Starting Swift Academy in Lewiston Oct 10!!

Some stories from the road...

We spent half of Thursday parked at Fontana because we had extra time on the load. So I walked/jogged 5 miles through the industrial wasteland, fighting a Santa Ana windstorm with 40-50mph winds that blew down trees and flipped trucks elsewhere, to get to REI and Best Buy to spend some of my new paycheck. The way back seemed longer because it was dark and I was tired, but I was glad for the exercise - it's as far as some of my thru-hiking days on the PCT last summer.

Friday was quite the adventure. We had two Costco drops, at 5:30 and 8am. I drove till 10pm the night before, so I was out of hours until 8am, and my mentor did the first drop while I slept (fitfully while the truck rocked). I got up at the second stop and found a grocery store across the street for bathroom, hot water for tea, and ice for my cooler. When I got back my mentor was pretty pissed about how messed up the drops were. At the first one, they found we were missing a pallet that they'd ordered, and theirs were all mixed up in the other store's stuff, so they pulled everything out, double checked, and put back what they didn't order, in hopes that it all belonged to the next store. But my mentor knew better, and at the next store they were short 5 pallets and had 20 left over that neither store had ordered. They also pulled off every pallet and triple checked everything. So we had 20 pallets of refused product on the truck, and we were two hours later than we'd planned for. Our next pickup was not far away and the window opened in about an hour, but with a truck half full of refused diapers, tampons, and Depends that Kimberly Clark had loaded us with by mistake, we were stuck until we could leave it somewhere.

My mentor, knowing how the system works, sent off the refused cargo macro but also called claims. After 20 minutes on hold, they said that the cargo macro was all he could do and he had to wait. So after another 30 minutes, he called his DM and someone else to try to light a fire under someone. I'm not sure what all happened (I had a light nap) but by the time we were supposed to pick up our next load, my mentor had been a squeaky enough wheel that he got someone to send us to the Mira Loma terminal (all the way across LA) to drop the extra freight.

90 minutes later, we were waiting around for someone at Mira Loma to figure out where to put the freight. They were all confused and frustrated too, and made us drop the trailer instead of unloading it. Now we had to find an empty, at a terminal notorious for being short on them. But 10 minutes of looking around brought us to an empty that had just been dropped by a student I'd been at the academy with. So we got our empty and I got to catch up with him, which was cool. Off we went to the other side of LA again to our pick up. We were only 30 minutes after the pickup window closed, but 4 hours after we'd planned to be out of there before the crazy freight mixup. However, as is often the case, the shipper was first come first serve with no appointments. There were 5 trucks in line ahead of us and only two docks, so we had to park and wait for about two hours before we could get loaded. We finally got out of there at almost 7pm.

We got to our fuel stop in Barstow at 10pm and my mentor decided to stop for the night. I had lots of hours left since I'd just started driving at 7, and was feeling good and ready to drive half the night. But my mentor had been up since 5am and frustrated from getting jacked around back and forth across LA, so he wanted to stop. We've got a load of makeup and soap and lotion that delivers in Columbus, OH on Monday, so we'll just run as much as he wants to.

It was midnight and cold, but I had energy and opportunity, so I ran around to the various truck stops and bought an electric cooler to replace my little styrofoam junk, and tried to find open, free wifi - but no luck. Oh, to have a smartphone with a data plan and tethering! Soon...

Saturday we got showers at the truck stop, then hit the road. We drove through the beautifully snowy high desert of Arizona and New Mexico, and fueled in Albuquerque. It was about 20 degrees and a little icy, but the roads were clear and we planned to use up the rest of my 4.5 hours. But halfway up the hill east of town, the snow and ice started piling up on the road, and the fog rolled in. Traffic slowed down, and we started passing several big rigs and 4-wheelers spun around off the road. The cops and tow trucks rolled up, and everyone slowed to about 10mph. With thick ice below and thick fog above, I didn't want to go much faster anyway. The CB was crackling with trucker nonsense, as usual - quite entertaining. A cop rolled up next to us and said they were closing the road at the next exit. Great - right where we'd hoped to stop for the night to get out of this mess. It took us about an hour to creep along the remaining 10 miles. With the road closed in both directions, trucks were everywhere, of course, but we snuck into a bank (tomorrow's Sunday) and shut down. If we run into more of this kind of delay, we'll either have to run team schedule or send a macro 22. It's all part of the adventure, and exactly the kind of experiences I was hoping to have with my mentor along to guide me. And I reached out to borrow wifi from a nearby hotel, so it's all good. Goodnight, that is!

