Roanoke, Virginia

They will not get me off the effing east coast! I told my dispatcher, or “Fleet Manager” as Werner calls them (which is better than Schneider who called them “STL” or ”Service Team Leader” (When did business become so enamored of stupid euphemisms. They always seem to conceal something.) anyway, I told my dispatcher that I would stay out on the road for 5 weeks in order to save up days that I could take off for Christmas. Technically I can do whatever I want since I am a “contractor” but I do want to have some money. So anyway I also asked my dispatcher if I could get west sine I would be out for so long. But no. This time out I have just barely gotten west of the Mississippi (at the brewery in St. Louis, about 500 yds from the river) And since then I have been really east coasting it up.
From Lebanon, PA I went to Chambersburg, PA to pick up K-Mart clothes to take to a DC in Greensboro, North Carolina and from there I deadheaded (no trailer) to New Concord, Ohio (Deadheaded! That was more than 370 miles! wtf) where I picked up Colgate/Palmolive products and took them to another Colgate/Palmolive place in Trenton, NJ and from there it was up to Carteret, NJ to pick up some import merchandise headed to a Lowe’s DC in eastern Connecticut and from there another long deadhead to Syracuse, NY to pick up cast fittings for electrical installation (like the things that hold conduit in circuit boxes) at Cooper/ Crouse-Hinds going to one of their DCs in Roanoke, Virginia where, as you can see from the title, I am now. I’m at a TA by I-81. I’m waiting. It’s Sunday. I also only have 1.5 hours left on my 80 for tomorrow (and 5.5 left today) so I am not really in a hurry.
SO… I want to answer some of your questions. A long while back a reader of my blog posted the following:
“I'd love for you to write more about WHY you're trucking -- of all the things you could do and have studied to do, why have you gone back to this? Is it the money/ease equation? Do you like driving? Can you see yourself doing this forever? What does your family think?”
First a little background. This poster and I went to college together so she knows a few things that a reader of this blog who I do not know would not know. (isn’t that cute, he thinks there are people reading this who he doesn’t know!)
I went to Grinnell College in Iowa which is a well respected (expensive) school. Very few of the graduates of Grinnell have probably worked as truckers, for whatever reason. I also went to a private boarding high school and come from an upper middle class family. What I am trying to say without seeming like too much of a turd is I am overeducated and not in the demographic that people usually associate with trucking. Note: “That people usually associate with trucking”, I have met truckers from all over the socio-economic spectrum. So, without further ado, here are the answers to your questions, Hillary:

Let’s start with the first time I started trucking, as I think I covered in the first post. After graduating from college I was looking for a job. I was having a lot of trouble with this. I thought, perhaps because it is a line I have been fed since birth “get a college degree and you can do anything” I thought I could do anything. Now I know that I could do anything, the tricky part is convincing others of this. I have never been a good salesman, especially for myself, since this seems unnecessarily immodest. But more than that I think there has been a sort of sea change since the 90s. A change that created an overly zealous job market in which employers needed false affirmation that you could do a job and have commitment and all the skills and prerequisite experience before hand rather than believe that an intelligent person could easily learn any job.
So I got fed up with this bullshit and went for a job that a.) I definitely didn’t know how to do but b.) someone (Schneider in this case) was eagerly willing to teach me. I liked this. They believed that I (or just about any non-felon who could pass a drug test) could learn this job, a job, I think, that requires a lot more specific and difficult skill set than telemarketing or some other crappy cubicle job. At that point, when I first started driving, I needed a job. I had bills (especially college loans) that needed to be paid. I also have always enjoyed driving and figured I could manage the “workload.” It also certainly had the allure of being “exotic.” Something that I saw all around me but knew almost nothing about. (a reason I think people enjoy reading this blog.)
But then I left. I left because I was bored. I left because I thought I could get a job doing something in “the industry” in LA (I graduated from college with a degree in theatre design, technical stuff like lighting and set design and construction) again, overzealous job market based heavily on having previous experience, usually experience that does not pay, which was not an option, and based, in LA, maybe more than anywhere, on who you know. I left also because I thought trucking was killing me. I was out of shape and did not feel “well.” I blamed trucking but really it was me, I was not eating well and I was not exercising, at all. (this time around I am doing better on this front.)
I came back to trucking this time around because I figured out what I want to do with my life (well, at least part of my life). I decided to build a brick oven and open a small bakery. In order to do this I needed to make some money. Money to pay off debt (student loans, and credit card debt that I accrued mostly while living in LA and Olympia with little or no employment income) and money to build this oven. The job that I had, working at an outdoor school, I liked but paid terribly and so I went back to something I knew would make me a fair amount of money. An especially fair amount of money considering I am single and have no housing expenses. (I get my mail at my parents house and split my time off, every other weekend, max) between Chicago and my parents’ home in Maryland. If you would like to follow the progress of this oven project I have started another blog, find it in the sidebar or on my profile page. (keep in mind I can only work on this project when I am home, once a month or so, so that blog will be updated even less frequently than this one.)
So that’s why I am doing this now, money.
As I said above, I do like driving. There are probably other jobs I could have gotten that pay more or less the same. But driving jobs are easy to get, and there is no “boss” not on that is present at least. It gives me a lot of time to think and read and write (like this excessively long entry) I get to see places and become more familiar with this fascinating industry. That being said it is not something I want to do forever, or even more than a year or two, and in that respect it is better this time around since I have a goal. It is a means to an end. And so I can not see myself doing this forever.
My parents don’t mind at all. They are open minded folks and they too know it is a means to an end. That being said, if trucking was something I wanted to do for a while or forever and it made me happy, they would be all for it.
I hope this answers these questions. If anyone else has any other questions please post them as comments to this post. Anything at all from basic trucking “logistics” to the great metaphysical matters that I consider while cruising across Kansas on I-70.
Additionally I invite any of my friends who have the time and inclination to come with me on the road. (this offer is only open to people I know, and even then not everyone :) Details: you would have to have no plans for at least 2 weeks. The only cost is that of food and any other miscellaneous expenses that you incur. Fuel and "lodging" (there are 2 beds in the cab) are obviously taken care of.