Yer gonna pay f'r that, pilgrim.

Today I solved yet another mystery that I never wondered about before.

You know how cowboys walk in the movies? That slow, relaxed, slightly stiff-legged, swaggering strut that makes the spurs jingle so nicely?

Hollywood didn't make it up. At least I don't think so. I think cowboys really move like that.

It's the only comfortable way to walk in those boots.

I delivered a load this morning, only nine and a half hours late.* As it turns out, due to oddities in their receiving hours, this wasn't too much of a disaster. And I ingratiated myself by helping one of their customers back her pickup and trailer out of a dead end she'd accidentally trapped herself in.** So everyone was friendly as I pulled out of the parking lot and headed west to my next pickup.

When I got there the gate guard smiled, and looked at my papers, and went over the company rules with me. At which point I realized I was in trouble.

I started this week in a hurry. Five days ago I called in and said “When do I take the truck out tomorrow?” And they said “You take it out today.” It was after lunch when this happened. So I did a lot of throwing things in the duffel bag and rushing out to the car. And I just KNEW I'd forgotten something.

Turns out it was shoes.

When I got in the truck in Atlanta, the weather was warm and pleasant. River sandals were most comfortable. And the weather has been mostly pleasant this week. Even in Pennsylvania, I could walk on top of the packed snow in above-freezing temperatures, wearing a pair of socks under the sandal straps. Those sandals are more comfortable than almost any pair of shoes I've ever owned, in these conditions.

But some places require you to wear something over your toes. Leather, at the very least.

I can't say I blame them—I've actually thought about a pair of steel-toed shoes myself, just to be overly careful. After all, I spend a lot of time in warehouses and lumberyards and things, just full of forklifts and jacks and piles of really heavy stuff that sometimes fall over and squash things. Like toes. So when a shipper or a receiver insists I put on real shoes, I smile and rummage in the duffel.

And usually I pull the shoes out and put them on.

Not this time.

After a few minutes poking into every corner of the truck, I faced the truth. And considered my options. There weren't many. After all, how many shoe stores have parking for eighteen-wheelers?

The only place I was sure would have both shoes and a parking space was a truck stop a couple of miles down the road. I'd never been there, but it was part of a chain I frequent; and their truck stops almost always have shoes in the travel store. In fact, last time I was in one, they'd had some inexpensive running/hiking shoes on sale.

So I made my apologies to the nice people at the shipper and made my way to the truck stop. And sure enough, they had shoes. They even had reasonably priced shoes.

Just not in my size.

They didn't even have unreasonably priced shoes in my size.

The only thing they had in my size was cowboy boots.

It took me something like thirty minutes to find even those. Cowboy boots don't fit the same way the shoes I usually buy do. It took some experimenting to find something I could walk in. And when I'd managed it, I found I had three styles to choose from:

A black pair with some kind of silver cap-like thing on the toe, that make me look like I was going to a Dwight Yoakam concert

The same style, in a color they called “black cherry”

And a more-or-less undecorated pair with low tops and zippers on the side.

I went for low profile. They cost a bit more (the other two pairs were on sale), but I was paying way too much anyway, so what the heck.

A hundred dollars to pick up a trailer-full of scrap metal. The things I do for this job.

At length I got back to the shipper, put my new boots on, and got out to walk to the shipping office. And within two steps I found myself frantically adjusting my stride several ways at once.

I mustn't bend the ankle much, I quickly discovered. Between the high heels and the high tops, flexing the ankle dug the boot-tops into my shins while throwing me slightly off balance. And if I didn't flex the ankle (much), I couldn't take as quick a step as I was used to. Not to mention the heel driving straight into the asphalt and jarring me clear through the knees and into the hips. So within ten feet I found myself walking at about half the speed I usually do.

Usually, I walk more or less flatfooted, my soles skimming the ground. Now the heel came down well before anything else, and I had to “roll” the foot forward to get the rest of the shoe on the pavement. And I soon figured out that the knee had to be in the right place, too, or I would feel it in the tendons along the side. To keep the knee lined up, I had to use the hips a little differently. And so on.

By the time I'd reached the office, I was walking in a slow, steady rhythm, slightly stiff-legged, with the tiniest twist to the hips with each step. I could almost hear it.

