Recent Occurences

I always like the way the Blue Beacons (truck washes) look at night because they are so bright and usually billowing with steam. It is all very dramatic. I was south of Atlanta on my way from Florida up to Kentucky with Dollar General schtuff.





I saw this Mexican restaurant in Cambridge, Ohio. I gotta wonder how the locals deal with pronouncing this. The folks back where I comes from have some troubles with the local pizza place 'Procolino's' and that's pretty standard Italian not ancient Nahuatl. I imagine they just say "the mexican place next to Wal*Mart"



After delivering some cereal (mostly honeycombs and fruity and cocoa pebbles) to Hunt's Point Market in the Bronx I had a pick up in Jersey City but I had to wait a while for it and so I took a walk with a friend who was catching a ride down to Maryland for the holidays. Amazingly we found this pleasant little beach (albeit strewn with tires and whatnot) overlooking this tranquil scene of international commerce.


I am currently taking a load of corrugated cardboard from Akron, Ohio to Charlotte, North Carolina. Since it is a short load and I had all weekend to do it I took little roads through Ohio which were pretty but at times tortuous. Here along the Ohio River I saw a tug pushing 15 barges of coal up river.


Looking west across the Ohio towards Ohio, from Ravenswood, West Virginia.

Sunny Florida

Today was a beautiful day, a day that makes you wonder why it was so good, what led up to it, what is it comprised of and what can be done to replicate those parameters so that every day from now on is like this one. And the really weird thing is most of this day happened in Florida.

After delivering a load of Sodium Bicarbonate (baking soda) to a pool supply store in Birmingham, Alabama. I was sent down to International Paper in Prattville where the rich vegetal-chemical wretch of a pulp mill poured from my nostrils down seemingly to the pit of my stomach and recalled, in proper Proustian fashion, other paper milling regions, Maine, Louisiana, Northern Wisconsin and, fondly, the Pacific Northwest.
6 huge rolls of cardstock were on their way to Harrisburg (wait for it) North Carolina (?) to a place that made packaging.
I was then directed to drop my empty trailer at the operating center in Charlotte and bobtail to Jacksonville, Florida to pick up a different empty trailer. I can not make out the logic of this 366 mile jaunt but it does wonders for my mpg average. (a criteria on which a potential bonus is based.)
I picked up the trailer and deadheaded to Alachua passing through the odd mini ranch land land of north central Florida. It seems that everyone here has a house (rancher style) in the middle of a 5-8 acre parcel of treeless land (there are trees at the edges) enclosed by a wooden fence and most people have horses. The trees are either tall scrappy loblolly pines or live oaks draped in Spanish moss the color of oxidized copper.
I picked up a load of merchandise from a Dollar General Distribution Center that is destined for another Dollar General distribution center in Scottsville, Kentucky. Lord knows why they need to move stuff between distribution centers like this.
I headed up the road and just before the Georgia Line stopped and bought some citrus fruits for christmas time. The fact that citrus ripens in the winter is a fact that makes me think that maybe the world or god or whatever is looking out for us.

Nothing exciting today, just a day where I felt excited.

One Day

All of this happened today, I swear:

1.) I woke up in Danville, Kentucky where I was supposed to deliver a load of engines yesterday but I got held up in Dallas as my truck needed some work on its own engine. (I got there last night but they were closed which made me nervous since I had already been assigned another load to pick up in the morning and the pick up was "critical" what they call "line shut down" as in, you don't show up on time you fuck up the works.)

2.) I got unloaded fairly fast with just enough time to get where I needed to go.

3.) I booked it down US-150 part of which is not a legal truck route, but had I took a legal truck route I would not have made it on time (which I did).

4.) The pick up was at a tobacco warehouse in London, Kentucky and the whole "line shut down" thing was because they basically have trucks coming in off farms unloading tobacco all day and that tobacco is then graded and weighed and put in new trucks and sent to North Carolina to made into cigarettes (this kind of tobacco, Burley, is grown almost entirely in Kentucky (70% of national production) and is prized for its mildness and ability to grow in really shitty soil. Almost all cigarettes in the US are made from this varietal.

5.) Last night in the hills and hollers of Eastern Kentucky a sloppy wet snow had fallen and as a result the tobacco was coming in slowly since the farmers were either waiting for it to clear up or were just plain stuck. Consequently trucks were being loaded slowly and there was absolutely no rush since I would not be loaded til later.

6.) When I returned to my truck I realized I had somehow managed to lock myself out. I have never done this before.

7.) I tried to see if i could get in through the wing windows since the hinge on the driver's side one is broken and therefore the whole thing is a bit loose. In my over exuberance I broke the window and in braking the window I managed to cut my wrist. (not too badly, But I was so startled by the way auto glass just sort of 'pops' that I didn't realize I was bleeding until five minutes into cleaning up the glass when I felt some wetness running down my arm.)

8.) I sat around waiting to get into a door at the tobacco warehouse until after noon.

9.) After I got into a door it took til 1:00 til someone came by to inspect the trailer.

10.) The manager found a hole in my trailer that I failed to notice and told me I needed a new trailer or to have that one repaired.

11.) Luckily there was a Walmart DC nearby that Schneider runs a dedicated account out of and so I went over there and the bored mechanics were thrilled to have something to do.

12.) They fixed my broken wing window at the same time.

13.) I went back to the tobacco warehouse.

14.) As I went into the office I heard the manager say "Yeah trailer TA739376,[my trailer] we're gonna have to cancel that load." There wasn't enough tobacco coming in that day.

15.) I drove down to the Pilot in Corbin were I wait still for a load. It's friday night, freight is often bad on the weekends and we are in one of the "softest" freight markets in some time. (i.e. There's a chance I'll be sitting for a while.)

16.) I went to use the bathroom at the Pilot and as I was standing at the urinal a man and his 10-12 year old son come in. The son says, "dad I got to poop again" and goes into a stall. The man takes the urinal next to me. We both stare intently at the wall. From the stall the son says "Dad?" and the Dad says "yeah" and the son says "I love you" and the dad says "I love you too."

Sheila

I was sitting in a truckstop in Effingham, Illinois, a city I have often noted for its humorous name. I can suggest others, Essingham, Beaessville, Washington G.D.
Anyway, I was in the lot of the TA (while we're on the subject of lewd initials). Some TAs are nice, new and shiny and generally well kept. But many are not. The parking lot is full of potholes and the whole place seems to be covered in a patina of diesel soot and hair grease. This TA was one of the later variety. I had just delivered a load of newsprint and was awaiting a new assignment when a woman pulling a small wheeled suitcase approached my door. I rolled down the window.
"Hey there, you wouldn't by any chance be going to Toledo would you?" She was polite but seemed a bit desperate and had the look of an older, more haggard Courtney Love.
"No Sorry." I began to roll the window back up.
"Can I use your CB to see if there's anyone around here headed that way."
I turned on my CB and handed the mic out the window. She pouted a bit and whined, "what i can't sit down?" I let her in the passenger side door. (It is at this point in the telling that most people freak out. She didn't seem harmful (except perhaps to herself) though later in our conversation I contemplated how likely she was to stab me with a short knife and take what little money I had in my wallet.)
I had recently downloaded a new ap for the iPhone that allowed me to make relatively hi-fi recordings and as she settled in I started it up and so what follows (however unethically) is a transcript of that conversation:
S=Sheila, M=me, mark

I started by asking her how she came to be looking for a ride in Effingham...

S:Oh that's a long story

M:Yeah

S:I couldn't cross the Canadian border with my boyfriend cause I didn't have my birth certificate, all i had was my driver's license with me.

[I'd have to go down to] South Carolina to get that but I don't really... (trails off)

M: Your boyfriend a truck driver?

S: Yeah outta Montreal

M: Oh, OK.

CB: WHATS THE FASTEST WAY TO GET TO EVANSVILLE, INDIANA FROM HERE?

S: (to herself) close to Coryden (into the CB) Is that close to Coryden, driver?

CB: (response to driver's question inaudible)

CB: TAKE IT, TAKE IT, GO DOWN TO MOUNT VERNON AND GET 64?

CB: (another inaudible response)

CB: OK, 10-4 THANKYA MAN. IT AINT BETTER TO GO DOWN 33 TO 130 AND ALL THAT CRAP, OR JUST GET ON THE INTERSTATE, I GOT TWO HOURS TO BE THERE.

M: Well he better hustle then.

Me and Sheila: (chuckle)

CB: IF YOU GOT TWO HOURS YOU BETTER HAMMER ON IT

Me and Sheila: (Heartier chuckle)

CB: I WILL TRY

S: Maybe I should go on, to, Toledo,

CB: THANKS A LOT THERE, SAYS ITS ONLY 100 MILES BUT, I DON'T KNOW...

