Bracing for Impact

This shit totally happened. So, I got my trainee like 5 days ago. We were originally on a load going to Maryland, but then had to help out on another load delivering to Indiana. Now, Indiana being the desolate wasteland that it is, it’s a little difficult to get out of without driving uber far, so a chance came to help out on another load going to Chicago. Now, since y’all aren’t drivers (well, most of you I’m guessing, maybe one or two of you are), Chicago is a clusterfuck of activity when you’re delivering. Add in construction, which I don’t know why there is any in winter, and it’s uber ridiculous. So, after sitting in traffic for an excruciatingly long time, I take my exit and I’m at an intersection waiting to turn.

Suddenly, this dude jumps on my truck, hanging on the driver side window and says “I’m a lumper, you’re making a delivery over here?” Now, to break it down, a lumper is a contract worker that unloads the truck and gets paid usually via a foreman. I’ve been greeted in the street by lumpers helping you get to a hard to get to receiver before, so I didn’t think too much of this guy hanging on my truck. Although I was a little nervous for him as I drove a mile with him hanging on my truck. Also the direction he was pointing me in was the same direction the GPS was pointing me anyway.

Now, Mr. Lumper asks “Chicken or Beef so I can tell you what side to park on the street.” I forgot to mention that yes, I was notified that this load was going to unload in the street. The process of that is completely awesome! Basically they use the forklift to lift a pallet jack onto the back of the truck which they use to bring pallets closer to the edge for the fork lift to reach. Anyway, Mr.Lumper actually does a really good job of directing me to exactly where I need to go and park and who I need to talk to which is obviously a guy in a white  factory coat directing fork lifts where to go.

Again to break something down for you, the process of delivery is usually you park, go talk to receiving, then they ask you if you need a lumper or if you’re going to unload it yourself, that is if the company isn’t automatically going to do it for you. Mr.White Coat receiver guy says nothing of the sort and I’m now a little suspicious as my student and I get back to the truck. We settle down for a bit because Mr.White Coat tells us it will be a bit before they can get to our truck.

Suddenly appears Mr. Lumper. He knocks on the window which I open a crack and he says “You paying cash or by check?” and I’m like “Check. How much is it?” (Basically I never pay for anything company related with cash, I have these checks I write that require an authorization code from my company without which mean nothing.) Mr. Lumper in all his awesomeness asks “How many pallets you got? 4? That will be $150…make it $200.” There’s big alarm number 2 going off in my head. Well alarm 2 and 3. First off, it shouldn’t cost $200 for 4 pallets. That’s just insane. $50 a pallet is  like 5x the price it usually costs. And also the price is decided by the foreman, not the lumper. So I tell Mr. Awesome Lumper guy I’ll put the request in and the dude stands there outside my window. After a while he’s like “What’s taking so long.” And I inform him it takes a while and I’ll come find him when I get the code. He grudgingly agrees, grumbling as he goes to talk to another truck. Even my student is looking at me like, “is this guy serious?”

Now, I’ve done a lot of retarded things in my life, but hading someone suspicious a check for $200 has never been one of them. So I proceeded to call the receiver who says “yeah, we don’t have lumpers.” I look at my student and we both start laughing. Now, the guy doesn’t come off as threatening in any way. I’m guessing he’s been able to con enough money out of drivers without being violent in any way. He seems to have been doing this for quite some time.

Re-enter Mr. Lumper. He asks if I got that code yet. I inform him “My company says I can’t pay unless I get a receipt.” Mr. Lumper looks at me and then disappears to talk to another guy who previously was unseen. He returns with probably the dirtiest most worn-out receipt that says “Lumper Receipt” across the top. I kindly inform him “Yeah my company needs a valid receipt with the company letterhead.” I thus took an extra 10 minutes or so to explain to Mr.Lumper what a company letterhead is. My student is really just sitting in the passenger seat trying not to laugh. Now I’m guessing that Mr. Unseen was getting suspicious of what was going on with his friend Mr. Lumper and he shows up whispering to the guy. In my head I think “This shit just got real.” So I told him I knew he wasn’t a lumper as I had called the receiver who said they would unload it for free. He then says “I’m an independent lumper. You’ll see when I unload your truck. At least throw me a couple bucks for getting you here.” I called the reciever and kindly informed them there were 2 guys going around to trucks pretending to be lumpers and trying to get money out of drivers.

