Allentown Day 3

oh Allentown Allentown Allentown.

Did you know that Allentown is the third biggest city in Pennsylvania. (after of course Philladelphia and Pittsburgh).
Philly is 1.5 million, Pittsburgh is 300,000 and Allentown is 100,000 so it is sort of a steep drop off.
Something about Allentown, it seems so miserable to me. Maybe its that billy joel song or the skinheads but in considering other cities in Pennsylvania, Scranton-Wilkes Barre Harrisburg, etc. all seem like this. They seem persistently grey, and the underlying coal, you can feel it there, even outside of a place like Centralia*, I had the thought today as I was walking back to the motel today that it seems odd that Pennsylvania hasn't collapsed in on itself fallen into the mines. Its weird they way, as I returned up "Crackersport Road"** and looked back toward the Wegman's where i had just bought some apples and sushi, it is weird how the land sort of lopes off to the not too distant horizon. Especially as it did today in the heavy grey air.
So today was different. All I had to do was wake up and then go over to the beautiful "Spruce Room" to sign in and have a meeting at which role was taken (what was the point of signing in?) and people who had been assigned trainers were told their names. I had not yet been assigned one.
back to the room. I watched tv and dicked around on the internet all day taking care of bills thinking, doing what I am doing right now I am getting paid more than I did per week at my last job. After noon I headed over to the terminal to dick around on the computers there and see if I could find anything else out.
The 12:45 van had only 3 people on it and i was talking to one, an older woman from Florida who was waiting for her truck to get fixed. I was nervous at first to strike up a conversation but, as it turns out she wanted to talk, i guess most truckers are pretty eager to talk to someone, something I don't think I appreciated last time. So we were talking, rounding the building when the driver, the same gasbag weirdo from last time chimes in.
"He derr, you're a woman and you're a mother, well i assume you are."
"yeah, I am" she responded a little annoyed. I think she was enjoying her conversation with me.
"Well tell me this" he said "I got this kid, he's not my kid but I been taking care of. He's 15 now and I been taking care of him off and on since he was like 6. and he's 15 now. Now I put a lot of time and effort into raising this kid and a lot of money too. And his mother she don't give me a cent for it."
"well" said the mom, " are you doing it for them money or because you care about him."
"oh no, i care about his guy but I would like it a lot better if I had a some more money you know I mean this kid he's got a job, a security job like the one i got down at the fair cept he don't got no gun, of course. So he's working there and I got this cable, satellite tv and he wanted it hooked up in his room at my house too and i did that, said if he wanted it he'd have to pay for part of da bill like $10 a month but his mom says shes collecting his paycheck and she'll get me the 10 bucks but she don't think she should got to because He ain't over there that much and I says dats why its only 10 bucks and he's over dere plenty enough."
We didn't have much to say to this. the mom said,
"We'll if I were the kid and had to give my check to my mom every week I wouldn't be working at all."