I hate going all the way out to Tucson I mean, I been livin there but I hate fuckin Texas, all that, It's hot down there,

M: That's a long way

S: mm hmm.

S: (on the CB) Anybody goin towards Toledo?

S: Is anybody goin towards Toledo?

(nonsense CB noise)

S: oh, no...

(long pause)

M: What's in Toledo?

S: I've been there and I, I know the town.

M: Oh, OK

S: I know the city...

M: How about Coryden?

S: (emphatically) Coryden is a GOOD place in Indiana.

M: Yeah?

S: Yeah. A really good place...

M: It near Louisville?

S: (somewhat surprised) Yeah. (long pause) but there's not one truck stop in Coryden.

M: No, It's all hilly down there, not much flat space.

S: (almost emotional) That's a good little town, (mumbles) I gotta make my mind up,
(mumbles) really go to Tucson.

M: Tucsons an option too?

S: Yeah

M: What's in Tucson?

S: Well I been livin there the better part of a year so I know people there.

M: Oh, OK. That's a whole different place isn't it?

S: Mmmm Hmmm. I mean it gets cold in the desert but ...

(CB cuts in somebody selling something, we exchange a few unintelligible lines)

S: Lot a truck stops there in Toledo (to the CB) Anybody goin to Toledo, Tucson or Little Rock?

(long pause)

S: Anybody over there at the Flying J can y'all hear me drivers? Sometimes it takes a little bit. Are you in a hurry?

M: No I was about to go inside but, I'm just waitin on a load.

(long pause)

S: (on the CB) How bout it at the uh Flying J anybody goin to Toledo or Tucson?

CB: (a female voice) Break 1-9. Hi Speedco Customers if you're planning on stopping at Speedco truck lube and tire service at exit 160 we currently have 3 open oil bays 2 open tire bays.

(pause)

M: Lemme, I'm going, Lemme check and see if it's calibrated right, sometimes it falls outta calibration. (pause) yeah it should be doing pretty well

S: It doin alright?

M: yeah

S: Drivers at the TA or Flyin' J anybody going to Toledo or Tucson?

(pause)

S: Sometimes you have real good luck sometimes it takes a little bit.

M: Yeah.

S: Well while you're sittin here.. My name's Sheila (she offers me her hand)

M: Hey

S: Hi, What's your name?

M: Mark

S: Mark, do you care if I drink a beer while we're sittin here?

M: I'd prefer if you didn't drink it in my truck just caus...

S: Oh, Ok.

M: It's a company thing, you know.

S: Even when you're sittin still you can't do it can you?

M: Yeah, I can't ever have alcohol in the truck.

S: Oh. Yeah?

M: Yeah, I wouldn't mind usually but it's just...

S: (sincerely) Yeah I understand.

M: You never know if you know, another driver's gonna drive by..

S: Yeah everybody tells on everybody so much! I didn't know drivers were like that but they, do, they can be (CB crackles) They're nosy.

M: Yeah they think if they get somebody else fired they'll get more freight or, I don't know its stupid, the companies enormous, they got like 13,000 drivers.

S: Yeah?

M: One person's not gonna affect that, you know. But... Yeah I'm not gonna say I've never had a beer in the truck you know but I'm just trying...

S: Yeah... I understand

M: try not to.

(CB crackles)

S: I just don't wanna go down south

M: How come?

S: Hot. Can't stand the sun and the heat.

M: You prefer it like it was last night?

S: mm hmm.

M: In the 20s?

S: Oh, yeah.

M: That why you wanna head up to Canada?

S: Yeah, Well my boyfriend's from Montreal. I love that weather. And the Snow.

M: Mmmhmm. snow much in Little Rock?

S: No, Very seldom. (pause) If they try and give me some problems about knockin on doors, askin to use radios, The police brought me here.

M: Oh they did?

S: I needed them to, Yeah (defensively) so they know exactly what I'm doin so, you know.

M: How did the, uh...

S: Oh...

M: the uh police...if you don't mind my asking?

S: I went to the hospital last night to get detox.

M: Oh really?

S: And they don't medically detox you in Effingham. So I asked them, they said the police'll pick you up and take you, so the police pick me up and I, I told em I need to get a ride and he brought me right here. So... They can't say shit to me.

M: I guess not.

S: And I am gettin (interrupts herself, on the CB) Break 1-9 for a radio check.

(unrelated CB chatter)

S: Break 1-9 for a radio check...
Break 1-9 for a radio check...
Break 1-9 for a radio check...

CB: (Indian accent) Yar radio ees workin.

S: Thank You.

CB: Yar welcoom.

S: Driver is anybody goin toward Toledo or Tucson?

(long pause)

S: (sigh) I guess they're not goin right now

M: Na...

S: I'm gonna go in and use the bathroom, and fool around in there, maybe I'll get somebody.

M: I as just about to head in, go to the bathroom myself. Good luck.

S: Thank you.

M" Sorry about your... your uh, luck out here. You know it's a slow time, slow time.

S: I know!

M: Everybody's...

S: It'll come around.

M: Yeah.

S: I just don't like waitin, waitin for it. You know, just like anybody else, impatient.

M: I hear ya. Good Luck.

S: Thank you.

(climbs out of the cab and heads towards the TA, suitcase in tow.)

-fin-

Run Down

I don’t know why I haven’t been writing. Haven’t wanted to. Haven’t thought of it. Don’t have the time. That last reason is certainly the most full of shit for I do indeed have the time. Here’s some things that have happened in the last few weeks:

I hauled Eucalyptus Pulp from the port of Baltimore to Central Illinois. It was harvested from mono-culture groves in Brazil and would be made into automotive filters. It is good to know that in addition to hauling freight for Wal*Mart, consuming a gallon of fuel every 7 miles, and generally contributing to an economy that I think is fundamentally at odds with the way in which humans should live on the earth I am also helping to destroy the rain forest. Perhaps next week I will get to haul the clubs that are used to beat baby seals.

(The way that started off it sounds like I am going to rant but, I assure you, that is not my intention.)

I hauled bicycles from Illinois to a Wal*Mart DC (distribution center) in southern Virginia. The company, Pacific Cycles, is a big conglomerate that you probably haven’t heard of but they have bought up a number of brands you probably have heard of (Schwinn, Mongoose, etc…) and made them cheap and crappy, almost assuredly at the behest of their great satanic overlords, The Walton family. In the run down warehouse I asked the shipping clerk if they made the bikes there.
“We used to…Now we just distribute ‘em.”
Unbelievably it is cheaper to manufacture these things in China, put them in a container, truck that container to a port, put the container on a boat, float that boat 6000+ miles to Los Angeles, put those containers on a train, roll the train 2000+ miles to Chicago or Saint Louis, put that container on a truck chassis, drive the truck to Olney, Illinois, unload the container only to load it onto another truck which takes it 700+ miles to Virginia where it is unloaded only to be put in yet another truck which unloads it at a store so you can go pick up at Wal*Mart, your “green” means of transportation/exercise or whatever it is people ride bikes for. It’s cheaper to do that than to make the goddamn things in the United States where we could, I don’t know, pay people a living wage to do skilled work that, at the end of the day, they could be proud of. Then they (we) would have money to buy other things made by Americans and we could get this effing economy out of the shitter. But it’s just an idea.

(I’m not doing a good job of not ranting, but it is what seems to be coming, so I’ll let it come)

I hauled potato chips to Canada. (The kind with interesting flavors like “All Seasoned” or “Ketchup” that they (apparently) make here but only sell there. I brought back from Canada a bunch of John Deer “Gators” Those sort of all terrain golf carts that landscaping folks often ride around on. (I don’t have a problem with buying Canadian goods because they have more or less parity when it comes to wages. Besides vast oceans do not separate us from Canada, only vast stereotypes.) It is interesting to me that going through customs with a truck load of goods is much easier going into Canada than it is coming out, though perhaps not surprising. While I was waiting for my paperwork to be processed I sat in a truck stop in Fort Erie, Ontario and a friend who lives in Buffalo joined me for dinner. It was good to see you Jamie.

I hauled Corn Oil from Archer Daniels Midland (Supermarket to the World™) In Decatur Illinois, a town that calls itself The Soy Capital (in institutions such as Soy Capital Credit Union) in deference to ADM’s main business, the processing of Soybeans. Just doing the lord’s work. (That oil was going to a Mexican food company in Atlanta that makes, among other things, tortillas.)

I was given a short load from the operating center in Atlanta to downtown Atlanta. I had to drive underneath a building and back into a dock through an obstacle course of concrete support pillars. It was a delivery of furniture and other various home décor to a “Merchandise Mart” type place. A place that functions as a show room for hundreds of décor manufacturers (?) I don’t know who goes here and buys stuff. It is one of those situations that is so hopelessly “businessy” that I do not intend to comprehend it.
Once I was docked many of the small strait-truck drivers (or just strait truck drivers?) came up to me and were amazed at my ability to dock this behemoth truck in this little dock.

