll let you in.”

That afternoon, after the repairs were made, we told Waldo we were ready foranother load. Soon the Qualcomm beeped: we were to repower a load going toHermiston, Oregon, from whence we’d head home. About an hour later, theguy showed up, backed into a vacant space, dropped the trailer and came overwith the paperwork. It turned out we’d met him in the company’s Portland,Oregon, drop yard back in early summer. After we renewed acquaintances, heasked: “Have you heard what’s going on with the New Jersey yard?” Wehadn’t, and he proceeded to tell us an astounding story, one which I confirmedwith several other drivers who’ve had the misfortune to go there.

New York, New Jersey and Connecticut are decidedly truck-unfriendly. Notonly are the rest areas on freeways and toll roads few and far between. The fewtruck stops that exist are way in the outskirts of town and are jam-packed withparked rigs by mid-afternoon.

As many truckers have been pulling the puckering string since Philadelphia,they’re in desperate need of toilets when they hit the New Jersey Turnpike. With our company having a terminal in New Jersey, truckers could pull in,park, and use the toilets. And don’t forget the lounge with a TV, a kitchen witha microwave and hot coffee and, of course, showers. Also, a trucker could catchsome winks. The place was old and run down, but nice to have.

But no longer. When inbound truckers began to pull into the New Jerseyterminal just after Pearl Harbor Day, the guard delivered an unpleasantsurprise: he told them that because the terminal had been downgraded to ayard, they couldn’t come in until they had drop numbers. As the drop numberprocedure was put into place with such haste, things were not runningsmoothly and the numbers sometimes took (and can still take) over an hour toobtain.

When the numbers were finally assigned, the truckers pulled in and parked,only to get an even more unpleasant surprise when they headed for thebuilding: The toilets, the guards informed them, are now off-limits to truckers. However, thanks to their contract with our employer, the guards can use thejohns whenever they like. We truckers – the men and women whose laborsgenerate every single cent this wretched company makes – are turned away. With no restrooms within an hour’s drive, and locked out of our own company’stoilets, we truckers are now forced to walk to the back of the yard, squat in theweeds and shit on the ground like animals.

The fellow from whom we were repowering the load, warned us that if we everhad to visit that drop yard, be sure to wear farmer boots so we could safelywade through the heaps. “You can smell the place for a mile,” he said.

I confirmed this sorry situation with other drivers. It holds true for allterminals that have been converted to drop yards – toilets for the guards, theground for the truckers. For a company to treat us like this – to deny us theuse of company toilets – is the kind of thing the KGB did to the zeks in thegulag – sadistic denigration for the sake of sadistic denigration.

The company likes to call us “professional truck drivers.” To call us“professional” anything when treating us like this is over the top. Can youimagine our CEO making his doctor crap in the bushes? Can you picture himtelling his lawyer to go outside and piss on a lamppost like a dog? No. Ofcourse not. But he has no trouble telling the men and women who provide hislavish salary and generous perks to do so. Indeed, there has to be a specialcircle in Hell for a man like this – a hypocrite who gushes about his devotion toJesus H. Christ Almighty, yet scruples not in degrading and humiliating thosein his employ.

Well, this was the last straw. Jo and I looked at each other and in one voicesaid: “Now we get out!” We vowed we would never haul a load to New Jerseyand crap on the ground.

The end had come.

—

Needless to say, we were both excited about getting out of OTR and returningto a normal life, so the miles flew by as we headed to a Hermiston warehousewith a load of plastic kitchen gewgaws. Near midnight on Tuesday, wedropped the trailer, making delivery a half-hour before the scheduledappointment. Having accomplished that, we drove to a nearby truck stop,found a vacant spot in Bobtail Row, parked, and hit the sack.

This last month, we’d come to the realization we were no longer taking care ofourselves. Sometime back in the summer, we’d stopped trying to take showersevery day. Now, in December, after a year behind the wheel, we were content –or if not content, at least resigned – to take no more than one a week.

Never, in my life, with the exception of Boy Scout camp, had I ever gone morethan forty-eight hours without a bath or shower. Now here I was, parked in atruck stop after going unwashed for four days, and I didn’t care. I itched. Ismelled. My clothes could stand up by themselves. But so what? All I caredabout was going to the bathroom, getting a gut bomb from the truck stop, thencrashing. Jo was no different. It was just like Fearless had said.

Without realizing it, we were becoming (had become?) like so many OTRtruckers we’d met – characters that a few months ago I decried as swinish. Onewoman trucker Jo met in the east L.A. terminal told of having to request a newtrainer as the one the company assigned had not bathed in twenty-eight daysand smelled like a barn. We weren’t close to that, but we were a lot fartherdown the slope than we liked to admit. The truth is, OTR is exhausting, andafter a year of it, truckers are at the point where they’ll not expend energy to doanything they absolutely, positively, do not have to do. And that includestaking a shower – an hour in the shower is one less hour to be spent onprecious sleep.

Another factor in the declining level of personal hygiene is the loss of self-interest and self-respect engendered by the demoralizing monk-like existencewe truckers lead. We’re kept from family, home and friends by a maddeningsuccession of runs we are powerless to refuse. Slowly but surely, we truckers,with our inability to control almost anything in our lives, come to see our livesas relatively hopeless. This hopelessness isn’t enough to deliberately plow therig into a bridge abutment at sixty-five, but it’s enough to acquire a chronic,low-grade depression.

Jo and I vowed that the instant we got home, it was off to a long voluptuousshower for both of us. With that promise to ourselves, I climbed up to my topbunk and got into my sleeping bag while Jo prepared to spend much of thenight in the passenger’s seat – something she had begun to do in mid-Augustwhen the lower bunk became uncomfortable for her extra weight. We said ourgoodnights and switched off the lights.

—

On arising Thursday morning, Jo sent Waldo a Qualcomm reminding himabout our home time, just to make sure nothing had fallen through the cracks. Even with some short, local, runs to chew up some time, we’d be home Fridaynight. A few moments later, as we sat there scratching and rethinking theshower issue, the Qualcomm beeped. The company had some local Seattlework for us. We were to haul an empty to the drop yard south of Kent,Washington, to pick up and deliver a couple of local loads. Yessss!

As luck would have it, this last run coincided with a brutal winter storm and wegot stuck at a weigh station in the Cascade Mountains, a hour’s drive fromhome. Finally, we got to the drop yard and pulled in. We’d been on the road for19 hours, driving through the snow and we were shot. It was 2:30 but as wedidn’t have to attend to the local work until 8:00, we could get four hours sleep. We found a place to park and I ascended to my upper bunk for one last time.

—

The week between Christmas and New Years, I turned in our resignations. Itold Waldo the truth: Our healths had declined. Waldo asked me to haul a loadof sausages from Seattle to the Sacramento-area terminal and park the rig. Waldo promised I’d have a bus ticket waiting for me at the front desk so therewould be no problem getting back home. Sure, why not; I’d be making a fewbucks and, besides, it would be the first time I ever drove solo. It was apleasant, easy run.

After turning in our keys, log pages, fuel cards and trip sheets, the terminalmanager handed me the promised ticket and summoned another trucker todrive me up to the bus depot. Recalling the unpleasant ride down from Everettfourteen months before, I’d brought a double dose of Sominex® with me and,just before boarding the bus for a straight-shot up to Portland, I washed itdown with a beer I’d bought in a superette around the corner. I slept like thedead. Whatever outrages may have taken place on that bus, I was oblivious tothem.

I was finally awakened when we pulled into Portland – those passengers boundfor points north had to get off and get on a different bus. I called Jo and askedher to meet me in Seattle where I intended to get off; I was in no mood to ride adamned bus any longer then necessary and getting up to Everett would requirean additional forty-five minutes.

A New Gig - 2007

We spent the Holidays decompressing. After the New Year, I started lookingaround for a job – something to do for a couple of months while figuring thingsout. It took two days but I found a trucking company that runs fishmobiles upand down the west coast and, like trucking companies everywhere, it neededdrivers. It’s a team job; another guy and I haul seafood between a little townnorth of Seattle, Washington, down to the major cities of California, chiefly,L.A. But though we’re gone for three days, this is not true OTR work. At thiscompany, we are route drivers just like the guys in bakery trucks. It’s just thatin our case, it’s over a thousand miles to the first stop.

Because working conditions at this company are such that drivers haveregular, predictable hours, and have as many as four days off each week, itattracts a different breed of cat than does OTR. The guys and gals at this placeare washed and ironed and most of them still have several teeth (at least theones in front, anyway). They may not all be happily married, but they do havehomes to which they go after their weekly trips and in this respect, theyresemble the normal Americans with nine-to-five jobs, Monday through Friday.

Not surprisingly the churn at this place is low – at least by trucking standards;only about thirty percent per year. While that is noteworthy in itself, what’sreally surprising is that a large number have been driving fishmobiles for thiscompany for well over a decade – one guy has been doing it for twenty-twoyears.

Over the weeks I’ve ridden with several of these long-timers (we call them“first seats”) and not only are they curmudgeons of the first water, they’re theworst backseat drivers on the planet. When you’ve got one in the shotgun seat,you might think he’d be looking at the scenery but no, he is watching theinstrument panel. It goes something like this:

• Speed. One says: “Hold it down to no more than fifty-eight,” (I’m goingsixty). Another one will chew me out for only going fifty-eight on thesame stretch of road.

• RPMs. “Jezus, Merl! You’re lugging the engine. Grab a lower gear,”bitches one (the engine is turning 1,350 rpm and the owner’s manual –which I took the time to read – advises not downshifting until 1,200). Ofcourse no two of these guys agree on downshift points, even with thesame engine/transmission combinations – I’ve been told it’s anywherefrom 1,000-1,400 rpm.

• Going down a mountain. One says: “Christ Almighty, Sprague. You’renot supposed to pump them brakes – ya’re supposed to ride `em.” Thenext one tells me: “What the hell you doing, Sprague? You ain’t suppostaride them brakes, yas supposta pump `em!”

• The Jake. Trucker A: “What you got that Jake on fur? Makes too muchnoise. Turn it off.” Trucker B: “Better turn on that Jake; it helps savethe brakes.”

• Cruise Control. One fellow became restive when I set the cruise controllow enough to where traffic was pulling away from me and cars wereducking in front. After futilely urging me to speed up (this was on I-880up by Berkeley at around four in the afternoon) he reached over and hitthe cruise control switch, bumping my speed up from fifty-five to sixty-two. The third time he pulled this stunt, I gave him a harsh look; hegave me a shit-eating grin and put his hand in his lap. But he starteddoing it again on I-5. We only rode together that one time.

—

Henry, the guy with whom I’ve teamed the most, doesn’t have many off-puttinghabits or mannerisms, save for the cigarettes. But unfortunately, he and Ihaven’t hit it off. As we go down the road, mile after mile, Henry will sitimmobile, hunched over the wheel, breathing through his mouth with his eyesfixed on the road, chain-smoking Camels. What conversations we manage tohave are strained and there are too many prolonged periods of quiet for myliking.

Me: “So, Hank, what’d you and the missus do this weekend?”

Henry: “Nothin.”

Silence.

I much prefer more animated types while Henry, I suspect, wishes I’d just stayin the sleeper and never bother him. But he’s not unique: eighty-percent of allthe old timers around this company are phlegmatic, taciturn and owlish as hell. It must be the job.

And speaking of the job, we truckers have to load and unload the goddamnedfish ourselves. To help us in these backbreaking labors, the companythoughtfully packs a pallet jack on each trailer, but there’s still an awful lot ofgrunting and straining. Henry, though, is an old football player. A beefy fellowten years my junior, he has no problem handling the goods. In fact, I think herather enjoys the physical exertion. I, on the other hand, do not; manhandling50-to-175 pound boxes of smelly fish is not my idea of a good way to earn aliving. Besides, looking at all those dead eyes and getting drenched by thejuices coming from the exenterated bellies (and did I mention the smell?), issimply revolting. I’ve been told that, for just these reasons, many new-hiresquit after one run.

Of course, in a loutish job like this, we get hurt. Here are some of the injuries Iand my fellow fish-haulers have sustained:

• One fellow had his shoulder crushed when a pallet of frozen fish fell onhim. He was out of commission for over a year.

• While I write this, another fellow has to go in for surgery next week to fixtorn shoulder and elbow tendons – a common injury here at this place. Your Humble Author has also pulled tendons in the shoulders and armsand has been gulping anti-inflamitories and pain killers by the gross.

• Another guy tore up his knee.

While we have health insurance, we have no income insurance so we have tokeep on working. True, the State has a compensation program for people likeus, but it has a cumbersome bureaucracy. The time between filing a claim andgetting money can be too long for many to tolerate.

After they mend, most of the younger guys will make a stab at working againbut most of the older guys now quit after they get wrecked. Not long back,when there was a lot of esprit de corps – not to mention decent pay – the olddudes would go through rehab and get back in the truck, just like theyoungsters. But not anymore.

One thing that may contribute to the longevity around here is the nature of thejob: it’s highly routinized and deadly-dull. Up and down the same old roads,making the same old stops, time after time without end. This no doubt hastremendous appeal for those who have a need in their lives for the security thatbeing in a rut can provide, and this job is nothing if not a rut. The only thingsthat change from one trip to another are the weather and the number of bugssplattered on the windshield. Other than that, it’s the same old same old, weekafter week after week.

And it’s a hard pound. I’m up all night Tuesday, all night Wednesday, half theday Thursday, and all Thursday night (yes, I’m still the night shift driver). When I get home late Friday, I’m so beat I spend most of Saturday sitting inmy recliner, snoozing and watching TV while Jo brings me food. Most new-hires quit after they find what a brutish, low-paying job this is so the companyis increasingly reliant on its older truckers. Why the old timers are stickingwith it, only God knows – there’s no pension, crappy health insurance, no 401k,no ESOP.

—

On the southbound run to California, we usually leave at 11:00 Tuesday nightand drive straight through to L.A., arriving about 2:00 Thursday morning. Itake the first leg to Eugene, Oregon, where my teammate who’s been conked-out in the sleeper, takes over. He drives down to a wide spot in I-5 namedSanta Nella, California, where I again take the wheel and drive into L.A. Oncein L.A., my partner and I make between seven and ten deliveries, unloading40,000 pounds of dead sea creatures to various fish mongers thereabouts,usually finishing before the morning rush hour begins.