Once at the terminal I talked to Kathy who said I had yet to be assigned a trainer. Shit.
I sat down at the computer and completed the course on crossing the border into Canada. My phone rang. It was a guy named Jose who said in a thickish hispanic accent and over a shitty cell phone connection that he was my trainer and he was in Massachusetts now and headed down to the terminal and I should plan on meeting him around 8pm. Awesome, that was quick.
I decided that this meant I could now take a walk without worrying about missing anything and I strolled out of the terminal and down the road to Tilghman Road. On down the shoulder I went appreciating how ill fit for the act of walking suburban america is. I proceded on to the Wegman's.
I must say I was not prepared for the grandeur and oppulence of this place, especially in Allentown, and within walking distance (like 2.5 miles) of a crumby trucking part of town. Never have I seen so many cheeses from America, never such an olive bar, an olive bar so magnificent that it included other things in brine like mushrooms and peppers and was called the "Mediterranean Bar" ooh la-la.
I bought some Odwalla bars for breakfast and some granny smith apples for lunch. I bought some eel rolls and a pound of food from the de facto chinese buffet up front. my god.
I ate my chinese-ish food which, as it turns out, was not particularly good at the charming tables set up on the side of the building. I walked on up past suburbia to Crackersport road and back to the motel.
There I called my SDM (Student Driver Manager) to touch base before I talked to Jose again. On the line there was hesitation. "Let me look at something here, what's your driver number............Mark, you still there, looks like we had you with Jose but then we pulled you off, he was looking for a bilingual student." I can speak espanol un poquito, eh? "Hang in there though, we'll get you hooked up with a trainer asap."
Fuck, that sucks.
I watched some more tv and typed the beginning of this and then headed down to catch the Target (/applebee's) van. While looking at satellite radios my phone rang, it was Jose he was nearing Allentown and asked if I wanted to head out tomorrow or perhaps tonight. I told him about my conversation with the SDM and he said, "lemme check my messages and I'll call you back senor." (he probably did not say senor)
I was browsing the clearance pants when he called back. "Look, they said if you are ready to go they can switch so you wanna go tonight or stay in the motel one more night?"
I'll stay in the motel I told him.
I called the SDM to confirm and got a very intense guy on the phone. Maybe hooked in seriously to the Omaha meth circuit.
"Yeah Jose he is intense but he's got milage stacked on his screen. The last guy didn't like him cause he yelled a lot but that guy didn't know what he was doing looks like you got some experience should be great and he's got the miles stacked up on him I mean other trainers got 3-400 miles but Jose just looking at his first screen he's got 3000 right there you'll get those 105 hours done in no time."
Fantastic I said. Sign me up.
I bought some pants and a pair of shirts. and a thermous mug.
Outside i crouched against the cement block of the beautiful Target with many of the others waiting for the van. One new orientee, a short plump african american woman was on the phone. It quickly became clear that her boyfriend was on the other end.
"Don't get all in my face just cause I didn't pick up my phone."
Her volume grew.
"Don't get in my motherfucking face about this shit. everytime you don't pick up your fuckin phone I don't freak the fuck out."
She didn't care that there were about 15 people within 15 feet, some of them sitting right next to her.
"That's right bitch, this shit is sad, its just sad. you need to trust my ass just like i trust yo ass. when I hear women in the background of your calls i don't freak the fuck out. chill. these are the fuckers I'm working with nigga. That's my goddman job."
The conversation continued once we had boarded the van but the volume and attitude had softened considerably.
Back at the motel we devanned and i headed down to the lobby to check the shuttle times for the morning, it being saturday. The air was so heavy.
The air conditioning feels so good.


Footnotes
*Centralia is a town in central Pennsylvania underneath which a seam of coal is burning and has been for about 40 years. The town still bizarrely enough has a population of 7 despite the fact that some roads are permently damaged smoke issues forth from fissures in the ground and, in places, the ground is warm to the touch. The seam is apparently big enough to continue burning for the next 250 years and there is no effort to keep it from doing so.
(information from the magnificent Wikipedia)

**Crackersport. I love this name. Is ita sport based some how on crackers or is it a port into which southern whites are shipped?

Allentown, Day Two

If I thought yesterday was dull.
Today after the early morning van ride in which our driver repeated the same schpeel (adding that near the Target there was an Applebee's) we entered the classroom and commenced to wait. and wait and wait and wait. Apparently Jason, the little bronxy african-hispanic-american had called in sick but didn't bother doing so until 8am (an hour after we had arrived) this meant that Kathy (the old but young one) had to teach class but apparently it was really her job to go through the applications to ensure that they were all properly filled out. So that is what she did. and did and did and did. until almost 11 am. Meanwhile we sat at the computers continuing on our CBT and then doing the ones that needed to be done by the time we were finished in the truck with the trainer. and then some more after that, just for fun.
Once we started kathy put on the projector and started reading more powerpoint slides in a dull monotone peppered with little overly sarcastic jokes. Jokes that were probably funny but suffered from a bad delivery followed by a forced laughter on her part and comatose silence on ours.
For lunch we had pizza again, such greasy pizza, but it was good.
When finally we resumed we covered map reading (so hard) and then driver pay (by which they really meant driver reimbursement and other things you are going to have to pay for.
Then out were handed out DOT medical cards and drivers badges (a sloppy looking thing i must say) I was finally relieved when I got these papers since it meant I had passed my test. By which I mean the only test I might be worried about passing. Then we also got a pair of canvas work gloves and a cheap flashlight. Oh the benificence.
Again we piled in to the van and drove back two of the younger guys (including my profoudly retarded seat neighbor) talked to each other in fuck peppered speech. such chips on their shoulders, i don't understand.
So here I am back in the hotel and this is, i suppose, where the wait begins.
Here I must remain until i get a phone call saying that I have a been assigned a trainer and they are in the area. If i want to leave I have to sign out at the desk. i don't have an ankle bracelet just yet. As for the rest of the night I suppose I will watch tv, look at wikipedia and eat cool chinese food.

Allentown, Day One

oooof.