On my way to Texas, however, I stopped in Lafayette, Louisiana to have lunch with a friend who always knows where to have lunch. We went to the Creole Lunch House which, true to its name, is a house in which a creole lunch is served. I had stuffed bread, a sort of cross between a calzone and a maid-rite loose meat sandwich if the meat in a maid rite was delicious. The ady behind the counter insisted that i have more food than i was eating. It was delicious, Thanks Rachel.

I took a that load to Sealy, in east Texas where I sat for over two days before getting another load. Only to head 400 miles up the road into Arkansas and sit again for a day. Freight in the mid south is slow my friends, avoid it.


After delivering a load of Sears crap to Wilmington, North Carolina and getting entirely too drunk with an old friend who works at UNCW I was sent up to Henderson, North Carolina (entirely sober) to run Wal*Mart frozen food runs for three days. My day would start at about 1pm when I would pick up a reefer (refrigerated trailer you single minded drug addicts) loaded with deliveries for 2 or 3 Wal*Mart or Sam’s Clubs in Eastern North Carolina and Southern Virginia, I’d make these deliveries and return to the Distribution Center. This would be a pretty sweet gig if I lived near the dc since I would be home every night and still making a decent amount of money. Seeing the backroom of a Wal*Mart is an enlightening experience. A complete mess, total disorganization, in stark contrast to the militant organization of the supply chain up to this point. I wish I had taken a picture, but they probably wouldn’t have let me.


I took Dog Food to New Jersey and Imported Beer (Heineken) from Elizabeth (NJ) to a distributor (Blue Ridge) in Waynesboro (Virginia).
Tomorrow I will take domestic beer (Miller) through the house (meaning I will keep the load while I go home) for thanksgiving.
And I’ll give thanks cause, I hope by now you see, I have a lot to be thankful for.

Love's

Last night after a slog through the North Carolina/ Tennessee mountains with 43,500 pounds of newsprint I pulled for the night into a Love's in Dandridge (the pic above is of a Love's in Lufkin, Texas). Two or three cop cars were pulled in at that jaunty 'no time to park-looking official' angle, lights whipping silently.
The CB chatter was what you would expect. "What is goin on at the Love's?!" "oh boy, three bears at the love's, somethin's goin down."
I finished my daily paperwork and got my dinner ready to be taken in and microwaved and then headed in (with a bit of excitement).
By the time I had made it in, although, most of the to do had been done. In the hall way between the Love's store itself and its appendage Subway a couple employees were mopping the floor in front of what I'll call the "fancy stuff" case.
A lot of truck stops have gifts presumably for truckers to buy to give to their perennially neglected families. These would be nice if the gifts were interesting or unique or place specific but they aren't. They're all the same, frightful dolls (often with questionably 'sensitive' racial characteristics, remote controlled semi-trucks, etc... Some of the "nicer gifts", big eyed child figurines, swords and knives, anything made of crystal (aka glass) are put in a locked glass case.
As I was microwaving some baked beans I asked a passing clerk what had happened. She was older and painted in make up and spoke in a clipped southern mountain accent roughened by cigarette smoke.
"This guy come in here try to break into that case so those two fellas behind the counter tackled him down to the ground. Says he was just tryin to get somethin for his kids. They all say that. See we gets a bonus if nothin gets stole, if nobody takes nothin, so those guys they tackled him. He broke the lock on that case, he broke it. He was tryin to get them two swords out the bottom of the case. For his kids, yeah right!"
"Does this happen a lot" I asked.
"Yeah, mostly this time of year."
"Oh cause of the holidays?"
"Yeah, all this time of year. We already had 4 in the last month."

!

They must have to scout for these cashiers at high school football games.

Olyphant to Maine with Digis

I was sent up to Olyphant, Pennsylvania to pick up a trailer and move a truck. The driver who had picked up this load, as he was ready to depart, required the services of an ambulance and hospital. i found out later from the folks in shipping that he was complaining of chest pains. His truck, which I had taken a key for in order to move it was dusted like a fine snow with cigarette ash.
When I asked the shipping clerk what it was that was in this trailer He said "Scrap digis." in response to my quizical look he added "scrap plastic." Whatever.
I took these up to Biddeford, Maine to a tiny little factory tucked in the northern pines. Inside I found a nice young guy willing to give me a tour of what they do at Sagoma technologies.

What I had been carrying were empty unused "Digipacks" those things that hold the discs in a set of dvds, long pieces of cardboard with cd trays glued to them that can be folded up onto themselves. They were from a live aid set (like this picture) that must have been overprinted or discontinued.
What they do in maine is separate the trays from the cardboard and send the cardboard off somewhere to be recycled. Meanwhile they melt down the plastic and make new cd/dvd trays in various styles including new digipaks. When I was there they were assembling the trays for the third season of Weeds.
Once I was empty I headed over to a small gas station where I parked and headed across the street to a shaw's to get some comestibles. While there I saw this alluring sign:

mmmm.
I sat for a bit longer before being sent up the road 12 miles to Scarborough to pick up pallets headed to South Holland (near Chicago) Illinois.

Orientation

Orientation, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, went like most orientations do. Long and drawn out. I finished tests and assignments first and thus spent a lot of time sitting around waiting for the next thing to start. My roommate was a pleasant jovial fellow from Hazleton, PA. He had worked local/regional for many years trucking into NYC with mattresses and delivering auto parts throughout the midatlantic. He would be working the Northeast regional accounts and get home every weekend. As with many he had come to Schneider in search of better pay and more consistency. It's easy to sit back as someone in my position, to think "the economy's tanking? I don't feel a thing. But as I return to the trucking industry the signs are everywhere. Smaller companies are shutting down, bigger companies are cutting corners. Schneider, known in the industry for providing full training to drivers with no experience or CDL is now hiring almost exclusively experienced drivers and I think, at this point, has almost completely discontinued its training program (temporarily, I hope. I think it is one of the best in the industry for those that can handle its manic pace.)

Recruiters had told us all that We might get a truck by thursday afternoon and have a load by friday. Thursday came and went and then friday and it became clear that there were not enough trucks for everyone. I think the reason is this: Schneider hires drivers at a rate that more or less matches the rate at which drivers quit. If enough drivers don't quit in a given week then there are not enough trucks and given the current (potentially psychological) recession drivers are probably less inclined to leave a steady job than they might otherwise be.
They sent us away for the weekend.
I headed to NYC since getting home via public transport is impossible and the train from harrisburg to nyc costs only $45.
I had a fine time in New York, perhaps for the first time since I was a little boy, perhaps because I spent the majority of the time in Brooklyn.
On monday, as I was dining with an old friend at his office in columbus circle I got a call that i had a truck.
later that evening I got back into Carlisle and moved into my truck. Its a little old, with 600k+ miles on it but it'll do.
The next day I readied the truck and then got my first load, a pick up, a rescue of sorts, near Scranton.

On the Road again (again)

Back on the road and with the big orange, Schneider National.
(This is a wrecked trailer I saw while walking around the yard, I wasn't involved and the posting of this image is not meant as any sort of comment on Schneider National.)
I'm in Carlisle, Pennsylvania currently, attending a 4 day orientation which is painfully dull. I should be out of here by Friday, god willin and the creek don't rise.

Keep on coming out for wacky tales of this winter on the road.

Epilogue: The Drive Home

So off I drove eastward in this gas and oil guzzling beast of a machine. The day was hot and pale yellow as so many texas days are. I-20 led me into Louisiana where green began to hang but the sunlight was no less harsh. I hadn't decided how to get home yet but I figured east was a good start.

I crossed the Mississippi at Vicksburg, a great swampy swath before the river and then hills up from the banks. Before I hit Jackson I found the exit for the Natchez Trace Parkway. I had taken this parkway a few years ago a some friend and her sister who were moving from Asheville to St. Paul and wanted to tour the south before resigning herself to the north. We had visited New Orleans and were headed up river and took the Parkway from its southern terminus at Natchez to this point near Jackson. Along the way I recall an episode in which my friend was feeling unwell so we stopped by the side of the road to allow her out of the car. She hurried to the edge of the woods and after a while her sister suggested i take her some water and a towel. As I stepped out of the car I thought to myself, my this ground is soft (I was not wearing shoes since it was so hot) and within a few seconds, my feet burning with over stimulation, I realized I had stepped into a fire ant nest. So here I am jumping around manically brushing ants off my feet and legs while my friend, crouched by the side of the words, wonders what could be more important than her well being.


