A Trucker's Tale

by Ed Miller

  One of the lead driver’s trailer tires had come off its axle, and the tire’s momentum caused it to keep pace with the trailer until it eventually ran off the road and headed into the highway median. When I passed the scene a few minutes later, I could tell that the drivers had retrieved the offending “tie-yah” out of the ditch and were rolling it back across the highway. A few miles down the road, the CB radios suddenly came back to life and for the next hundred miles, drivers were laughing and repeating, “It’s your motherfucking tie-yah!” I must have heard it a dozen times, a symphony of “tie-yahs.” I may have even repeated it once or twice myself.

  When I arrived at my destination in upstate New York, I delivered a load of empty one-gallon glass jars to an apple processor, and couldn’t wait to crawl into the bunk because I was plumb worn out. I handed the shipping papers to the receiver and asked if he could wake me when they finished unloading my trailer. The guy looked at me and politely stated, “Well, you have to help us unload your trailer, so we can just wait until you finish your nap before we start on it.”

  Shit, there wasn’t much I could do about it, so I just figured it would be unloaded sooner by my helping, which would get me in the bunk sooner, with a full night sleep instead of a dinky nap. The empty jars were packed four to a case and all we had to do with this floor load was to place each case on a roller conveyor. Unloading actually went quicker than I expected—the unloading crew seemed to work faster because I was working fast and steady. After, the receiver told me the jars would soon be filled with apple cider and asked me to follow him into the warehouse. When we got there he hit a button that opened a thick, heavy door to reveal a cavernous refrigerated warehouse packed full of bins of gorgeous red apples. Each apple had very fine droplets of moisture on it. The fellow told me the apples had been in storage for several months while waiting for processing. He found a bag, filled it with those luscious-looking apples, and handed it to me, and then wished me a good sleep and a safe trip.

  Later, I phoned my dispatcher and he gave me my next assignment, telling me to pick up my next load after I woke up. I was to deadhead (drive empty) just west of Pittsburgh to pick up a load of motor oil that needed to go to Atlanta. The shipper was open 24/7, so it didn’t matter what time I arrived. The trip from New York to Newell, West Virginia, and then to Atlanta was so uneventful that I probably wouldn’t even remember it if that receiver hadn’t given me that bag of apples, and especially if I hadn’t eaten five of them along the way.

  My early delivery in Atlanta went very quickly, and afterward, I started heading north to a truck stop off I-85 to grab a shower and some breakfast. All of a sudden, my stomach started growling so loudly that I heard it over the truck noises. Then, the cramps began. Oh God, I beseech you, where is that exit for the truck stop? A sign read five miles to the exit and I breathed a sigh of relief, I was almost there. For a bit the pains began to subside, but one mile later, the cramps returned with a vengeance, and my rear end was ready to explode. Dear Lord, I begged, if you don’t let me shit my pants, I promise I’ll never eat an apple again. I clinched my cheeks so hard that my body went stiff as a board, which made driving the truck anything but safe. It was like I’d taken a malaria pill.

  Finally, the exit appeared. But as I started up the ramp, I saw a long line of trucks waiting to turn onto the highway leading to the truck stop. The pain was unbelievable, and the wait would be excruciating. What’s a trucker to do? Knowing I could not hold it any longer, I pulled onto the ramp shoulder, set the brakes, turned on the four-ways, grabbed a box of Kleenex, jumped over the guardrail, and practically ran down the embankment until I found a somewhat level place to squat. That feeling of instant relief was unlike anything I had ever experienced or will ever experience again. I was so weak that I had a hell of a time climbing back up the hill to my truck. I have often wondered what everyone thought about the fact that I couldn’t stop grinning the whole time I showered and ate breakfast. You can find happiness in even the direst times.