 

These past several days have been long and hard. We got to Columbus on time, but due to the late start in LA and the closed road near Albuquerque, we had to run about 18 hours a day. Then the next morning we took a load down to Florida, near Tampa, running 1,000 miles in about 20 hours straight. This morning, just 4 hours after we delivered, we went to pick up something and take it to Atlanta, but it was gone already - some other driver had taken the load and the computer didn't know, so then we got deadheaded up to Spartanburg to take another load to LA again. Starting tomorrow morning, we have about 48 hours to run over 2,300 miles - 48mph average for all time between pickup and delivery, a true team schedule. My mentor doesn't like these runs, but wanted the miles (and hours for me) so we'll be going nonstop. At least we get to park the truck for over 10 hours tonight, and that feels like a luxury after the past few days.

I like driving around seeing things, and the unpredictable and varied place and schedule, and the money - the three things that drew me to trucking in the first place. It's good to have real confirmation that I really do enjoy the job as much as I'd hoped I would. But I don't like running on team schedule, or having such a hard time finding groceries and internet, or squeezing myself into the edges of the truck - both physically and socially. All these things will be fixed once I'm solo (and have a smartphone), but they're getting more onerous as time goes on.

It's been hard to get enough sleep with the truck moving for 18-20 hours a day, although with exhaustion comes a newfound ability to sleep through the bumps and noise of the truck moving, and I hope this will get better in the coming weeks. Still, when I imagine having the truck only moving when I'm driving it, and being forced to have it stopped at least 10 hours a day, it seems like heaven in comparison to this rushed, tired existence.

My mentor eats truck stop food, and not much, and irregularly. I eat real food, and plenty of it, and regularly. I expected this, and left all my cooking stuff at home, but even eating the ready-to-eat stuff I brought is difficult when I don't have much time not sleeping or driving, and can't replace my dwindling supplies. I've asked my mentor a few times if we could somehow hit a grocery store, but he puts that at a pretty low priority, so I only get to shop when we happen to be stopped for a while and I can walk there. Tonight, for instance, the closest store (to the terminal in Greer) is a Wal-Mart about 6 miles away, and I don't have 4 hours to walk there and back, so I'll continue to subsist on junk food and fast food, eaten hastily at fuel stops or in my bunk while my mentor sleeps or drives. I knew I'd probably have to put up with this for 6 weeks, but it's still hard to take.

I've been feeling increasingly socially oppressed lately, and several incidents in the past few days have reinforced my growing sense that I'm something of a second class citizen. Stories full of juicy details aren't necessary, but it's clear that I'm not allowed to make decisions on certain things, disagree with him about almost anything, or make helpful suggestions. We don't get into arguments or have tense moments, because I'm that guy who always backs up and does whatever is necessary to smooth things over. And this doesn't affect the driving much, as he only occasionally gives me input, and it's never harsh, and I think I'm doing pretty well. But it means that I have to just put up and shut up, go along with whatever he says and does, and not question or criticize anything. To be fair, I'm sure he feels that I'm a know-it-all (which I am) and he hates that (everyone does) and that I'm pretty weird and hard to understand, so it's not as though I'm easy for him to get along with. Still, it's a very unbalanced relationship - he has lots of social rights that I don't. To be clear, this is not because he's the mentor and I'm the student, as it doesn't affect the professional nature of our relationship much. It's just the natural outworking of our respective personalities. I had a friend who is very much like this, claiming all the available space and most of the rights in the relationship, and I've seen this dynamic between many people before - he takes what he wants, and I give it to him. I'm hardwired to interact this way with people like this, and it means I absorb within myself as much of the tension that results from our differences as I can, to smooth the relationship. It works, as long as I have some time and space to myself to decompress (thanks for listening, everyone!) and the time or scope of our relationship is limited. I just have to keep reminding myself that I expected this on some level, it could be a lot worse, and it will be over soon, and I'll be able to keep doing OK.