I am, at long last, in the coziness of my beautiful room at the days inn (miraculously it is a single with a very big bed.
typically there would be two people per room as long as the truck company is paying.)
Today was deeply dull. Orientation, they called it and i suppose i was getting 'orientated.'
the morning began, after showering etc. with a drizzly dark morning walk over to the "Spruce Room" a cubical off the main hall way in this motel which feels sort of like a only slightly scaled down public highschool. A typically grizzly crew of drivers had congregated there and soon enough in came a woman, a tall skinny probably not very old but older looking in that highly homely Pennsyllvania sort of way. She had a lists. "Co-drivers sign in here, students over here."
I had no idea what she meant as no one had explained it to me just as no one then explained that I was neither of these things but was in fact going to orientation and that meant i should just get right on the van which i then did and was whisked off to the training. The driver was again typical, an old man, somehow grotesque and needlessly verbose.
he welcomed us to the van and sleepily rumbled through the rules, "no drinking, no eating no smoking, no one sits in the front seat, the seat belt is broken, the way i'm going to take you is the best way, there are other ways and these other guys they'll go the other ways but the way i am going its the way that makes the most sense. there are other shuttles throughout the day and I'll be driving those at 8:45, 9:45, 10:45, 11:45, and 12:45. now that's my last run, you get on t 3 or 4 it'll be someone else but before then, it'll be me. now I don't just do that, I also work security and right now they got me working the allentown fair and thats real nice but i live twenty, twenty two, twenty five miles from here. i come in here at 6:30 and they got me working there til midnight sometimes and it just don't make sense to go 25 miles so i just stay at the hotel.
Well here we are I thank you very much for being so nice, good luck to you all and when you get those trucks be careful there's a lot of crazies out there i seen a bunch of people, guys out there in these four wheelers pullin right in front of a semi on a wet day like today. but thanks for being so nice, you guys were great and good luck to you, by now."
We had all sat perfectly silently and now someone opened the door and out we poured.
The day was so grey. The building was so squat and ugly but there was the Werner Blue Arrow. In we went and to the left down a knotty pined hallway hung with driver recognition plaques. Beautiful.
We sat in the class room. Plastic and metal tables in 5 long rows oriented toward the front of the room where a projector and laptop were set up and ready to be read. All around the room were glossy posters illuminating the finer points of defensive driving. In the back of the room were those carpet covered cubicle dividers which set up an "office" for the instructors. No one came out for a while. 7:00am, the time we were supposed to start, came and went. i could here them back there. What were they doing!
the this guy came in. oh fuck what an obnoxious son of a bitch. He had one of those flat fat retarded looking faces. He had gotten lost on his way that morning. He sat right next to me. He talked incecently and peppered his speech with fuck this and shit that. It seemed he really had an axe to grind but I couldn't quite figure out what it was.
It is a common condition in this industry people who are mad, people who are convinced that people out there are trying to rip them off. Inevitably these people are woefully stupid and this guy was no exception.
"I know how to get anywhere, I drove for CRST for a couple months they were trying to fuck me over, they were only paying me 10 cents a mile! and I was like fuck that I'm outta here this fuckin sucks but I know how to get any where, try me."
Guy on the other side of him: "how about Houston?"
Well you just gotta get on 40 that'll get you to texas, 40 goes through texas...I'm not really familiar with texas. 35 goes through texas right?"
Me (irritated): Well 35 goes through central texas.
Him: yeah Houston.
Me: Houston is more like east texas.
Him: yeah, east central.
Me: (silently gives up)
(actual answer, from Allentown, PA to Houston: I-78 west to Harrisburg, I-81 south to White Pine, Tennessee, I-40 west to Knoxville, I-75 south to Chattanooga, I-59 south to Slidell, LA, I-12 west to Baton Rouge, I-10 west to Houston. Total miles: 1547.)
Finally out they came from behid the burlap curtains.
Jason, one of the 'orientatators' was a small guy of mixed hispanic and african descent and a thick hispanic/new york accent. It occurred to me that Allentown was only 2 hours from Manhattan. He had clearly done this a number of times and just because we were new to it didn't mean that he wanted to make it interesting. He rattled through powerpoint slides monotonously reading directly from them. I felt so taught. (the chinese food has just arrived!)
It went on like this all day, jason reading us things seeming terribly bored we sat being terribly bored, They have found a brilliant way of haveing you not drive but get the same mind numbing exhausting boredom as being on the road all day. For the first half of the morning i sat tighly, miserably until i was finally called to have my physical and drug test. After that i was much relieved, Literally!
We talked about so much. i mean we looked at powerpoints and were read to about so much. It sucked. It sucked terribly. At about 4:00 pm we were set free to complete some CBT (computer based training) watching more poewrpoint and poorly made videos and then answering questions in modules on such fantastic topics as: Pre Trip Inspections! Quallcomm!* Per Diem Pay! and Sexual Harassment! so great.
i got those done in no time despite the retardedness next to me and then went into the driver loung and watched Law and Order: Criminal Intent and sucked on a jolly rancher.
Then I went outside and talked on the phone as I walked around the yard. there were a lot of Nestle trucks, their connection to Werner i have not yet figured out.
Allentown seems an odd nook in the trucking industry. Not really on a main route. Maybe an outpost of NYC, maybe of Philadelphia. perpetually cloudy and full of people who are unsettling at least.
at 7:00 the van arrived to take us back to the motel and we piled in like the japanese subway. it was awfully close.
I came home, to my big single bed and ordered some chinese food which, as you know, arrived. While typing I at it. burning my tongue. i have put some of it on the air conditioner to remain cool enough, i hope to not get overly putrid by tomorrow evening.
Oh the life I have missed.