  I drove through the night to make my delivery in Eastern North Carolina, and arrived empty at the WMTS home office around lunchtime. I couldn’t wait to crawl into the bunk to catch up on my sleep, but before I did, I walked into the office to turn in my paperwork. I was informed of an extremely “hot” paper load, meaning it needed to be delivered ASAP. It absolutely, and without fail, had to be at the receiver’s printing plant in Jonestown, Pennsylvania, the next morning. The printing plant was out of paper and the shipper had made the urgency very clear. I was told that I would be hauling the load, and in order to get a better rest than I would have gotten in my truck’s sleeper bunk, the company checked me into a local motel, gave me a car, and told me they would call me when the shipper finished making the product later that afternoon. Another driver would bring it to the terminal, and then I would drive like hell to get it to Pennsylvania by seven the next morning.

  Murphy’s Law—that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong—came into play when the relay load did not even arrive at the home office until close to eleven o’clock that night. I had already fueled the truck, so all I had to do was hook up and haul ass, but Murphy must have also hitched a ride in my passenger seat, because I had driven less than sixty miles when I noticed the first snowflake. Each additional mile brought more snowflakes. I was very glad my seventy-seven-thousand-pound vehicle helped my traction as it snowed, and snowed, and snowed. I had driven through snow many times before, but never anything like this, and not for this duration.

  Just after daylight, the heavy snowfall finally eased up, and I was slowly proceeding up US 15 N, just south of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. I was driving in the well-packed-down right lane when I noticed a produce-hauling truck coming up behind me in the left lane. The driver was lugging along through what was now twelve inches of snow, going fifty to fifty-five miles per hour in a late model black Marmon. I was impressed, wondering, How could he be running this fast, when my lane is as slick as molasses? Hoping to learn from watching him, I moved several feet left from my lane and into the lane that still had deep snow, and by God, I got educated on the proper way of running in snow: It was necessary to get out of an ice-packed lane and into the snow-covered one because the deep grooves of a tractor’s drive wheels get more traction in snow than they do on ice. With traction, I was able to pick up my speed enough that I stayed with him for quite a few miles.

  At 7:45 that morning, I was just a couple of miles from the consignee. I sorely needed a cup of coffee, so I pulled up on the right side of the road beside a large mound of plowed snow, and walked into a McDonald’s. When I opened the door, everyone in the place, including the employees behind the counter, was staring out the windows. I turned around to see what captured their attention, only to see that it was my rig that had them mesmerized. The tractor and trailer looked like a solid block of ice and snow. The snow and salt, which I had traveled over all night, had been thrown upward and caked underneath the trailer and behind the tractor. All openings had been filled with snow. The rig resembled a big, white locomotive, right out of a Coors Light ad. You could hardly tell the tractor’s make or color. It was one of the strangest sights I’d ever seen.

  The snow caused me to miss the seven o’clock delivery time by an hour. When I handed the bills of lading to the receiver, I said something like, “Sorry I’m late, but here’s that hot load of paper everyone’s been screaming about.” He looked over the listing of the load’s contents and proclaimed, “We don’t need this shit. We have a whole warehouse full of it. The damned paper mill didn’t even send what we needed.”

  Every truck driver has had similar shipper snafus happen to him. Upon delivery, we learned that our “hot” loads really weren’t hot; or sometimes, when we took our time getting there, the loads turned out to be “hotter than hell!” Most drivers realize that these scenarios happen, and probably will again sometime down the road. Although we wish we’d known the facts before we began the run, we di
dn’t, so there isn’t much we could have done about it. About the only thing you can do is pat yourself on the back for doing your part.

  The following morning, the weather was much warmer than it had been in Jonestown, Pennsylvania. As I drove my white locomotive across a railroad track in Eastern North Carolina, the uneven roadway broke loose several big chunks of the caked-on snow from under my trailer. The area had received no snow that previous day, and I wondered what drivers thought when they observed those icebergs laying in the roadway before they melted in the warm weather.

  One Friday afternoon, I had loaded a full load of wooden pallets from a manufacturer in Warrenton, North Carolina. There were so many stacks of pallets that I had to use eight nylon straps, in addition to several chains and binders, in order to hold the load in place. As with the finished lumber, you couldn’t tighten the shit out of the pallets, you could only tighten them snugly.

