Vocabulary lesson #3

A laptop has many uses. Tonight, once I get through here, it will become an extremely expensive alarm clock.

I forgot the cheap ones, y'see. And I still haven't replaced the cell. So my laptop is all I have. I picked up a freeware timer at one point, and it has an alarm clock function. So I'll run it all night, and hope it doesn't run down the truck batteries.

I don't know if it will, y'see. I have never been in this truck before.

Your word for today:

Slip-seating
When a driver is not assigned to a single truck. He slips into the seat, drives the truck for the length of his current assignment, then slips out of the seat and another driver slips in. Guess where the name comes from.

Slip-seating is not popular among drivers, from what I have heard these past few months. Companies love it, of course--to them it means the truck is in more or less constant use, making the most of the money they spent on it. To the driver, it means he doesn't know what to expect when he comes to work.

What truck does he get?
Does it run?
Is it clean?
What quirks does it have? (I've been in a truck where the Jake brake (see previous entry on that subject) only works while you're stepping on the brake pedal. Since the whole idea of a Jake brake is to let you use the regular brakes less...)

I drove a taxi for a while. More accurately, I drove for a taxi company--I didn't have a cab of my own. All of the above applied. It was not pleasant.

But for a truck driver it can be worse. The truck cab is your workplace. Even a day-cab driver has a tendency to personalize it. Imagine if you came in to work every morning with all your office supplies, and then hunted around the building to see which cubicle you were sitting in today. And whether the phone works. And whether the chair has a working backrest.

For an over-the-road driver, out for a week or more at a time in a sleeper cab, it's worse still. The truck is your second home. If you go by the time you spend there, you might call it your first home. Imagine if your job required you to live in a hotel room, and to move to another room every week.

And see whether the phone works. And whether the chair has a working backrest.

I spent several months driving my "own" truck. It was pleasant, in its own way. But I was out for three and four weeks at a time, and my wife needed me home more often than that. So I found a way to get home for three days out of every ten. To do that, I have to slip-seat.

It's not as bad as it sounds above. I don't get a different truck every time I go in, for instance. I'm one of three drivers who rotate through two trucks. Kind of a time-share thing.

So I only have two trucks to get used to. And I don't have to worry about the previous driver being a chain-smoker. But I still have to bring all my stuff to the terminal at the beginning of each week of driving, and haul it all home at the end.

And a week ago I came to work, got in "my" truck, and found out it wasn't my truck any more. While I was at home the teams had been reshuffled. So I have two new trucks to get used to.

This ones seems to have a good set of batteries. The laptop will probably last long enough to wake me up in the morning. Probably.

G'night.