So I had seen the southern part of this well groomed road with its wide verges and dark woods draped, like set pieces, in spanish moss. And now I figured, if I was going to take a drive, I would take a drive on roads that prohibited semis, and i would see the northern part of road.

The road itself runs along the route of an ancient path through the southern woods. The path was blazed by Native Americans from foraging paths trod down by large game and was later used by the military and the postal service, serving as an important link between the well connected "north" (Nashville and the areas north and east) and ports on the Mississippi river (such as Natchez).

The way the road looks now, with wide cleared, neatly mowed verges belies its origins as a narrow path through a dark and forbidding wood. But it makes current travel by car a pleasant journey with no commercial development and few at grade crossings. As you travel north the woods get less dark, less heavily junglish and occasionally the forest opens up to wide meadows with ancient wooden barns. I headed to Tupelo the first night as darkness fell and checked into a motel 6. It was 10pm and the air had cooled all the way down to 88.

I woke up not to early the next day and stopped by the Wal-Mart to pick up a case of oil for this thirsty (read: leaky) truck. I headed north again on the trace, swiping a corner of Alabama and entering Tennessee. I got off the parkway to fuel up (and oil up). I had wanted to continue further up the trace to Grinder's Stand, the site where, on a fall day in 1809 at the age of 35 the perennially depressive Meriwether Lewis either shot himself or was murdered. An interesting end to the life of a man who traveled to the Pacific when Europeans of the east weren't even sure where it was exactly.
Anyway, I took a wrong turn out of Collinwood and ended up in Lawrenceburg and kept heading east toward Chattanooga.

I made a slight detour north to Lynchburg to see something I had always wanted to see, the distillery where Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey is made. As you enter this very cutesy town you can see the barrel houses holding millions of gallons of whiskey dotting the hills above the hollers. The day was getting pretty steamy and the cool visitors center where I waited for the tour to begin was pleasant. I highly recommend the distillery tour. It is a full tour of all aspects of the distillery, up close and personal, not from a distance and not a tour of some mock up. It's the real thing. You can stick your head in the fermenting vats or the charcoal filtering towers and that combined with a walk through the highly aromatic barrel house will likely leave you a bit lightheaded. Besides it's free. The only catch is that, hilariously, The distillery is in a dry county and as such you can not buy or consume whiskey on the tour or anywhere else in the county however you can buy "Commemorative Bottles" that are sold to be collected but they are only marginally more expensive than a bottle at your local liquor store and the whiskey inside is, I assure you, completely drinkable.

Out of Chattanooga I followed the Ocoee (site of the 1996 Olympic Kayaking events) up torturous curves and spitting rain into the Smokey mountains, a place it always seems to be raining, and a place I don't mind the rain. It seems to add to the atmosphere. (It is after all, like the Northwest coast, a temperate rainforest receiving over 6 feet of precipitation per year)

Night fell in western North Carolina and eventually I got to Asheville where I shared some of my commemorative whiskey with friends and then headed to a bar to dispose of the rest of the evening.

In the morning I waited for my friends to wake and then took them out to brunch in Asheville before headed out towards Greenville (NC) in the eastern part of the state to visit another friend who also disposed of some of my commemorative whiskey.

In the morning I headed north and a bit east towards Chesapeake, Virginia, part of the Hampton Roads/Norfolk glut of shipping and military complexes at the southern end of the Chesapeake Bay. Here I did my last bit of trucking, stopping by Kerneos, a cement importer, to pick up some calcium aluminate cement to be shipped to me to build the bread oven. The truck sagged a bit but made the trip across the 17 mile Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. and up the long DelMarVa peninsula and up the driveway back home. The clouds from earlier in the day had cleared and it was a cool blue day.


This will be the last entry in this blog. Thanks for reading.
I'll now direct you to my blog documenting the building of my brick oven
and the beginnings of a bread business.

Closeout

So I woke up in the morning and untarped my load and helped some other drivers untarp their loads and when I was empty I sent a message saying I was so and another saying that, even though i was in Dallas, I intended to work for another week until the quit date I had specified a week earlier (giving the customary, though in the trucking world somewhat unheard of, two weeks notice.)
A few minutes later the Quallcomm beeped and the message said:
"Mark, unfortunately we have to accept your resignation now since we don't have a lot of freight booked into texas right now and probably couldn't get you back by next week. Besides we need your truck in Sunnyvale [at the terminal for new hires finishing orientation.] Go back to the terminal and check in with Daniel. OK?"

This was a bad note to end on. I had planned two weeks because it would take me right up to the time that I am to head to Minnesota to cater a wedding and the money would tide me over. Now I would have a gap and not enough money to buy all the brick for the oven. What a pain in the ass.

I headed back to sunnyvale, packed up the truck, got thoroughly sweat, handed my keys in and left.

Back to the eastern shore, back home, back to real life, I hope.

Slow Week

So from Winston Salem, in keeping with the deja vu theme, I headed over to Elizabethton, Tennessee to pick up more metal building parts destined for the northeast, Robbinsville, New Jersey namely, a suburb of Trenton, if Trenton has suburbs, per se.
The building parts weren't due until Monday and it being Friday and Winston-Salem being less than 600 miles from Trenton I would take these through the house. I am glad that the route could justifiably take me through the house otherwise the shortness of this weekend load would have really frustrated me.
So after another pleasant weekend at home I tootled up to Robbinsville and delivered the building parts to the inside of a big empty warehouse in an industrial park. Apparently the building would eventually be built a few miles from here but the crew who were supposed to be preparing the site had fallen behind but they were forced to take delivery of the building anyway. What an added expense for when the site is ready they will have to truck it all out again.
It was the crew that unloaded me that made the "grizzly adams" and "chuck norris" comments made famous in the previous post.
From there I waited (waited!? no way!) the rest of the day before getting a load to pick up in New Jersey and deliver to Laredo but as soon as the assigned it to me they took it away like dangling $100 bills in front of your face and then snatching them away (or more like $780, in this case). Not long after I got another load, a pick up in Sunbury, Pennsylvania (central PA) with a delivery in Aurora, Illinois. This one as well giving me about a day's worth of extra time (even though it wasn't the weekend.) I would get to see my friends in Chicago but, while I love seeing friends and family I was also, as it turns out, trying to make some money in the mean time. I spent the time in Chicago biking around eating good cheese and sweating a lot and then delivered the load in Aurora, it was fibreboard insulation from a company called Celotex. To explain I will quote a poster in their shipping office"

Want Structural: Use OSB
Want R-value: Use foam
Want both: CELOTEX

(that, i am sure, is perfectly clear to all my building contractor readers.)

Then it as more waiting (yes!) before getting a load to pick up the next day (waste of time) in Joliet at a company called Johns Manville who makes a similar product to the one I had just hauled from Celotex, though it seems less structural. The delivery was to Dallas. To Dallas a week before I had requested to be there.
I stopped for fuel at the Love's in Rolla (atcha boyz) Missouri and found that my fuel card had been "turned off." Evening dispatch turned it back on for me but something was getting fishy.
It was the weekend again and I got to Dallas on Saturday afternoon and tinkered about with the truck I had purchased. I replaced the window motor and changed the oil and cleaned up the battery whose corrosion was becoming an issue. The next day I drove the pickup to a big confusing mall whose directory listed two stores I wanted to check out, a camera store and a book store. Both had closed and were boarded with festive anticipatory plywood.
I needed a drink and some cheese so I stopped in at El Chico, a chain trying to wrest the "mediocre mexican in a drab atmosphere" crown from ChiChi's. I ordered a beer and found myself in an odd corner of the blue laws of the United States.
Before bringing me the beer julio brought me a small piece of paper about 6"x3". Three quarters of the sheet was a carbonless copy form and the remaining quarter was a detachable buisness card sized card. Julio handed this to me and asked me to fill it out without an explanation. When he returned and i asked him what the deal was he explained that we were in a dry county and since we were in a dry county any establishment that wished to serve alcohol had to be a "private club." In order to order a beer at this restaurant I had to "become a member" of their "private club" I had to fill out this card which would be good for thirty days at this restaurant only. If i went somewhere else i would have to fill out another card and on and on. For anyone who was worried i can assure you that prohibition is not over, it has just gotten stranger. This New York Times article explains the whole thing nicely.
Then I went to the movies. I'm not sure how I got there given the absurd complications (at least to this outsider) of the Texas frontage road system (explained in a previous post). I watched Wall-E, a beautiful little movie and then thought that, given that I paid $9.25 to see this movie (and it was before 6pm) I was owed another movie. I haven't snuck into a movie since I was 13 and snuck into Indecent Proposal with some friends who were equally excited by the promise of lasciviousness. (We were disappointed), I was less disappointed with The Dark Knight which, though at times was very loud and somewhat disjointed in its quest for special effects gold, was thoroughly entertaining. It was surprisingly easy to sneak into this movie and I think I could have continued to sneak into movies all night but i was tired and drove back to the terminal where I hopped in the truck and drove over to Spec Roofing Wholesale where I would deliver in the morning.