When I look outside, Mr. Unseen and Mr. Lumper are gone and I see a cop car start to circle the area. Suddenly I get another knock on the door. It’s totally an elder man, holding up porn DVDs for sale. Seeing it’s two females in the truck, he then proceeds to offer other movies for sale. I don’t think I need to tell you that neither of us got out of the truck until a dude in a white coat driving a fork lift came out to tell me he was going to start unloading me.

All in all I must say…Chicago is awesome. This is seriously cheaper than the movies. I only wish I could have taken pictures without fear of Mr. Lumper going all crazy.

Well, I’m back on the road again after my ‘too bad you can’t get Christmas off but we can get you there a week before’ Christmas/New Years home-time. It wasn’t all too bad. I slaved away in the kitchen, drove people around, watched children…you know the typical non-vacation vacation stuff. I did get to watch Twilight: Breaking Dawn Pt 1 though…and totally wrecked my ‘no soda’ plan the last two days, because seriously…how can you go to the movies and not drink soda with your popcorn? It’s unheard of. Also got to have sushi with 2 and a half very awesome people. They say they read my blog so *waves ‘Hi’ to Amy and Bill.*

So, tomorrow I pick up my first student in Salt Lake City. I will say that I am filled with both anticipation…and trepidation. Will she like me? Will she kill me? Will she make me want to claw my eyes out? Apparently as a trainer, I am not allowed to threaten to stab people in the face. This is something I must work on. In general, I have a lot of patience for people I don’t really know very well. There aren’t a lot of people that I don’t like in the world, but there have been a few exceptions. One thing I hope though. I hope she is able to tolerate, if not enjoy, the awesome sounds of Glee…because if not she may as well not get on the flight…

This post was actually going to be a little longer but I got side-tracked while looking for a picture to put up on here.  I learned that Gloria Estefan may be gracing the Glee cast as Santana’s mother and Pitbull may play her brother…hmm…wtf

So it’s been a few weeks since I last posted here. It’s not that I’m avoiding this site, well…I might be but only because I think absence makes the heart grow fonder…or because I’m lazy as all hell…but I’ve been sorta busy / not busy at all in the past 3 weeks. So when I last posted, I was on a load going straight to Texas because I was overdue for my 90 day safety talk and all that fun business. My truck, who I lovingly called Tripple B (aka Big Blue Bit*h), was ready to undergo some serious work since I was having unlimited issues with it.

When I pulled onto the yard, not only did I have a long list of departments requiring me to stop in and talk to them before I could leave the yard, but also despite the last check at TA (travel centers of America…aka truck stop of crap) saying my truck had no problems, Tripple B had a fuel leak, an oil leak, a coolant leak, an air leak, a crack in the DPF filter, needed 2 new tires, and a bunch of other stuff. Yeah…good thing there was nothing wrong with her. So after much pleading with the paperwork folk upstairs, I managed to get a new truck. Well, not completely new, but definitely better than Tripple B. So, I’d like to present Darth Sidious, or Sid as I like to call it. Sid is a 2011 Kennworth T700.

In the first pic that’s TB on the left and Sid on the right. Thank god I’m done with that god-awful dark blue, though I wish they hadn’t taken a crappy old mirror to put on the hood, it makes it look very meh. My Qualcomm has been upgraded to the electronic logs which, unlike a lot of complainers who don’t have them yet are dreading, I frigging love because I no longer have to do any math at the end of the day. Although the layout of the inside is the same as the t2000, the ceilings are higher and it’s a 10-speed…which means yes once again, I have issues finding 7th gear.