Ching. Ching. Ching. Ching...

The things you learn being a trucker.

- - - - -
*See here if you're really curious about why. Don't if you're not.

**Backing a trailer is something I do a fair bit of (surprise), and it's harder than it looks.
As it turned out, I was caught a little off guard myself. All the problems are more or less the same, but that tiny trailer could come around a lot quicker than the 53-foot monsters I'm used to. And if I'd jack-knifed it instead of her--
--come to think of it, maybe I didn't back her trailer out of that spot. If the Company's lawyers ask you about this, you imagined it...

Virtue is its own punishment

I'm adjusting to the concept of warmth again.

This is the truck without a bunk heater. And for two nights running, I didn't have to get up in the wee hours to start the truck so I could stop shivering and go back to sleep. Pleasant, but disconcerting.

This comes under the heading of counting my blessings. I might be ranting a bit otherwise.

I started driving at 9:00 this morning. This was a carefully considered decision. Any later and I might not be on time to deliver the load I picked up yesterday. Any earlier and I might not be able to deliver the load they assigned me for today. I was supposed to deliver that second load at 10:00 pm. By starting at 9:00 am, I could get there with an hour to get unloaded and find a parking space before I was in trouble with the law. Not enough, but better than nothing.

Yes, I'm going somewhere with this...

I got to my first delivery point before noon. A couple of hours later the forklifts stopped bouncing the trailer around and I got my paperwork. Whereupon I got the information for the next load.

They'd changed the delivery time. I had to have it there at 11:00 pm. Which, of course, meant that once they'd unloaded me, I'd be in violation of federal law from the moment the truck moved away from the dock door.

A mildly frantic phone call reassured me. It turned out that 11:00 pm was the LATEST time I could deliver it. Usually, they'll give you a “window” if that's true—2:00 to 11:00, for instance. But I wasn't going to argue. If they didn't mind an early delivery, I didn't mind having time to park and sleep. So I did my paperwork for the new job and drove the two or three miles to the shipper.

They didn't have my load ready, of course. So I sat around for an hour or so, after having dropped my empty in the back lot. At length they had finished shuffling things around in the trailer I was supposed to pick up.* So I hooked up, and scaled it (they have their own scale, which is handy), and did my paperwork.

In the process, I noticed that one of the tires on the trailer was messed up.

As in, it might blow out anytime.

So I sent a message to the Breakdown Department. After all, I had seven hours to go less than two hundred miles. Getting a tire replaced? No problem, right?

Two hours later I got a message back, asking me a quick procedural question. I answered it. And told my dispatcher I might be in trouble.

Two hours after that I called. On the phone. Waited about thirty minutes on hold. And learned that the fellow I'd sent the message to had gone home, and nobody else knew to follow up. The guy on the phone listened to my story, and said he'd call a service truck and send it my way. It would be there in about an hour, he said.

By this time I had exactly enough time to get the load to the customer if I started driving right now. Which, of course, I couldn't do—I had gone on record saying I had a trailer that wasn't safe. Not a good career move, driving happily through the night with a trailer you've SAID that you KNEW was potentially dangerous. So I called my dispatcher and told her I couldn't deliver the load before morning. She checked with the Customer Service people and said we weren't in trouble this time.

They were good sports about it. At least I'd warned them.

Some time into this, it occurred to me that if I'd just kept my mouth shut, I could have spent a (more or less) pleasant afternoon driving through the countryside, dropped this trailer at the customer, picked up another trailer, and gotten my next load. And that potentially dangerous tire would have been the next guy's problem.

And it occurred to me that a lot of drivers would have done precisely that.

I wonder if anybody considers me a troublemaker. Hope not.

No matter, tonight. I'll get some sleep, get up early in the morning and deliver this load as soon as I can. That's all I can do.

And at least it's warm.

-----
*At least, I presume that's what they were doing. This place has a rep for loading their trailers as heavy as they can get away with. Sometimes they get carried away, and have to take stuff out and redo it...

Sometimes you just gotta--the sequel

Woke up this morning, blinked, and looked around vaguely. Grey sky, promising drizzle. One of the two trucks that was here when I parked last night. Three more behind me.

And a police car parked in front of me.

That'll wake you up.

