Accident Part II: The Wrecker's Prayer

Ahead of me the wrecker was sweeping the accident debris off the shoulder. The wrecker continued to my truck and knocked on the passenger side door. 

I caught up to him. "You need something?" 

The wrecker turned to me. A wide scar ran from his right eyebrow up his forehead and back through his hair. The hair did not grow where the scar passed.

"You're the driver?"

"Yes."

"Nobody was hurt here tonight?"

"No."

"When I got the call I expected there to be dead people. When did it happen?"

I told him.

"I was in bed and an explosion woke me. I said to my wife, there's been a terrible accident. But that was 25 miles from here. I couldn't have heard it." 

"It was like a bomb went off when he hit my tandems."

"Somebody should have died."

"Yes." 

"If he hits you a second earlier he goes under your tandems and you drag him down the road crushing him. A second later, he hits the rear of your trailer and shears off the top of his car taking his head off. He should have flipped from how he hit you."

"Yes."

"I was in an accident with a truck once. Its how I got this," he pointed at the scar. "My brakes went out and I hit his trailer going through an intersection. Ejected me from the car. Truck dragged the car two miles before he knew he was in an accident."

"You don't feel anything when you're driving a truck."

"I asked an EMS guy once what was the worst accident he ever saw. He was off-duty sitting at a diner eating a burger and from the window he watches a car collide with the trailer of a truck. The driver is ejected 15 feet in the air, then lands on his feet and starts running. The EMS guy chases him down the street yelling after him. He chased the guy until he collapsed from blood loss." The wrecker smiled.  "That guy was me. You lose a lot of blood when your head's opened up."

"You didn't remember running?"

"Nothing," said the wrecker. "I was in the hospital a long time." Then the wrecker said, "Are you a Christian?"

"Yes," I said.

"May I pray with you?"

"Yes," I said.

The wrecker held out his hands and I took his hands in mine. We bowed our heads and the wrecker began to pray. The wrecker prayed in thanks to the Lord Jesus Christ for what had happened this night, that I and the other driver were both alive and unhurt. The wrecker prayed in thanks for the Lord's protection against evil and prayed for His continuing protection. The wrecker prayed in thanks for the gift of His son Jesus Christ, who's birth we were to celebrate in a few days. The wrecker prayed that more of the world would come to know Him and accept Jesus Christ as Savior. The wrecker prayed this all in name of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, Amen.

"Amen," I said.

Accident Part I: Over the Line

The night was clear and very cold. After leaving Dallas in rush hour there had been no traffic on US 69 through Oklahoma, and it was very quiet in Pryor and in Muskogee. In my trailer was more than 45,000 lbs of boxed Coca-Cola syrup. It was three days until Christmas.

At midnight, miles from the Kansas border, I turned into the dirt truck parking lot at the Buffalo Run Casino to take my 30 minute DOT break. I heated water to make coffee and lay in the sleeper reading. I had 180 miles left to Kansas City and a 4 am appointment at Vistar. 

It is my custom to begin driving after exactly a thirty minute break -- the minimum mandated by the DOT to unlock the remaining three hours of drive time on the daily 11 hour clock -- but on this night, knowing traffic would be light into the city because of the holiday, I chose to make a proper coffee from grounds, requiring water heated longer and to the highest temperature. 

I remember finishing the coffee and noting on the Qualcomm my break had lasted 42 minutes. I was not pressed for time, and would likely have to wait to be unloaded when I arrived at the customer, but a truck driver lives by his clock and as a matter of principle these twelve minutes in excess bothered me. 

I began driving and crossed into Kansas. US 69 merges with US Route 400 at the town of Baxter Springs and the posted speed increases to 65mph as the road leaves town, a northbound and southbound lane undivided by a median. The road continues to a roundabout with Route 66, a very technical obstacle to pass cleanly with a semi-truck, but one I each time looked forward to as a test of my professionalism. 

A mile before the roundabout a southbound car edged over the line. 

At 65mph you do not have much time but I gave the driver the tiniest moment to right himself in his lane, then yanking my horn I started to the shoulder. But he kept coming into my lane and now with both hands on the wheel, headlights coming at me, I jerked the tractor onto the shoulder, as close as I could get to the drop off into the ditch and bushes and the pond, and he went by me. Then an explosion like a bomb had gone off, but I felt nothing. I slowed onto the shoulder but in my mirror I saw nothing. Then bounding down the road went one of my trailer tires. 

I quick put on my coat, took my flashlight, my knife and a blanket and jumped out of the truck. The driver-side outer tandem tires on the trailer were gone, the rims bent and disfigured. A quarter mile back in the ditch on my side of the road was a car with its lights on and I ran towards it. The road side was littered with pieces of metal and plastic and glass.