After the last delivery, we douche the trailer at one of the many truck washeson Bandini Avenue and sprinkle fresh coffee on the floor to kill any residualfishy smells. We then catch breakfast at one of the roach coaches plying thestreets.

After our repast, we call in. While the phone rings, the First Seat and I chant“bananas, bananas, bananas.” If we’re lucky, we’ll pick up a full load of themover in Oxnard and be on our way home before noon. If we are not lucky, we’llhave to pick up many small orders from places all over town until the trailer’sfull, a process that can take us to 6:00 P.M. and beyond. The trip home takesabout twenty-six to twenty-eight hours and I drive most of it.

—

When our outbound cargo is fresh chilled fish (as opposed to frozen), it’sperishable, which means it’s slowly rotting as we go down the road. My firsttime out, Henry drove the first leg while I tried sleeping. Our first delivery wasat a place south of Tacoma, Washington and after stopping, Henry beat on thecurtain to awaken me. He told me to get out, go around back and open thetrailer’s doors so he could back up to the dock. I pulled on my boots, donnedmy coat and hat, climbed out into the rainy dark and, shivering, went aroundback. When I lifted the latches and swung open the door, the smell that pouredout was like the breath of Beelzebub.

Let me tell you, the odor of dead fish gets into your hair, your clothes, evenyour sneakers and every time you go into the trailer, you acquire more andmore of it. If – when – you get a good soaking of fish ichors, it molders in yoursweaty clothes and stays with you for the rest of the trip, getting more foul bythe day. Malodor counteractants – the stuff hospitals use in cancer wards – arethe only things that can truly defeat the smell. I have written a two-wordcouplet that precisely sums up my feeling about this job:

Fish?Ish!

This is a good place to offer a word or two about our customers, the fishmongers. They range in size from shitty little 2-man operations with ratsscurrying in the darker recesses, all the way to billion-dollar corporations withsterile, ultra-clean facilities.

The bigger outfits evidently make a lot of wampum for their owners, for I’vespotted Bentleys and Rolls/Royces parked in the “reserved” spots out front. Asfor the guys and gals who whack off the heads and pull out the guts, most areMexicans whose knowledge of English is limited to “OK” and “Let me get myboss.” As these folks drive clapped-out Toyotas and Chevies, it’s clear they’repaid minimum wage, which means most are probably illegals.

—

Dark Secret time: In case you believe the grocer or butcher whose countersigns proudly proclaim “fresh fish,” let me tell you what really goes on. Thiscomes from my own experience:

• Monday. I picked up a load of fresh fish from a local fisherman whoseboat had caught them on Saturday, two days before; he’d been keepingthe fish down in the refrigerated hold so they’d stay fresh. While I

waited, the carcasses were packed in ice and loaded on my truck. I droveback to the company yard, parked the truck and made sure the refer unitwas “On” and set to 24OF, a temperature just above that where fishmeatwill freeze. I went home.

• Tuesday. The fish were reloaded onto the fishmobile that my dourteammate and I would hump to L.A. that night.

• Thursday. My partner and I got to L.A., delivering the fish to awholesaler at 3:00 A.M.

• Friday. The wholesaler finally loaded the fish onto a straight job fromwhence it was taken to the distribution center of a major grocery chainwhere it was put in the cooler.

• Saturday. The fish were delivered to retail stores in the L.A. area and putin display cases.

• The following Tuesday. A week and a half since the fish were pulledfrom the water, Ms. Jane Doe came in and bought some. Lord onlyknows how long the rest of the stuff sat before it got tossed in thedumpster.

This is why your mother always told you to be careful when preparing fish –that if it smelled the least bit funny, toss it in the garbage. Better to waste afew bucks than to be strapped to the toilet for three days.

—

Pay? Did I mention that my monthly gross salary is just shy of $2,800.00 (whichwould be around $33,600 if I stayed here for a year)? No? Well that’s what it is. Pretty piss poor, if you ask me. However, it’s better than what I’d have madedriving OTR as a solo. Besides, it’s double the Federal poverty level for afamily of two so I guess it could be worse. But bad as it is though, eachbimonthly payday, Jo manages to stick fifteen bucks into our savings account. (I wonder how long it’ll take us to save for a down-payment on another house?)

And speaking of pay, you should know that the guy who owned the place justsold it. He cleared, so the fellows tell me, eighteen million simoleons andkeeps his job as president for another two years. Not only that, but for the lastseveral decades, the old boy’s been taking home a couple of mil each year forhis efforts, so he is pretty well fixed. A lot better fixed than his truckers with

their $2,800 a month. A Teamsters recruiter should be showing up any daynow.

As to how el Presidente spends his time, the other day I saw him on a ridingmower, cutting the grass. Seriously. Here’s a corporate president whosehourly pay comes to something like $1,900 and he spends his time mowing thelawn. And he does this while his truckers quit over the crappy pay. Therewere almost one hundred truckers working here at the dawn of themillennium; there are only forty-eight now. Half the fleet sits idle for lack ofdrivers. If I were the new owner and caught the president mowing the lawnwhile the company circles the drain, I’d toss him out the front gate so fast itwould make his head swim. This place has the stink of death about it.

The day I can kick this job to the curb, I’m going up to the liquor store, buy abottle of good booze and go on a bender.

A Word or Two about Accidents

Over this last year, when we’ve gotten together with our friends and families,we’ve always been asked about accidents. Besides that grizzly one last July,we’ve seen a good two to three dozen, maybe more, most involving semis. Infact, during the months of January and February, I was seeing an average ofthree a week as I drove the night shift. Jo saw quite a few during the day aswell.

Some accidents are pretty tame. For example, Jo saw one on I-80 in Ohio,where one semi tail-ended another semi that, in turn, tail-ended a car. No onewas hurt but she said the little car sure was a mess.

Others are not so tame. Like the Toyota we saw on the Pennsylvania Turnpikethat had jumped the median barrier, flipped, and landed on its top. The roofover the driver’s seat was flattened to the window sill so if a driver had beenstrapped into the seat, his or her head would have been squashed like astepped-on grape.

Based on what Jo and I’ve seen, I can tell you that trucks come to grief farmore often than do cars, as measured either in miles driven or in numbers ofaccidents taking place. Of course it could be that because we’re tuned-in totrucks, we pay more attention to them then accidents involving only 4-

67 MICRO-SLEEPS “Micro-sleeps are brief, unintended episodes of loss of attention

associated with events such as blank stare, head snapping, prolonged eye closure, etc. whichmay occur when you are fatigued but are trying to stay awake to perform a monotonous tasklike driving a car or watching a computer screen.” – www.sleepnet.com

wheelers. It’s kind of like when you buy a new car – every third car you seefrom then on is the same exact make and model as your new precious (call itobservational bias).

When it comes to wrecked semis, most of the ones we saw were single vehicleaccidents and most took place between the hours of 3:00 AM and 7:00 AM. Whyis this heavy skewing to the wee small hours? Because tired truckers, who arebehind the wheel when they should be safely home and in bed, fall asleep andrun off the road. Duh. However this is not as bad as it might seem, forsleeping truckers don’t, as a rule, hit bridge abutments or plow into trees; theysimply wander off the road, go into the ditch and roll over. In most cases, thetrucker unbuckles the seat belt and crawls out, unhurt.

Bert, a trucker I know, told me of following a rig just after sunup one morningdown I-65. He first knew something was amiss when the truck began towander lazily from its lane into another then jerk suddenly back to the originallane only to begin wandering again in a minute or two. The trucker, Bertrealized, was having “micro-sleeps67” and wandering out of his lane when hewas zonked. Bert tried to raise the trucker on the CB but there was noresponse. Soon other truckers joined in trying to get the wayward driver’sattention with blasts from their air horns and flashing the high beams but to noavail. Soon, this band of drivers decided the best thing to do was call the highway patrol so a squad car could pull this fool over. But they were too late;the trucker had gone out for the count. Slowly the rig drifted onto the rightshoulder, then onto the dirt, then down into the ditch. Caroming along, thetruck slowly heeled over then laid down on its side. Tufts of sod, clods of dirtand clouds of dust went flying while the trailer’s doors came open and thefreight spilled out. Bad scene.

The reason it’s difficult to get hurt when a semi rolls over is that there’s a lot ofmass surrounding you and that mass absorbs the blow. First, you have that bigdiesel engine out front to run interference for you. It will push aside a lot ofobstacles that would otherwise bring your `lil-ol bod to a sudden and jarringstop – obstacles like tree stumps, Jersey barriers, rocks and what have you. Second, the trailer’s full of freight whose inertia will keep things moving. Thismass ensures the truck slows gradually so your person doesn’t come to thatsudden and deadly stop.

The second major cause is going too fast which, I might note, is different fromspeeding. Speeding is going faster than the sign says is permissible. Goingtoo fast is doing 40 m.p.h. in a 65 m.p.h. zone while in a pea soup fog with theroad covered in patches of black ice. Going too fast is also heading onto a curveat 55 m.p.h. when the little yellow sign advises no more than twenty-five. It isin these Going Too Fast wrecks where more than one vehicle becomes involvedand where people tend to get hurt and killed.

This is especially true in the winter as lots of truckers forget that snow and iceare slippery and keep on the throttle as if it were summer. What lulls driversinto a false sense of security in the winter months is the fact that a loaded semican press down through snow and slush and get in fairly good contact with thepavement beneath. Where a car will just skitter off the road, a heavy semi,even without chains, could probably start, stop and steer with no apparentdegradation in control.

At least for a while, anyway. Then, unnoticed by the trucker, the temperaturedrops below freezing and the slush turns to ice. In these conditions, many atrucker, having left the Jake engaged, will lift his or her foot from the throttleto slow and, BRRAAAPPPP, the Jake suddenly comes on and retards thetractor’s drive wheels; the trailer’s wheels will enjoy no such braking actionand, because they’re on a slick surface, the trailer will lose traction; the tail endswings out around the tractor, and you have a jackknife. Alternatively, thesemi slides into a school bus that’s stopped at a rail road crossing and kills a lotof kids.

Fog is the other big killer. I hate fog. When it gets to the point I can’t see aminimum of two truck lengths ahead of me, I get off the road and park. Unfortunately, too many truckers take the position that unless they see afireball rise up before them, indicating a wreck ahead, it is safe to continuethrough the fog at 65-70 m.p.h. What they don’t seem to realize is that, throughtheir recklessness, it might be themselves who become those fireballs.

A word of caution to your 4-wheelers: please be aware that there’s a lot ofmorons driving eighteen-wheelers. If, while passing through a fog bank, youshow prudence by slowing to a speed where you can stop if somethingsuddenly looms up, you should know that somewhere behind you is an idiot ina big rig still going like a bat out of hell. He won’t see you until it’s way, waytoo late. His truck will smack your puny little car like Bobby Hull smacks ahockey puck. My advice: When the fog gets thick, get off the road! Spend afew hours in a restaurant, take in a movie, check into a motel, whatever, but for

heaven’s sake, do not stay on the highway. Wait somewhere safe for the fog tolift.

Safe Trucks and Unsafe Trucks

If you drive a semi over the highways and byways, sooner or later you’re goingto get inspected. Once each year, a semi is supposed to be gone over with afine-toothed comb. Traditionally, this inspection is performed by the highwaycops at inspection sheds associated with truck scales. Once the inspectorsdetermine your rig’s OK, you’re given a sticker to display prominently on thewindshield and sent on your way. If your rig flunks, the inspector will slap anOut of Service notice on your windshield, tell you where to park and forbid youto move your rig until repairs are effected. Should you try to avoid inspectionstations by taking your worn-out old truck over the secondary and tertiaryroads, a highway bull is nevertheless likely to notice the absence of aninspection sticker – or the presence of an expired one – and order you to thenearest station to have your rig examined.

This is as it should be.

However, there is an exception to these estimable inspections. Our old UncleSam and the Mexican government are conspiring to let Mexican semis ply ourroads and freeways without having to meet the rigorous standards applied toAmerican trucks. This agreement was a part of NAFTA and was supposed tohave started sometime in 2008-2009 but Uncle Sam, feeling the heat fromAmerican truckers, has backed off (but seeing as how no one really drove astake through this idea’s heart, it’ll be back).

Under this plan, Mexican truckers will simply drive their old rattletraps acrossthe border with not so much as a by-your-leave or a peek inside. As Mexico is aSecond World nation tottering on the brink of Third World status, you canimagine the deplorable condition of these trucks. Also as Mexican truckers arenot required by their government to meet the same standards that apply toAmerican truckers, you can imagine their condition as well. Oh, now andagain a Mexican truck will be pulled over for a quick once-over then sent on itsway, but these perfunctory “inspections” will be for public consumption only.

To help forfend public scrutiny and to turn aside criticism, Uncle Sam hascherry-picked one hundred Mexican trucking companies for inspection. These

one hundred companies, those with the newest and best maintained fleets inall of Mexico, are deemed typical of Mexican trucking in general and UncleSam has said he’ll base his trucking policy on the results of these inspections. Treating all Mexican trucks alike, based on a selective sample, means theMexican owner-operator with a twenty-year-old beater with ten-million miles onthe clock will be put in the same category as the 100 big Mexican operators withfleets of brand-new rigs.

Personally, I suspect that the zeal Washington shows for winking at Mexicantrucks and truckers is that it helps in Washington’s effort to provide corporateAmerica with a flood of cheap labor – in this case, truckers instead of tomato-pickers. For its part, the Mexican government joyfully aids and abets this byasserting that inspections of their trucks and truckers by American cops arethe politically incorrect sins of racial profiling and ethnic discrimination. Consequently, should your loved ones be mowed down by a defective truck oran exhausted, drugged-out trucker, the odds are increasingly good it will be aMexican truck and a Mexican driver that does the killing. To bolster mycontention that Mexican trucks and truckers are unsafe for American roads, letme quote an article from the May 1-14, 2007, edition of The Trucker, an industryrag. The salient portions of the article are these.

“MONTERREY, Mexico – The driver of a tractor/trailer that lost its brakes andkilled nine people has been charged with homicide after testing positive fordrugs, authorities said April 4.