As I mentioned yesterday, I wasn't really supposed to be there. The warehouse had a FOR LEASE sign on it. Private property. And no permission. I'd been told it was frequently used by out-of-hours trucker types, and nobody seemed to mind. And the fact that at least five other trucks had used it just last night seemed to bear that out.

But when you wake up and find a police car parked RIGHT THERE..

The drivers behind me were comparing notes about something. Loudly. The officer sat and watched the traffic, unconcerned. Apparently he was watching for speeders and other reckless types, and was using this lot for the same reason we were. Low profile.

When I pulled out, he just sat there and watched. My adrenaline level dropped noticeably.

In some places, they understand...

Sometimes you just gotta

I'm sitting in the darkness, in an abandoned warehouse's parking lot.

I don't like doing this. It's a good way to get in trouble. And even when you're fairly sure nobody's going to mind, it still doesn't feel right. At least not for me.

But I was told this particular empty lot was the unofficial hidey-hole for trucks that can't make it out of town to a real truck stop. I've seen a few places like that in other towns. The police know it's done, and why; so as long as the owners don't raise a fuss they don't look too closely. At least as long as nobody abuses the privilege.

Hope I heard right. I needed it this time. Badly

Examining the omens
I got up this morning and turned the satcom on. After its usual few minutes, it came back with my email list. With no new messages.

Which meant no load info.

So I sent my dispatcher a message. And shortly got a reply: Call in for a verbal.

The need for a verbal confirmation usually means the load is hot--either high-value or you-better-get-it-there-QUICK. If not both. The perfect way to begin the day.

Oh, well. I called in, and the dispatcher made sure I could get there. This time the heat was high-value. The load was 120 miles away, but the time constraints weren't bad at all. So I jumped through the virtual-paperwork hoops and started on my merry way. In the process, I switched to navigation mode, to make sure I had the distance right.

The map screen was blank.

My GPS had fouled up again. It wasn't working. At all.

Time for the modern equivalent of slapping the cabinet. I pushed the proper buttons. The computer said it was shutting down.

It didn't.

That should have been a hint...

Communication is the key
Oh, well. The time constraints weren't bad, but sitting here wrestling with the computer still wasn't a good idea. And I knew where I was going--the directions were pretty straightforward. So, off we go.

I got to the shipper in plenty of time, and checked in with the gate guard. He asked what I was doing there.

I didn't have a pickup number, so I went back to the truck and sent a message in asking for one. But after a few minutes, a niggling suspicion crept into my mind. I had told the computer to shut down, more than two hours ago. And it hadn't. What else hadn't it done?

Virtually slapping the thing hadn't worked. Time to virtually drop-kick it.

I wormed into a back corner of the truck and physically unplugged the computer.* Then I took a quick walk across the parking lot to the nearest, um, facility. Got back, plugged the computer back in, sent the message again. And picked up the phone, just to be sure.

My dispatcher said, "What are you doing there?"

Turned out the load had been cancelled.

About the time he said that, the computer beeped. Informing me that I had an email. Telling me the load had been cancelled.

So if I'd kindly drive another 120 miles, the dispatcher said, there'd be a load ready when I got there. Oh, and while I was there, would I mind bringing the shipper a few more trailers? A customer nearby had a few to spare...

As long as we understand each other.
So I apologized to the nice people and drove and drove. Got to the shipper, dropped my empty (had to sweep it out--the shipper is a neat freak), and made my way to the other place.

"You ain't taking none of our empties!" the other people said.

They said it much more politely, of course. The gate guards hadn't made the decision any more than I had. But there it was...

So I found a parking place (running bobtail gives you a few more options) and called my dispatcher. Arguing with the customer's middle management isn't part of the job description. I'd let my people talk to their people.

An hour and a half later, I'd made a fair start on catching up with my reading. But I hadn't heard anything. So I called my dispatcher again. He hadn't heard anything either. We made sympathetic griping noises at each other and I went back to my reading. And shortly after that, I got a satcom message, telling me EXACTLY which trailers to go get.

Round and round the mulberry bush
So I went back in. The security people cheerfully let me through--their people had talked to them, too And I made a quick sweep of the parking lot, looking for the two trailers I'd been told to get.

Two hours later I hadn't found either of them.

