by Ed Miller
At my first lunch meeting with Art, I kept up with the number of martinis he drank. The resulting hangover, possibly amplified by the richness of Tambellini’s food, is one I’ve never forgotten. I had to behave myself at subsequent lunches with him, and switch to water after only two martinis. It made it a hell of a lot easier to drive home after dropping him at his bus stop.
I also took the dispatcher who called me an asshole to lunches and dinners, but thank God I never had to spend seven-and-a-half hours with him drinking martinis.
The TM at a large steel mill in Baltimore was tough as nails, but treated his employees and carriers fairly. Our company hauled a large volume of steel loads from all the different mills within this complex, including coiled steel, tinplate steel, and steel pipe. On the first evening I asked the TM to dinner, he requested Haussner’s Restaurant, which was located in the Highlandtown area of Baltimore and was one of the best-known restaurants in the city. An entire wall of the eatery’s second floor was painted with a mural of a battle that took place during the War of 1812. Ornate oil paintings that hung throughout the restaurant, including dozens of nudes in the bar, were worth millions of dollars.
At least once a month, this TM would call our office, usually a bit before 5:00 p.m., and ask whether I’d like to go to dinner. He knew that I could hardly turn him down, due to the volume of business he gave our trucking company, so I’d meet him in Haussner’s between 5:30 and 6:00. After several cocktails, we’d finally order food. I really never knew what we ordered, but it always managed to be very expensive. And you can be sure that we washed those delicacies down with more cocktails, and bottles of good wine. One thing that sticks with me is that at the end of each meal, he’d order a strawberry pie to take home to his wife. Haussner’s pies were rich, decadent, and expensive. But because the economy was in high gear at the time, my company never questioned my expense accounts after dinner with this TM.
On my way home after one of these dinners, I needed to pull over onto the shoulder, under an underpass on I-95 North, to rest a few minutes. When I opened my eyes after what felt like just a few minutes of rest, I looked at my watch and saw that it had somehow become six o’clock in the morning. To this day, I still wonder why I wasn’t awakened by law enforcement. Since this was before we had cell phones, I had one hell of a time explaining to my pregnant wife why I was just coming home from a dinner that had begun at six o’clock the previous evening. She probably still thinks I was out with some floozie.
One transportation dispatcher, in his desire to imitate his TM’s actions, took his greed to another level. Carriers referred to him as a “whore” because of the way he acted at dinners. If you took him to the most expensive restaurants and watched as he ordered two of the most expensive entrees, then your company could expect a large volume of shipments. He would order two filet mignons, or two whole lobsters, or two whatever-the-highest-priced entrees happened to be on the menu that evening, and he would request one of the entrees to boxed to-go after being prepared. He’d also order two desserts—one to go. It was a bit ridiculous, but he was a likeable fellow who was so close to retiring in Florida that he didn’t give a hoot what people thought of him. All carriers, including my company, wondered if he would be able to buy two of everything when someone else wasn’t paying the tab.
Another traffic manager wasn’t the least bit bashful about calling to inform me that he was closing in on the last bottles of the excellent case of wine I gave him on a regular basis. One time I called to ask why our level of steel shipments had been slow for several days, and he replied, “Oh, I thought I’d told you I was out of wine.” I suppose it was necessary to grease the palms in order to grease the wheels.
Strikes
The fact that I grew up in Western North Carolina, with a father and grandfather who ran things themselves, practically ensured that I would never be a union man. My college experiences never caused me to lean left of center on the political spectrum, and to this day, I think a person is better served when others do not speak for him or her. I was born in a right-to-work state, and although there seem to be several different definitions of the phrase, I define it as having the right to work without some union group trying to prevent me from doing my job. Also, it has always raised the hair on the back of my neck when I’ve been told that I cannot do my job, or make money, because other people are striking. That’s my personal feeling—but I do respect the thousands of truckers who prefer the union way. We have a kinship in being truckers, which stays with us even if we have ideological differences.