  I was taking the rig to the home office yard for the weekend, so I traveled down US 401 for several miles until I reached NC 58 S, which required a left-hand turn in the very middle of Warrenton. I had a green light, so I pulled into the intersection as far as I could to allow enough room for the trailer to make the left-hand turn. Opposing traffic was still traveling through the light as I caught the eye of an extremely beautiful young woman as she crossed the street. She looked college-aged and had long brown hair. It was summer­time, which meant that it was Eastern North Carolina hot. If memory serves, she was wearing white shorts, a tight, Carolina blue T-shirt, and black flip-flops. Other than that, I don’t remember much about her. She smiled at me, and, of course, I returned a smile.

  As the stoplight was changing to red, a car from the opposing traffic lane passed by my tractor. The young lady had reached the sidewalk by the time I began my turn, and since she was still smiling at me, it was only polite to smile back as I made my turn onto NC 58. All of a sudden, my rig started slowing, so I looked back from the driver’s window to notice my trailer wheels trying to climb over the trunk of that last vehicle to go through the light. Traffic had backed up in front of the car, and with nowhere to go, the car was sitting in the middle of the intersection.

  I am pretty damned sure I was responsible for tons of cuss words that Friday afternoon, because I had tied up Warrenton’s Main Street at quitting time. Thankfully, no one was injured, although my ego certainly took a hit due to the young lady’s seemingly uncaring feelings. She lost her smile as she watched the accident happening, and she stayed on the scene long enough to look at me, look at my trailer, look at me again, and then shake her head in disapproval. Then she continued walking down the sidewalk as though she couldn’t have cared less. If I could have read her mind, I’m sure I would have heard her thinking, dumbass.

  Warrenton’s weekly rag probably read, “Local beauty queen distracts truck driver, causing accident on Main Street during rush hour.”

  I wonder how many accidents truckers have had while appreciating the sights around them—especially during warm weather.

  For my final college trucking trip, I was dispatched to Indianapolis to pick up a load of pinto beans. At the bean processing plant, the dock foreman asked, “Where’s this damned load of pinto beans going? North Carolina?” I was surprised at his foresight and asked how he knew the destination.

  He replied, “Cause that’s the only goddamned place people eat them fuckin’ pinto beans!”

  He and his buddies laughed their asses off. Hell, I thought, I do love pinto beans, so maybe he was right.

  This was a floor load and I had to help the workers transfer fifty-­pound bags of pinto beans off their pallets and then stack them on the floor of the trailer. The delivery appointment was scheduled for early the next morning, so after sweating my ass off loading the beans, I drove a few miles to a truck stop, where I showered and got something to eat—which definitely was not pinto beans after humping those fifty-pound bags of them.

  Twenty miles into the trip south from the truck stop, a Good Samaritan driver called me on the CB to inform me of a flat tire on my trailer. I soon found a truck stop with a tire repair shop, but I was told that I might have to wait several hours for the repair. The hot weather was causing many blown-out tires and the shop was extremely busy. There was nothing I could do but wait, but while waiting I began having doubts as to whether I could stay awake long enough to make my delivery on time the next morning. Over coffee, another driver said he had a couple of “truck driver pills” he could sell me that would help. I wasn’t so naive that I didn’t know about black beauties, but I’d never used them. I decided, however, to give it a go, so I paid him, and gulped a few down.

  Back on the road, I headed south, and it didn’t take long to realize the pills were beginning to work. My mouth was as dry as a pinto bean fart, and I was smoking Camel non-filters like they were going out of style. Just before I crossed from Kentucky into Tennessee, a loud “pow!” alerted me to yet another blown tire—this one on the tractor. I had to limp several miles before I could pull over at the Tennessee Welcome Center; but, unfortunately, I had used my only spare tire back in Indiana. This was the 1970s, when we had to use pay phones and phone books, and I spent a very long time and shitload of quarters trying to find road service. There was no tire service available at midnight, and the very best any company could do was to bring me a tire at seven the next morning.