“Ruben Rodriguez, 44 had traces of marijuana and methamphetamine in hisblood April 1 when he lost control of a rig towing two trailers loaded with 66tons of steel tubes ...

“The rig crashed into pedestrians, cars, dozens of buildings, utility poles andtraffic lights before coming to a halt and leaving behind a 2.5 mile trail ofdestruction in the northern industrial city.

“Garza said investigators determined that the truck’s brakes failed ...”

Nuff said.—

Speaking of drugged-out truckers ... Many years ago, a lot of truckers stayedalert by taking stimulants – stimulants other than caffeine, that is. However,in the last years, the development of drug tests have pretty much put thekibosh to that. While coffee is still consumed by the gallon, use of the other

stuff – Benzedrine, amphetamines, black beauties, meth and whatnot – hasdeclined.

Declined, but not gone away. The problem is that while the law allows randomand frequent testing of truckers, it hardly ever happens. Oh, to be sure, youget a drug test before you hire-on and whenever you are involved in an injuryaccident but the idea that trucks are randomly pulled over and their driverstested, well it just doesn’t happen. Jo and I rolled over two hundred thousandmiles through forty-five states, and though our truck was inspected severaltimes, we never got hit by random drug tests. Nor did any of the truckers withwhom we talked. Consequently, if a trucker feels the odds are with him (andthey are) he or she can pop a pill and go down the road unmolested.

As long as truckers are paid on a piecework basis and given stupidly shortdelivery deadlines, drugging will continue. It simply has to.

Miscellanea

In our peregrinations, we found things that were interesting and sometimesshocking. I present them here, in no particular order.

We pulled into a Pennsylvania rest area to use the bathrooms. As we werewalking back to our truck, a beat up old rig belonging to a small hardscrabbleline pulled in. The rig was filthy. The name and phone number looked likethey’d been painted on with a whisk broom.

The trucker got out and stood on the tarmac as if he were in a daze. After a fewseconds, he started for the building with an unsteady gate. He and Iacknowledged each other with a nod. Then he spoke: “Man, I’ve been drivin forseventeen hours straight and I still gotta make Augusta before I can stop.”

He was already six hours beyond the legal limit. “Jesus,” I said. “That’s a hellof a haul. You must be shot.”

“I am,” he said, “but I’ve gotta make my delivery tomorrow no matter what. SoI’m loadin up on coffee and No-Doze and pissing like a racehorse.” He lit acigarette and took a drag. “Fucking company!”

“Wow,” I said with an admiring smile, “You must be keeping two log books.”

Another drag. “Two? Hell, I’m keepin three.

I asked: “How do you manage to stay awake?”

“Beats the shit out of me,” he replied. Heaving a sigh, he took another drag andsaid: “Well, better be goin. See ya on the road.”

It’s illegal as hell for a trucking line to dispatch someone who’s out of hours. They can be fined and lose their operating licences for that. But nasty littlelines, as this one seemed to be, do it anyway. They hire truckers with less thanstellar records, guys and gals who are desperate for work but, thanks to theirspotty records, can’t pass muster at bigger, better, lines. Knowing thesetruckers have few, if any, options, these lines pay them squat and work themlike dogs.

Do you like fudge? I love fudge. Penuche tops the list, followed closely byvanilla. If you want to know where to find the best fudge this old trucker hasever tasted, it’s in a truck stop off I-80 at exit 214 in Rawlins, Wyoming. On thesouth side of the freeway. Big place with a red and blue logo. You can’t miss it.

The only times I’ve ever passed by without stopping for fudge was when I stillhad plenty in the rig.

We’d been dispatched from the south Dallas terminal to pick up a load inAustin. The dispatch called for us to take on fuel at a truck stop at exit such-and-such from I-35. But we had a problem: that part of I-35 is elevated and youreally can’t get a good look at what’s on the ground – kind of like flying blind. Anyway, the exit loomed but neither of us could see anything of the truck stop. In fact, the whole area looked very residential; not a seedy, grungy, area thatwould play host to semis.

After a quick consultation, we decided to take the exit as instructed and hopethe truck stop was there. We were really low on fuel and might not make it to analternative.

We came down the ramp onto a surface street that paralleled I-35. Bad news,everything around us was residential. Oh, man. “Well, keep going,” Jo said. “Ifwe don’t find the place in a few blocks, I guess you’ll have to get us turnedaround so we can head back. Better to run out of fuel on the freeway than downhere.”

68 For obvious reasons, I’ve changed the location.

There were lots of underpasses, but few that could accommodate a semi. Thefew that could were controlled by traffic lights. We came to the first one; notruck stop. Then the second; again, no truck stop. Then the third; same results. I was cussing like a trooper. Not only were we not seeing our truck stop, weweren’t seeing any signs showing us the way back to I-35. We were starting tofret. Then, at the next red light, a tanker pulled up next to us and stopped – atanker in the livery of the very truck stop we sought.

“Oh,” exclaimed Jo, pointing to the tanker. “Look at that,”

“Holy shit!” I said.

“Follow that truck!” Jo chirped.

We did, and he turned under I-35 onto a street you certainly wouldn’t associatewith a truck stop, but, sure enough, there it was.

We were north of Dayton, Ohio68 on I-75 when traffic came to a stop. We turnedon the radio and scanned for the news. At the hour break, the station gave a tenminute newscast and we heard that our delay was caused by a semi/pedestrianaccident. Someone in a car had broken down and pulled off on the shoulder. Unfortunately, this someone was probably drunk so he threw open his door andstepped out, right in the path of a semi and was turned into instant road jam.

When he got hit, the poor guy went down under the rig. The truck had anti-lockbrakes so when the trucker stabbed the brakes, the wheels – and the drive shaft– kept on turning. As he was bouncing along under the rig, a bit of the victim’spant leg got snagged by a U-joint and instantly wound around the whirlingdrive shaft, tearing the poor bastard to shreds. Blood, guts and mangled bodyparts were strewn down the road.

The freeway was closed not only for the necessary investigation, but to shovelthe remains into a bag and hose off the pavement. We got going again hourslater.

By far, the best rest areas are in Texas. They’re big and spotless. They havelots of interesting displays to peruse while your teammate is in the can.

Snow had closed Donner Pass so, about 6:00 in the evening, we pulled into aLas Vegas truck stop and parked for the night. As we went in for dinner, wepassed through the casino (with the exception of lavatory stalls, everything inNevada is a casino). I spotted a trucker sitting by a large, garish slot, stuffing inquarter after quarter – I could tell he was a trucker by the chain-drive wallet andgrungy Peterbilt cap. Next to him stood a forlorn and anxious girl about 12. Hiskid, no doubt. When Jo and I headed for the truck an hour later, they were stillthere.

Next morning, when we went back in for breakfast, the two were still there. Thetrucker was playing the same slot and looked like death warmed over. Anashtray overflowing with cigarette butts sat next to him. The kid was still theretoo; sometime during the night, she’d pulled up a chair and was curled up in it,fast asleep. Her old man had at least done her the boon of tossing his jacket onher.

Jo and I’d heard too many stories of truckers who are always broke, havingpissed away their paychecks in dumps like this. It’s a problem in the industry.

We’d considered bringing a cat with us. The company was good about pets butrecalling the problems Moe had riding in a car, we thought better of it. Thenone day, as Jo pulled into a truck stop for fuel and lunch, she stopped way shortof the island, pointed and said “Oh, Merl. Look at that.” A fellow in a brightyellow 389 Pete bobtail had pulled up along side a strip of grass and was walkinghis cat (and the cat wasn’t on a leash either).

The cat, a fluffy black fellow with yellow eyes that could be seen at a distance,had been out getting some air. Despite the roaring diesels, honking horns andhollering truckers, the cat just nosed around, enjoying the out-of-doors. Whenhis human decided it was time to leave, he opened the driver’s door, saidsomething to the cat and pointed into the cab. The cat looked at his human,then bounded up the steps and into the rig. The trucker followed, and off theywent.

Jo still talks of this.

Who says cats can’t be trained?

We’d pulled into a truck stop near Talladaga, Alabama, for dinner. Walkingback to the rig, we noticed another Freightliner had pulled in next to us. Theinterior lights were on – the trucker was probably busy fudging his logs.

Whatever he was doing, the trucker was sitting on the top bunk, his legsdangling over.

From where he sat, he thought no one could see him – from his vantage point,all he could see out the windshield was the rig’s hood. However, had he laiddown, he’d have seen that from bunk level, he could look out all the way to thefuel islands and beyond. He would have also seen that anyone outside could seein. But believing he was safe from prying eyes (and he was, from the waist up),the trucker had taken off his trousers and sat on his bunk in his boxers. Ofcourse boxer shorts don’t have a secure fly; his had pulled open and his johnsonhad flopped out.

As we approached, we heard a round of guffaws from some truckers up aheadand saw them point to the Freightliner. Jo and I looked to where they pointedand saw the dude sitting there, blissfully unaware that his unit was on publicdisplay. We had a good laugh too. I don’t think the poor guy ever knew.

My favorite rest area? Echo Canyon, on I-80 just inside Utah’s border withWyoming. There’s a picnic table atop an adjacent hill that’s far enough awayfrom the parking lot to attenuate noises. There’s also a bunch of cute little furrycreatures that will eat from your hand. It all makes for a good experience.

The best restaurant we’ve frequented that’s not associated with a truck stopbut accessible to semis? Tom’s, on Reservoir Avenue in Pomona, California, acouple of blocks north of the 60 Freeway. His bacon and eggs are to die for –good, and lots of them.

What is the armpit of America? Alameda Avenue, down in L.A. It’s amonstrous, festering sore peopled by derelicts, winos, pimps, hookers and theprofoundly disturbed. They void and spew in the gutters at will.

During the day, these creatures sleep on the sidewalks (don’t ever try to sweepaway a pile of filth and rags, there may be a bum sleeping inside). At night,they mooch at the doors of visiting semis, snort drugs, drink Mad Dog and partyin the middle of the streets, spreading their spoor and offal. They are sustainedby civic agencies and charities.

But as degrading and horrible as you and I might find this life, they like it. Afellow with whom I drove the fishmobile told me that he once struck up aconversation with a fish monger who was on cordial terms with this flotsam. The trucker wondered how many of them would leave if they had the chance. “You really want to know?” asked the fish monger. The trucker nodded.

“Maybe 15 percent,” came the reply. “The rest love it – and why not? The citytakes care of them and they don’t have to do jack squat. Hell, if one gets theclap, all he as to do is go to a public health clinic and he gets a free shot in theass.”

What passes for business on Alameda, takes place after dark. Throughout thenight, you’ll see a host of bums pushing carts they’ve filched from local grocerystores. They’re going around, hither and thither, picking through the guttersand trash, retrieving bottles and cans. After filling the carts, they head for localrecycling centers where they sell their boodle for enough small change to keepthemselves in rotgut. Unfortunately for them, the grocers will occasionally hirea bunch of no-neckers to bring the carts back. When the gorillas find a winowith a misappropriated cart, they simply grab the cart and upend it, spilling thewino’s treasure back into the gutter. While the bum stands there raging at theunfairness of it all, the goons take the cart back to the grocery store where it willbe disinfected and returned to service.

Ah, the City of Angels.

In a Virginia truck stop, we’d parked next to a driver from our line and beganshooting the breeze. The subject of dispatchers came up. “Who you got?” heasked.

“Waldo,” I answered. “A couple of guys told me he was a real pain in the ass,but so far, we haven’t had any problems.”

“Well, yer lucky,” said the trucker. “Waldo can bust balls, but he’s fair. Me? Igot Bug – probably the worst dispatcher the company’s ever had.” Ah, yes, theBug. He’s earned this appellation not only for his bulbous body and spindlylimbs, but because he has the morals and principles of an insect.

Dispatchers are paid by the number of loads their truckers haul each week and,loving money as much as life itself, Bug works his truckers like mules. I’d beentold the company had fired Bug three times, but each time they let him go, theymissed the revenue he generated so they hired him back. “D`ya hear whathappened a couple a weeks ago back at headquarters?” my companion askedwith a smile. I shook my head No.

“Well, one day this ol trucker comes a-rollin in the front door. He’s got shit inone eye, blood in the other and a fuckin tire iron in his hand. ‘Where’s thatgoddamned Bug’ he hollers. ‘I’m gonna beat his fucking head in.’ The ol`trucker proceeds to start smackin desks, door posts, whatever, and it took five

guys to get him calmed down. Bunch a other guys had to hustle Bug out theback door a`for that ol boy took sight of him.”

“Christ. What had happened, anyway?” I asked.

“Don’t know all the details,” my friend said, “but I hear it had somethin to dowith the trucker’s missing his kids’s wedding. Bug wouldn’t route the poordevil home – the guy lives in Maine or somethin – Bug kept him working outwest until it was too late. Weren’t no reason to do that. Just cussedness.”

After that, the company installed a security system with magnetic cards to openthe doors. Of course truckers aren’t issued these cards. For truckers, thecompany built a special entrance room that’s outfitted with bullet-proof glassand a 2-way squawk box. Thanks to the Bug, when truckers visit headquarters,we now conduct all of our business with the company from that little room. Onthe rare occasion that we must enter the building proper, we’re patted down bya security guard before being buzzed in.

Someday, Bug is going to get shot.

Eyesore Ally? It’s a stretch if I-75 in Georgia, north of the Florida border that’sinfested with modern, high-tech billboards. Rank after rank, they stretch formiles. These billboards are all of the same modern design. They sit atop largemetal posts and are arranged at uniform height. All are brightly lit.

Ugly, ugly, ugly.

The dirtiest, filthiest stuff in the world, is 5th wheel grease. Being swivels, 5th

wheels need lubrication. When a tractor is new, and every time it goes in theshop for service, the mechanics slather it with fresh, clean grease. However,immediately after leaving the shop, the grease picks up diesel soot, road dust,pollen, animal hair – anything – and grinds it in. Soon, the grease is as black astar and just as sticky.

If you get any on your cloths, you may as well throw them away, for 5th wheelgrease will not come out. Fifth wheel grease gets all over everything behind thecab. It also collects along the lower front edge of the trailer, which scrapes the5th wheel as the tractor backs under to hook up. If you ever come upon abobtail, or trailer standing on its landing gear, stay away from these areas.

You’ve been warned.