Anyway, that’s not all that happened while I was on the yard. I mean, I was stuck there for 2 weeks. I took the classes to be an over the road trainer…haha. They sure as hell let me be a trainer. Took classes for 4 days on all the policies and such, or that was the idea. Really we had the same speeches given to us we had when we first got hired. Safety talks, compliance talks, some dude came in from the mechanic shop asking a bunch of mechanical questions that no one knew the answers to, thus making everyone feel like an ass. We also had to spend nights up on “the hill” where we helped all the new hires on the skills courses. And of course the best part was taking the classes with none other than my bestest trucker buddy Ivan the Terrible.

So starting next year, I’m going to be training students to not suck at this job…this is going to be epic.

I would say that one of the biggest issues I have with being a truck driver isn’t driving something that’s around 65 feet long, or never being home, or even trying not to kill people. Although those are big enough issues that anyone would have a problem with, mine is of a simpler demon.

Public restrooms.

Now, for your normal human being on the planet, public restrooms, washrooms, bathrooms, the loo, latrine, john, head, or whatever it is you call it depending on whatever part of the planet you’re on,  are a thing used on rare occasions or only while at work or on vacation.  For truck drivers like myself, there’s no other option…except of course a bottle or glad container, but we’re not going to get into THAT monster.

For most people, the problem with public restrooms would be of course cleanliness and privacy not being top notch. This isn’t always true. I’ve been in bathrooms that would make Mr. Clean proud if he were a real person. I’ve also been in bathrooms that I’ve just walked right out of and continued driving to the next truck stop.  Anyway, this is not my problem.

My main problem is that whenever I go into the female bathroom, I get looks from horrified, to mortified, surprised, shocked, anger, and sometimes suspicion. It seems that every female in the women’s bathroom thinks I’m a male. I’ve had a woman chase me into the bathroom saying ‘Excuse me! Excuse me!’ I’ve had an older woman scowling at me in the bathroom saying ‘Some people are NOT where they belong.’

I will give you this. I am not like most other females. I don’t wear makeup. I don’t carry a purse or wear skirts and dresses. I wear hats and have short hair. I’d rather wear cargo pants and canvas shoes instead of heels. But really that’s just me. I’m not trying to be a boy or make a fashion statement or whatever. I don’t care about those stupid labels like ‘butch’ or ‘femme’.

So I’ve altered my bathroom entrance routine to a few things. I always ditch my backwards baseball cap, and enter humming (in my most feminine humming tone of course) the song “Once Upon a Dream” from Sleeping Beauty.

Now on one level, my brain is telling me that I shouldn’t have to do that. I should just be who I am and not worry about what other people say and blah blah blah. On a completely other level,  I just want to use the bathroom in peace. I don’t want to have to deal with people thinking I’m a guy just because they notice the short hair instead of the huge knockers on my chest.

I just wanted to say, that I fricking hate the power inverter on my truck. It doesn’t give me enough power to run a single burner without it getting all pissy and beeping at me. All I can say is that I am starving and I want to eat my damn artichoke.

So after taking a week off to go to Hawai’i, I’m back at the wheel again. First load? Straight to Texas to go to the main yard to talk to safety about that ditch incident over a month ago. That and there’s a lot of work that needs to be done on the truck. Stupid coolant light keeps coming on despite there being enough coolant. I need an oil change and a fuel filter change and an air filter change. Also my truck is leaking oil from somewhere under the engine casing. I’m going to be stuck in Texas forever, I just know it. On top of that they gave me 6 days to drive 2200 miles. Really? Fun times all around.

I suppose it’s a good thing I’m not in a rush. I decided to take a nap yesterday and ended up sleeping past my 14 hour mark. Jet lag maybe, I don’t know. So I ended up driving all of 350 miles yesterday. Today I was determined to drive at least 600, but alas it seems traffic and the state of Oregon’s 55 MPH speed limit felt like standing in my way. Though I must say it seems that other drivers were having quite a problem keeping their own trucks on the road.

