B. J. and the Beep

There's a man on four-foot stilts poking around in the ceiling.

I have no idea what the problem is, but it feels as if half the truck stop is under construction. The fellow on the stilts is just the obvious part. More background noise than I'd hoped for, but what the heck.

B. J. is in Mississippi at the moment. At least that's where he called me from. He'd just read an email his employers had sent him.

“About the idling thing?*” I asked.

“Yeah. They finally made up their minds which gadget to roll out. Took 'em long enough.”

“Well, they had several ways to go.”

“That's what the email was about. They went through all the choices, good and bad points, why they liked the one they picked.”

This sounded interesting. Truckbert Logistics* likes to brag about their technology. Their trucks are pretty close to the state of the art. I'd been wondering what they were going to do about idling.

“So what'd they pick? That fuel-cell system?”

“Naw. They said it didn't have a track record. They wanted something reliable.”

“Oh. Well, I guess that makes sense. But you said they didn't like the APU's with motors. That nobody could use them in California, and they were afraid soon you couldn't use them anywhere.”

“That's right. The ruled out the motors pretty early.”

“Hm. That leaves the battery-powered APU's.”

“Nope. They only last ten-twelve hours. Not enough for a restart** without firing up the truck every once in a while. Which kind of misses the point, the company thinks.”

“Uhhh...”

“No APU's. Said they weren't cost-effective. Too many of our trucks are team or slip-seat. They wouldn't use the units enough to make it worth the money.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “I'm a slip-seat driver. My schedule can't be too different from your slip-seaters. And I can assure you, I spend as much time parked as the next guy.”

“Not as many restarts, though. And yeah, I know that don't add up to that many extra hours. I'm just quotin' em.”

Another thought popped up. “Uh, B. J., how many of your trucks are team operations?”

“Less than half, that's for sure. And a lot of the rest of us use their trucks when they've put enough miles on 'em.”

“Then--”

“Don't ask me. That's what they say.”

I sighed. “All right. So what are they rolling out? Bunk heaters?”

“Nope. They only help in the winter. Too much money, not enough benefit.”

“Electric blankets? Fans? Window screens?”

“Too easy to steal. You know what a bunch of thieves we are.”

“Then what are they doing?”

“Adding a new program to the satcom. You idle the truck long enough, it beeps at you. You don't shut down, they start docking your pay.”

I closed my eyes and took a breath. “Ingenious,” I said.

“Let's hear it for technology,” he agreed.

- - - - -
*Truckbert Logistics is a fictional entity. It is in no way meant to resemble any real corporation—especially the one B. J. works for.

**I mentioned the concept of a restart here. It's in the footnotes there, too.