I'd driven through every parking lot on their grounds at least twice--including the sections where no outside company's trailers were supposed to be. Nothing. Not just neither of my trailers. None of our company's trailers. At all.

There was only one more place to look. Along one fence line was a long double line of trailers. As in double-parked. No way to tell what was in that back row from the main lot. And if I found either of them, I'd have to get a yard dog to move the trailer in front before I could get it. But I'd run out of other places to look. So I got out and started worming between the rows on foot.

I still couldn't find one of them. But I finally found the other.

There was a large, brightly-colored tag hanging from an air-line connector.

NOT ROADWORTHY, it said.

No kidding,, I thought.

Did I say the tag was hanging from an air-line connector? I should have said THE air-line connector. The other one had been broken off at the fitting. The front wall of the trailer behind that fitting had a dent in it, two inches deep and about three or four feet high. In the middle of the dent was a four-inch gash in the metal.

It looked as if someone had backed the corner of another trailer into it. Hard. Couldn't have been the customer, of course. I mean, just because it was impossible to move with that particular fitting missing. And nothing could have hit there as long as it was hooked to a truck. And it was tucked into an obscure corner of the yard. With other trailers lined up in front of it. Where it was almost impossible to find. Some people have nasty, suspicious minds...

By now it was night.
The dispatcher I'd been talking to all day had certainly gone home by now. So I called in and told my night dispatcher what was going on. She said "Don't waste any more time on it.** Just go get your load."

So I Went back to the shipper and found out which trailer I was supposed to take. Hooked up, brought it around to the gate, and pulled onto the scale. This shipper has its own scales, which is a good thing. If you've got a weight problem, it's always nice to find it in a place where you DON'T have to turn around and drive ten or twenty miles back to get it fixed.

Like this time.

The load was both slightly overweight and VERY nose-heavy. No way to balance it. So I took it back to the warehouse, where they could pull a few pallets off and reshuffle the rest. Then it was back to the gate to rescale.

Legal this time. Quiet sigh of relief.

By now, I had maybe half an hour of legal clock time. The nearest truck stop was at least that far away. And, given that it was the only one for a hundred miles or so, I figured its parking lot almost had to be full by now.

At that point some nice person mentioned this parking lot. Said I wouldn't get arrested for parking there, but he could get fired for telling me about it.

Which means, of course, that nobody told me anything.

So here I am, sitting in the dark watching the traffic go obliviously by a hundred feet in front of me. And making up stories.

Guess I'll stop now.

G'nite.
-----
*I'm not supposed to know how to do that, of course. So I must have imagined doing it...

**Well, all right--the language might have been a little stronger than that...

Maryland House has a Starbucks.

You don't see that a lot at truck stops.

On the other hand, this place gets a lot of buses stopping. So finding the Starbucks counter without a long, long line takes patience.

Truck stops tend to have video games. The fancy truck stops have cushy couches in front of a tv. This place has neither.

On the other hand, I don't play video games. And if I don't like what's on the tv, there may not be another place to sit down in the building. A hard chair in front of a table is certainly better than nothing. And the absence of noise can be a worthwhile thing.

In an hour I go to pick up my next load. In the meantime, I have a seat, with windows. And a Starbucks, if I can get to the counter.

Not a bad trade, I guess.

Weight problems and new old maps

This section of I-95* was a toll road once, I think.

I can't see what else Maryland House is doing here. A welcome center, yes, and that's not odd this close to a state line. But it's on an island in the median of the highway. And there are restaurants. Restaurants where only people driving the Interstate can eat? I've never seen that anywhere but in toll road service plazas.

Therefore, Maryland House must be left over from a more mercenary period in this highway's history. Q. E. D., he typed smugly.

(I will have to look that up somewhere, he thought, less arrogantly...)

Be that as it may, Maryland House is a welcome thing. It's not QUITE the only truck stop anywhere near here, but it's the handiest place to park. And being able to get a hot meal at a rest area is a treat. When I pulled in here last night, it was the end of a thirteen-hour day. Ten of those behind the wheel. With two fifteen-minute restroom breaks Fueled by a pint of water, one package of peanut butter crackers, and a small cup of welcome-center coffee (thank you, ladies--I will remember the North Carolina border kindly**). A real meal before bedtime was cause for celebration.