The Fraternal Association of Steel Haulers (FASH), comprised of steel-hauling owner-operators, was founded in the late 1960s, as an offshoot of the Teamsters Union, which had previously represented most of its members. FASH’s founders thought the Teamsters overlooked the needs of the owner-operators, and that they deserved better representation. They wanted detention pay for the lost work hours, or days, they spent in steel mills waiting to be loaded, but the Teamsters had ignored their pleas for help securing this. In the late 1960s, it seemed as if Teamster President Jimmy Hoffa had adopted a policy of not caring about the needs of owner-operators.
I understand why FASH was pissed off by this, but I don’t stand behind how they tried to achieve their goals. For example, while I wasn’t their enemy, their protests caused me to endure several terrifying weeks of driving. During my breaks from college, I suffered at their hands during several unpleasant dispatches that caused me to traverse the Pennsylvania Turnpike from Breezewood to Pittsburgh and beyond. They were terrifying journeys because the FASH boys had decided that while they were on strike, no truck drivers should be on the road, as a form of solidarity, and any driver who was on the road deserved to be punished. Consequently, they would send bricks and cinderblocks toppling off the turnpike’s overpasses and onto passing trucks.
Since I wasn’t going to not make my runs, I had thought up all kinds of ways to protect myself from their window-breaking missiles. My main strategy was to make my truck a difficult target, so I used every bit of the roadway as I arrived at each overpass, moving my truck between lanes and both shoulders, and even moving into a different lane as I went under each overpass. I would also cover my eyes with one of my arms as I went through the overpasses. I knew that I couldn’t block the entire windshield, but I thought that I might be able to at least protect my eyes if I was hit. This wasn’t easy, or particularly safe, to do while passing, or being passed by, another truck, or when there was heavy traffic, but I did it when I could. During these episodes, I was by far the most scared shitless I’ve ever been while driving. I offered up many Thank you, Gods when I drove this turnpike.
The strike lasted two weeks, and while drivers don’t usually like it when law enforcement officers hang out on overpasses, during this time, every trucker on the road was grateful when the cops were out.
The next time there was a FASH strike was when I was a terminal manager in Pittsburgh, and one of our trucks was headed to deliver a closed-van load to a consignee near the Pittsburgh airport. When the driver stopped at a red light several miles from the consignee, a fellow climbed onto the steps of his International tractor and asked the driver if he knew there was a strike going on. The driver replied that he was aware that FASH drivers were striking, but he wasn’t on strike, so he needed to deliver his load. The FASH member told the driver not to come back to that part of town again or there’d be trouble, and that he would be smart to park his truck.
While the striker was standing on the side of the tractor, he purposely blocked the driver’s view of his side mirror, so the driver did not see another striker reach under the trailer and pull the handle on the fifth wheel. The fifth wheel is what connects the tractor to the trailer. When the driver started moving after the light turned green, the trailer became unhooked from the tractor and slammed onto, and then off, the tractor tires, and then fell onto the landing gear pads, which were raised for travelling.
The trailer blocked part of the intersection, and some Good Samaritan must have called the cops; but even though they arrived quickly, by then the FASH members had fled the scene and were nowhere to be found.
The trailer’s landing gears were bent and could not be hand-cranked, so the police summoned a wrecker to lift the trailer in order for the tractor to get back under it. Thankfully, no one was injured, and no other vehicles were involved. The driver was an older gentleman, and handled the situation like it was just part of his job. Those FASH bastards, however, cost our company quite a bit of money from this. I wonder if they would have been proud of themselves if the trailer had split from the tractor, built up speed, and then run into a busload of kids.
During another one of my breaks from college, I arrived at a Greensboro steel distribution facility with a load of steel coils at around eight o’clock in the morning. Our dispatch office had alerted me that the plant workers might be on strike, so I wasn’t all that surprised when I saw the entrance gate blocked by fifteen to twenty striking steelworkers. They refused to move and let me through the gate and I quickly learned that I would forever be labeled a “scab” if I went into the plant. But I still had to make my delivery, so I asked the gate guard to contact someone in the receiving office. Soon, a supervisor came out to let me know he’d called the Greensboro Police Department and requested that they send officers to help me get into the plant. Several police cars arrived soon after, and the officers told the strikers to move out of the way. There were loud, obscenity-laced protestations, but eventually they parted and I drove through the gate and into the plant.