Not long after we left Fearless Leader’s tutelage, we were at a truck stop inBarstow, California, where we planned to take showers and have dinner. I wasstanding at the kiosk where truckers cash in their points for showers (everyfifty gallons of fuel earns enough points for one shower) when a worn lookingman made eye contact with me and scooted over. He explained that he and hiswife had been on the road, i.e., hitchhiking and walking, for the last ten days. He wondered, would it be possible for me to stake the two of them to showers?

Sure. We had points galore, so I stuck my card back in the kiosk and punchedup two more showers. When I handed the chits to the man, you’d have thoughtI’d given him the Hope Diamond. I was about to hand the guy a twenty so heand his wife could get something to eat but, thanking me again for the showers,he vanished into the milling throng. This was my first experience in years athaving the mooch put on me. It wasn’t the last.

At least once a week, maybe more often, I get hit on by a hobo. Hobos aren’twhat you think, at least not the ones haunting truck stops and shipping docks. Their health may be shot and they may be dirty, but the ones where truckersgather are OK guys; not aggressive and pugnacious like New York’s squeegeemen. When these guys approach, they’re polite. Indeed, they try for as muchdignity as they can and you can sense their reluctance to beg.

To avoid the label of “beggar,” many will offer something for sale – usually apiece of trash found at the roadside which, after being cleaned with spit and ashirttail, is presented as a priceless heirloom. Of course we know what the itemis, and the hobos know that we know, but the “transaction” provides dignifiedcover for what is really abject begging so that neither of us are embarrassed.

At all times of the day or night, in every major truck stop, there will be at leastone `bo working the truckers.

Let’s see: so far I have bought a hat, three belt buckles, a totally broken battery-powered TV, an old tire gauge and ... Oh, I can’t remember what all. I put thesepurchases in the truck and tossed them when next we stopped.

Life can be hard.

On westbound I-15, east of Victorville in California, there’s a rest area fortrucks. You can tell it’s for trucks and not cars because it’s an unlit waste ofpot-holed dirt with two chemical outhouses at the far end. It’s one of the fewplaces for truckers to stop since the Nevada border and the last one before

entering the L.A. megalopolis so it gets a lot of use. Knowing it might be hoursbefore we could get to a formal toilet, wisdom dictated we pull in.

Jouncing along the rutted ground, I pulled up and parked in front of the nearestouthouse. Jo had decided long ago to avoid these evil things, opting instead fora Wag-Bag in the cosy confines of the rig. I, of course, had no suchcompunctions so I headed for the closest unit.

The thing was alive with flies. I opened the little door. The stink wasunbelievable.

In the dim light, I could see the toilet seat was already raised and waiting. Istepped up and unzipped. As I was aiming, I realized I wasn’t looking downinto a yawning blue hole; indeed, I was looking at a heap of feces and TP thathad built up to the level of the seat itself. But then I noticed something else: Atthe top of the pile was a pair of discarded Jockey shorts with a great gob of shitground into the seat. For a few seconds, I looked at this in shock and wonder. Then, in a thrill of horror, I realized that a trucker had crapped in his pants.

Oh, the poor bastard. He must have been holding it for hours. Probably hopinghe could make it to his L.A. destination before they closed for the day and hehad an unpaid layover. Clammy sweat pouring down his face, he held thepuckering string shut mile after mile. The trucker was boring in on hisdestination when, bang, he hit a pothole and the dam burst. Sliding around inhis soiled breeches, the trucker spotted this rest area, parked, doffed his filthyshorts and tossed them in the outhouse. His pants, having had the shorts catchthe brunt of the evacuation, were fouled but salvageable. These he no doubttook back to the rig and stowed them out of sight and smell. (No wonder thelaundry rooms of truck stops and terminals have a feculent aroma in them.)

Fearless Leader had said truckers often shit in their pants. The most commonreason is they’re running late for a pickup or delivery, feel they can’t afford thetime to stop and, consequently, have an accident. Others are so steeped inapathy they don’t care. Still others, he said, do it simply as a matter of courseand convenience. In any case, Fearless said the guys and gals who do messthemselves are old-timers ground down by life on the road. Newbies like Jo andme still have enough dignity to stop when the urge comes upon us.

Questions & Answers

While taking some home time, our old neighbors in Clearview invited us to aparty. Their daughter had just graduated from high school and the old folkswere hosting a do in her honor. Seeing our tractor parked out front, manypartygoers asked us questions about driving and hinted around about getting achance to peek inside the rig. Amiable soul that I am, I accommodated. I gavethem guided tours of the Freightliner and answered their questions – many ofwhich are cited below. They are in no particular order.

Q: How in the world do you back up a semi? I can’t back my car into thegarage, yet I see semis backed into loading docks in perfect alignment.

A: A hands-on illustration works best so head up to the grocery storeand get a cart; it will be your “trailer” and you yourself will be thetractor. Go around to the front of the cart and grasp it in the middlewith both hands; this connection will be your “5th wheel.”

Now start pushing cart backwards, aiming at a place where youwant to park the cart and pay attention to the movements you mustmake to get the cart in there. They will be exactly the same sort ofmovements a driver makes with his or her tractor.

Q: You two actually live in this thing?

A: Indeed we do. We not only live in it, we eat in it, work in it, sleep init, go to the can in it. We do so for anywhere between five and sevenweeks at a stretch – for as long as we can stand it.

Q: Forgive me for saying this, but you two look like you’ve put on someweight. Have you?

A: Thanks for asking. Yes we have. Close to fifty pounds each. Butwe seem to be stabilizing now.

Q: Gee, why so much weight? Fatty food? Things like that? Why not justget some good old exercise?

A: Exercise? Where do you propose we park the semi? About 97% ofthe time we have a trailer hooked to the tractor and you just can’twilly-nilly get off the freeway and turn down onto a street that lookslike it may have a nice fresh air farmer’s market. That’s a good wayto end up in a ditch or get a ticket for blocking traffic as you try toextricate your self from your folly.

Nor can you pull into one of those upscale mini-malls like down inHooterville. While its stores and shops do indeed have facilities fortrucks, they’re unloading facilities and designed for small deliveryvans; you try to park a semi there and the mall people will tow youaway so fast it’ll make your head swim – and if you’re stupidenough to try to park out where the 4-wheelers park, you’ll end uprunning over something that doesn’t belong to you.

And where was the last Gold’s Gym you saw that had a sign saying“Semis may park in the rear”?

No sir. In a semi, your parking options are very tightlycircumscribed, and that means your activities are too.

Q: What do you like most about driving a semi?

A: Driving the semi. It’s subtle and hard to put into words but I’ll try. First, there’s the sound of the engine – a great deep purr that youfeel as much as hear. It’s most enjoyable when you’re on theflatlands with the cruise set and going a constant speed. Verysoothing.

Also soothing is the very act of driving. I have always likedmachines and liked operating them. I can do it for hours at a timewithout complaint. I could be just as happy engineering a train orpiloting an airplane.

A good part of my enjoyment comes from the reverie that drivingallows. I can think of a million things and dwell on them to myheart’s content. For example, I can ponder what goes on inside astar that lets it give light and warmth to the planets that whirlaround it. Or I can remember the fall night Jo and I took a bargedown the Colorado River out of Moab, Utah, as the guide told ofIndian legends memorialized on the red sandstone cliffs above.

I can recall and relive adventures I’ve shared with buddies. Likethe time Clarence “CJ” Jones and I got in a drag race on CedarAvenue and clicked door handles at 110 m.p.h. as we crossed a setof railroad tracks. Or when I did a burnout in Larry Shain’sdriveway at three in the morning just to piss him off.

Then there are all the “what if” games a guy can play. Like tryingto imagine in what ways my life would be different if I’d taken ourneighbor’s offer to join him as his copilot in a mad flee toGuatemala. Or if I’d given the faithless Suzie another chance. Orbought that house in Richfield when I was married to the ex.

Driving and thinking has made me realize my life – anyone’s life –is an endless presentation of doors. At any one time, you are facedwith a thousand of them. After suitable dithering, you pick one andgo through only to be confronted by a thousand more. Not havingcrystal balls, we can never be sure we’re opening the best doors – orthe worst ones, for that matter. The best we can ever do is make aneducated guess, turn the knob and take our chances. The driver’sseat of a semi is a good place to think on these things.

If traffic permits, and it often does, I can steal glances at the USA aswe pass by homes, farms, cities, factories, war memorials, horses,cows and people. You can get little glimpses of other people’s livesand then expand on them to create “real” people in your head andbuild little worlds for them.

I also have the time to miss my dead friends. Don, who died of avicious cancer way before his time and of Paul, whose last yearswere full of pain and loneliness. And of CJ, whose heart failed himwhen it ought not have. When I first met these guys, we wereyoung and the world seemed open and inviting and the times feltreally good. As the song says: Those Were the Days, My Friend, WeThought They’d Never End. But they did.

Then there is the perch high above the passenger cars, SUVs, vansand pickups. The world, or at least the road, looks far differentfrom up here. Less congested and hectic and that’s nice. And aloof. I like being aloof.

Finally, there is the ability to refine the art of shifting. My goal is tobe able to change gears, up or down, as smoothly and quickly as anautomatic transmission and without using the clutch. I’m happy toreport I’m getting there.

Q: What do you like least?

A: Everything else, but especially the stultifying boredom and thefatigue, close behind which comes a certain homesickness. Theboredom comes from doing the same old same old day after dayafter day after day with no let up. Oh, the view out the side windowchanges somewhat, but we have to concentrate on what’s out thewindshield and as I said before, one mile of pavement looks prettymuch like any other.

The same goes for making pickups and deliveries. The experiencesare completely interchangeable with one another. It’s like flushinga toilet over and over and over again – pull the handle, the watergoes down. Water then fills back up. Pull the handle, the water ... You get the idea. It’s to the point where Jo and I have lost all senseof time. We never know what day of the week it is as our days allblend into a gray blur. Time flies by at light speed and we wonderwhere our lives are going: it’s the purposelessness of running in asquirrel cage.

But of course that’s the way you want it when you drive a semi, forexcitement only means that something is going haywire and youmight be in danger of getting hurt or killed.

As for the fatigue, it comes from the stupid Hours of Service rules,plus being chained to that goddamned Qualcomm 24/7 and havingto hop-to whenever the thing beeps. You can never – never – counton getting any down time no matter how exhausted you are. Andthen there are the constant deadlines. When the dispatch says youmust drive from New York to L.A. in three days’ time, you don’t getmuch sleep.

As a long-haul trucker, you must manage your fatigue. Forexample, I can do three night shifts in a row, but not a fourth. Onthe fourth night, at some point, I am simply going to have to pullover and sleep and if this makes me late for a delivery, so be it. Ofcourse, as the company considers us to be meat machines, theythink this is unacceptable but, frankly, Jo and I aren’t going to riskour lives so some trucking company can have a better on-timedelivery record than some other.

As for the homesickness, I assume that needs no explanation.

Q: How do you know when to pull in after passing another car or truck?

A: We use the mirrors. Our mirrors are the only way we can tell what’sgoing on behind us. In fact, most of us back up to shipping docksusing nothing but the mirrors, though I usually look back out thedriver’s door window to make sure I’ve got a good lay up.

Q: Don’t you two ever get cabin fever?

A: Providence be thanked, we do not. Of course it helps that we don’tactually see all that much of each other. Remember; when I drive,Jo sleeps and visa-versa. Of course, we’ve had practice: we spentsixteen years in the software business working eight to twelvehours in the same office, sitting at desks right across from eachother.

Q: Diesel engines don’t seem to smoke and stink so much anymore. Why isthat?

A: Because Uncle Sam stopped buying the industry’s self-servingbilge that diesels were actually “clean,” smoke and smellnotwithstanding. Diesel fuel is now being refined to remove almostall the sulphur and, for the 2007 model year, the engines are beingequipped with catalytic converters. All this should have been done– and could have been done – years ago.

Q: Do truckers actually use the tachometer? I’ve got one in my car but ...

A: You bet we do. In today’s car, the engine has a useful range of froman idle of around 650 r.p.m. to a red line of over 6,000 r.p.m. However, in today’s truck diesel, the useful range is from 500-1,800r.p.m. If it is allowed to go to 2,300 (easy to do when going down along mountain grade and you aren’t watching the tach) the enginewill blow up. Also, if you lug a diesel, i.e., apply full throttle below1,000 r.p.m., you’ll hammer its internal bearings to smithereens. Diesel engines may be brutes, but they’re sensitive brutes and theuse of the tachometer is vital.

Q: At night, out on the freeway, I see some trucks that are all lit up like themother ship in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. What’s with that,anyway?

A: Those rigs belong to independents who have no better uses for theirmoney. These lights, in all their garish profusion, are the truckers

equivalent of the old hot-rodders’ dingle berries, teardropspotlights, fender skirts and jeweled mud flaps. Many of theselights are so bright they can easily be mistaken for brake lights,signal lamps and so on. I think they should all be banned.

Q: What kind of mileage does one of these suckers get anyway?

A: Our rig gets a touch over seven miles per gallon. We could getbetter if we drove with lighter feet but it isn’t our truck and wedon’t pay for the fuel, so what the hell. And when I say “better,” Imean getting 7.75 to eight-zero.

Q: I heard someone talking about “trucker bombs.” What are those, somesort of Homeland Security thing?

A: Hardly. They are old plastic jugs full of piss. Knuckle-dragging,low-hairline truckers fill them while under way then toss them outthe window when they think no one’s looking. Some explode whenthey hit the pavement but most simply roll into the grass and weedswhere they fester in the hot sun until hit by a lawnmower. Othertimes, the louts will set them down when stopping to fuel or eat. You’ll see these trucker bombs lining the curbs in rest areas andtruck stops all over the country. The problem has gotten so badthat many states have passed laws specifically addressing thisproblem. My home state of Washington hits errant drivers with a$1,050 fine for ejecting one of these disgusting things into publicareas. Personally, I’d like to see these kinds of drivers sentenced toa chain gang whose job it is to police the roads and rest areas,searching for trucker bombs. When one is found, the guy on thechain gang has to open it, empty it, cut it up and put it in a recyclebag.

Now I myself use a jug too, but I simply empty it out, rinse it andreuse it.