Ten hours behind the wheel. And it could have been worse

Day before yesterday I got to the terminal and picked up my first load for the week. Filled out my paperwork, pulled out the gate and went straight to a truck stop.

I believe I've told you about weights and balances already. The load was heavy enough the company would compensate me for the scale fees, so I did that first.

Good thing. Whoever loaded that trailer put way too much weight in the back. The load wasn't overweight, but the trailer was badly tail-heavy.

I've told you the various states are picky about both weight and weight distribution. And I think I mentioned that the trailer wheels can slide back and forth, so the load can be properly divided between truck and trailer. I'm not sure if I mentioned that you can only slide those wheels so far back before you get in trouble with the law a different way. There are legal limits to a tractor-trailer's wheelbase.

I slid the wheels on this trailer as far back as I dared, and scaled it again. The weight on the rear wheels was still more than a ton over the legal limit.

If it had been too heavy in the front, there were a few things I could have tried. Moving the fifth wheel*** a little, for instance--that could transfer some of the weight from the back wheels to the front. But when a trailer's too heavy in the back, that's all she wrote. The only thing you can do is take everything out and rearrange it. Or let somebody else do it. So I went back to the terminal, where I was told to drop it and wait for another load. I suppose a local driver took it back to the customer. I didn't sit long enough to find out.

The next load I was assigned didn't look too bad, at first glance. About seven hundred miles, with a day and a half to deliver. Not a problem. Until I looked at the route I was expected to take.

The first part of the trip was pretty straightforward. Two-hundred-odd miles to the fuel stop. Given everything that had happened so far, I would get there just about in time to shut down for the night. And I did. But then I had to get up in the morning and cover about another four-hundred-and-something miles. And less than half of that was on Interstates.

On an Interstate, I typically plan for an average speed of 50 mph, and hope for 60. On a two-lane, I plan on 30 and hope for 40. Four-lanes are somewhere in between, and I've never been able to make a really good guess.

Yeah, I know the speed limits are a lot closer, but the complicating factors have nothing to do with speed limits. On an interstate, you don't have to run smack through the center of town very often. And when you do, you don't have to worry about red lights. Or pedestrians. Or cars parked within a foot of the travel lane.

And even when you're between towns, interstates don't have people pulling out of driveways, or county roads. Or slowing down to look at mailboxes. Or pulling off to get a candy bar at that convenience store that's right beside the road, just around that blind curve.

Limited access roads are beloved of travelers for a reason. When I'm going somewhere for fun, I like driving the more ordinary highways. You see more. But I don't travel for fun as much as I used to. And I usually do it with something a little smaller...

My route for the day was marked on the map as four-lane all the way. But that was still going to be a good bit slower than an expressway. In fact, I found myself wondering if I could make it in one day, period. Legally that is--I'm only allowed eleven hours behind a wheel, as I believed I mentioned.

Well, I made it with an hour to spare. But only because my map was wrong.

It appears the people who published my road atlas haven't updated their maps recently. I knew that, of course, but still...In this case, quite a bit of the road in question (US29 through North Carolina and Virginia, in case you're wondering) has been upgraded to limited-access. Maybe a third to a half of it. I saw a few signs talking about a "future I-785 corridor." Be that as it may, the surprise was a pleasant one.

So I made better time for a lot of the way than I expected.

And it STILL took me ten hours. Not counting the two restroom breaks.

Stromboli can be so comforting.

-----
*North of Baltimore, that is.

**One of the nice ladies said she wished her husband could try truck driving. I asked her if she was really that tired of his company. A nice laugh all around, and she said maybe she'd better stop saying that. "Yeah, you'd better," said the other...

***That big flat thing on the back of a semi-tractor, that the trailer sits on. It does for a tractor-trailer what the ball on a bumper hitch does for a car-and-trailer. The trailer has a "king post" that slides into the slot in the back of the "fifth wheel" and is locked in place. The fifth wheel then holds the trailer up and gives it a surface to slide on when it needs to turn. (It's usually covered with a layer of THICK, STICKY grease. Don't get it on your clothes...)
Like the trailer's tandem wheels, it's made to slide back and forth. We don't do it often, though--that's a major operation, and on a lot of trucks you can only make BIG adjustments...