A car stopped on the shoulder ahead of me. A young couple was inside. I told them to call 911, I gave the location, and told them to say a car has collided with a semi.

I hurried down the embankment through the grass, shining my light on the car. The hood on the driver's side was crushed, the front tire was gone, and the driver's side door panel was torn away. I prepared for something awful inside.

Someone was in the back seat. I shined the light in on him. A young man was packing things into a duffel bag and mumbling. I asked him if he was okay. He said he was okay and continued packing. I told him I was the driver of the truck he had hit and I asked him to step out of the car. He stepped out and faced me. I looked him up and down, shining my light over him. I asked if he was injured, if he was in any pain. He said he was fine. I could hardly believe it. 

On the knee of his right leg was a spot of blood. A skin graft, he said. The skin was tender and prone to bleeding. It was nothing. He really was fine. I could hardly believe it.

A patrol car arrived and parked on the road. The state trooper came down the embankment with his light on us. The young deputy was called Noble Deakins. He asked each of us if we were injured. I gave the deputy my CDL and insurance card and told him what had happened. He sent me back to my truck to call my dispatcher and roadside service. 

After I had made my phone calls I walked back to see the deputy. A wrecker was down in the grass preparing to winch the totaled car up onto a flatbed. The young man was gone. A friend from Missouri had come for him, the deputy told me. He claimed to have insurance, but could produce no insurance card and had been cited. Deputy Noble Deakins also said the young man told him it was I who had gone into his lane and nearly killed him. I smiled and shook my head. The roadside evidence does not support his story, I said. The state of Kansas does not assign guilt in accidents and the two stories would be presented in the report, the deputy explained, the insurance companies will then debate who is at fault. 

I said goodbye to the deputy but he stopped me.

"You did a good thing here tonight," said Deputy Noble Deakins. 

"I know, sir. But I was lucky too."

He held out his hand and I shook it. Then I walked back towards my truck. 

(PART 2 TO COME)

Human Side Podcast 02: Once, I Lost My Soul

A conversation with Andreas of Austria on the experience of "losing his soul." Also talk of toothless lot lizards, Wittgenstein, Bruce Chatwin, working third shift at Home Depot, Colombia, Argentina, Patagonia and other nonsense.

Download it here:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1p_37WCsN2nKchppFivgpKxC2hASSLscG

Working Class Alpha, Part I

Its damned hard generating alpha as a working man. Alpha, as an individual's return beyond the average or expected return, is how a fella evaluates where he is. As a futures trader back in the day I had a lot of alpha. I shit alpha for fun. For years I traded no more than a couple hours a day, netted a few grand, and pickled my liver and watched the Yankees. Its not like that anymore. This working life kick I'm on now is something else. 

They've made it damned hard for a working man to make any money. He's got no defense against the MBA cost cutters. The unions are broken or irrelevant. Foreign labor will work for less, accept very low standards of living, and the borders for cheap labor have been opened internationally. Labor is a cost input and the banks and holders of assets expect ever increasing returns. And it is labor that has born that sacrifice to make these returns possible. 

At Home Depot I discovered the only way to save any money was to sleep in your car. You could get a 24 hr gym membership for showers and exercise. To really earn as a minimum wage man you also needed overtime. Running two or more minimum wage jobs was hell (I watched a few guys dying from that along with their alimony payments) and getting from one job to the other reduced essential sleep time (and time for reading and writing). This led to my realization that the ideal minimum wage job would have the potential for overtime but more importantly would pay for room and board. 

It was then that I discovered cannery work in Alaska. A good 3 month salmon season meant 18 hour days without a day off. Alaska's overtime laws are not ideal compared to the Lower 48, but food (as bad as it is) and housing (also poor) are provided to cannery workers. 

Like all of today's minimum wage jobs, these cannery jobs were once lucrative and excellent. Only Alaskans did them. But private equity hit commercial fishing and its all changed. While still a good deal relative to Lower 48 minimum wage work, because food and housing is provided, no Alaskan will work for those wages. Alaska is expensive, and you can't survive the winter when work is limited to minimum wage pay during the short summer. So its only foreigners and Lower 48 rejects who do that work now. For me, it ended up being a good deal while I did it: working summers in Alaska and saving the money for living the rest of the year in Colombia. Throw in six months of unemployment payments from AK and it was an even sweeter arbitrage. 

But now I'm living full time in the Lower 48. Expenses are up, though at least Texas has no state tax. I realized here there was really only one other way to work and have my housing paid for: commercial trucking. 

But OTR truck driving has also gone to hell. The foreigners have been brought in and pay per mile has dropped, despite there being a driver shortage (what a great opportunity for the Teamsters or some union--incredible that drivers can't band together to improve their pay). But as with cannery work I was drawn to truck driving because housing is paid for: you sleep in your truck. 