*the satellite communication computer that looks like some early gaming system made by Tandy or Texas Instruments.

The Setup

So right, I was working as this "Outdoor Educator" at Echo Hill Outdoor School in Maryland (pretty close to where my parents live) andduring the winter things slow down quite a bit and it was at that point, the winter (2007, January) that I first looked into trucking for a second time. I was thinking I might be able to work for a few months pay off some of that wonderful credit card debt and then back to the outdoor school. One of the companies I contacted was Werner Enterprises and they called me and sent me this great letter saying that I was "Pre-Qualified" (!) (just like a credit card). I didn't return to trucking at that point, instead I stayed on at Echo Hill where things got progressively shittier for many reasons most of which are too ridiculous to recount here.
I like to bake bread and I like to read books and at some point I purchased the book "The Bread Builders: Hearth Loaves and Masonry Ovens" and was intrigued by the idea of building a brick oven and baking bread for the community and I was encouraged bu the idea that i could do so and actually make a living. This sort of project of course requires capital of which I and, apparently, anyone I know have none. This is when the idea of returning to trucking re-occured. Trucking is suprisingly lucrative especially to people like myself without what corporate america might call motivation.
My sister and I had these plans to take a big cross country roadtrip in the summer and, in July, I quit at Echo Hill and we did that. You can see some pictures from that trip at http://www.flickr.com/mhbourne. Click on The Cross Country 2007 Set.
During that trip i sort of fell into the romance of open road and big trucks all over again. silly, i know. but here I am.
I wanted to return to the road but i wanted to impose a bit of discipline on the life that would make it hopefully a more rewarding, and less weight gaining, experience. One of those bits of discipline was to write, maybe to write a book. To talk to people and try and paint a real and unsensationalistic view of trucking. This blog is a way of getting some of those thoughts down in some way.

So when Sarah and I got home I dug up that pre-approval letter and called the number:
"Werner Recruiting this is Amber!"
and i was underway again.
I got set up to attend an orientation in Allentown, Pennsylvania, which is where I am now.
I would be at orientation for 3 days and then on the road with a trainer for a refresher period of 105 hours behind the wheel since I had not driven in almost 2 years. I was to report to the Days Inn on Bulldog Road on the west side of Allentown on tueday evening. Wednesday morning I would meet the shuttle driver at 6:30 in the Spruce Room and I or we would be taken to the terminal 3 miles away. A lot of this was familiar from my Schneider training in Green Bay and Gary.

On Monday (yesterday) my sister and I headed up to Westtown where she teaches. Today after driving through the endlessly light rain to find an affordable and in stock 26" HD LCD TV for her apartment Sarah drove me up to Allentown. The traffic at King of Prussia was absurd. I saw a few Werner trucks. i hoped that I would not find myslef in this part of the country too much in the following months.

The Background

When I graduated from college in 2004 I moved to Chicago because my friend Matt's parents had moved out of their little brick house in Jefferson Park but had not yet sold it. We could live there, they said, for the cost of utilities.
Once in Chicago I had to find a job and my degree in technical theatre did not qualify me for anything whatsoever.
One day I was miserably scanning the ads of the Tribune and came across a 1/4 page picture ad.

Learn to Drive Trucks!
Get Paid While you Train!
Schneider National
1-800-44-PRIDE!

So nervously I called the number and was scuttled down the path of becoming a trucker and driving for Schneider National, the nations biggest full load Truck Carrier. (Which means that they aren't a LTL (Less than full Load) carrier like UPS or FedEx. A full load carrier picks up a full load from one place or delivers it to one place. These are the bulk of the trucks that you see on the road.)
I drove for them for 8 months before I decided I had something better to do. After 2 years and working as a sculptors assistant, valet, garde manger chef at a seafood restaurant, draftsman, and outdoor educator it turns out i did not have anything better to do. and I have found myself back in the, hem, pro-verbial, em, drivers-seat.