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.