ZIRP and NIRP (zero interest and negative interest rate central bank policies) have greatly increased the values of assets, especially housing. All this while wages for working men have been stagnant or dropped. A working man now has to sacrifice if he is to get ahead, and housing is that essential sacrifice. A fella interested in getting ahead cannot afford to pay rent. To generate alpha this critical expense on the liability side of the balance sheet must be reduced or eliminated. As working men make so little, alpha generation must come not from income, but from liability reduction. 

And other sacrifices must be made. Health insurance must be eliminated. Fortunately, Obamacare penalties are basically cheap put options for the opportunity to buy insurance if one becomes ill. If you're young and physically training these puts are dirt cheap and insurance is really irrelevant. Anyway, its likely if a younger healthy working man gets sick he's got a bitch of a sickness and probably on his way out, insurance or not.  

OTR truck driving offers the chance to drive up to 70 hours every 8 days, as per DOT regulations. Pay is by the mile and a beginning driver can start to calculate that he has a chance at some decent money. But then he discovers the regulations: no more than 11 hours of drive time daily; no more than 14 hours of drive and and on duty time daily; a mandatory 10 hour break off duty between driving periods; a mandatory 34 hour off duty period to reset his 8 day 70 hour clock; etc. etc. 

Then there are the restrictions of your company, such as an engine governor that stops you from driving faster than 60 mph despite Texas highway speeds of up to 80mph. They've outfitted the truck with all sorts of electronics that report on a driver and restrict him. Then the new driver discovers he's blowing drive time off his 14 hour clock while sitting through 3 hours live unloads of his trailer. 

He starts to think he's bitched. He's forced to drive 20 mph under the speed limit because of the company governor and that, he calculates, is costing him 200 miles a day in paid miles. He's stuck loading and unloading trailers with slow moving hourly and salaried workers who could care less about his DOT clock ticking down. He loses drive time there. He's dealing with Trans Flo and bill of lading paperwork, updating permit books, evaluating a truck and trailer mechanically for possible problems and potential DOT inspection fines, the scaling loads at CAT scales--all this unpaid and reducing his drive time and sleep time. 

But if you sit a man in a truck, with hours and hours to think as he drives across the country on the highways, he will think up ways around the DOT clock, ways around the company truck's restrictions ... (Part II to come)

Accident

Honor. Personal honor, is essential. It is why the best men act in the best ways. Honor between men allows the world to operate more smoothly. When another man comes to me, even a stranger, and with urgence explains how I have been in error, I am likely to believe him, to accept that I have been at fault. 

Today I was wrong to believe what another man claimed to have seen me do. My acceptance of a personal failure based upon another man's word was in error. 

After one year of driving I was obliged to be sent out for a road test with a burly toothless man named Mark with an official title of OSR. As it goes with acronyms, they once stood for something but are now simply letters. This OSR was to test my driving ability. They are also safety professionals who interview and evaluate drivers after accidents. 

This OSR Mark gave me a challenging test of buttonhook turn after buttonhook turn around Love Field in Dallas. I knew company policy was for double-clutch shifting, so I tried to do some of that to start but soon stopped as I realized Mark, the OSR, was an alright guy, a driver of many miles and years. He said nothing about my floating gears. He was a driver after all and we both knew company policy on double clutching and being out on the road were quite different things. Everybody who fucking knows floats, I thought to myself. Let this motherfucker fail me for floating without a single goddamn grind then. I knew he was honest enough not to and he didn't say anything. I had shown a few double clutches to start and now the floating was understood.

We came back to the syrup plant after the test and met a long line of trucks waiting to enter. I put my flashers on and we waited on the roadway and me the OSR and talked. The security guard came out from the plant and said it was shit show in the yard, which was already very tight for parking but was now nearly impassable with trucks and trailers. 

After nearly an hour on the road waiting we finally were able to enter the plant and a tight turn against a backed up truck was the start of it. Sure enough, it was goddamn shit show in there. I weasled in between some other trucks and there were a couple spots to park my trailer but near impossible blindside backs would be required. I continued on. No doubt the drivers ahead of us had passed those up too. 

There was a spot then along the fence but I would need to turn the truck around to not go blindside into it. It was going to be very tight to turn between the rows of trailers but it was possible. I told the OSR that was our spot and started the turn, lining up the trailer as close to the parked trailers on the far side and then slowly bringing the cab around, watching the cab ferrings as they came closer, closer, closer, now nearly against my trailer. Now my cab was going to clip the trailers parked on the other side of the yard. It was damned tight. I stopped to back it up a little.

"You're gonna hit the wings." said the OSR.

