Where are the stories from the road?

[quote=IROCUBabe;
PLEASE DELETE

 

I like the one about the u boat.

 

I got one........... if a plumbers job goes down the drain and a firefighter job goes up in smoke dose a hooker get laid off ?????????????????

 

Not proud of any of this, but I think enough time has gone by that I can talk about it.
This wasn't the best job in the world, but I was hungry, literally. I talked them out of a $50 comcheck before I even picked up my first load.
I was almost late picking it up too. I didn't care, since I hadn't eaten in 3 days and wasn't thinking very clearly.
But I got it handled and things went pretty smooth for a few weeks. I did my job and they seemed to like me ok.
I didn't want to attract any attention to myself since my application was a total lie, including my name.
I had spent the previous fourteen months in prison and didn't want to mention that. I told them I had been up in Alaska ice trucking.
This was way before that TV show and they were mighty impressed with that.
I gave them a phone number of a guy I was in the Army with and every time they called he would act like he barely spoke english.
He was usually so drunk, he was almost impossible to understand anyway.
About the fourth week with this outfit I pick up three new garbage dumpsters in Elk Grove Village IL going to Jamboree KY.
Turns out them dumpsters was supposed to go to Pikeville KY, which is actually accessible by truck.
The fellow that purchased the aforementioned dumpsters lived in Jamboree KY and was apparently confused when he submitted the shipping information regarding "bill to" and "ship to". That's a handy piece of information to have.
If I had to make a list of the 100 favorite roads of mine, US119 in KY and WV would be nowhere near it. But it was a cakewalk compared to Hy 194.
Switchbacks galore. Had to stop four times to let traffic by. Then there was the pick up truck I run off the side of the mountain.
My right mirror was nearly scraping the side of the mountain and my left trailer tires were hanging off the other side when I seen him coming.
I was scared to let off cause it was icy and I was already spinning a little. Well, he hit his brakes and slid right into my trailer tandems.
Dang if he didn't take a clean bounce and topple right over the cliff pretty as you please.
No need to stop now. That fellow was a goner.
I get on over the mountain without further incident and find Hy 632. Jamboree 12 miles the sign tells me. Talk about bad to worse.
After the first mile of this drunken goat trail I was having fond memories of Hy 194.
I finally get to the bottom (smoking brakes and all) of twisting 9% grade to find a wooden bridge at the bottom.
Well don't that just beat all. 5 ton limit. Not good. I get out and crawl down the bank to inspect the integrity of this fine structure.
As I said before, not good.
I remembered something in physics about the faster an object is moving the less it weighs. That's how jets take off.
So I backed up the mountain about an eighth of a mile. Would have liked to have went further, but I almost fell off the side twice.
Count to three and let 'er rip. Don't know how fast I got it up too. Like most things on that truck, the speedometer didn't work.
But I do know that by the time I got back down to that bridge, I had very serious doubts as to the sanity of my plan.
When the front tires hit the first planks I heard a sharp cracking, splintery sound. Not good, but I was still rolling.
The truck took an odd hop and I was airborne for just a second or so. When the tandems came back down, I heard that sound again, only twice as loud.
If that wasn't bad enough I felt the world dropping out from under me.
Somehow I had enough momentum for the drive tires to grab terra firma as the bridge collapsed beneath the trailer. Small victory, but too early to celebrate. Because it was about to get worse.
By the time the trailer tandems got to the edge the bridge was gone. So was my speed.
The trailer bellied out and the first axle slammed squarely into the embankment.
The sheer force of the impact broke the jaw in the fifth wheel and I was instantly bobtailing, leaving the flatbed trailer at a twisted angle in the shallow riverbed, dumpsters and all. I never looked back.
I did find Jamboree and threw my bills out the window when I drove by the post office.

I would have taken the tractor back to Macon GA. After all that man was nice enough to give me a job, but I ran out of fuel in Atlanta so I left it on I-285. Never did find out what happened to the dumpsters.

 

I made sure to wipe down the truck for prints and I destroyed th NM drivers license I was using belonging to the late Albert Grumstein.

 

Priceless ... absolutely PRICELESS.

Did the wooden bridge thing once myself in a gas tanker on an old dirt road ... even backed up for some additional speed ... figured if I didn't make it, I darn sure didn't want to be sitting in the cab all busted up and burning

 

I was hauling a load of gas down an old "hog path" between Morven NC and Cheraw SC. It was about 2 AM and VERY foggy, traffic was almost non-existant. I came around a sharp curve in the road and out of the corner of my eye ... there was two people standing in the fog. A man and a little fella looked to be about 6 years old. I pulled over and then I saw their car ... apparently they had taken the curve a little too fast in all that fog and went off the road hitting a large tree head-on. The man just stood there looking at me ( I guess he was in shock ), but the little boy said that they needed some help and asked if I go get an ambulance and the police. ( This was in the day before everyone had cell phones ) He started crying said his parents were hurt and I asked if he wanted to ride with me to the next town and we would get some help for his mom and dad, but he said he would stay and the two of them wandered back to where the car was smashed into the tree.

I made a "bee line" to the nearest house to call 911 ... then had to go all the way to Cheraw before I could find a place wide enough to turn around in. When I got back to the accident site the emergency personnel were pulling the lady out of the car and she was screaming about a pain in her back. I looked over on the passanger side and saw a man all crumpled up with his head under the dash ... blood was everywhere and brain matter had blown against the side window. Needless to say this man was beyond help and as the paramedic checked his pulse ... he just shook his head.

I went back to where the little boy was and pulled a blanket out of my cab and tried to console him as best I could while the paramedics did what they could for the lady. They eventually got her out without doing too much more damage and then they pulled the man from the passanger side. They placed him on a gurney and was wheelin' him to the back of the ambulance and just before they placed a sheet over him I caught a glimpse his face ... I got the shock of my life ... on the gurney was the self same man who had been standing beside the little boy when I first saw the accident. I had forgotten all about him ... he never had said a word ... the only thing he had done was point with his finger to where his wife was trapped in the car.

Life just keeps gettin' stranger and stranger.

 

I have been driving alot lately, which is good, because my mentor is usually sleeping. He told me the day before we took off for the holiday that he was visited, abducted and experimented on by aliens when he was a teenager. He says that one night an alien visited him, he found himself floating above his bed and the next morning he had scars on his body he could not explain.
(can any one say "Therapy")

He put the truck in the shop during our break because the charging, cooling circuit (TAS in a Volvo) was not working the way he wanted. He even gave the mechanic a copy of the schematic with the area circled that he know was causing the problem.

Not looking to getting back in the truck and hearing his stories of his trip to the strip clubs and how the women there all know him and treat him special.

Want an image that wont go away? Two days before our break he decided he wanted roasted chicken, so we stopped at a grocery store and bought a whole roasted chicken, now for the picture,

350+ lb person laying on his stomach with 4 pillows stuffed under his chest eating a roasted chicken with his hands ( kind of reminded me of a hog at the trough)

Well hopefully the next 3 weeks go faster, now that we are team driving, most of the time I am sleeping or he is.

I feel my skills are improving and maybe with some more backing experience I will be little more comfortable "running" the truck.

I will keep you all informed and hope to see you all out on the road soon

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Good Luck, and safe journeys!