Q: How about noise? Semi’s are frightfully noisy from the outside. What’s itlike inside?

A: Frightfully noisy. Here, let me show you. (At this point, I reach forthe key and start the engine. An earsplitting racket fills the cab. Invariably, my interlocutor jumps, startled.)

Q: Good lord! That’s awful. How do you two carry on conversations?

A: Yes, it is awful and we carry on conversations by shouting. Andremember, the engine is only idling now. You should hear what it’slike when we’re pulling a full load up a six percent grade in seventhgear with the radiator fan howling.

Q: Why don’t you guys get some ear protectors?

A: We did. They didn’t work. There is something about the noise adiesel makes that cuts right through. All they did was kill thesounds of human voices and the music coming from the CD player.

Q: How about some of those noise-canceling headphones?

A: Can’t. It’s illegal to wear headphones when driving. We have tohear police sirens, horns and any strange noises the truck may bemaking, not to mention the co-driver. As for wearing them duringnon-driving hours, I don’t think sleeping in them would be verycomfortable.

Q: Do you ever get any downtime when you’re on the road?

A: On occasion. One time we’d dropped a loaded trailer at theOklahoma City terminal and as the company didn’t have anythingfor us right then, we bobtailed into town. We spent the day at thesite of the Oklahoma City bombing where there is a moving, heart-rending museum, then went to the other side of downtown to seethe movie, Munich. Of course the whole thing was spoiled whenjust as the hero was finishing off the bad guys, my cell phonestarted jumping around in my pocket. It was our dispatcher,Waldo: “I’ve got a load for you so would you get your asses to theterminal and pick it up? It has to be in Delaware Friday night.” And we’d even planned on going to the steakhouse across the streetwhen the movie was over. Oh, well.

Q: My cousin, Joey, told me about this driver back east that makes over ahundred and seventy thou a year and ...

A: (I hold up a hand to cut off my interlocutors and then finish thesentence for them.) ... and works only three days a week from ninein the morning to three in the afternoon and owns a fifty-acre ranch

where he raises thoroughbreds. Yeah, I’ve heard about him too. Sohas every driver I’ve ever met. Some day we’d all like to meet him.

Q: Oh, so you think that’s just an urban myth?

A: One hundred percent unadulterated bullshit.

Q: If you have a load where the trailer isn’t packed floor-to-ceiling, front-toback, how you do you keep the stuff from flying around inside when youhit bumps?

A: Several ways. First, the trailer floor is made of hardwood so a fewnails will often do the job. Then there are load locks: These aremetal bars that reach across the inside and lock into slots in thetrailer’s walls. Just put one or two of these things across the load’sface and you’re in business. Finally, there are nylon straps. Justwrap them around the load and secure them in the same slots usedby the load locks.

Q: I bet it’s a lot safer to drive just the bobtail than a whole semi with a loadof freight. Right?

A: Wrong! A semi – the tractor with a trailer attached – is designed towork as an integrated system. A tractor without a trailer is probablythe most skittish, squirrely and unsafe vehicle on the road. Once,while bobtailing down to the Kent, Washington, drop yard to pickup an empty, it started to rain. I was following along in 30 m.p.h.traffic when the driver in the car ahead put on the brakes. Ifollowed suit and – holy shit – nothing happened! All ten wheels ofmy tractor locked up and the damned thing kept right on going in astraight-line skid. I had to turn off onto the grassy shoulder to keepfrom crunching the Honda in front of me. No, tractors need thetrailer’s weight to keep them in traction with the road beneath.

Q: So, Merlin, bottom line: can you tell me what the life’s really like? Canyou think of any analogy – something that might give me a trueperspective on trucking? I mean, is it like being in the military?

A: You aren’t the first one to ask this. I’ve given it a lot of thought andhere’s my answer: It’s a bit long, but bear with me.

One night last summer as Jo and I were walking from the parkinglot of a truck stop to the restaurant, I’d seen a sign on the fence:

Warning. This area is reserved forprofessional truck drivers only. If you do nothold a CDL, do not enter.

I’d seen another one like it down in Southgate, an area around I-40south of Dallas that is home to mammoth truck stops, repair shops,parts stores and truck washes – and the purview of hookers of everydescription and taste. Both signs reminded me of something, butwhat?

After a while, it came to me: It was another sign I saw long ago atSan Francisco University, an institution run by the Roman CatholicChurch. I was down there on a consulting project and whileinventorying the campus telephone system, came across this noticeposed on a door:

This is a cloistered area. Unless you are a resident orcaretaker, do not enter these premises without a guide. Please also remember the residents here have takenstrict vows and must not be disturbed.

Or words to that effect.

And so here is the analogy: Driving a semi is like living in acloister. Like the monks and nuns living within hallowed walls, weare of this world but not in it.

We pass by shopping centers and markets abuzz with people buyingstuff for the family, noshing with chums, heading into movietheaters, getting new eyeglasses, whatever, and all we can do iswatch through the windows from high in our rolling monks’ cells. Floating above the rest of humanity, we are observers only. We donot interact. Hell, we can’t. There’s no place to park our rigs andjoin in the bustle of normal civilization. We do not talk to others and they do not talk to us. We are confined to our trucks –forbidden by the nature of our calling to be a part of everydayAmerican life.

And a monk’s cell the truck cabin truly is. It is dark and dingy. There is the cramped lumpy bunk with two or three small spaces tostore a bit of clothing and a few personal possessions. Also, thetruck belongs to the order; it is not ours to personalize with photosand gewgaws. As in a cloister, our cells are for work and sleep only,toilet facilities and the mess hall are communal affairs.

We drive past residential neighborhoods and see wives hanging outthe wash, husbands mowing lawns and children goofing off, but wecannot join in. That life is forbidden to us. We are walled off fromit by 80,000 pounds of steel, aluminum, fiberglass and rubber. Moreover, our vows of eternal fealty to the forced dispatch mandatethat we not tarry, even if there were a place to park.

On holidays we roll past farmhouses and see them surrounded by cars as extended families have come home for a gathering. In ourminds we can smell the roasting turkey, see the table set withwreaths and shimmering candles and hear the laughter of peoplewho love each other. Presents. Cookies. Lavishly decorated treesholding center court in the living room and piled with brightlywrapped gifts – all the stuff of familial happiness. But this is not forus, for we operate under forced dispatch and the abbot of our orderhas assigned this task to us. While those people in the farmhousewill sleep tonight surrounded by their mothers, fathers, sisters,brothers, daughters and sons, we will put on a CD of Christmascarols, sing to ourselves and drive on through the night.

In the rearview mirrors we will steal a last look at the farmhousewith all its rooms brightly lit and a curl of smoke coming from thechimney. We will heave a sigh. We will envy these lucky folks but they do not even know we exist. The best we can hope for issomeone in that house will hear the grunt of our diesel engine and –maybe not even consciously – know that a member of our order ispassing by.

On those occasions when we drive into town to pick up or deliverloads, people are hardly aware of us. Our forty-ton trucks are likephantasms to them – hardly noticed as we chug and lumber downtheir roads. Until, that is, we cause them some inconvenience atwhich time we take corporeal form. Giving a start of suddenawareness, they flip us off.

Day after day, week after week, we live in our rolling cloister like afoetus in its womb – dreamlike and silent, unperturbed by theworld outside. But like most cloistered monks, leaving the confinesof the Abby is sometimes necessary. We open the door and comedown from the truck for such worldly purposes as going to thedoctor, a funeral or to visit a family member. Provided, of course,the “abbot” will have given dispensation and not sent anotherdispatch, in which case whatever we had planned is cast aside forThe Load Must Go Through. When we do alight, we are instantlyrecognizable by our habit: Disheveled hair with flyaway beards,dirty clothes stained with grease and mud, filthy unwashed bodiesand a miasma of B.O.

A thought: imagine a nun’s cloister as seen from the road. Nopasserby has the foggiest idea of what goes on inside, the wall ofsecrecy is so thoroughgoing. For all anyone knows, the nuns couldbe painting themselves blue and swinging from the chandeliers. Soit is with our rolling cloisters: people see the 18-wheeled brutes allright enough, but I wonder, do they understand there are livingbeings inside? Or are we just abstractions – boxes with brightlycolored logos and catchy names but as devoid of humanity as a pileof rocks? What do they imagine we do as we hurtle down the road? In truth, when I have asked people about this, most of them doindeed put semis in the same category as cloisters – things that canbe seen, yes, but never truly comprehended or clearly understood. As much as we are alienated from the normal world, the normalworld is alienated from us.

You now have an idea of what it’s like driving a semi over the road. To be sure,we could drive for twenty years and we’d see some more bazaar things but theeveryday stuff – hooking up trailers, backing into docks, showering in the truckstops, surviving on the bad food, getting shut down in the snow – would be thesame. As I said, a year behind the wheel and you have pretty much seen it all.

However, there are some other interesting subjects on which I have touched butnot dealt with in enough detail: Our fellow truckers and the future of drivingsemis in the good old U.S. of A. They are next.

Piecework, Teamwork, Nickels & Dimes

Piecework is a shirttail cousin of commission work like sales jobs, orcontingency billing as in consulting. In driving things like dump trucks orfishmobiles, you are paid a salary, an hourly rate, or a commission on sales. InOTR, you are paid for each mile (the piece) you roll. I’ve talked some aboutpiecework, but to see its pernicious effects, it needs a more detailedexplanation. Let’s see how it affects the truckers.

For solo drivers. One night, while looking for empty trailers at a drop yard inIowa City, we met a fellow who drives for a OTR company we’d originallyconsidered. He told us he’d been working as a solo for almost a year and all hewas getting – or would get for the foreseeable future – was the same 28c|/mile atwhich he started. Now a good week for a solo is 3,000 miles which, at 28c|/mile,is $42,800.00 a year, but most solos don’t roll anywhere near that. This chap toldus that, for him, a 1,500-mile week was good. That works out to $21,420 a year –pretty poor for a man with a wife and kid at home. And that’s with staying outfor two months at a crack.

He said he’s had it; as soon as he can find a truck stop within a day’s drive ofhome, he’s going to park the rig and ask his brother to come get him. He’llleave the rig’s keys at the fuel desk and let the company worry about it. He saidhe’d rather eat sand than drive OTR again.

For independents. Consider the plight of Teddy Trucker, a guy who owns hisown rig and who pays all his own expenses. Teddy hauled a load from Dallas toDuluth, Minnesota, and dropped it at the consignee just before noon. He calledhome and found that at 4:00 that morning, his wife drove their kid to thehospital for an emergency appendectomy. His wife says the insurance coversabout half so Teddy will have to pop for the rest of the $20,000.00 bill. Bummer.Because the kid’s OK, Teddy doesn’t have to head home; he can stay on theroad and make money for a few more weeks.

Teddy calls his usual broker: Sorry, no loads from Duluth today. Teddy startsworking his cell phone, burning up the minutes, calling everyone in the littleblack book. Nothing. Teddy parks in a little truck stop to spend the night andprays for a load the following day.

He’s eaten all the food he brought with him, so Teddy goes to the restaurant andspends fifteen bucks he can ill-afford (Teddy’s ten days late on his truckpayment, thanks to a slow pay shipper). At sunup, he calls the broker. There’sthree loads going out of Minneapolis, but Teddy’ll have to burn his own fuel togo get them. Teddy is about to agree but the broker tells him the loads are only

69 HOT BUNKING – So called because when it’s your turn to sleep, the bunk is still hot

from the other trucker.

paying 85c| per mile – loaded only, empty miles are not covered so Teddy wouldhave to eat the deadhead. That’s not enough to earn a profit, let alone paytoward the looming hospital bill. Teddy declines the load but nothing elsecomes in that day. By the second morning, after tossing and turning with worryall night, Teddy calls the broker. Teddy says he’s willing to take one of the 85c|loads but finds that, late last night, three even more desperate truckers snappedthem up. Teddy now tells the broker that if he can get at least 1,500 miles, he’llhold his nose and take a load for 75c| per mile. Surprise, surprise, the brokerhas three loads paying just that. Teddy takes the longest one.

Starving like this, working construction for his uncle doesn’t seem so bad. Teddy decides that once he gets home, he’s going to sell the rig and strap on atool belt. Another trucker bites the dust.

For teams. Our OTR company pays teams 39c| per mile for every mile the truckrolls under dispatch, empty or loaded, and teammates split the money 50/50 sothere aren’t any wrangles over who drove most. This 39c| represents a smallpremium paid to teams in compensation for hot-bunking69 with strangers. Believe me, after team-driving the fishmobile, I can tell you the extra money iswell deserved:

1. When it’s his turn to sleep, your teammate invariably grabs your pillowinstead of his own, stuffs one end into his sweaty, unwashed armpit,sticks the other end beneath his jowls, and drools away for his eight hoursin the sleeper.

2. You get to watch your same-sex teammate prance around in his 3-day-oldskivvies while he gets ready for bed.

3. You’ll also listen to his inane hoots as he tunes in Rush Limbaugh on thesatellite radio and yells “Megadittos, Rush, megadittos!”

4. You must put up with farts, belches, nose pickings, tooth suckings andother icky personal quirks.

5. You must endure endless criticism of your driving techniques and listento ceaseless k`vetching about the truck, the company, driving, the cops,the HOS, his wife and life in general.

Members of most non-married OTR teams get cabin fever within six weeks andeither go back to solo runs or scout out new partners. On occasion, one teammember will become so overwrought at his partner’s excesses that he stops thetruck and pounds the crud out of him. Usually, though, before they come toblows, one or the other will have said “I’m outta here,” and absconded at a truckstop. In these cases, the company pays the trucker for the bus ride home.

For the licentious who see team driving as an opportunity to bed a succession ofwenches (or stud-muffins if the trucker is a she), forget it. No company willallow mixed gender OTR teams. The potential for ruinous sexual harassmentlawsuits is simply too great. (Yes, your honor, when I was in the back and hethought I was sleeping, he took out his thingie and played with it. I was sooffended).

However, a married couple driving as a team is OK. More than OK, marriedteams are the sine qua non. Most hubby/wifey teams are older couples longused to, and comfortable with, each others’ peccadilloes. They’re usuallyretirees who think driving a semi might be a lark – or old fools who have takenan economic pratfall and can’t be picky about how they make a living. In thebest cases, the married couples actually still love each other and enjoy eachother’s company.