Beardo

I haven't trimmed the beard in almost 2 months. A guy at this place where I unloaded today called me "Grizzly Adams" and then likened me to Chuck Norris. Me thinks it's time to trim this beard

Deja vu

The drive up into the Poconos was a challenge, a fun challenge, the perfect extended obstacle course to scare the pants off a CDL candidate. It made me realize how far I have come from those first lurching days in Green Bay.
I had spent the previous night in Scranton. Although it was almost 2 hours from my final destination in the hinterlands of Northeastern PA, it was the closest truckstop. I awoke early and headed out into the beautifully hazy morning mountains. The Poconos are technically not mountains but rather a deeply eroded plateau geologically not part of the Appalachian mountain chain. They are related to the adjacent Catskills, essentially two names for the same geological feature. Regardless of the nomenclature the back roads are hilly as hell.
After turning off US-6 the road narrowed, lifted and plummeted, careening through bucolic valleys and to the edges of glacial lakes. The last turn was onto a wide dirt road. Branches brushed the tops of the cab and then a sign “Camp Nesher →” I turned in tightly revving the engine up a steep narrow dirt road thinking of the sleeping campers and this undoubtedly unusual morning. Another driver was there already we had both arrived before the construction crew.
The camp looked classic summer camp run down buildings and a lake with all sorts of brightly colored things floating in it.
The crew soon arrived and quickly unloaded him and then me and informed us there was a way to get out by continuing strait which was a relief since turning around would require some doing. Once I was unloaded I headed out the track rounding a corner and heading down a hill where I saw a bus stuck on the curve from the road into the drive. The driver motioned frantically at me to stop as if I were a freight train. I was still a good 100 yards off and moving at 10 miles an hour.
From the road the lane took a turn up hill (the hill I was headed down) and the tow hooks on the rear of the bus had snagged on the asphalt of the road. She was fully blocking the southbound lane but traffic could squeeze by in the other lane. I tried to do what I could to help her but she was already on the phone to her company explaining the situation. “There goes my safety bonus” she grumbled as she sat on hold.
I realized there was nothing I could do and decided I needed to back back up the driveway and turn around in the construction site. This was tricky but not impossible and as I beeped into the site the crew looked at me. I explained that there was a bus stuck in the drive and they immediately jumped into the forklift and a pickup.
“You got the chains?”
“Let’s go!”
And they were off like that. I turned around to head back to Scranton. About half way there I got a message to head up to Oswego and pick up some coils to take to Winston-Salem. Déjà vu all over again.
I turned north onto more hilly Pennsylvania mountain roads headed toward I-81. Winding out of town a long line of cars snaked slowly up a ridge. I couldn’t see the head of the line but I figured it was a slow moving truck. At the ridge crest the cars turned into a cemetery. Men in military dress stood at attention. The cars crawled to top of the hill under a grey Pennsylvania sky to put another dead boy in the ground.

I made it to Oswego to find a long line in the driveway of the Aluminum mill. Who knew what the back up was but it took forever to load the same load it had taken me less than an hour to load the previous week.
Again to Syracuse where I biked to the mall to try and find some 220 film for the medium format camera my sister had lent me. No dice, they barely had any 35mm film, how quickly things change.
The next day a long one down I-81 which must have a higher percentage of hills than any other interstate. South through the river valleys of central New York then crawling diagonally over the successive crests of Pennsylvania’s comb like Appalachian ridges. Flat for a while from Harrisburg to Winchester as the mountains retreat to the west. They return and you climb up and into the Great Valley of Virginia, snug for a while with the Blue Ridge (an outlying eastern ridge) to your left and the Valley and Ridge (the main body of the Appalachians) to your right. Around Roanoke you head up into the mountains proper and things are really hilly. Leaving I-81 and heading south on I-77 toward Mt. Airy, NC presents a fantastic vista of the Piedmont (literally “foot hills” as you tumble out of the mountains and realize just how high up you were.
Now I’m here in Winston Salem, sweating and waiting again.

Through the House

More goddamn waiting.
I sat behind the Shell in Boucherville all day and then Angie sent me a message telling me to get out of Canada. Drive down toward Champlain, New York and let her know when I got there.
I did, I headed down to the border. It's easy to cross when you have an empty flatbed, essentially the same as in your car. I kept going down I-87 to Plattsburgh where I found a small truckstop in the woods.
I had noticed a mall with a bookstore a bit up the road and I figured I’d bike up there. After my Montréal expedition I was thoroughly exhausted and my legs were resistant to this 5 mile jaunt.
I wandered about the book store and then the mall, unfortunately disinterested. I got back on the bike and stopped at a little c-store on the way back to the truck (there were a number of them, New York’s northwoods loves the middle of nowhere corner market.)
I bought a Saranac Lake sampler pack. Someone there is thinking of people like me. Back to the truck where I proceeded to drink and enjoy the cool of these northern latitudes. I did not enjoy the large mosquitoes.
I waited most of the next day with nothing before I sent an exasperated message. I had requested to be home for the weekend. The July 4th weekend. It was July 3rd, a Thursday. If I didn’t get something today I would sit here all weekend, a three day weekend.
Finally they sent me a load that picked up in Oswego, a four hour drive across the Adirondacks. The pick up wasn’t supposed to be until Sunday. Sunday! I was seriously bummed. I decided to head over to see even though I had been to this shipper before and remembered not being able to load early.
The drive was spectacular. Through the heart of the really incredible parts of the Adirondacks, a mountain chain geographically unrelated to the Appalachians. Black brooks foaming white over ripples of rocks in the shade of heavy northern pines. Towns bustling with summer weekend activity, people in their brightly colored synthetic and highly performance oriented clothing.
I got to Oswego and checked in. I could load early. This was the best news ever.
Onto my truck were quickly put two enormous Aluminum Coils. Thin aluminum headed to Winston Salem to be made into beverage cans by Rexam. Not so quickly I chained and tarped them. These things are a bitch because the aluminum is so soft and can not get the least bit wet or it will stain and not even the slightest damage is tolerated since people put these things so close to their face.
I finished tarping, chilly with sweat in the Lake Ontario evening and drove to Syracuse where I fueled up and spent the night.
The next day I drove to Maryland dropping my trailer before making it home in time to see fireworks through the hazy rainy weather. Before I got back on the road I decided that this would be the last trip. 3 and a half weeks then to Dallas to pack up the new (pick-up) truck and head home to get this bread business started for real (right after I get back from catering a wedding in August)
On Sunday afternoon I drove down to North Carolina. The july fourth return traffic was horrendous. Essentially from DC to Richmond was one big jam. (that’s like 100 miles). I was exhausted and crashed for the night short of my goal. In the morning I headed to Winston Salem and delivered the coils waiting not too long for my next load. Over to Star Buildings in Elizabethton, Tennessee, a place I had been twice before. A lopey drive through the Appalachians, an easy pick up, Some metal building parts destined for a Jewish summer camp in the depths of the Poconos.

Oh, Canada!