"Its alright," I said. I back it up a bit. I'm watching the ferring, which he was calling "wings" which I had not heard before. I didn't need this genius to tell me what to worry about. I backed it up just to give room for the trailer at my bumper and pressed the ferring even closer to my trailer.

"The wings," he said.

This OSR was a worrier. 

"The ferrings are fine," I said. "There's room." I pulled slowly forward with just centimeters of clearance on my bumper on the trailer in front, my eye on the ferrings of the cab on the passenger side--still undamaged--but right damned now flush with my trailer, and I pulled the trailer as tight as a motherfucker between those two rows of trailers and free to go back and properly park that trailer in the spot behind us. It would not be a blindside back into that spot now. All those other drivers had passed up that spot because they couldn't spin a trailer around between the rows. It was my spot now. Fuckem.

Then I see this negro company driver gesturing at me. He was behind me as I was turning and now in front as I came back towards my spot. I rolled down the window on the OSR's side.

"What the hell you think he wants?" I said.

The negro rolls down his window. "You hit that truck," he says. 

"What truck?"

"Your trailer hit that truck back there," he says. 

I stop, throw on the air brakes and rush out.

Behind us there's a white day cab, company truck, nobody in it, parked nose in along the wall. I know with my tandems all the way forward I have a lot of tail swing and tail swing I can't see on the driver side on a tight right turn. I knew I would be near to that day cab on the turn but didn't even consider that I could touch it. 

I inspect the day cab. There's a big dent in the side of it. 

The negro driver is driving off up the ramp. I wave him down. Did I dent the side of the cab, I ask him. No, he says. He says I clipped his mudflap. I go take a look at the mudflap. It looks a little bent, perhaps like something has clipped it. But the bracket is undamaged. Also the distance between the mudflap and rear tandem tire is only a few inches and the tire is untouched. If I had gotten the back edge of my trailer in there on the turn it was only by the slightest of margins. Still, this fella said he had seen it. I went back to the cab.

"He says I hit him," I said to the OSR. "I guess I got to report it." I couldn't believe it.

"Yes," says the OSR. 

So begins the company process of accident reporting. I call a number, give my driver number, the number of the other truck, and explain the accident. Of course, I didn't see it. Some guy I don't even know his name or truck number saw it. I take a picture of the creased mudflap and send it in to the investigatory unit. 

I go back to meet the OSR and sign paperwork for my one year driving test. He has to fail me on account of the accident.  

But it was a fluke, he says. He doesn't believe the accident even happened. I said I didn't either. How could that guy have seen it from his tractor? he says. How could he have seen what was for him the blind side corner of a trailer on the tightest of turns clipping a mudflap from 100 meters away? 

"He didn't believe I could twist the trailer around to take that open spot in the yard," I said. "And you didn't believe it either," I said to the OSR. "You thought I was going to fuck up the ferrings."

"I thought so," he admitted. 

"You didn't say nothing about that other parked truck," I said. 

"I don't think it happened," he says. He puts out his pen and and keys on the table in the positions of where we were, the day cab and the other driver. The way our trailer twisted it would be impossible to see any clipping of the mudflap by the other driver. 

"He didn't think I could twist it around for the spot," I said. "That's all. He didn't want to believe that I could do it." 

The OSR then had me take an accident and re-training course on a computer. I had to put on headphones and watch an animated man in khaki pants and a blue shirt explain safe driving techniques. While I was taking the course the OSR interrupted me and said he was going to make a phone call and that I shouldn't listen or be disturbed by him talking beside me during the accident course. He asked me for my accident claim number. He asked for the company accident report number and made a call. I listened to him explain to the person on the other end that he was an OSR and was in the cab with me and that he believed there had been no accident. He wanted his testimony put down as evidence for the accident investigators. He tapped me on the shoulder when the call was finished. He knew I had been listening. 

He was 19 years in the company and a long time OTR driver. He had seen immediately what kind of driver I was. He knew of the injustices. But I knew that he had to protect himself. He had to make me report on myself for an accident he doubted had occurred. Now, perhaps, his conscience as an OTR driver and not as an OSR company man had been activated. Still, I had reported myself and he was fully protected. 

Later that night I realized it was now necessary to un-report this accident. I had been in error to accept the anonymous negro's report. The negro, I realized, had seen nothing. Nobody in the investigatory unit even knew his name or truck number. I had reported upon myself out of some errant sense of honor, an honor I assumed other men had of themselves. I realized it may very well have been something else: a man watching another driver execute the tightest of whip around turns between rows of trailers for a spot numerous other drivers had passed up in frustration and not believed was possible. The next day I would have to call my dispatcher and demand that I be un-reported for the accident. It would be the only honorable thing to do.

The Old Man 2

"Follow the trucks. Get over," said the old man. "Get in the truck lane."

