The absence of omnipresence

06 NOVEMBER 2013, 21:01
Sitting in a truck stop restaurant tonight, I went over my day. It did not give me a warm glow of self-congratulation. But there was a certain satisfaction in seeing a pattern.

Just for starters…
At my fuel stop this morning I got out of the truck with my clipboard. The one with the storage bin for all my blank forms and the clip for my present paperwork. After all, this was an Approved Site for scanning my paperwork--which is a necessary prelude to getting paid.

While inside, I used the restroom, washed my hands, got a hot dog and a drink, and made a quick check of the remainder table. Then I went back out to the truck and started toward my next stop.

Did you notice anything left out of that list? So did I--half an hour lnter. Two somethings, actually. I didn't scan the paperwork--and I got back to the truck without it or the clipboard.

Fortunately I had a way to contact the truck stop (there's an app for that). If I ever get out there again they'll have my clipboard. And in the meantime they were nice enough to scan in my paperwork. 400 miles I will get paid for.

So then--
At the next stop I backed into the dock doors and waited to be loaded. The load was much lighter than the trailer was set up for. So when they were done I retracted the slider pins,* closed the doors, sealed the trailer, sent my electronic paperwork in, and departed.

When I stopped at the end of the driveway there was a terrible noise. The truck shook. Then someone came out of the building to see if I was all right. Apparently I'd shaken the building as well.

I reassured them. After all, I already knew what had happened.

The brake pedal on a truck like this one controls the flow of compressed air to the brakes. Two separate sets of brakes--the ones on the tractor and the ones on the trailer. And they're almost never perfectly in sync. On this particular truck, the trailer brakes always grab a little harder at first. Normally this isn't a problem.** But this time…

The trailer wheels stopped. The tractor kept going, and the trailer itself followed. At least until it hit the end of the slider path.

Boom.

(The missing phrases for this section were, "Slide the tandems" and "Extend the pins.")

Luckily I was still going slow, so the wheels didn't get ripped off the trailer. I reassured the people who came to rescue me. Then I slid the trailer back to where it should have been, extended the pins, and went on, much chastened.

And after that--
I spent the next few minutes calling myself names. That stopped when I almost drove through a car--because I was to busy lecturing myself to notice the stop sign. After that I decided to drive.

Leading to a lecture…
Multitasking, I've read, is not really something us human types can do. Not on any level much past walking and chewing gum at the same time, anyway. But I seem to be worse than some when it comes to faking that.

Thinking while driving is OK--I think that's using two different parts of your brain. But thinking and, say, navigating? Or picking out one sign from the ten or so at that intersection that's important? Or remembering what I was doing three items-on-my-list ago, and where I put that thing down while I was doing it? Not so much.

And there are times when that could get somebody hurt. A lot of times.

With this in mind I determined to tell you all about the dangers of distraction, and left the restaurant in a glow of determination and resolve.

An hour later I went back and got my walking stick.
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*I've talked about balancing the load before. You do it by moving the wheels back and forth. What I haven't, perhaps, mentioned is how you do that.

The wheels are attached to the trailer with a set of sliding rails, kind of like the glides on a drawer. The trailer "glides" have a bunch of holes drilled in them, and the wheel "glides" have a set of retractable pins, about as thick as a (small) wrist. You retract the pins, slide the trailer forward or backward to where you want it, and extend the pins again--locking wheels and body together. Then you weigh the thing again…

Many companies don't like it when your wheels are too far forward, though. Driving a forklift onto a trailer with a long overhang can be bouncy--enough to make things unsafe sometimes. So we often slide those wheels all the way back when we back into a dock, and slide them forward again afterwards.

Which brings us back to our story...

**You do have to be careful on a slick road…