They also seemed to have trouble keeping their trucks from catching fire.

Ah well, hope all drivers are safe. I need to sleep. Hopefully if I can get this load to Texas with enough time on it, they’ll let me take it to the yard and hand it off to another driver.

So as it turns out, trucks don’t like it when they have no power and can sometimes shut down when you’re just driving down a road minding your own business and singing along to some random Ke$ha song…either that or my truck doesn’t like Ke$ha which I hear is a common opinion among trucks…anyway. Last week, as described just a few seconds ago, I was driving along some back road in Missouri and my truck decides to get all uppity and just shut down. Now when I say it just shut down, I don’t mean it beeped a warning and the engine died. I mean one second it was moving along, the next second it was moving along but with no acceleration power, no radio, no digital clock telling me it was 5 p.m….but hey all the gauges still said I was going 45 m.p.h. despite the fact that I was pulling over and slowing to a stop. Of course, the shoulder was just big enough to get a few inches over the line and still be out of the ditch that was right outside the passenger door.

Being a contractor, that means it was my duty to open the hood and wiggle all the wires and shit to make sure it was something I couldn’t fix. After all, I remember that tow which cost $300 just for the 10 minutes it took to haul me out of a ditch. I could only imagine what it would cost to get towed to a shop. So alas, I opened up the hood, and wiggled some random wires…checked the coolant and the oil cause that’s really all I know how to do. I noticed the oil was a little low but not THAT low. Not so low that it would shut the truck off and take away all power from the cab. So I decided to bite the bullet and put in a call to the breakdown peoples. I believe I was on hold for about 30 minutes when I decided to close the hood, because in my mind I imagined some truck whipping by and the wind force ripping my hood off. Whether that’s possible or not I don’t know. So I closed the hood and got back in the truck and slammed the door with such anger and force that all the power returned to the truck. I knew it! Everyone that had ever told me problems couldn’t be resolved through violence was wrong! So I started the bastard up and 5 minutes later I got through to breakdown and they unhelpfully told me to head to the nearest TA (which I was already doing) to get it looked at. Here’s my paraphrased conversation with the dude at TA:

ME: The truck just lost complete power. No radio, no flashers, no engine, nothing.

Dude looking under the hood: Looks like your 1 jug low on oil. These new trucks like to shut down when it’s low on oil or coolant.

ME: It doesn’t cut all power to the radio and lights.

Dude pouring oil in: No really, it has to be the oil because I can’t see anything else wrong with it.

ME: I’m pretty sure when you’re low on oil, the low oil light goes on.

Dude closing the hood: I called your company and told them it was the oil and that you might have an oil leak I can’t find. They said “Rock and Roll.”

ME: Ok, thanks dumb ass (ok that was just in my head)

Next day features me driving down some back road in Iowa listening to some random Glee remake of a random Bieber song. Apparently the truck does not like Glee or Bieber because as I’m driving down singing along to how my first love broke my heart for the first time when the truck dies…like literally dies from embarrassment. Suddenly I find myself pulling on the shoulder that’s once again big enough to get over the line a few inches with a ditch just outside the passenger door. The first thing I do? Notice there’s a pizza hut right there. Weird that I’m here in Amish land and there’s a pizza hut there. I contemplate ordering delivery and telling them to just bring it outside and half a block down the road. I wonder if I’d get charged the full delivery fee for that. Anyway, to make a long story short, I hungrily think of pizza as I hold on the line with breakdown and go poking around the engine again. I hear that cannibalism is the solution to hunger, but sometimes pizza helps too.