The supervisors and foremen were more helpful than any of the steelworkers had ever been, and several of them climbed onto the flatbed and helped me remove my tarps and chains. It took less than thirty minutes for the shipment to be completely unloaded. They also helped me fold my tarps. It was great.
When I returned to my truck after washing my hands, one of the supervisors told me that picketers had gone around the building and were now blocking the roll-up exit door. He didn’t know how I would get out. I judged the distance from where I was parked to the exit door, and guessed that I could be in fourth or fifth gear by the time I got there, so I asked the foreman to raise the door when I started moving. Sure enough, the door opened to reveal the strikers defiantly standing there, but I was headed toward them at a fairly good clip. Of course, I still had room to stop if they didn’t get out of the way—I would never intentionally run someone over—but I didn’t even have to slow down because they scattered when they saw me coming. It probably helped that I was driving a truck that had an extremely loud 903 Cummins engine.
I am no badass, and under any normal situation, I wouldn’t drive at people knowing it would scare the heck out of them. The only reason I crossed that picket line was that I was being prevented from doing my job. After I passed the strikers, I didn’t stop at the stop sign at the end of the street or make a complete stop at any stoplight on my way to I-40. I also didn’t let many cars stay alongside me very long as I drove east. I didn’t want to get shot at. I don’t regret having driven through the picket line, but I’m glad I never had to do so again.
Baby Animals
During the middle of a hellacious snowstorm one winter, a scroungy, malnourished, dirty white dog staggered into the Baltimore trucking yard and tried to shield itself from the snow by lying down and taking cover between the two fuel pumps. Each time Frank and I tried to approach her, she ran from us. Eventually, after we placed a bowl of warm milk beside a fuel pump, she realized we could be trusted. Since she had no collar or tags, we couldn’t bring her back to her owner, even if she had one, so we decided to take her in and give her a new home.
Frank named her Baby and she quickly became his assistant while he worked as a mechanic, and his best friend. A veterinarian gave her shots and deworming pills, as a precaution, and informed Frank that she was in good shape. Good dog food quickly took care of her malnourishment.
For the next two years, if you saw Frank, then you saw Baby. If Frank was working underneath a truck, Baby was lying beside him. If he was operating the forklift, she was sitting behind him. If he went on a road call, she was sitting beside him in his pickup truck. When he walked out on the yard, she was by his side. But she also knew when to stay out of the way, lying on her blanket when equipment was moved in or out of the shop.
One horrible afternoon, Baby inexplicably left her blanket and began walking across the shop floor just as Frank was backing a tractor out of the shop, and one of the tractor tires hit her. Horrified, Frank scooped her up and rushed her to the vet. The vet said she had some broken bones in her hip, and while she might be left with a limp, she would otherwise recover. Afterward, Baby did a lot of lying around and sleeping, but her appetite was good, so it seemed like she was on the mend.
A few weeks later, Frank got to work one morning, and Baby failed to greet him. When he turned the lights on in the mechanic’s bay, he found her lying on her blanket. She had died during the night. In the autopsy, Baby’s vet found that her stomach contained enough antifreeze to kill her. Frank figured that Baby had smelled the sweetness of an open container of antifreeze, and, who the hell knows why, drank it. Frank cried like a baby for his Baby, and I know he always blamed himself for leaving the antifreeze uncovered and out in the open. He never had another dog at the terminal.
I was no longer working at the terminal when Frank lost Baby, but word of it spread quickly. Years later, when I was in our first Pittsburgh terminal, I found my own best friend while at work. At the time, we were renting the terminal from another trucking company, which used the offices on the top floor of the building, and we had the entire bottom floor. The other company’s owner and its dispatcher, Debbie, were seasoned trucking folks, very nice people, and we all got along famously.