So how much did Jo and I make driving OTR? Based on the propaganda wewere fed in truck school, we anticipated a yearly gross of around $75,000.00. Notbad, only my nephew, He on Whom the Gods Have Smiled, or my brother-in-law, the Vice President, make over that. Well, here’s the actual number for 2006,as taken from our Form 1040: $54,970.

What’s wrong with that? Plenty. Jo and I drove as a team so this is combinedincome. Had I teamed with a stranger, he and I would have split the money50/50, so I would have made just $27,485. “Professional Truck Driver” my ass.Hell, bag boys at WalpMart make this. Of course we truckers get bennies –health insurance, 401(k), and other such, which WalpMarters do not get so ...

So why do OTR drivers tolerate piecework and the crappy pay that comes as aresult? Good question. While sitting around the South Dallas terminal waitingon some repairs, I listened to a bunch of truckers and from what I gathered, theproblem is two-fold: The first is tradition; it has always been thus, and no onecan conceive of it being any other way. The second is that truckers generallyhave a low self-worth and feel they deserve no better.

About Truckers

We were back in New Jersey, pulling an empty and heading to the terminalsouth of Newark. It was pitch black and raining. Clyde, our night dispatcher,had a westbound load for us. We didn’t have to be at the shipper until 11:00 inthe morning; we could park at the terminal, attend to some chores, then get adecent night’s rest. After I backed the rig into an empty hole, we gathered ourdirty clothes and a bag of nukable food and headed in, blundering along in thedark, splooshing through the mud.

I held the door for Jo and we went in. Inside, the manager sat in his darkenedroom playing Solitaire on the computer, a Dutch door isolating him from thetruckers. We said hello and, without looking up, he responded with aperfunctory grunt. Jo wanted to get some supplies – Trip-Pack envelopes,trailer seals and whatnot – so while our cans of Dinty Moore were heating in themicrowave, she went to see the night manager. I loaded the washing machine,took a seat, laid out my copy of USA Today and began to read the opinion page. Jo has an unmistakable voice; even without talking loudly, it carries clear andsharp through walls and across open fields. I could hear her talking to the manbehind the counter, then heard her laugh. Eventually Jo returned and fetchedher soup from the microwave. When the clothes were dry, we headed back tothe truck. Passing by the manager’s doorway, he caught our eyes andbeckoned. He rose from his chair and walked to the Dutch door, leaned on it’sshelf and said “I really apologize for being so ... er, distant, when you two camein. Frankly, I thought you were just another couple of bozos like I see everynight. But after talking to the Missus, it was pretty clear you aren’t.”

I asked him what he meant and, lighting up a smoke, he began. “Most of thetruckers that come in here are pretty awfully disgusting. Dirty, filthy. And,Christ, do they smell. Just this morning, a guy came in – a solo in a Volvo – whostank so bad that Sheila, the day gal, had to open all the doors and used half acan of bathroom spray to kill the smell.”

Then, looking from one of us to the other with some alarm, he asked “Say, youtwo aren’t going to take showers here, are you?” Not tonight, I said, butadmitted we had taken them the previous month when we were in town.

“Well don’t do it again,” he cautioned. “I’ve had to go in there,” he said pointingin the shower rooms, “And clean human feces off the walls and floors of those

stalls. And not just once, either. Drivers shit and piss all over the place. It’slike the monkey house at a zoo.

“And its not just men, either,” he said, looking toward Jo. “Women truckers? Most of them never wipe their fat asses or flush the toilets – they just take adump, hitch up their drawers and walk away.”

Since he had opened the subject, I decided to tell the dispatcher about the flea Iencountered on the bus to California. When I finished, a rueful smile spreadacross his face: “That’s nothing,” he said. “Did you see that chassis sitting outthere at the end of the bobtail row? Well less than a year ago it was a brandspanking new Freightliner. The company assigned it to a solo based out ofhere. I’d seen the guy come in every now and again and he smelled like adump, but what really got me were all them marks on his skin. I thought theylooked like old bites,” he said, snapping his jaws in emphasis. “Some werescars, some were scabbed over, some fresh and raw.”

“Anyway, one day this guy, he quits. Came in, gave me his keys and logs andtook his stuff out of the tractor. He dragged his shit out to the street and caughta city bus outta here. Well,” the dispatcher said, dragging deeply on thecigarette, “Sheila tells Greg, one of our local drivers, to go out and see `boutcleanin up the rig. Not five seconds later, old Greg’s in here cussing like atrooper.” The dispatcher smiled at the recollection. “Greg’s so worked up hecan hardly talk but he finally gets it out: ‘Them’s bugs in there’ he said,‘Fucking bedbugs. I saw `em.’ he hollers. ‘Goddamned tractor’s alive withthem.’” Another deep drag.

“Greg goes on to say he knows all about bedbugs `cause he got bit up all thetime when he was a kid. Greg told us we couldn’t pay him enough to go back inthat truck and that we’d have to get an exterminator out here if we ever plannedto use it again. So Sheila calls in some bug guy who comes out that afternoon. He goes in, looks around a bit then yanks out the mattress and the curtains andsets fire to them right here in the yard. Next he sets off some big, nasty bugbomb inside the tractor and tells us to leave the doors and windows closedovernight. Bedbugs, he tells us, are sons-of-bitches to get rid of. Next morninghe comes back and finds the damned things are still alive. So now he set offtwo of these bombs and comes back the day after that and, sure enough, thelittle suckers are still crawling around.

“Anyways, that was enough for him. The bug guy goes and calls the healthdepartment – bedbugs are serious business, I guess. Bright and early the nextday, some guy comes out, goes in the old Freightliner for a few minutes, comes

out with some of the little motherfuckers in a jar and shows it to Sheila. Hetells her: ‘You’re probably going to have to burn it,’ meaning the truck.

“A couple of days later, the company sends out a team of guys that does thiskind of thing for a living. They hook the tractor to a tow truck and haul it tosome boneyard. They unbolt the cab and sleeper and lift the whole shebang offthe chassis and drop it in a shredder. Then they brought the chassis back hereand dumped it.”

Jo and I were flabbergasted. “My word,” said Jo. “Bitten up as you say, thatpoor man must have just lain in that truck every night and let those awfulthings dig right in.”

“Yeah,” said the dispatcher, nodding and agreement. “But according to Greg,the little bastards don’t usually hurt when they bite so he probably didn’t care.”

The dispatcher said that such personal rankness was seen more often in solosthan teams, though some pretty scrofulous teams had come through theterminal. This makes sense. If your teammate reels from the stink when youdrop your pants before hitting the sleeper, there is a certain incentive to washnow and again. A teammate can offer a check and balance against the worstexcesses of self-neglect.

—

If what the dispatcher was saying were true, and I have no reason to think itwas not, then there’s some justification for the attitudes I’ve encountered. Clerks that won’t make eye contact and who handle the paperwork at arm’slength. Truck stop personnel that act like they’re in the middle of a lepercolony. I remember the boss of a lumper crew who wouldn’t take the company’scheck from Jo’s hand, telling her to just put on the desk. Nor would he take thecontract, but let it sit for some minutes before picking it up. I think he wasgiving the bugs time to leave.

Now let me describe the general state of our fellow truckers.

Teeth. Or should I say, the lack of them. I have never encountered a cadre ofpeople with so few teeth. Men and women twenty, even thirty, years my junior,without a tooth left in their heads. They go around the yards and truck stopsshowing off their caved-in faces, their jaws making endless chewing motions. Of course it may be there are no greater percentage of truckers without teeththan in any other segment of the population; it may be that truckers just don’t

bother wearing dentures. In the isolation of driving, they know they don’t haveto impress anyone, so they opt for comfort and pack the chompers away in theluggage. When dentures are worn however, they generally seem to be ill-fitting– the truckers thrust them in and out of their mouths and when they speak, thedentures clack like castanets.

Even in those who still have some teeth, the remaining ones are in bad shape:crooked, discolored and carious and a horror to behold. If enough molars havebeen lost in back, the incisors and cuspids up front jut out like a bulldog’s. Thebreath is accordingly foul. I have to wonder if truckers might not keep neartheir seats, jars into which they can spit teeth as they loosen and fall out.

One afternoon we were having lunch in a Tennessee truck stop and joined aconversation in progress. The subject was orthodontia and a couple of truckersbegan to complain about the cost of keeping their kids’ teeth straight. At somepoint I let slip that even at sixty-four, I still have all my teeth. A toothlesstrucker sitting across the counter, a fellow with a neck like a turkey, guffawedon hearing that and called me a girlie-man. “Still got all yer teeth? Whatzamatter wit ya?” he wanted to know.

I thought for a moment then said: “Hey, I just started driving seven monthsago. Give me time.”

Morbid obesity. Though our country is fighting the battle of the bulge, mostpeople’s weight problems involve a little tummy or some cellulite around thehips – a double chin perhaps. What we’re talking about when it comes totruckers are thousands of men and women who look like Jabba the Hutt.

These truckers are so fat they have trouble just walking. I once saw a fellowstruggle for what seemed like three minutes to climb in his rig. When you seesuch truckers, look for a shiny area across the front of their pants just below thebelt line – it is a rub mark from the steering wheel.

Health suffers proportionately:

1. Hidden by clothes, the skin folds over on itself creating inches-deepcreases. These provide fertile grounds for molds and fungi that cannot beeffectively washed out. Ghastly smells issue forth as the flesh corrupts.

2. The bellies and rumps are so vast that normal arms cannot reach thenether places to wipe or wash. To reach down into the crotch to clean out

the old duck butter, these people would have to have arms like anOrangutan.

I had a dear friend, now deceased, who was crippled by a degenerativespinal disease. As he became more and more immobile, he resorted tousing a toilet brush wound with a wash cloth to scrub those parts he couldno longer reach. I should imagine such contrivances are employed by themorbidly obese truckers but I wonder how just one hand can support asagging, gelatinous, one-hundred pound sack of fat so the second handcan reach in with the brush and scrub? Maybe they rest the belly on thebathroom counter top.

3. One poor fattie I saw at our Dallas terminal was wearing shorts thatrevealed an Ace bandage wound around his bloated right thigh. Bulgingfrom below the bandage and proceeding down to mid-calf, the leg’s fleshhad the appearance of crepe paper. When he walked, the poor souldragged the ruined limb behind him like Marley dragged his chain. Thatleg must have hurt like blazes. How he could still manage to drive a truckwas beyond me.

4. Heart problems, of course, run rampant.

Bad Skin and Ulcers. In summer, when shorts are worn, you see a largenumber of truckers with problems in the lower legs. The limbs are edematous;as thick at the ankle as they are at mid-calf and the skin around the ankles hasa metallic red sheen like the skin of a pomegranate. In over half such cases,there are ulcers in the red areas. There’s usually more than one and the largestwill be about the size of a half-dollar. They weep a yellowish ichor that crustsover the lesion like a scab. In other cases, the fluid is produced in suchprofusion that gauze wrappings are required.

Limps and Hobbles. If it were only the morbidly obese who had problemswalking, you could write it off as the joints being crushed by the burdens theybear. But a lot of the normal-to-skinny truckers limp and hobble too. Theymove like garden slugs. Because these truckers don’t do much walking, mostcan get by without a cane – and with good reason: if they got caught usingcanes, they could lose their CDLs. The state, or even the company, might callthem in for examination and, finding them unable to easily manipulate the footpedals, they’d be disqualified from driving. No, using a cane is simply too greata risk. Instead, they park their rigs as close to the doors as possible and hobblearound as best they can, many in obvious pain.

—

So what’s going on here? I’m no doctor, but after looking up all thesesymptoms and manifestations on the internet, I’ll hazard a couple of guesses.

Scurvy. First, because of truck drivers’ notoriously poor diet, many probablyhave scurvy. Yes, that’s right, scurvy, the curse of ancient navies. From scurvycomes the loss of teeth we see so often. Scurvy also causes the softened bonesthat show up as bent legs and chronic limps. A good, succinct definition ofscurvy that fits to a “T” is found at www.monzy.com: “Scurvy is characterizedby swollen and bleeding gums with loosened teeth, soreness and stiffness of thejoints and lower extremities, bleeding under the skin and in deep tissues, slowwound healing, and anemia.”

You get scurvy from a lack of Vitamin-C. It is a form of malnutrition. Howcould such a thing be in this day and age? It’s not a surprise, really: fresh fruitsand vegetables are generally unavailable to truckers. A guy in a semi just can’twhip into any old supermarket parking lot to load up on oranges and othercitrus fruits. Truckers must buy their food at places that accommodate big rigs,i.e., truck stops, and most truck stops don’t sell fresh fruit. However, there isone truck stop chain whose stores will occasionally offer some fruit, but themerchandise is generally unappetizing, having sat on the shelves too long. Theapples are bruised and pulpy with a flat insipid taste. Oranges are wizened,discolored and dry. Bananas are black and soft with age. But you can’t faultthe truck stop for this.

Of course truckers could simply start taking a Vitamin-C pill once a day andsolve the whole problem but that would require a certain minimal interest inself care. A thing that is problematic at best.

Stasis Dermatitis. This is the swollen, red and ulcerated legs we see. www.merck.com/ says: “Stasis dermatitis is inflammation on the lower legsfrom pooling of blood and fluid. Stasis dermatitis tends to occur in people whohave varicose (dilated, twisted) veins (see Venous Disorders: Varicose Veins)and swelling (edema). It usually occurs on the ankles but may spread upward tothe knees. At first, the skin becomes reddened and mildly scaly. Over severalweeks or months, the skin turns dark brown. Eventually, areas of the skin maybreak down and form an open sore (ulcer), typically near the ankle. Ulcerssometimes become infected with bacteria. Stasis dermatitis makes the legs feelitchy and swollen, but not painful. Ulcers are usually painful.” Merck’s websitegoes on to say that this condition is hard to treat.

Stasis dermatitis exactly describes the condition we have seen on so many,many, truckers. If indeed this is what they have, can there be any doubt it iscaused by the sedentary, indolent nature of truck driving? Remember of what atrucker’s day consists:

1. Fourteen hours working, eleven hours of which are to be spent behind thewheel, sitting immobile, traveling down the road.