I was driving a load of fine paving sand back north on the freeway through Portland. We had hit heavy traffic in the city center.

"Start moving over or they won't let you in," he said. "Nobody wants to be stuck behind a truck. Nobody let's you in unless they think you're going to run them over."

I was in the third lane of the four lane highway. The semis were moving slowly in the second lane. I put on my right blinker and looked in the mirror for an opportunity to get over.

Some guy in a pickup slowed to let me in. He flashed his lights. I started over, giving clearance for the trailing axle.

"Stay in this lane. The lane the trucks are in is always fastest," said the old man, "Always."

A white hatchback with blackened windows and big silver rims merged onto the freeway and then cut in front of me and I slammed on the brakes. Now the guy wanted to get over into the next lane.

"Motherfucker!" yelled the old man. "Where's that banana?"

I slowed to increase my following distance behind the white hatchback.

"Get back on him! Get on his bumper! Where's those banana peels?"

"I ate the banana," I said. I got back on his bumper.

"Whatd'ya do with the banana peels? Where are the banana peels?"

"In the garbage bag on the floor," I said. We had both had bananas for breakfast. The hatchback was trying to get over and nobody was letting him in.

"Look at this motherfucker." The old man had retrieved a banana peel from the garbage bag and rolled down the window.

"Motherfucker!" The old man was furious. The old man got up on the passenger seat and leaned half out the window with the banana peel in his hand. The old man hurled the banana peel at the white hatchback. The banana peel landed on the back bumper and stayed there.

"What the fuck, Ray!"

"Motherfucker!" yelled the old man. "Motherfucker!"

The hatchback swerved in front of a car in the third lane. Then he shot over into the fast lane. I saw him switch back into the third lane. He didn't use his turn signals.

The old man was digging in the garbage. Now he had the other banana peel.

"We're going to see him again. Look at these idiots switching lanes. They think they're getting ahead. Nobody knows the truck lane is fastest."

I didn't see the hatchback now. He had gotten far ahead.

"On Long Island one time I threw a banana peel on this zip's windshield. Zip stops right in the middle of the intersection just staring at me, stopping traffic. So I throw another banana peel on his windshield," the old man laughed. "Goddam zipperhead just stared at me until I yelled at him to get out of the way."

We continued slowly ahead in the lane of trucks. Then I saw the white hatchback in the fast lane. He wasn't moving. None of the cars were. The banana peel was still on his back bumper.

"There he is, that dope. You see, they think the truck lane is slowest but they're wrong."

The old man had the other banana peel in his hand. But it was impossible to throw the banana peel over the hood of the truck and two lanes of traffic. We moved on past.

"One time I was driving a walking floor full of garbage into Jersey and this guy cuts me off on the bridge so I hit him with a banana peel. This guy drives up beside me. I look down and he's got a pistol on the passenger seat, patting it with his hand. This guy follows me all the way to Trenton. I waited half the night at the garbage plant to make sure he wasn't outside. Scared the shit outta me. I was scared to drive home. Looked in my mirror all the way home."

"But banana peels aren't garbage," said the old man. "You got to drive with a banana peel next to you for when you need it."

Ketchup, Ammonia, Lizards and Oranges

I. Ketchup

It was 4 am when the light turned from red to green beside the door. The lumpers were finished offloading the trailer. I went to shipping and receiving for my paperwork. The old woman pushed a yellow paper across the counter.

"There was cargo damaged that you'll need to sign for. Two cases of ketchup."

I pulled the truck forward from the door and walked back and looked inside the trailer. There were two cardboard boxes. One was crushed. The other was stained and wet and stunk of ketchup. I thought to throw them in the trash and drive to my next stop, but I remembered it was necessary to report cargo claims to the high command.

The woman at high command in Green Bay, Wisconsin told me to put the two cases in my cab and I would be instructed later on what to do with them.

I wrapped the wet case in paper towel and lifted it out. It weighed at least forty pounds. I put it on the floor on the passenger side. I set the crushed case on top of it.

II. Ammonia

The cab stunk of ketchup. The damaged boxes contained thousands of Burger King ketchup packets.

I pulled in to some sort of chemical plant for my pickup. There were large silver tanks with steel hoses and the air was thick with ammonia. I got out and went inside shipping and receiving for instructions.

I was to wear at all times a hard hat, a respirator, goggles and thick leather gloves. Even when I was driving.

Despite the protection the ammonia stung at my eyes and throat. I drove to the back of the plant where a man said he would spot for me on a blind back around a building and into a warehouse. There was limited room to swing the cab around. No driver had tried it yet with a big sleeper cab, he said.

Wearing the hardhat and gloves and goggles and the respirator made for a very awkward back but after a few pullups I put it into the warehouse. They loaded the trailer with 43,000 lbs of urea on wrapped pallets.