Speaking of it being over soon, I'm at about 112 hours of driving time now, almost half of what I need. At our rate to date, I'll be done between Christmas and New Year's, which would work out perfectly for us both - I get to be home for Christmas and in Portland (at a party with friends) for New Year's, and then get released to solo on January 2. If we keep running team hours like the last few days, though, I could be done as early as Christmas. Either way, I'm pretty excited - solo hours, my own truck (and bicycle on board), cooking meals, and my own music can't come too soon!

 

The road goes ever on and on...

We got loaded 5-6 hours late in Spartanburg, and I used the opportunity to clean and Rain-X all the windows and mirrors in the truck. Then, of course, it didn't rain or snow the whole way across the country! We ran the wheels off the truck, stopping only for fuel and driver changes. We delivered only two hours after the original appointment, averaging over 54mph between pickup and delivery, no mean feat in a 62mph truck.

Last night was great. I got to play the HOS game, starting in in west Texas and running across NM and AZ on 10. When I started driving, the QC said I only had 9 something hours - what happened to my 11?! Oh right, I've been burning up my 70. Dang, I guess I'll have a short run and my poor mentor won't get much sleep before he has to drive. No, because it's 7 hours till midnight, and I'll get some hours back then. OK, so I'll drive the full 11 again - cool. Sure enough, I had 2 hours left at midnight, then it popped up to 4:56. We stopped to pee near Tucson, and my mentor decided to switch at a truckstop near the CA border if I had the hours to get there. I did the math as I drove and he slept, checking every 30 miles, figuring that at 62mph I'd have 6 minutes left when we got to the exit. Oh no, there's construction in Phoenix - no, it's fine, there's no traffic at 3am. Oh no, there's a burned vehicle 26 miles ahead with the right lane closed - no, it's fine, there's no traffic at 4am. I kept the cruise control pegged to the governor the whole way, and when I rolled in to the truckstop at 5am, the QC said "You have zero hours and five minutes of drive time remaining" - whew, I made it!

The full moon captivated me as I drove west through the desert, its soft rays falling on the saguaro and palo verde alike. As it slid down the sky in front of me, the Magician started pulling down a window shade over it. The black spot started at the top and crept slowly downwards. By the time we switched drivers, a crescent of white fiercely resisted the advancing shadow, but was found powerless. My mentor was driving and I was exhausted, but I held my eyelids open to watch as the moon was transformed into a dim red disk on the horizon ahead. Pink tendrils of sunrise snuck over the hills behind us, washing the stars from the sky and waking the sleeping brown hills. Suddenly, everything came together, and I was in the canyonlands of Utah, the hills of Death Valley, the desert of Baja California, the wasteland of eastern Oregon, and everywhere I've had special desert moments. This is it, I thought - this is where it all works. Lunar eclipse and sunrise, mountains, desert, the road, and me.

Sleep deprivation is better than drugs!

The receiver wouldn't give us an empty trailer, so we bobtailed over to a crappy grocery store, and I miraculously found decent groceries to load up with, easing my concerns about the days ahead. My mentor set our PTA for tomorrow at 6am to give us plenty of time to rest (and for me to squeeze in a 34 - I have less than 2 hours left), so we parked at the terminal in Fontana. After lunch, I slept all afternoon, then walked around talking to friends on the phone for a few hours, got a shower and did laundry, and spent a bunch of time on the internet. We don't have a load assignment for tomorrow yet, but with a full 70 again, I'm hoping to get more of these crazy team loads so I can keep running 10-11 hours a day and knock out my 240 before Christmas.

... Down from the place where it began...