  This meant that I was shit out of luck, and again there was nothing to do but wait, so I took my shower kit into the men’s room, washed my face, and brushed my teeth. I crawled into the bunk and laid my head on my pillow, determined to sleep until the tire man made his appearance. But my eyes wouldn’t shut. The pills were doing such a fine job that I couldn’t have closed them even if I’d used a pair of heavy steel pliers. At the time, there were no truck televisions, smart phones, or wireless internet access—hell, Al Gore hadn’t even invented the internet yet—and I had nothing left to read; I’d already finished the one book I’d taken on this trip. So I tossed and turned, and eventually became so fidgety that I had to get out of that bunk because I was getting the heebie-jeebies.

  I plopped myself down at one of the many picnic tables lining the sidewalk leading to the welcome center and struck up a conversation with practically everyone who stopped at the rest area. It was summer and there were many travelling vacationers, so there was no shortage of folks to talk with. I greeted most everyone walking into the welcome center building by asking any number of questions. They certainly didn’t need to know that I was unable to sleep, or why, so I simply informed those who asked that my truck was broken and couldn’t be fixed until the following morning and I was biding my time. I learned that several families were taking their kids to college, while many others were going to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, for vacation. Most everyone was quite pleasant and seemed to enjoy a bit of conversation. A few folks, though, were not so agreeable, like the one fellow I asked, “How are you doing this fine evening?”

  He gruffly replied, “It’s none of your damned business. Leave me alone!”

  Several others just stared at me and said nothing when I asked them how they were doing, but, not to be deterred, I kept asking the questions for hours.

  One thing I figured out quickly was that about three out of every four men entering the men’s room didn’t really need to use the facilities. Rather, they were there seeking the company of other men. I wasn’t thrilled to be propositioned a couple of times during the night—and one guy didn’t want to take no for an answer. He wouldn’t get up from the picnic table when I told him I wanted to be left alone, so I got up and began heading back to my truck. Somehow he misread this, as if I was inviting him to come with me, and he began to follow me, but he quickly ran off to his car when I pulled my tire thumper, a miniature baseball bat, from under the seat. When I went back to my perch at the picnic table, I took it with me, and I kept it with me the rest of the night. With it in hand, I didn’t receive any m
ore offers—but maybe holding that thumper was also the reason no more vacationers stopped to chat. So I drank Cokes, smoked Camel non-filters, watched hundreds of vehicles come and go, and walked around the picnic grounds by myself until morning. I learned that day that black beauties will do a fine job of keeping you awake, but when it comes to the places where I’ve seen the sun rise, I can think of a hell of a lot more picturesque settings than the Tennessee Welcome Center.

  –

  Either life got in the way or I was so broke that I couldn’t focus, but for one reason or another, I didn’t finish college. At the time, I was driving a piece-of-shit VW camper, which broke down pretty often, so when WMTS offered me a well-paying job at its biggest terminal, in Baltimore, Maryland, I gratefully accepted—and so began my fulltime career in the trucking industry, which I began as an assistant terminal manager.

  Part Four

  Characters

  Frank

  Frank was a WMTS guy I’d met before I went full-time. He had a lot of driving years under his belt and when we met he was WMTS’s mechanic, road service person, and forklift operator. Like Obie, he was a very capable jack-of-all-trades. What he lacked in formal education was eclipsed by his intelligent application of common sense. There was no mechanical problem he couldn’t solve. He approached each issue, studied it, and then resolved it.

  And Frank never shied away from any job that had to be done. Back when I was in college and working for WMTS, I had fueled up at the Baltimore terminal late one very cold and windy winter night and driven up I-95 North about thirty miles, on my way to somewhere in New England. Just as I was passing the Maryland House rest stop in Aberdeen, Maryland, my truck’s main radiator hose blew out, and most of the antifreeze was lost. I contacted Frank and he said he would help me as soon as he could get there. Luckily, I had both a blanket and the military poncho liner I had traded for in Vietnam, so I stayed tolerably warm in my bunk if I didn’t move around too much.