III. Lizards

Vanco was the nearest Cat Scale. It was still early. The sun had just come up. 

Stockton, California is a nasty town and the Vanco truck stop is the nastiest of nasty truck stops. I pulled onto the scale and pressed the call button. Before the attendant answered a pair of lot lizards, a black and a white one, came up to my door.

"You looking for company, daddy?"

IV. Oranges

I followed the computer navigation past where I should have turned. In my mirror behind me I saw the trucks parked at a building. Then the pavement narrowed to a single track and went up a steep hill through the orchards. I was looking for anywhere to turn around. The pavement crumbled and turned to dirt. At the top of the hill the dirt road ended at a chainlink fence.

What to do now, I thought.

This dirt area at the hilltop was wider than the road I had come up on, but it was not wide enough. Perhaps I could drive into the orchard down through one of the rows of trees and drive in deep enough that I can back the trailer back out and cutting it hard, swing the cab around.

I turned slowly into the orchard between the trees. The truck tore oranges from the trees on both sides and the branches scraped down the trailer. This had to be done, I told myself. There is no other way.

I drove it in deep enough and then started to slightly angle the trailer back out, tearing more oranges from the trees. I had the windows down and it smelled wonderfully of citrus. The citrus smell overpowered the smell of the ketchup.

I made many pullups and slowly angled the trailer around. I tore more oranges and branches from the trees. It took me a half hour but I got out of the orchard.

V. Ketchup (Redux)

I dropped the empty in Sacramento and picked up the relay. It was 29,045 lbs. according to the truck computer. Anything under 30,000 lbs we were told it is not necessary to scale.

But after I coupled up and pulled away the load felt heavy.

There was a non-certified scale on site and I ran over it and wrote down the weights on each of the axles. I didn't trust the scale but the load scaled out legal. Still, something didn't feel right.

Sixty miles later I passed the first weigh station on I-5 and it was closed. I thought of the axle weight numbers I had written down. I realized they added up to over 76,000 lbs. I was pulling a lot more than 29,000 lbs. I pulled the paperwork out and saw there was a second page I hadn't looked at. An additional 11,000 lbs had been added to the trailer.

The load was over 42,000 lbs. I needed to scale this thing immediately before I hit another weigh station.

My navigation said the nearest Cat Scale was 40 miles away. Fortunately, the nearest weigh station was 20 miles after that. Still, if the load could not be made legal I was over 100 miles from where I picked it up. High command would not be pleased.

I scaled it at the truck stop and went in for the ticket.

There was 34,000 lbs exactly on the drive axles. I knew the law stated it had to be under 34,000 but I couldn't remember if it was legal at exactly that number. Nobody at the truck stop seemed to know either.

The tandems were already all the way forward so the only way to move weight off the drive axles was by pushing the fifth wheel the one remaining notch forward. But this would have the effect of moving 350 lbs off the drive axles and putting me about 50 lbs over the steer axle 12,000 lbs limit.

I would need to cut at least 50lbs of weight from the cab. The only thing to do would be to jettison the ketchup. That would bring my steer axle weight back below 12,000. The ketchup would have to go. The high command would have to understand. 

I lifted out each of the boxes and set them beside a dumpster.

I pulled back onto the scale for the re-weigh and went inside for the ticket. 

It was a success. By jettisoning the ketchup I was now legal by 40 lbs. on the steer axle.

Exploitation, Part II

Private equity has shifted much of the legal liability of truck operation onto the driver. Private equity has accomplished this through lobbying the CMSA for expanded safety protocols that put all blame upon the driver and relieve the private equity ownership of liability. Both the private equity ownership and government can claim the public is safer. Its devious and well played on both their parts, because the accident lawyers (who are powerful politically as well) are still in business but are only able to strip the assets off drivers, not the private equity owned trucking companies. The federal government has added paperwork and requirements of drivers, hours of service regulations that when broken can trigger fines of thousands of dollars. So the federal government has opened up a new cash stream off the truck driver. 

The DOT has set up a points system with an account on each individual driver. These points accumulate as a result of citations and accidents and upon reaching a certain level cause the driver to be stripped of his CDL. Insurance companies also check a driver's points and may choose not to insure him. Because of the severe government oversight in trucking and frequent inspections, it is inevitable that a driver will get stuck with a bad trailer (1 in 5 trailers I pick up have a citable problem) and begin to have points added to his record.

At a certain point the driver will be done, out of the game. But this also serves the private equity spreadsheet men. For the elimination of older, experienced truckers who's wages have slowly risen by a penny a mile over a long period means they can be replaced with young, new drivers with clean records and, importantly for the spreadsheet, hired at the lowest per mile wage. As a result, trucking companies are always looking for new hires fresh out of trucking school.