The load in Norman was at York, who make big air industrial conditioners and the pick up wasn’t until midnight but even so They didn’t start loading until 1:30 and then, once they had loaded the trailer, from front to back, they realized they couldn’t fit the last one on and so they had to take something off. The something they had to take off was the thing in front and so they unloaded the whole thing and reloaded it finishing at 4:00am. I pulled out and went to sleep, I would strap it all down in the morning.
I did that and when I went out to get the bills there was some problem, and it was Saturday so the problem was taking even longer to figure out. Eventually it was figured out but it certainly took a while.
I took the load through Tulsa and stopped by the office to make sure all my paper work was in order to head into Canada. When you take a load into Canada one of the easiest ways to do it is a system called PARS. Pre authorized release system or something like that. Essentially you affix a bar code sticker to the bills and fax them to an independent broker at the border where you are going to cross. They work out the paper work, figure out who owes what in customs and inputs the info into the computer. When the trucker gets to the border they only need to scan the barcode, check out your id and, if everything checks out, on you go. It worked out that way this time and crossing the border was a piece of cake.
I crossed at Detroit-Windsor. Detroit is bad enough already but they have decided to rip up pretty much every mile of interstate downtown at the same time and this really makes the whole place feel like a post-apocalyptic mess. I crossed the Ambassador Bridge over the Detroit River (Detroit is French for “straits” and technically the river is a strait connecting Lake Huron to Lake Erie (via a not so great lake called Lake St. Clair.) and as I entered Windsor, Ontario an air of civility fell over then land. Don’t get me wrong I love America but Canada feels different and that difference feels like civility.
You must traverse some surface streets in Windsor before finding the 401, southern Ontario’s main highway that connects Windsor to Toronto and Montreal. It would be a long slog up this road to Quebec but it felt shorter because of the kilometers. When you are used to miles, kilometers fly by.
I stopped at a Pilot to get some food intrigued by how foreign candy wrappers that you are unused to appear. I got some potato chips that I remembered from the last time I was in Canada. They were just Ruffles but the flavour was “All Dressed” (or in French “Assaisonait” or “seasoned”) I don’t know what is on these but they are very tasty.
In Ontario all the signs are in English and then, just down the road is the same sign but in French. This seems like it would cost a lot (Quebec solves the problem by dropping the English altogether.) Some of these signs are humourous to me. Par Example: there are many signs that warn of the penalties for various traffic violations. They list the violation and the resultant fine and points on your license. In Canadian English they call these “Demerit Points” which is funny enough but the French is “Points d’inaptitude” which really cracks me up.
The highway through most of Ontario is pretty unremarkable, very flat at first (its just a lake away from Ohio, really not that exotic) then there’s Toronto, a big city, but not overwhelming, like Chicago. North of Toronto it gets pleasantly woodsy looking more like upstate New York which is, of course, right across the St. Lawrence. The Thousand Island area is evocative. You can never really see the river or the islands but the land hints at its beauty, and its mayonnaise, ketchup and relish mixture.
Crossing into Quebec changes little (but everything gets more French) I stopped at the centre de bienvenue (not actual what it is called) and was greeted with the traditional Quebecoise tourist welcome “Bonjour, Hi.” A charming French boy tried to help me find a carte bicyclette de Montreal but to no avail.
Turns out I didn’t need one. Montreal’s bike paths are ubiquitous and while not particularly well signed, they are extensive and not hard to figure out.
I had parked in Boucherville across the river from city proper behind a Shell station that seemed the only place to park around here. I hopped on my bike and headed toward Montreal. This would have been far enough to bike into the city but as it turns out the bike path from along the east bank of the river into Vieux Montreal is quite indirect. It heads south along the river for about 10 miles from the point where I joined the trail. At one point I got off the main path and headed toward a marina which was the head of one bike path who’s sign implied that the path continued all the way to Quebec City, 440 km northeast.
I found the proper path again and continued south (to the point that I knew I was south of the downtown). Finally the path crosses the river on the Pont Victoria onto a little island (Montreal itself is an island but this was a much more bitty island) and on this island is a park and at the north end of the park is an amusement park. The bike path goes north on this island for a couple miles before crossing onto the île de Montréal. At this point however you are on the far side of the port and so must go south a couple miles to get around the bottom of the port and then its back north again to get into the heart of Montréal. All told this ended up being over 15 miles (25 kilometers) and I was beginning to lose hope since I knew I had to get back somehow and trucking does not keep you in the shape I was a few years ago when biking 70 miles in a day was totally do-able.
But it was totally worth it. Old Montréal is incredible. Not Europe not America but a little of both and something altogether different. Big buildings built of a stone that looks like really nice concrete create windy canyons of streets lined with restaurants and galleries and in the dying light, as the yellow glow from the windows began to become apparent the whole scene was really something. Oh yeah, and it was Canada Day so the whole place was mobbed.
I wandered about in wide eyed amazement, pleased that this was the 2nd time in a week that I had been in awe of a place. Three countries in a week isn’t so bad, especially when your continent only has three countries.
The darkness closed in on the festivities and fireworks began to pop in the distance and I consulted the phone to try and find a way to get across the river without the 15 mile return trip. I headed up over the ridge out of old Montréal surprised to find a sprawling modern city just over the crest. I found the subway and headed down only to be shoed out by bilingual cops who informed me no bikes were allowed in the Metro on Canada Day.
What in the world was I going to do. I was exhausted. I was right beneath the Pont Jaques-Cartiers near the aromatically malty Molson Brewery. I looked up at the towering bridge. If I could cross this bridge I wouldn’t have to make the zigzags to cross the river cutting the trip in half. I had to head pretty far west to find the point at which the bridge began its rise above the streets but when I got there I found that there was in fact a bike lane, Quelle Chance! I had not encountered this bike lane earlier since the bridge makes an equally gradual descent on the east bank and I passed under it right on the river where it still towered high above me.
I tore across the bridge with inexplicable energy and then bombed down the other side stopping at a convenience store called “Couche Tard” of which I passed no fewer than 20 on my return through the suburban streets of Longuieul.
I got to the truck and ate my chicken salad sandwich and gulped water. Chicken Salad here seems to be a chicken and mayonnaise paste between slices of bread. It’s pretty tasty.
I slept like a baby and woke in the morning where I delivered the air conditioners to more brilliantly bilingual Quebecers. The receptionist greeted me with “Un livraison?” I knew what she was saying but even in my brief hesitation she switched to English. The air conditioners were unloaded quickly and I returned to the Shell station to see what would happen next.

Dallas Breakdown

I cruised into the truckstops on the south side of Dallas about midnight. I knew that these places, like those on the south of Atlanta or east of LA and truckstops near cities everywhere had a tendency to crawl with illicit activity, primarily prostitution and drug dealing. It was also late and my chances of finding a place to park were slim. As I maneuvered through the Flying J people scurried around the lot like rats, one dude jumped up on my running board clinging to my open passenger side window.
“hey man you looking fo a girl?”
“no, man I’m looking for a parking space.”
I started to drive off requiring him to dismount.
I found a spot. Not a real spot, but a spot where people could get around me, at the TA on the other side of the highway.
The next day I woke and showered and came back to the truck. Still no load. I moved the truck into a real spot. I waited.
I did a crossword, or maybe six.
I tried to read. It is miserably hard to read when you are waiting for something. When trucking you are almost always waiting (or driving) and so, while it may seem like a great job for reading time, it isn’t. I get most of my good reading done at night before bed, like everyone else.
I waited some more.
I was getting exasperated.
I had spent a night in Laredo waiting, I had spent the better part of the next day in Laredo waiting. I had driven to Dallas and spent the night and the waited some more. It was 2pm. I was loosing hope. It was also Friday and the likelihood of getting a load on a Saturday (at least with this company) is nonexistent.
I cracked.
I wanted to quit. I was so done. How could I go home? Melton has a terminal in Dallas, I’d leave the truck there. How could I get rid of my stuff? I could sell some over the CB, but there would still be too much to walk or bike with, or even take a plane, especially with these baggage fees. I could buy a car!
I looked at the Dallas Craig’s List. There was a beater ’84 F-150 for sale for $900, I could do that.
I drove to the Dallas terminal. Not sure why. I got a cab to go check out the truck.
The guy selling the truck was a little unhinged I think. He worked on the oil rigs near Amarillo. He worked for 14 days at a time and then had 14 days off. He was selling the truck because he had another kid on the way. He said it needed a new starter solenoid, which he repeatedly pronounced “sodenawd.”
We drove to AutoZone to get it rather than wait for his mom to get home (he didn’t have any money for this $10 part) He installed it in the parking lot. When he drove the truck he scared me, though it did prove that the engine and brakes were working well enough.
Then we had to go to the DMV to get a title since he didn’t have one. Apparently he had bought the truck only a month before and the dealer had not yet got the title to him.
That process was surprisingly smooth and in 25 minutes I had the title in hand. I asked him how much he wanted for the truck.
$900
what about $750?
$800 and it’s a deal.
Deal (I didn’t really expect to pay $750, I suppose this is at the core of the bargaining art)

He cleaned his junk out of the truck and handed me the keys. My phone rang.
“Hey its Angie” [my dispatcher] “I got a Canada load for you.”
(sweet, what do I do with this pick-up?)
“It picks up in Norman [Oklahoma] tonight and delivers on Monday”
“sweet, where in Canada?”
“oh don’t make me say it, Butcher-vull.”
“Oh yeah Boucherville, Quebec. Sweet put it on me. I’ll be back at the truck in 45 minutes.”
The seller looked at me, “goin to Canada huh?”
Yup.

I drove the truck back to the terminal. I could leave it here until I did quit, whenever in the next month or two that would be. Then I could have them route me here and I could put my stuff in it and drive it back to Maryland. And now I would have seriously useful vehicle for these building projects.

I parked the truck and took some pictures and then headed up the road to Norman.