2. Ten hours of down time, eight of which must be spent lying a-bed in thesleeper, leaving just two hours for so-called “personal time” for exerciseand such.

This completes a trucker’s work cycle, after which the cycle is repeated adinfinitum. The unremitting pressure of piecework pay ensures that truckersoften live and work like this for weeks on end. And why not? After all, family,home and friends are often half a continent away. What incentive do suchtruckers have to park the rig, get out and go do something wholesome? And doit with whom? No, it’s easier just to sit in the rig, keep it rolling and suffer theconsequences.

Of course the question that begs to be answered is: If you see your legs swell,your ankles discolor and ulcerate, and notice that your teeth are falling out, whyin the blazes are you not seeing a doctor?

—

Brother Bill, when he told us about trucking, sternly cautioned us to eat wellbut eat sparingly and get plenty of exercise. But this is terrifically hard to doand if you have read this far, you know it is sometimes just plain impossible. After driving for a year, Jo and I both feel ourselves degenerating.

1. Thanks to the constant snacking we need to keep us awake, we’ve bothput on a lot of weight. The diet of fatty, poorly prepared food contributes,as does the lack of leafy greens, orange and yellow vegetables and freshfruits. When we take some home time, the first thing we do is head forthe grocery store. We spend the rest of our home time gorging on all thethings we couldn’t get on the road – grapes, apples, nectarines, freshsweet corn, oranges and bananas, plus lean cuts of red meat and whole-grain breads. Then, all too soon, it’s back on the road for another sixweeks of greasy cheeseburgers, milkshakes and sodas, pasta with creamsauce, eggs, sausages, french fries dripping with oil, boxes of Good-n-Plenties, Fritos, Cheetos, bearclaws and fudge.

2. The muscles in my legs are beginning to atrophy from disuse andwalking is becoming difficult. Jo’s pace has slowed to that of a womanfifteen years her senior, and six months ago she began to get the swollenankles characteristic of stasis dermatitis. Thankfully, she does not haveany discoloration or ulcers – at least not yet.

3. Both of us are beginning to get carpel tunnel syndrome from hangingonto the steering wheel for hours on end without relaxing our grip.

This job is a killer.

Heads Full of Snakes

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I am not a psychologist or psychiatrist. I have no credentialswhatever in those areas nor pretensions to expertise. At best, I am merely a layobserver of the human condition. Consequently, what I propound below is athesis based on just my imperfect and wholly incomplete observations of a smallrandom sampling of my colleagues. What we have heard and seen has beenconsistent throughout. That said, I’m satisfied the sample is reasonablyrepresentative of truckers as a whole.

The Trucker Personality. One afternoon, while waiting to go to a log book classat headquarters, I overheard an exchange between one of our old-timers, askanky man in dirty overalls with greasy fingerprints on his glasses, and a newfellow who had recently moved to America from some European country(France, I think). The subject was the general state of truck driving, and theEuropean fellow was explaining what things were like on the other side of thepond.

• All trucks have governors. They are set – by law – at ninety kilometersper hour (90 k.p.h.), which is a tad over fifty-five m.p.h.

• Truckers are paid salaries. There is none of the piecework nonsense wehave here. They also get regular home time and lots of it plus fullbenefits and vacations of up to four weeks each year.

• Truckers are limited to an eight-hour work day, period. If a trucker spent seven of those eight hours sitting at a customer’s dock, that trucker

has just one hour left in which to roll miles, and then his day is over andhis rig gets parked.

• Truckers get mandatory breaks. A fifteen-minute coffee break after thefirst two hours. Lunch lasts for forty-five minutes. In late afternoon,truckers get another fifteen-minute break. These too are fixed by law.

Sounded like heaven to me, but the older trucker in the dirty overalls tookexception. Tipping over his chair as he bolted to his feet, he pointed a grimyfinger at the European and bellowed “Why ya bunch `a goddamned wussies! Yaain’t got a hair on yer asses.” Thrusting out his head like a snapping turtle, heleaned into the European’s face and continued: “Stinking goddamnedgummints and their effing rules. If it wasn’t fer them do-gooders in Washintun,what with their hours-a-service bullshit, I’d be rollin a thousand miles a day,every goddamned day-a-the week. Not like you damned softies.

“Oh, and that coffee break shit `a yours; just like them snooty blue-suits in theoffice. Well, lemme tell ya, the only time I stops is to fuel the rig. When I’mrollin and I gotta shit, I shits in the truck. And what’s with that ninety-kilo-whatever-the-fuck-it-is? When I had my old Pete, I’d `a shot anyone who said Ioughtta put a governor on her. You candy-assed frogs; ya can’t do a lick `a whatwe Americans does.” Toothless though he was, the dirty man was makinghimself quite clear.

He was at full boil. He thumped his chest and said: “D’ ya know how often I

gets home? I gets home fer a long weekend with the ol` lady maybe every eightt’ ten weeks, that’s how often. The rest `a the time, I’m out here rollin’.” Whenhe said this last, his faced positively beamed with pride.

Listening to this, it dawned on me: This man actually likes it this way. Thevery conditions of OTR which I find to be abusive and appalling, he revels in! To him, taking all the guff, getting cheated by the company, wearing himselfdown physically, going dirty, denying himself a family life and totally trashinghis health, are rewards in themselves and matters of considerable pleasure andpersonal pride.

There is a word for someone like him: Masochist.

Now it was all starting to make sense. All these months I’d been marveling atthe disproportionate number of truckers who are absolute wrecks – the obesity,the filth, the missing teeth, the rotting skin, the sores, the bug bites, themalnutrition, plus all the damage that must surely lie unseen inside the ravaged

bodies. How – why – could they allow this to happen to themselves? Neither Jonor I, nor anyone we have ever known, had ever for a moment, toleratedconditions like these. Not only are such truckers physically destroyed, but Ibelieve that to endure these conditions, they have to have some psychologicalproblems, and masochism certainly fills the bill.

If you think I’m being overwrought, let me lift the definitions of masochistdirectly from www.dictionary.com. Compare them, especially the second one, with what I have relayed and see what you think:

• Gratification gained from pain, deprivation, degradation, etc., inflicted orimposed on oneself, either as a result of one's own actions or the actions ofothers, esp. the tendency to seek this form of gratification.

• The act of turning one's destructive tendencies inward or upon oneself.

• The tendency to find pleasure in self-denial, submissiveness, etc.

Well, there you have it. As I see it, the way long-haul trucking has evolved, itsnature and conditions are attractive to the masochistic personality. Just as thesadistic jingo is attracted to the military, the rootless masochist drives an over-the-road truck. Out of all the truckers who decide to go into OTR, the non-masochists are soon weeded out. They, like Jo and me, are soon repelled by thesqualid conditions of the job and they quit. The masochists, on the other hand,find their fulfillment – or if not fulfillment, at least a haven where theirpeculiarities will not stand out from the crowd. They stay and thrive in theirown strange way. This culling not only explains the heavy population ofmasochistic truckers, it also explains the high attrition – the seventy-twotruckers in seventy-three that quit within their first year.

To amplify on the theory that the masochistic personality prevails in the ranks,there is the additional phenomenon of homelessness. I’ve found that astunning number of OTR truckers – at least a third – have no home and by thatI mean not even a rental unit. For example, the very first OTR trucker wetalked to – the woman who had parked her rig a couple of blocks from ourdriving school – was homeless. During our conversation, she said that she hadput all her possessions in storage and she and her cat now live in the truck fulltime. However, she does maintain a mail drop in the Everett area so thecompany has a place to send her reconciliation statements and yearly W-2forms, but that’s all the “home” address is for.

Then there’s the fellow Brother Bill offered as an example: this gentleman wentthrough a messy divorce that cleaned him out. After selling his home to satisfythe decree, and therefore becoming homeless, he got into driving OTRexpressly so he would have a place to live.

There’s also the trucker (who will remain nameless) who wrote into Truckingmagazine. While complaining about the hours-of-service, which was thepurpose of his letter, he wrote with great pride of getting “home” maybe once ayear. Once a year? I submit that any place you visit no more often than once ayear is not your home. It may be your parents’ home, or your sibling’s home, orthe home of your friend, but it is definitely not yours – it is only a place youvisit. Your truck is your home.

And of course, you have Jo and me. As I said earlier, one attraction of drivingOTR was the fact that we could indeed live in the truck. We were, after all,teetering on the edge of the abyss. Had it not been for the ability to live in thetruck, Jo and I might now be living in a hobo camp under a bridge. The abilityto live in the truck was a principal factor in choosing trucking as our career –the logical port in a storm.

And don’t forget the 12-inch penis factor. A big attraction for many is the truckitself – an eighty-thousand pound machine almost seventy feet long can bepretty intimidating. In the main, truckers believe that, because they controlthese brutes, the public sees them as Marlboro Men – a flattering comparisonindeed. Sitting up in his air-ride seat, high above the little 4-wheelers thatscuttle warily around his Leviathan, the driver of a semi can easily find a senseof power and invincibility. “Look,” the guy in the semi says to himself, “thatson-of-a-bitch just gave me the finger. Why, all I have to do is swing to the leftand I’ll run the little bastard over.” And he’s right; if he did, he would.

Though a semi is not particularly quick when it comes to acceleration, today’srigs have top speeds almost as high as a car, and can reach them easily. Atrucker could chase down almost any car on the road and when he catches up toit, mash it – and the 4-wheelers know it. And truckers know that the 4-wheelersknow it. To illustrate: one night in Chicagoland, on our way to scaling a load,I’d stopped for a red light. As I waited for the green, I saw a new-ish Mercedes-Benz roadster approaching from the right. The driver, a man in his fifties andprobably used to giving people ulcers, was yackking away on his cell phonewhen the “Don’t Walk” light for his lane came on. In a few seconds, he’d get ayellow. Now he either didn’t see the signal or, because he was a Mercedesdriver, didn’t care, but whichever, it was clear he intended to go through theintersection, the traffic light notwithstanding.

I thought I’d have some sport. I quickly put the truck in 4th gear so when Istarted out, the engine would lug and really sound off from the load. With myleft hand, I took hold of the air horn’s cord and with my right, reached behindthe wheel to the turn signal lever to click the high beams. When, as expected,the man in the Benz ran the light and came across my bow, I hit the highbeams, let out the clutch, nailed the throttle and yanked on the air horn. Thefellow snapped his head in my direction and a look of stark terror swept acrosshis face as he stared into my oncoming headlights like a startled deer. The cellphone fell from his hand as he fumbled for the wheel then tromped on hisaccelerator and shot across the intersection and went out of sight. And I smiled.

Psychologists will tell you that men buy showy, expensive and powerful cars tomake up for small peckers. How much sweeter it is with a semi.

—

So then, let’s summarize what I think we can safely call the TruckerPersonality. Monkish and hermit-like, these men and women love theroutinized, ritualized, and highly isolating life provided by driving a semi overthe road. They also get their jollies from the self-abasement and privationcharacteristic of hermits and flagellant monks, including personaluncleanliness and self-neglect, if not outright abuse. All of this definesmasochism.

Unable to relate in a wholesome way to other people, they often becomehomeless so they can live by themselves in the truck. This lets them avoidcontact with families and friends for months on end. When they do go “home”they quickly become uncomfortable and often cut the visit short so they can getback into the rig, retreating, if you will, to their cloisters.

Some Recommendations

As discussed earlier, the trucking industry has a chronic and growing shortageof truckers. Get on your favorite search engine and look up these four words:truck trucker driver shortage. I Googled them and found there are almost onemillion matches. According to the very first hit, a white paper by GlobalInsight, Inc., the current shortfall of over 20,000 long-haul truckers is expectedto reach 110,000 by 2014.

Recall that during Indoctrination, I discovered our comrades’ prime motive forbecoming truckers was the same as Jo’s and mine – financial distress. In thesimple need to eat, many made the expedient choice of becoming truckers. Hadit not been for the hard times of the early 2000s, four of the six people in ourindoctrination class – Jo and I included – would not have been there. Now thatthe Great Recession is in full boil, the number of new people entering the“profession” can be expected to rise.

However, a deterrent to trucking is the current emphasis on team driving. Alltrucking companies that aren’t just local delivery, are jettisoning solo truckersin favor of teams. Team driving means more loads per truck per month, andthat means more money for the CEO and owners. However, as noted earlier,team driving blows. My boss at the fish-hauler said that on those rare occasionswhen truckers come in to apply, he immediately informs them they’ll be drivingin teams, whereupon five out of six turn right around and walk back out.

But the recession will eventually end and when it does, OTR will be right backbetween a rock and a hard spot. To attract – and keep – the number of truckersthe industry says it needs, many things must change. First, OTR must berestructured so that it has appeal beyond those with the Trucker Personality. Clearly, even in a population of three hundred million souls, there are notenough nuts to fill the current need, much less those of the coming years. Theindustry must, at the very least, effect three changes, and do so quickly.

Get Rid of the Piecework System. No more incentive-based pay. Truckersmust be paid a livable salary commensurate with their being “professionals.” Being a salary, the pay will cover dead time such as sitting at customer docksand waiting out the weather.

Get Rid of the Seventy and Eighty-Hour Workweeks. A forty-hour work week isstandard for Americans and it must be extended to cover those who drivetrucks. Exceptions may be granted through negotiated contracts.

Provide More and Better Home Time. Tied directly to our hideous workweek isthe issue of getting home more often. Keeping truckers away from their homesfor weeks and, sometimes months, is no longer viable. The current practiceworks for the hermits and head-cases who are such a big portion of today’scadre, as well as the financially strapped like Jo and me. However, for thenormal person who has the financial freedom to be picky about his job, thestingy home time is a deal killer.

Humanize the Hours of Service. Truckers must have a workday like that oftheir European counterparts, which I described above.

Provide Adequate Rest Areas on Freeways, Toll Roads and Primary Routes. Truckers can never predict when and where fatigue will set in. When it does,they must be able to find a safe place to park the rig and rest. The westernstates do a pretty good job of this, but the states east of the Mississippi needimprovements. And, please, real toilets, too – none of those reeking chemicalhorrors.

