Tanker to ready mix

Well said Reo

 

It’s really funny your coming off the road doing tankers...I’m actually on my last couple of days training on tankers to run the road with. I bumped docks and did reefer for a while but there is no challenge in it anymore. I have always wanted to do tanker work and should started along time ago.

 

TBH in Westminster Maryland accepted my tractor trailer bulk delivery for cement several times a week over a period of months, I never had trouble unloading at their ready mix plant ever. It's empty in a hour and off I went. I even showed up when no one was expected to show up in 3 feet of snow. But they took the load.

Fast forward a little bit and sat in their nice office on a rainy week day to interview for work on a Class A which at that time means I can drive anything Class B or C or whatever Commerical Vehicle. Just not Motorcycles. Despite a yard full of lowboy 18 wheelers sitting still with drivers at home due to the rain all around the office, the management there showed discrimination against me on two count. First I am deaf. Not welcome. (Oh really? Now you tell me... after all those cement delieveries from either Lehigh in Union Bridge or Blue Circle in Canton Baltimore Ternimal off a ship)

Second that Class A was considered by the Yankees overqualified for the Class B ready mix. In short, they did not want me period. I brought in a ADA lawyer again and had a interview with same against TBH and frankly we let it go. The company itself is literally too small to be worth going after. One of the things the Lawyer did say to me there was go South Young Man, they will give people with handicaps certain oppertunities you wont find up here in Yankeeland.

Many years later I hired onto B&B Concrete in Little Rock for Bulk Tanking first, without questions. Provided that concrete or flyash is at the silo at the plant asap. That means either Hope AR twice a day or Redfield AR several times a day (*Power plant, flyash way over gross)

When the tractor of that tanker broke (Not just broke down, but actually broke) they handed me a trainer *Who was one of he few very good ones actually...) and a old time Auto Car 12 yard cement mixer with the splitters.

That autocar became mine for a few weeks to months after I finished training. That old iron and I enjoyed our time together so to speak. We mostly poured very deep 60 foot 5 foot wide holes to bedrock for the then new Federal Courthouse complex PLUS a annex to be built onto the Capitol building that year in addition to the Alltel Arena plus the UAMS Buildings related to cancers and eye which were pretty avant garde in design for their time. I was very very very happy to do this work.

Until they stuck me back into that same old tanker. With a thousand more rivets. Long story short, I dared use some of the early hours taking care of the wife's car to the Federal Employment for which she cannot and WILL not ever be late. Then showed up on time at 6 am to clock in. Younger boss threatened me because Im not allowed to think for myself and my needs on a work day.

I quit.

Razorback hired me next. Strictly ready mix. This time a Mack, that the running joke goes, everyone has had a turn on it. It's not a very nice joke. The truck was worn through. I made the best of it. But I knew in my hearts of hearts it would be 10 years before they issue me a new mixer. So I settled in and paced myself there. Not working too hard.

What I did discover was a 4x4 wheeled 936 CAT front end loader to feed rock and sand into the ready mix plant. THAT was the job I have been waiting for all my life. If you put me into one of those wheeled loaders right now and said feed sand and rock.. it's going to get done once I fueled and greased it. Of all the jobs I have held in my life with the exception of working a horse breeding farm the heavy equiptment is my personal favorite. Never mind the petes, KW's large cars and so on. I can climb into a big one or a medium one or a small one and get going well enough.

The main problem to that type of discovery when you have a life match to a specific job, everyone has it and no openings. So I go home and forget the whole thing.

 

I was driving a propane truck through a construction zone once,

and a guy came running out in the road, stopping my truck, asking me what the hell I was doing I was going the wrong way,

he didn't realize it until I told him I wasn't a cement truck, I was carrying propane,

I knew a guy once who drove for a cement company, and he said some foreman guys, were buttholes about cement,

I've thought driving a cement mixer, until I started driving hauling propane.

I interviewed twice, the first time I didn't get call back, the second time I did,

but didn't take it after he explained the odd hours, and max pay after a year, you start out almost at max pay, and if you make it a year, you get a raise, but its the max you'll ever make, no raise after a year.....