A couple of months after we moved in, I came to work one morning and found a little white ball of fur leashed to a fence post alongside the building. She was barking and jumping around, and when I began to pet her, she was so happy that she peed on the ground. She was sweet and playful, but I could tell that she had feistiness to her too, and while she didn’t bite me, I could see that her little teeth were as sharp as razors. Turns out that someone had gifted Debbie the ten-week-old puppy, a mix between a German Shepherd and an American Eskimo, and Debbie had named her Sheba. Debbie was unable to keep Sheba at her house, so she decided to leave her tied up outside at the terminal.
I have never kept a dog chained up, and I wasn’t all that comfortable with it, so after I arrived at work each morning, I would unleash her and let her run around all day. Debbie thought this was great for the pup, and soon realized how well Sheba and I got along. After a few weeks of this, she asked if I wanted to keep Sheba, and so began a long and faithful friendship.
It didn’t take long for me to learn that Sheba was pretty damned smart. At four or five months old, I decided to begin the process of teaching her to sit up. I quietly spoke to her with the calm instruction to “sit up,” as I pushed her rear down into the sitting position, and lifted and held her legs up. At first, when I let go of her legs, she toppled backward as if she was in slow motion. But then she got up, licked my face, and sat down in front of me. I raised her legs, released them, and she sat there! She had it down pat after one try. Through the years, she would often drop balls or shoes at my feet, and then sit up, while waiting for me to throw them. If I happened to be on the phone, she would remain sitting up for fifteen to twenty minutes. I eventually became accustomed to her just sitting there, but observers could not believe the length of time she would sit up and patiently wait for me to throw the ball.
Sheba went to work with me at three different terminals, practically every day for seven years. She was always outgoing and happy to meet new truck drivers. In Baltimore, her favorite game was to drop a tennis ball at someone’s feet, back up a step or two, and then try to prevent the ball from get
ting kicked past her. After mowing my lawn one weekend, I posed Sheba so her paws were on the mower’s push handle, and then snapped some pictures from different angles. When I shared the photos at work, most everyone looked at the pictures, and whether they were office personnel, mechanics, or truck drivers, just about everyone had the same comment, “Yeah, right.” Later though, in the middle of the afternoon, one of the mechanics walked into the office, and, noticing we were alone, walked over to me, and quietly asked, “Does that dog really mow your lawn?” I explained to Don that although Sheba required some assistance going up and down the hills, she always did a great job mowing the level parts of the yard. As he shook his head back and forth, he declared, “Goddamn, that is one smart dog!”
Sheba had quite the impressive trucking resume, so it only followed that she’d need a headshot to boot. One day I sat her in an office chair at one of the desks, inserted a telephone receiver into her collar, and then snapped several pictures. She made a great a dispatcher and was also a hell of a lot more honest than Slick Jack.
Sheba was with me when WMTS transferred my family and me from Pittsburgh to Baltimore and when we moved back to Pittsburgh a year and a half later. By the time I returned, the Pittsburgh terminal had moved, and the new office was leased from a different trucking company. They had two employees, whom I got along with well. They had been in trucking for many years and had a great sense of humor, and they were glad that Sheba came to work with me every day. When none of my drivers were around to play with Sheba, one of those fellows would play ball with her in the hallway.
I happened to be in their office one morning when the terminal manager drew a map and directions for a driver onto a piece of paper. With the map in hand, the driver left to pick up a load of steel some thirty-five miles north of our terminal. For some reason, probably to check on Sheba, I had gone back over to the carrier’s office, and had to wait until the terminal manager finished his call. The driver was calling to say that his load had been cancelled, and asked what he was supposed to do. Since there wasn’t another load close enough for him to pick up, the manager said he should just return to the terminal. The poor fellow must have been missing those last two pallets, because he asked the manager how to get back. The terminal manager, quite irritated, answered, “You know those directions I drew for you? Turn them upside down!” With that, he slammed down the phone and made numerous disparaging remarks about the driver’s mental aptitude, and the driver’s mother. He then looked down, noticed Sheba, and pronounced, “Sheba, you have a hell of a lot more sense than that son of a bitch I was just talking with.”