—

These recommendations are not onerous. Indeed, they are based on simplecommon sense. These measures would ensure that truckers are given the samehumane consideration as are sales people, airline pilots, school teachers,business executives and those in almost every other walk of life. Of course,these changes will alienate many in the current cadre, i.e., those with thetrucker personality. However, these people cannot easily secure – or endure –other work and so, disgruntled though they may be, they will stay on (and whoknows, having normality thrust upon them, some may actually adapt andchange for the better).

If trucking became more like, say, driving a cab, screwing airplanes together orcutting computer code, the trucker shortage would disappear overnight. Inorder to do this, though, the industry would have to act in unity. Any companythat acted alone would be placing itself at a disadvantage by having to charge awee bit more than the others. Hauling freight is a commodity business so evena rate increase of 1%-2% makes a difference in getting business.

Alternatively, Uncle Sam could re-regulate the trucking industry in acomprehensive way and simply decree the changes I’ve recommended, butthat’s just not in the cards. It would be about as popular with the general publicas gun control. And besides, it’s said the trucking companies own morecongressmen outright than does any other segment of the economy. Thecompanies would simply get their way and the regulations would be toothless. And so the shortage of truck truckers is destined to go on and on.

There is, though, one possible source of relief: the twelve million illegal aliensmassing within our borders. We could simply offer these people, under afederal training program, quick-and-dirty CDLs and tell them that if they driveOTR for a year without a wreck or major ticket, they get a green card. Then, ifthey drive for a couple more, they’ll be automatically naturalized and becomecitizens. Of course there’s no reason to suppose that illegals could abide the

70 DAY CAB – A tractor with no sleeper. Called a “day cab” because it has no provision

for spending the night. It is used around town during the day by a trucker who gets to gohome at night. If a day cab is ever taken on the road, the trucker will have to stop at a motel.and the company doesn’t want to pay for a motel so the day cab never goes on the road –unless the trailers are doubles or triples.

killing life of a trucker any better than native-born Americans so this idea mynot work out.

—

Bottom line: The trucking industry is simply incapable of making the necessarychanges to solve the driver shortage. The world, however, will not stand still forthe trucking industry’s convenience. Indeed, it will move on.

So what’s going to happen, anyway? Are loads going to start languishing on thedocks, waiting for truckers? Hardly. Nature, as we all know, abhors a vacuumso something must fill the gap. That something, I believe, is America’srailroads, and I think they’re already moving in.

With too few truckers for OTR work, the trucking companies will workcooperatively with the railroads to cover the intercity distances. I predict thatby 2012, OTR companies will have jettisoned most of their road tractors andswitched to local fleets of city-based day cabs70. These local fleets will haul theloaded containers or trailers to the railroads’ marshaling yards, drop them, thenscoot to the next shipper on the list. The railroads will put thecontainers/trailers onto flatcars for the trips to distant cities. When the trainsarrive, the containers/trailers are taken off, hooked up to local day cabs anddelivered to the receivers. Because these driving jobs will be local, truckers gethome every night and have weekends off so applicants will come out of thewoodwork.

Shippers and receivers may grouse at first about the extra time involved inshipping by rail but their discomfort will be more than offset by the savings.Rail is, after all, the cheapest form of land transportation in existence. CSXproudly asserts their trains can move a ton of freight 423 miles on a singlegallon of fuel. In the fishmobile, that same gallon hauls one ton for just a littleover 31/3

rd miles. Now let’s see: NO 2 diesel goes for .$3.00/gallon, so if a shipperhas a yearly volume of 100,000 tons going 10,000 miles ... You do the math.

There will still be some time-sensitive shipments, and shipments going toplaces without rail service, and these can be handled by a specialized carrierslike the fishmobile.

Of course the railroads aren’t waiting for the trucking companies to make theirmoves. One big and important example is described in the January 14th 2007issue “USA Today” and in Trucker of 1-14 November 2006. These publicationscarried stories about railroads in hilly West Virginia that are modernizing theirtracks. The railroads are raising the height of their tunnels to accommodatedouble-stacked container trains. With their current low tunnels, the railroadscouldn’t haul double-stacked containers and became uneconomical compared tosemis. With double stacking, trains will turn the tables and now be cheaperthan trucks. The new trains will be about one hundred cars long so each willsupplant two hundred semis, and railroads can run several such trains everyday.

But railroads are already carrying trailers on intercity runs for several majortrucking lines so the trend is already underway (for an example, visithttp://www.bnsf.com/markets/intermodal/pdf/welovetruckers.pdf). If you watchfreight trains roll by, you’ll see them carrying containers and trailers fromtrucking companies like Schneider, J.B. Hunt and Swift. Though our old OTRcompany hasn’t gotten on the band wagon yet, it will. It will have to.

On the other hand, why couldn’t the railroads themselves operate the localfleets? Why even bother with trucking companies? The advantages of such aconsolidated “single source solution” are many:

• By eliminating the middleman (companies like our employer), costs willbe driven down.

• As only one company will be involved, scheduling pickups and deliverieswill be easy and accurate and responsibility will lay in just one set ofhands.

• Without having to split the fees, the railroad can maximize revenues. This permits construction of spur lines into places that have no railservice today and upgrade the main lines to high-speed service.

Another nail in OTR’s coffin is the haste with which states are sloughing offtheir freeways and toll roads to private interests. The new owners are under noobligation to keep tolls affordable; they can raise tolls and raise them a lot,making railroads even more attractive. Today, when we haul a load throughIllinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, the tolls are around $125.00,depending at which exit we get off. My guesstimation: that $125.00 will be closeto $600.00 by 2014.

Bottom line. Once the business community sees the economic advantages oftrains, it’ll get aboard. Trucking lines will be so busy selling their rolling stockto the railroads, to Mexico and to other 3rd world countries, they won’t have timeto worry over a driver shortage. Of course with the railroads gobbling up all thelong-haul business there won’t be a trucker shortage anymore so ...

So guys and gals like Jo and me are going the way of the dodo. But that’s a ways off. By the time they get around to handing us our pink slips, we’ll eitherbe doing something else, be retired, or dead.

Lessons

In going bust, I have learned that no matter what you do, no matter howcarefully you have made your plans, no matter how charmed your life seems tobe, something, at some time, will crawl out of the swamp and bite you in the ass,ripping out much meat and causing a great effusion of blood.

While our ass-ripping centered around pecuniary difficulties, yours can involveanything: Being cuckold, seeing your child killed, a wasting disease, falseimprisonment, torture, maiming, disfigurement – the list is truly endless. Andas you can never know in advance what it will be, you can never prepare.

I have learned that this event will cause a change in you that can’t be undone. Though you survive, you will never be the same. Even if you win the Lotto,found another Microsoft, find another love ... whatever, you will have beenpolluted by the experience and it will color everything. After all, you can’t un-remember. During your misery, you will encounter the Big Three: fear, shame,and hopelessness. You will live with them day and night until they become oldfriends.

I have learned that “the lesser of two evils” will take on a profundity you neverexpected, for when the travail hits, you will find your alternatives to taking thegas pipe to be straightforward, unpleasant, and few. You will have to deal withthe fact that your life may never again be as enjoyable and satisfying in the wayit once was. But I’ve also learned that there is the chance life may be evenbetter. Slim, yes, but it’s there.

I have learned that the old saw is true: “If you don’t bend, you’ll break.” Though your life may be in free fall, there will be a bottom and when you hit it,

you have to have enough flexibility to bounce or you will indeed break. Inflexibility is where nervous exhaustion, depression and suicide come in.

Human history also teaches that while it’s true all good things come to an end,so do all the bad ones.

Our New Reality

Jo and I live simply now. We rent. We have one vehicle. We don’t go manyplaces or do many things. We still buy our clothes at St. Vincent de Paul. Wehave become true minimalists. Now that we are used to this diminished lifestyle, I have no serious objections. Though I chaff from time to time, I amsurprisingly content. I think that the jolting change of driving a semi had a lotto do with this. Had we not found the “out” of trucking, but had continued ourslow slide to absolute ruin, I’d probably be quite a grumpy guy. I guess it’s likethe difference between the doctor amputating your leg an inch at a time, versuswhacking off the whole thing in one merciful blow.

Another factor in this strange contentment, I suspect, is my age. People in theirsixties and beyond are not the balls of fire they once were. It is one of theironies of life that when you finally have enough money to do what you want,you’re too old to want it. (Of course I don’t have any money so the irony is loston me.) Truthfully, I would much rather have an ugly old car I don’t have towash than a snappy new one that I feel I must. Back in the 1980s, I loved thevacations Jo and I spent climbing around in the desert southwest; today, I’mcontent to see it all on the Discovery Channel.

Of course, in my genteel poverty, there is a good chance I’ll never again see mykids. They live two thousand miles away. That rankles.

Then there is the issue of mortality. Having had the cancer, I am all too awarethe end eventually comes. And, being in my mid-sixties, I am also aware of thefact I am now a short timer – I don’t have twenty years to somehow feather mynest (hell, I probably don’t even have ten). Today my attitude is this: There isno point in chasing after the bus when it’s only a block from the end of the line.

It looks like retirement is going to be out of the question. I’m probably going tohave to work until I drop off my perch. But what the hell; lifelong toil was thenorm up until the end of WWII. Frankly, I think those years when the Average

Joes had pensions and portfolios were a short-term aberration. In any case, withall the downsizing and foreignizing that’s been going on, I’ve got lots ofcompany. I must admit, though, retirement sure would have been nice.

I have to confess to becoming like those Depression era folks I used to knowwhen I was a kid. The seemingly endless grind of the Depression suffusedthem with a pessimism that made them eternally wary. No matter how goodthings were going, they always expected the other shoe to drop. To them, badtimes were the norm and good times were the exception. I’m like that now.

But there is a silver lining to trucking’s cloud, and it is this: Jo and I are closerthan ever. For over a year, we lived in a space not much larger than a closet andthe only times we were out of each others’ presences were when we went to thetoilet. I’ve had chums tell me that if they had to spend even a week with theirspouses in such close confines, one of them would be dead by Friday. I thinkthat when you and your spouse are cheek-by-jowl for long periods, you quicklyunderstand that, to make a go of it, you must resolutely ignore each other’sfoibles and peccadillos – which, in reality, is something you should do anyway.

There’s something else I’ve learned while trucking: There’s a great culturaldivide in America, a divide of expectations and it is unbridgeable.

• On one hand. If you’re someone like, say, a software developer (BillGates, Jo and me), or an attorney (Bill Gates’ dad), or an entrepreneur(like the guy who founded the fish hauler), the sky’s the limit. You go,boy! America expects you to do well. You are expected to charge for yourproducts or services, and expected to charge big. If you suck the businessdry, so much the better; you’ll be called a Lion of Commerce, get yourpicture in the paper and be elected president of the Rotary. The publicwill love you.

– but –

• On the other hand. If you earn your bread by driving a truck or lumpingcargo on a warehouse dock, you are expected to stay in your caste. Shouldyou have the temerity to want more – say by unionizing, or taking ahigher paying job, or even going back to school – you’ll be vilified for“hurting the economy.” You’ll be denounced for “igniting inflation” and“creating a labor shortage,” “impacting corporate earnings” and “drivingup the wage/price spiral.” You’ll be called greedy and self centered.

A good example is found at the fish hauler. I have been told by more than onetrucker that el Presidente has gone on record saying that if we truckers everunionize, he’ll shut down the business – out of naked spite, he’ll close the doorsand liquidate the assets. Finis. Kaput. Here’s man who, each year, takes homea fortune from his business but to prevent those who work for him frombettering their lots, he’s willing to destroy that business and the fortune itgenerates. This is the divide I’m talking about.

Of course I always knew this divide existed, but until I got into trucking, Inever appreciated it first hand. Nor did I appreciate the ferocity with which thefirst group enforces it on the second. Nor the cowed resignation with which thesecond group accepts it.

Today

My old buddy, Dale, thinks I never should have become a trucker. He may wellbe right. Had I been forty-two when I went bust instead of sixty-two, I’d havesimply started another business and pressed ahead with the vigor of a man inhis prime. But I was sixty-two, and that made all the difference in the world.

One day in mid-2004, while sitting at my desk reaching for the phone,awareness of what my age really meant hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks.It wasn’t the thought of going bust that threw me off my horse, for I’ve beenbusted before, it was the sense of having, at age sixty-three, no future – at leastnot a good one. After all, age is (as we would say in the software biz) a non-recoverable fault. In that moment, all I could see ahead were a poverty-wrackedold age in a refrigerator crate under an overpass, selling my blood to buy foodand begging for small change at the foot of an off-ramp. My mind raced with allthe possible indignities I was sure Jo and I were doomed to suffer. It was likeWile E. Coyote, who, in chasing the Road Runner, failed to monitor hissurroundings and ran out over the edge of a cliff. There was no going back andthere was no going ahead; the only thing the poor beast could do was swallowhard, blink, waive by-by, then fall to the bottom.

It was also like being in one of those dreams where you are in a crowd andsuddenly realize you are naked.

In Paradise Lost, John Milton said the lintel over Hell’s gate was inscribed“Abandon hope, all who enter here.”

I suppose some would call this sense of abiding doom a kind of nervousbreakdown. Maybe so. Whatever it was, it had the Indian Sign on me and itheld fast for years. Compared to it, the cancer was a cakewalk. You see, withcancer, the tale is told in days or weeks – the treatment worked and you’ll live,or it didn’t and you’ll die. And if you are to die, you’ll die sooner rather thanlater. Ah, but in going bust, you land flat on your ass and the grind of povertyand ignominy just go on and on and on and on . . .

But then, just as suddenly as it came, the bad thing went. Literally, overnight. Like smoke in a fresh breeze. Perhaps it was Divine Grace at work, for it waslike someone had thrown a switch and changed the world. Oh, I’m stilltrucking, but released from the grip of dread and melancholy, I seem to be myold self again. In fact, I have the glimmering of a new business churningaround in my head – a business that’s easy to start, has no competition and canbe easily bootstrapped (Jo, I suspect, will be pissed to hear this). What’s more. ifthis idea doesn’t work out, I know I can come up with more. I’ve invented workfor myself before; I can do it again.

And so it’s time to end the inglorious adventure of trucking. But right now, Ihave to take a nap, for it’s Tuesday, and tonight, I must haul another load ofdead fish to L.A.

As we truckers like to say: See you on the road.

Merlin SpragueClearview, Washington

Endnotes