1 Hour later

Some dude from some random Iowa shop pulls up. They charge like $1.10 or something for every mile they have to drive, and $75 an hour from the moment they leave their shop to the moment they return to their shop and they are like 30 miles away. So already it costs like $75 worth of driving + $66 worth of miles just for showing up. Dude pokes around for like an hour, taking shit apart, checking the oil, checking all the cables, pulling apart my steps to look at the battery and he’s like…you have power it’s just not getting to your truck, and he literally calls his boss and his boss is telling him what to do over the phone. And low and behold his boss is GOD, cause suddenly power returns and the dude is like “I fixed it, this huge ass cable that everyone missed was loose.” When I say huge ass cable, I mean it’s bigger than the size of a half dollar coin. So I paid over $200, plus whatever I had to pay TA just for the power cable that everyone missed except for the dude in some repair shop 30 miles away. Sadness.

Since I was like 2 years old or whatever, I’ve always been an avid reader. It’s sort of a family thing I guess. My mother was always a big reader. My sister always was. I’d like to say my brother was but he was more into music but he was known to pick up a book or two and enjoy it. My dad…I don’t remember him ever reading a book actually. Anyway my sister, Gabby (the gf), and I have been reading these books that are never-ending. I must say we’ve hopped on the teen vampire/immortal book trend lately. Anyway, the problem with this is that if I were to sit down and read…let’s say a 400 page book…it would take me 1-2 days…more if I’m busy or taking a break to play MMO’s. And after buying this book or borrowing it from my sister, I’ve now got this book with me for 3 months or whatever time it takes me to get home.

Anyway I’ve been thinking, all these books sitting around being read three times, once for all 3 of us…and then what? Re-sell them on Amazon? That’s a possibility. But then again that can only be done once every whatever I get home. And they take up a lot of space after a while. So I’ve been considering picking up like a Kindle or something. Now I know there are arguments on all sides about the usefulness of one of these, especially with Amazon’s cloud reader thingy that lets you read books on any device. But the kindle just seems so friggin’ convenient, and my phone, tho it’s one of the larger ones out there, still has a small screen for reading large amounts of text. Anyway, I’ve been looking up the different books you can get and I’m glad to see that a lot of small-release books I’ve wanted in the past are available for purchase in the kindle store. I’m also drawn by their integrated 3G which would make getting books that much less of a hassle for someone who’s on the road 24-7 like I am. I dunno.

One thing I noticed while driving down the road from state to state, city to city, town to town, is that music can lighten your soul…and stab you in the face. I’ve got one of them thar new fandangled iPodamajiggers that has like a million songs in 1GB of space…yeah…So I’ve got maybe 1000 songs on that thing…well I did before I went on a big deleting spree this morning. So 1000 songs…let’s just say that 1000 songs may seem like a lot at first but after driving for a year and, music being what it is these days, not really adding much to it…I came to the point where I’m skipping about 80% of the songs that pop up.

The music from the 50s and earlier were the first to go. I love me some Bobby Darrin and Billie Holliday but that record-quality music got on my nerves after the first few times. Then the techno was on the chopping block. There’s only so many different versions of the same song you can listen to a million times. Slowly but surely I started ignoring the 60s and 70s and 80s and what was left was 90s+. I started downloading stuff I never would have thought I’d get 2 years ago…suddenly my ipod was full of Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, and Rihanna songs. What has the world been coming to? Then came Glee which I’m still currently listening to and have yet to get fully irritated with everything…but I notice myself starting to skip songs now.

So anyway the past two days I’ve been looking for songs to download to put on there and really I just don’t know what to get anymore…frankly all the songs I was mildly entertained by before I became a driver are the very songs that are now making me want to stab myself in the face. I bought a satellite radio when I first went solo and let me tell you…half the stations are full of ignorant people talking their heads off, the other half is the same songs in different orders. So I got the ‘top 20′ songs…anyway the ones that didn’t drive me crazy…like a month ago…and they’re still the same songs. I programmed the disney station and it’s the same songs sung by kids. I then got the broadway station put in there and low and behold…I remembered songs I wanted to get some time back. So alas, I now have the complete soundtracks for Chicago and Mamma Mia on my iPod. Can’t wait for the day to start!

And to leave you all in such a delighted mood, I shall offer you a little video from Mamma Mia.