Laredo y Nuevo Laredo

The load of steel was headed to Laredo. 1100 miles almost due south of Norfolk, NE and so I spent the next 2 days watching the northern plains become the southern plains. The land of the Sioux become the land of the Comanche. People don’t think of Texas as the plains (which is to say I didn’t used to) I think because it is relatively more populated than the plains to the north. After crossing the Red River on I-35 from Oklahoma one quickly encounters Denton then Dallas-Fort Worth, Waco, Temple/Killeen, Austin, San Marcos, and San Antonio in (relatively) rapid succession, east-coast style.
After San Antonio everything comes to an abrupt end for a 150 mile cruise across the baking chaparral to Laredo.
I got into Laredo in the early afternoon. Good I thought, since I would be able to deliver my load a day early and then have n advantageous spot on the board and get out of the hellish oven that is south Texas. In all fairness the weather this time around (while above 100) was not so bad since there was a firm and constant breeze and the humidity was quite low.
As it turns out there was a hang up with my paperwork, the shipper had neglected to include on the bills the name of the forwarder (the facility in Laredo at which I would leave the trailer for a Mexican carrier to pick up.) I would not be able to deliver until the morning.
It was comfortable enough outside that as the sun began to get low in the sky I figured I’d head out for a bike ride. Initially I headed south unsure what I wanted to see. Maybe just to the mall or into downtown Laredo to see what it looks like where they don’t allow trucks, but peering down a long strait avenue I could see an enormous Mexican flag billowing in the soft blue breeze and I new where I was headed.
Downtown Laredo is certainly a different world than the Rubik’s cube of trucks and warehouses that make up the north end. Mostly commercial boulevards, not unlike those in San Antonio or Phoenix or LA terminate near the river having become quiet streets of medium height Spanish buildings, stucco and heavy shady trees, open squares and pleasant spaces.
There are two border crossings in downtown Laredo, one for trucks and cars and the other primarily for pedestrians. I found the latter and paid the fifty cents toll, walked my bike up and over the bridge, over the Rio Grande, a great green ditch in this semi desert and into another country.
I’m not sure I was prepared for how different it would be. First of all, although I was allowed freely to enter Mexico without so much as a check of my documents, there were heavily armed guards everywhere. AK-47s cradled in arms shock me, an unreal object, as intense as if the soldiers held corpses.
Once past this however, the scene becomes classic Mexican. The world is more colorful. Horses pull rickety but brightly painted carts. City buses are old school buses painted solid and scrawled with soap in the windshield “#4 Walmart.” Open squares with great shade trees, farmacias selling prescription drugs at 80% discount. Everywhere fruit and juices and ice to stave off the heat that persists from March to November. And people. People everywhere, walking.
After about an hour of wandering around in wide eyed amazement I headed back toward the border. Urchins tried to sell me cheap leather or beaded jewelry. Their technique, in lieu of a facility with English (apart from “meester, you like”) was to follow me for a few blocks.
Crossing the border back was not bad, though certainly not like coming into Mexico. I never seem to be able to communicate on the level with customs and immigration. I’m never sure what they are saying or implying, and they always seem to think that I, bicycle in hand just walking out of Mexico, am up to something.
I biked back to the terminal stopping for some Gatorade and then some carne guisada which was tasty.
The next day I finally delivered my load (the shipper had returned the faxed bills with the words “EXIT LAREDO” on them, if that’s all it takes…) Then I waited some more.
I waited most of the afternoon before Laredo gave up. Not a lot of freight headed out of Mexico, not enough, at least, to keep up with the freight coming in and so I, and a lot of other waiting drivers, were deadheaded to Dallas, 400+ miles north.
I drove it all that night, getting in by midnight. It felt like nothing.
The air was cooler but much more humid and much less pleasant.

Kansas Mississippi Texas Iowa Nebraska Texas

They've been keeping me running around with a lot of short loads.
After delivering the insulation it was up to Ottawa, Kansas where, adjacent to the American Eagle Outfitters National Distribution Center there is a place that makes big I-beams. I took two of them, each 40 feet long and 4 feet tall, to a Steel Mill in Mississippi. The website for the mill said it was located in "a growing manufacturing infrastructure in the Southern United States." This struck me as odd. For years the industrial infrastructure has been the domain of the north, especially the Rust Belt area around the Great Lakes and of course it has been in decline for a long time. When you think Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh you don't think "hey those places are really on the up and up!" Much of this is due to the unfortunate outsourcing of manufacturing to places where whose governments don't have strict laws about treating people fairly and paying them a living wage, where quality is lower and materials cheaper, so much so that even with the (ever increasing) cost of transporting these products thousands of mile by land sea and air they are still less expensive. It seems odd then that here is a burgeoning manufacturing in the Southeast. One the one hand great, jobs in the US, people being paid fair(er) wages and being treated well (enough) but on the other hand it seems a bit backward, to industrialize an area that for a long time (since the beginnings of this country) has been agricultural and let the rusting hulks in the north continue to dissolve into the earth. I'm sure it makes sense somewhere, probably in ledger or stock portfolio.

From there (there being Columbus, Mississippi in the northeast part of the state, I headed to the other side of town and picked up some floor joist, through some straps over them and took them to Justin, Texas on the northeast side of Fort Worth. Justin, Texas is where they make Justin boots which you might be aware of, if you are ware of things like western boot manufacturers.
Then it was over to Royse City on the far east side Dallas to get some Trailer Axles. Axles for the sort of trailers you might tow behind a pickup to transport tools or a vehicle. There were 3 stops, one in Grandview, Missouri and two in a little town in southwestern Iowa called Clarinda (birthplace of big band leader Glenn Miller and 4-H and home to WWII internment camp for German, Japanese and Italian POWs (what a place! thanks Wikipedia)).
I made the first two stops and then headed north out of town to the third. As it turns out H&H trailers who on their website claim to be "The World's Best Trailer Value" can sell you a trailer so cheeeep because they build them with prison labor. (There is no mention of this on the website).
To enter their facility on the grounds of the Clarinda Correctional Facility (which describes itself as "an adult male medium-security prison to serve primarily chemically dependent, mentally retarded and socially inadequate offenders" one must enter through a dual gate system (sort of like an air lock) and have one's truck searched and be frisked. I think it would have been nice to know about this before hand. The delivery went smoothly though and in no time I was out of there and sitting behind the Super8 waiting for my next load.
That next load would take me to Norfolk, Nebraska (inexplicably pronounced 'Nor-Fork'* and childhood home of Johnny Carson) Far on the northeast side of town there is a big steel mill and in a quick pick up I loaded up with 9 coils of steel bar about 3/4" in diameter. These were destined for Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico, via Laredo, Texas, USA.



* I guess it's not that inexplicable, Wikipedia offers this: "The name "Norfolk" is traditionally pronounced "Norfork" by Nebraskans. When the city was incorporated (as a village) in 1881, it was named after the "north fork" tributary of the Elkhorn River on which it lies. The United States Postal Service assumed that "Norfork" was a mistake and changed the name to "Norfolk". This became the official spelling, but the local pronunciation did not change."

Oklahoma Storm

After delivering my load of various metal shapes I was sent up to the north side of Dallas to pick up boards of foam insulation.
I had picked up here before. That time it was windy and the strapping and tarping of the load was an absurdly difficult spectacle. This time it was calm and in short order I had the load strapped tarped and ready to go.
I was headed north to Pittsburg, Kansas, a town in the southeast corner in the midst of building a new police station. A new police station that apparently needed insulation.
On US-69 in Oklahoma great storm clouds began to billow and pile on one another and before long the first winds of the storm storm were jostling this high light load around like a boat at sea. Then came the rain pelting sideways and cracks of lightning with stronger gusts. One of these gusts manage to catch the fold in the tarp at the rear of the load and by the time I pulled into the Love's in Eufaula the relentless wind had snapped and shredded the back of the tarp to tatters.
I bought some more bungees in the store and filled up with fuel before setting out to resecure the back of the load as best I could. Being a load that is 13'6" high I had to get out the ladder which, I think you can understand, made me a bit nervous as lightning continued to split the sky around me.
I got it done and continued down the road. The rain had let up almost entirely but the wind had not. Standard Trucking tarps come in two pieces, each has a top and three flaps, two long ones and a short one (for the front of back of the load) When you tarp you put the rear on first and then the front so that the open end of the rear tarp (which faces forward) is covered by the rear facing open end of the front tarp, so as to prevent wind from catching the rear tarp and pulling it clean off the trailer. Somehow in this storm the rear tarp had worked its way slowly backward until at one pointit eeked out from beneath the front tarp just enough to catch the wind which promptly pulled it off the trailer. In so doing it broke every bungee cord (appx 30) except 4 at the rear which held it out like a drag parachute on a fighter jet. I pulled to the side of the road and in the spitting rain and orange light folded the tarp in the grass as little bits of wet grass and seed stuck to my sandled feet. I proceeded to the terminal in Tulsa, the only place where I might be able to get back on top of the load to retarp it, and got a new tarp, more bungees and no grief, which was a relief.
There was some minor damage to the rear of the product where the tarps had flapped violently against the soft foam and, of course, it had been rained on but the guys at the jobsite in Kansas didn't seem to give a shit.