In addition, there are the heavy punishments meted out by courts in recent cases involving truck accidents. One Florida driver was found to have been on his cell phone for 20 minutes during his DOT mandated 8 hour uninterrupted sleep in his sleeper berth. The judge and jury concluded this was evidence of negligence in an accident that killed 7 children on a school bus. The judge wanted to give him 7 years prison time for each of the 7 dead children. So the judicial system, district attorneys, and the public also get their piece of the truck driver, a person who they clearly view as not simply a public menace but a likely moral degenerate.

If wages had increased commensurate to the risks of fines and imprisonment (as well as because of government limits on drive time and introduction of paperwork) then a positive risk/reward for trucking might be argued. But since the Teamsters and other unions were broken, wages have stagnated despite drivers spending more time doing unpaid paperwork and being forced not to drive due to HOS limits.

It should be noted that mileage pay is also based off the distance between two cities as the crow flies, which, naturally, is much shorter than a truck route. Any driving done inside a city qualifies as 0 mileage. Additionally, the company has a policy that job assignments cannot be turned down. I recently had 2 trips with 2 two hour live loads (unpaid time) within Portland, which being within the city meant my miles driven was calculated at 0. That day I assumed the risks of fines and imprisonment in exchange for $0. 

I did some calculations based upon my work totals, which I broadly define as anything involved in the operation of the truck, meaning paperwork, ETA calculations, pre/post trips, hooking and unhooking trailers, live on/off loads, etc. Around 3-5 hours of my day I do things necessary to performing the job which are not actually driving, which means I am unpaid for those activities. A gross pay versus total hours worked leaves my effective hourly wages at under $10/hour, and this is, of course, working 7 days a week with total worked hours well over overtime. But as pay is calculated per mile there is no overtime for truck drivers. It is a crummy job, worse than a minimum wage job, and there is a constant risk of fines and prison time. It is an industry remade to continually suppress the cost of labor and to empower various institutions, both public and private, to feed off defenseless drivers. 

The Old Man

"You get all talky and the next thing you know you got no money and you're driving a truck."--Moraline in conversation with Maximin, on the transition from trader big money to poverty

I learned a lot from the old man from New York when he visited and trained me to drive the dump truck. The little old guy had almost 50 years driving experience. He had driven everything. 

What I remember most was he was a funny pleasant guy out of the truck but the second he got behind the wheel he got angry and started cursing and yelling. With that thick Long Island accent he scared the hell out of the payloader and scale masters and jobsite laborers. Portland people didnt know what to make of it so they shut up. He was pissed off all the time behibd the wheel. One time this yahoo guy in downtown Portland says, "put it over there." Over there was backing blind around 3 corners with trenches on both sides. "Oh, fucking put it there, eh?" Says the old man. 

"Yeah."

Halfway there the old man sees the labrorer looking annoyed he's taking so long. 

"Hey! C'mere you!" He yells at the laborer. "What do you fucking think this is, a bicycle?"

The guy looked at him sheepishly now and said he was sorry. The old man acted like that on every jobsite we went to. 

I learned quickly to do the same when I started driving the dump truck by myself. They were vultures who only wanted to see you fail on the jobsites. You had to mistreat them to get any respect, or at least just to be left alone to make your dump. 

But when I started driving long haul over the road I went back to being nice and relaxed. I didnt think I would need to mistreat anyone. There werent any jobsites to go on. But there were other vultures all around me. The other long haul drivers. Then there were the idiots at the destinations watching you back in. There were idiot company drivers who even offered to spot for you just to fuck you up on your backing. 

The old man was right. Be pissed off all the time behind the wheel. Yell at everyone. It was the only way to be left alone and respected. 

Exploitation, Part I

Before graduating from the Fontana, California Schneider Training Academy we were to have one final 2 hour presentation. It was to be a presentation against unions and the unionization of truck drivers. In length it rivaled the presentation against sexual harassment and was considerably longer than any presentation of driving technique and safety on the road. 

A young bearded guy wearing a Schneider polo entered the classroom. He had a big smile on his face.

"Welcome to Schneider! We're so glad you have joined the Schneider family! You are now a part of something really special! How is everyone doing today?!"

There was no answer.

He tried it again but louder. "How is everyone doing today?!"

"I guess its early and you guys have been in training for a long time. I know its tough. I'm not a driver, but I know its tough."

He became serious.

"Now, I want to get right to the point here. This is very important. You are going to be approached out on the road. A man will come to you and make you promises. He will want you to sign something. It will all appear to be in your best interests, to help you. This man works for a trucker's union. If you sign something, anything, it will mean that money comes out of your paycheck. Do not sign. I repeat, do not sign anything. When you sign something I can no longer help you. If you sign something they will take your money."

