I guess it's called confidence

Well at least I didn't strain anything permanently.

Yesterday was what you might call eventful. One of the more interesting events was a landing gear that jammed. I strained something in my shoulder trying to crank it up. But I'm in a good bit less pain this evening than this morning, so it doesn't seem to've been permanent.

So I won't talk about that.

In fact, I guess I won't talk about yesterday much at all. It was what you might call one thing after another--not boring, but neither entertaining nor edifying. Today was a bit more relaxing. But I did run into something interesting.

I stopped for fuel this morning, and another truck belonging to the same company I drive for pulled in behind me. After I had fueled and pulled forward he pulled in and started to fuel his own truck. I went in to get something at the convenience store (convenience stores are dangerous that way). When I got back, the other driver waved, and then motioned me to come talk.

Turned out he wanted help sliding his tandems. I've talked about that part of this job before, so I won't go into too much detail here. But it is the kind of thing that's easier with two people--one moving the truck while the other watches to make sure he doesn't move it too far.

But that's not what he needed. He wanted me to help figure out how much to move it.

He had his scale ticket, and it told him how much too heavy his tandem wheels were. But he couldn't figure out how much to move the wheels to make it balance. I told him a few of the rules of thumb we use for that, and then about how much they said to move it. Then I watched while he did--as I said, two people does make it easier.

I also suggested he should scale it again just to make sure--the rules of thumb are not that reliable. I don't know whether he did that or not--I had to roll. I hope so.

The scary thing is, he was a lease operator. Translation: he rents a truck from the company, and pays the rent out of his own profits. I get paid a price per mile. He gets paid a considerably larger price from which he buys fuel, scale tickets, repairs, and whatever else the truck needs.

In other words, where I am an employee, he's running his own business.

Several people have tried to talk me into doing that. My response is always the same: "if I were that good a businessman, I'd be in another business." Maybe he is that good a businessman. I don't know. What I do know is that he hasn't bothered to learn some of the basics of operating a truck. If you don't know how to balance the load, and have to call a friend when it doesn't scale properly, something is wrong.

I worry about that guy.