Jersey-Chicago-Dallas

I woke up early and headed to the truckstop in Centreville where I drop my trailer before coming home. Pleased it had not been stolen I hooked to it and carried on back to Washington where I made the first delivery of those big fabric rolls i had picked up on friday. Then it was up to New Jersey for the second stop and after that a wait. I headed to the truckstop in Paulsboro and hooked up to the idleaire. It was really hot and I was willing to pay not to be. (Idleaire is a system that pipes a lot of services into a truck. Among them:heat/ac, cable tv, phone, internet, electrical outlets etc... at a rate that is cheaper per hour than idling the truck (an idling truck uses about 1 gallon per hour. and many truckers idle the truck all night, even when the temperature outside is comfortable. think about that, cost wise and fossil fuel usage wise)) You have probably seen this service. It looks like a number of metal box trusses spanning the parking lot with yellow tubular appendages dangling into each space. If you haven't noticed it before you will next time you see it.
It took a while to get a load (something I don't get given that I was in the beating nasty core of the east coast megalopolis. but finally I did and I headed up to Perth Amboy to pick up some steel, hooray for steel!
Perth Amboy is located on a point where the Raritan River from New Jersey meets Arthur Kill (a tidal strait that separates Staten Island from New Jersey) and flow into Raritan Bay, a bay of the Atlantic Ocean) If the whole NYC metro area were a big cow, Perth Amboy would be the spot where that cow was about to take a crap. Not that I'm sure it doesn't have its lovely bits. It is he birthplace of Jon Bon Jovi.
This steel production facility used recycled scrap to make lower quality wire and bar products. It was on the banks of the Raritan river and all about there were odd bits of scrap metal including a rail line that came on to the property just to bring in railcars that were ready to be scrapped.
I was picking up some rebar which was coiled into big beehives, an odd way to ship it since I imagine it must be uncoiled and straitened before use. It was headed out to (Mr.) Belvidere, Illinois, near Rockford. By the time I had it strapped and tarped my shirt was as soaked as if i had spent the time in a driving rain.
I drove it the first night to western PA and slept well. I had gone through a cold front and up into the hills. A bit of rain and temperature drop of 40 degrees.

I stopped the next afternoon in Chicago parked at what I like to think of as my secret spot, a little Speedway on the south side at 35th and California with a tiny lot that I always pray will not be full. I was excited to see a friend of mine who lives in Andersonville. I was going to bike. If you know Chicago you know this is a bit of a hike but, having not done anything particularly active for a while and loving, as i do, the biking in the city, the 12 miles went by quickly.
The next day I made the delivery in Belvidere and then was directed to Schaumberg (a far northwest suburb of Chicago and home of the Chicagoland's IKEA. The load wouldn't be ready until 11pm so using my Apple Brand iPhone (which has made my life immeasurable more fulfilling) I found that i was pretty close to a Metra commuter line station, biked there, hopped on and visited some other friends in Chicago. the headed back out, picked up my trailer, loaded with pipes and bars of various shapes and sizes and tarped just in time to guard against a brisk and torrential downpour.
The pipes were destined for Dallas and that, faithfully, is where I took them.
I got there on Saturday night and since the load wasn't to be delivered until Monday I spent Sunday exploring Dallas.
My intent was to head to a nearby Home Depot to buy some chain and a padlock for my bike and then to head into downtown with my primary goal being the Dallas Museum of Art. En route to the Home Depot I developed a flat, since it seems that the roads in texas are sprinkled with broken glass, just for fun.
Using again my iPhone I found that my only hope was a target on the south side (it was sunday) and I bussed down there, fixed the flat and headed back into the city.
To my delight there was an Art fair going on and so I had some overpriced beers and saw the collection of the DMA (who's collection certainly indicates a city of wealthy patrons) for free. and i sweated a lot and got sunburned. what a delight Texas is.
On the way back to my truck I got another flat.

Hotlanta

Diagonally from the northwest to the southeast is not a way that the interstates had mind, at least not directly. Most interstates go north-south or east-west and most diagonals are southwest to northeast.
So i found myself headed down US-41 through Indiana and Evansville where I visited a friend who is a talented photo journalist. We had a fine evening eating German food at one of the most aesthetically entertaining restaurants in the middle west followed by some billiards. Very civilized. A few shots from north of Evansville:




































The delivery in Atlanta (technically in Suwanee) went fine though sweatily and then I was given a load to pick up in Pendergrass. I had been to this place before. Big rolls of fabric (of the sort that mitigate erosion) These had two stops, one in Hyattsville, Maryland (east side of DC) and the next in Williamstown, New Jersey, in the southern part of the state. It was Friday and the deliveries were on Monday and so I was expected to take my weekend between pick up and deliveries. In order to get any decent weekend out of this I would need to bust ass to get home friday night. I did and I did (legally) eeking into the deserted house at 11:45 pm. My parents were in Connecticut for the weekend for my mom's high school reunion.
The next day I went to my high school reunion. It was blisteringly hot. Our conversations seemed too easy for people who had not seen one another in 10 years.
Afterwards I headed back to Kent County for a friend's birthday party where my exhaustion and ingestion resulted in passing out by the pool, something that sounds more glamorous than it is.

Beulah, North Dakota

So I was being sent to Beulah North Dakota to pick up something from a place called Entergy something, which I assumed (correctly) was a power plant of some sort. The commodity was listed in the load assignment as "Industrial Toolings" I had no idea what that meant.
Turning north at Beulah I headed up into a sea of grey green grassy hills and coming over a rise I saw my destination, a great mute blue monolith in soft focus, Richter-esque, if you will.
First, on the left I passed a great hole in the earth where enormous machines with tires that boggle the find haul out the coal, This part of the west, it seems, is one big lump of coal with grass growing over top and cattle munching on the grass. Then to the right a coal gasification plant which smelled both horrible and appetizing, like over smoked rancid ham, the intensity of which made me wonder how long I could stand it. Then, past the ham gasification plant my stop, a big coal power plant. I pulled up to the guard shack and checked in with a surprisingly beautiful woman who seemed unsure why I was there but directed me to one of the Siemens employees who was just getting off his shift. This gruff union troll told me to pull in and park to the side of the road and he would show me where to go since he had o head back with his car to get his tools.
Inside the power plant he directed me to head "back towards that corner and then take an elevator to the 4th floor and ask around up there. These elevators here are so busy you're libel to end up on the 15th floor before you know it."
He was yelling all this at me. He was yelling because the noise in a power plant, you might guess, is a bit overwhelming. It isn't painful overwhelming like a jet or a siren, just a background whir and hum and it isn't until you try to hear someone that you realize just how loud it is.
I headed back toward the corner through a landscape bewildering in its scale and instrumentation. I felt i was walking through an industrial-apocalyptic movie scene such as the one in Batman when the Joker falls into the acid. Is it the Joker?
Some ceilings were low and then opened up 4 stories or 15, all around machines spun and valves hissed. Does it really take all this to generate some electricity?
I found the elevator and headed to the 4th floor. There I encountered a large man with a thick southern accent who, when I told him I was from Melton said "Boy am I glad to see you!" He then explained that he and his coworkers were employees of Siemens. One of the things Siemens does is build power plants. They had been making some repairs or additions to this plant and now were done. It would be my job to take their tools back to the home base just outside of Atlanta. They were glad to see me because, i suppose, these southerners were ready to be done with North Dakota.
They said that I was earlier than they had expected and were pleased since that meant that they could foist the responsibility of loading me onto the night shift.
It was raining lightly and ceaselessly.
They had me back into a bay in the center of the plant, in a part that was open 5 floors, 5 tall floors, probably 100 ft. While I waited for night shift to get done with a safety meeting I repaired my tarps that had been cut in a few places by the sharp grain bin parts.
Eventually loading began and took the better part of 6 hours since all of these steel boxes full of tools (some of them not particularly big) had to be lowered by crane from the 4th floor. This wouldn't have been so bad if afterwards I had not had to pull out and tarp it in the light rain at 12:30 in the morning. Anything with many levels is difficult to tarp since wherever there is a level change there is a possibility for loose tarp and loose tarp means flapping and flapping can result in loosening or tearing of the tarp. This load had enough levels to resemble a city scape and many sharp "ears", where hooks could be fasten to hoist or lower the boxes by crane and so all the ears needed padding before the thing could be tarped and tarping sucks (even more) when you are tired. I finished and slept, still having not caught up on my sleep from my "busy" weekend at the college reunion.