So this fat bearded clown was the company shill, I thought. Part hype man and part shill.

"Come to me if you are approached. Call me. We can discuss it. But do not sign anything. I am here to help you and to protect you. We do not need unions here at Schneider. We have an open door policy. We have respect and communication. With respect and communication a union can add nothing. A union can only cost you money. A union can do you no good."

He became cheerful again and said he had a video for us to watch.

"This video begins with an address from our CEO. I love this address. You are going to love this address. It gets me so excited and pumped up! Just to see and listen to our CEO fires me up and this address you're about to hear is just awesome!"

A pudgy middle aged man with a receding hairline appeared on the screen. He wore a sport jacket with an open collar and began to speak in a monotone voice about the values of respect and communication at Schneider. He went on to speak of the company's greatness, and it was then that I became distracted by his eyes which were slightly off from the center of the screen. They moved from right to left as he droned on and I realized he was reading off a teleprompter. I started to doze off. 

"Man that was great! How great was that!"

The company shill had awoken me.

I listened for awhile longer to his pro-Schneider and anti-union talk and I began to hate him. He had the sincere enthusiasm of a house nigger. He had betrayed each of us drivers for what he believed was a seat at the master's table. It was the worst sort of deficiency of character, and one he hoped to cover over to himself by getting us to agree with him and not join the union. I had only contempt for him.

"Does anyone have any questions?" asked the shill.

I raised my hand.

"How many times the average driver's salary is our CEO's annual income? Is this multiple increasing or decreasing?"

"I'm not sure I understand the question." The shill looked confused and uncertain. The others in the classroom turned around to look at me.

"How many times the average driver's salary is the CEO's salary? Over the last ten years is this multiple increasing or decreasing or staying steady? Its a question of income inequality."

"Oh, I think I understand your question. And that's a great question," the shill smiled, "And I can look that up for you. Come and see me after the presentation." He seemed to have regained his professional confidence. For a moment perhaps it had been in the balance.

But I did not approach him when the presentation ended and the shill made no attempt to stop me as I left the classroom. I hoped that the others had realized as I did, that whatever this bearded company clown shill was for, you, as a driver, had to be against. The message had not been wasted. Respect and communication be damned, the union was our only hope.

The Asphalt Scar

It began with animals. Perhaps the smallest. It was a way through the forests and brush to get to something to sustain them. It was perhaps the best way to reach the water. Or the best way to pass when the seasons changed. 

The way through for these animals drew other, larger animals. Some were predators who fed upon the smaller animals who used the way. Others used the way for the same reasons the smaller animals did. The grasses were worn and pushed aside where the animals passed through. Wood ticks hung from the stalks of grass along the way waiting for the warmth of a passing animal to attach themselves and to feed.

One day a man appeared and used the way of the animals. He was drawn to the way just as the animals were. He found it led to a lake. There were fine views of the mountains that surrounded the valley. He called the way down to the lake his own.

The man built his house upon the lake and the way of the animals that was now his own he named Lakeside Way. He had a family and they used the way and now the animals were scared off. It was a human way now. It was a path. 

Then, later, the way was laid over with cinders for horse and carriage, and later with pavement for automobiles for the families who now vacationed at the many homes upon the lake. 

Then the local planners dammed the river that fed into the lake and the valley was washed out. The damming was necessary for hydro-power for electricity in the city and the cost/benefit analysis made it right. The first man's home and the vacation homes were now under the waters of a much larger lake. 

But part of the old road remained. A much larger road that was being built by the federal government was paved over the old Lakeside Way that was not under the lake. The federal government called the new asphalt road an interstate highway. 

Animals were drawn to the highway for the food that sometimes was thrown from the vehicles. Other animals tried to pass over the highway and get to the waters of the lake but were run over by truck drivers who's company policy is not to avoid animals. 

Along the interstate highway were deer without heads; in one place there were hundreds of crushed jackrabbits who had attempted a group crossing. There were dead skunks and racoons and other smudges upon the road that were unidentifiable. Men in their automobiles crashed and maimed and killed one another. It became a place for scavenging and for death. The vehicles passed so quickly over it. The way of animals had become an asphalt scar upon the land. 

A Trucker's Chapel

At Love's Truckstop off I-95 in Woodburn, OR

The wages of sin is death, he told me. But the love of Jesus Christ the Lord is your forgiveness. Later that night I got down from the sleeper in the cab and went and urinated in the tall grass behind the chapel. It was a clear night and I could see across the dark fields to some silos. Beyond them were dark mountains. I thought of the wages of sin. Then I thought of my wages of 32 cents a mile. I walked back through the rows of idling big rigs. The noise reminded me of how the cicadas got every seven years. I climbed up into the cab and went back to sleep.