So on the last trip I took out, I left on Monday December 1st to be gone 24 days and return home for Christmas.  My first dispatch when I got in the truck was to pick up an empty trailer at a client in Jacksonville Florida, about 90 minutes from my home. I was to pick up an empty trailer and head to another client for my first load at another client in Jacksonville. I found a trailer and hooked up to it and immediately noticed that the ABS system light was on, indicating a problem with the Anti-lock brakes on the trailer I picked up.  I inform Road Assist of the problem and they tell me I need to take the trailer to a truck service center to fix it before I can take a load anywhere with that trailer.  I drive 25 minutes out of Jacksonville to the closest service center and was told there were 9 other trucks in front of me waiting, so it was going to be “awhile” before they could get to me.  As it was they called me about 6 hours later to bring the truck in. This was at a truck stop so I was able to park and take a nap while I waited to get seen.  This time I was waiting the same old routine of emotions is going through my mind: “Why does this always happen that I get a trailer I have to fix something on and cause me hours of down time before I can go?”  (as a truck driver you only make money when the wheels are turning.  You’re paid by the mile not hourly or salary.)  I’m also mad at the jerk that dropped a trailer off that needed fixing. So once again shit rolled down hill to me.

It only takes the mechanic 15 minutes to fix the problem, which was a loose wire underneath the trailer. Now I’m cursing myself for not having the basic mechanical knowledge to fix the problem on my own.  I chalk it up to “lesson learned” and leave to get my first load.  The rest of the 3 weeks on the road I struggle with the same things I struggle with every time I get behind the wheel.  People in cars cutting in front of me at exits and hard braking to exit causing me to have to hard brake and try not to brake hard enough to shift the load I’m carrying which is usually around 34,000 pounds.  Add that to my truck weight and I’m driving a vehicle that ways over 70,000 pounds and takes 5 times the distance to stop as it would take to stop empty.  People that drive that inconsiderately around semi’s just makes my blood boil.  How can someone be so ignorant to the laws of physics of driving a semi?  The exit scenario or someone pulling onto the road way in your path when you’re less than 100 yards from them traveling the speed limit of 45 mph happens on a daily basis.  You have to constantly be on the look out to avoid hard braking which could shift your load and/or cause damage to it.  And also look out for the people that do this to avoid actually killing or severely injuring them simply because they see a truck coming and don’t want to be behind it.  Selfish thinking and ignorance at the same time on the motorists part.  Something of a pet peeve of mine. This constantly being on the lookout causes stress for me because I take what I do VERY seriously.  I’ve always had pride in workmanship. I don’t want to simply do a job, I want to be the best at it.  I guess that’s a trait that adds stress as well but so far I haven’t tried to change that and don’t know how I even would at this point.

So about a week into my trip I get a dispatch to pick up a load in Kentucky and take it to our main terminal in Springfield MO for another team operation to take the rest of the way to California.  While I’m at the terminal I get selected for a random drug test.  No big deal, that is very normal in the trucking world.  Although the I stress at these tests because I have a large bladder and it takes me awhile to go.  Add to that having to do it in someones presence and my stress level goes up 100%.  I have a shy bladder and can’t go, even in public restrooms, if I can see someone.  I struggled with this in the military as they would have someone watching you during the test.  I would have to drink a gallon of water and wait sometime hours before I could actually fill the bottle, which caused grief from the Sergeant giving the test because of all the wasted trips into the restroom that produced nothing.  And for some reason I got picked for these “random” tests most of the time.  So I suppose I attribute these tests as someone trying to catch me doing something I”m not actually doing.  So anyway I take the test and get my next dispatch heading to NE Indiana, drop that off, pick up another in Indianapolis and head to another drop off in London KY.  Then I get another dispatch to take a load to Springfield again. Very strange to be going back within 4 days of being there.  I tried hard to get out of the load because picking it up means I’d have to drive in the middle of the night 3 1/2 hours to get it and I’d woken up at 2:30 AM that morning and the dispatch came in at 10:00 PM that night.  I’d been awake too many hours and didn’t feel safe driving tired thru the middle of the night to pick up the next load.  I went back and forth with the night dispatcher trying hard to get out of that load as I needed at least an 8 hour sleep to be able to drive again.  He wouldn’t have it.  He kept me on that load at all costs.  So now I know, “they want me to come back to take another drug test.  What happened with the first one a few days ago?  Did they mix up mine with another that was positive and now are they bringing me back to fire me?”  Well as it ends up, when I get to Springfield again I ask the gentleman giving the test how often these “random” tests come about.  He tells me “I’ve seen guys get hit twice in a month.”  I say “twice a month?  This is my second in 4 days!!”  He says, “Oh man, that means the guy that gave you your last test forgot to remove you from the computer queue.  You shouldn’t have had to take this one.”  Imagine that?  Again I stress over something I didn’t need to stress over, but at the cost of someone elses mistake.

Lastly on the Sunday before Christmas I’m at a Wal-Mart distribution center where I’d been doing local routes for the past week instead of my usual cross country stuff.  I loved every moment there as I didn’t have to worry about planning trips around hours I’d need to be at a truck stop to find parking at night.  After dark, parking a truck at a truck stop becomes difficult.  Truck stops fill up very fast in the evening.  Parking your truck in between 2 other trucks where you only have about of foot of room between the mirrors of the other trucks can be stressful.  Especially when you drive for a company like mine that hires new people with no truck driving experience.  These companies get a reputation for having bad drivers.  So on the CB radio when other drivers see you driving around looking for a space to park, they say ignorant things like: “uh oh watch your hoods drivers [that company] is looking for a spot to park, he’ll hit you for sure.”  Ignorant statements like that just make me upset. And the ignorance level of the average truck driver is much higher than any other profession I’ve ever done.  And as I stated above, ignorance is a pet peeve of mine.

So Sunday night I let the dispatcher know I’m ready to take a load home to Florida for my home time during the holiday.  Monday morning rolls around and my regular dispatcher tells me to find and empty trailer and hook up and let him know what it is and he’ll get me going home.  I do that within twenty minutes and he tells me he’s looking for a load to Florida.  A few hours go by and he tells me he’s not finding anything going that far south.  He offers me a load that goes to Jacksonville that doesn’t deliver until the day after Christmas.  But I have nowhere to park my truck and a trailer near my house.  I’m not comfortable leaving a loaded trailer unattended until it’s time to deliver it.  So I turn it down.  A few more hours go by and he gives me a dispatch that I have to take.  It picks up in Champaign IL and delivers the next morning in Louisville, KY.  He says “I know its not going to the southeast but it’s as close as I can get you right now.”  Louisville is still a 2 day drive to Florida with the driving regulations the government has. So at best case it doesn’t look like I”m gonna get home until Christmas day.  This will be the second holiday in a row I was promised to be home for the holiday and they don’t get me home until the evening of the actual holiday.  They did the same thing to me for Thanksgiving.  So now I’m pretty much beside myself with grief.  I spend the hours driving from Champaign to Louisville completely depressed at the way things are unfolding.  I have an overwhelming desire to get things off my chest but one of the only people I trust enough to talk to is my wife and she’s having her own issues with losing her job of 20 years and having to run the house by herself and 2 kids and me not being there. So I feel I can’t talk to her. Eventually I call a mutual close friend of ours and unload my grief.  If I don’t get stuff off my mind by talking about it, it festers in me until I blow up later on.  And that is never pretty.  I’m not a violent person by nature, but when I get to the point of blowing up, ugly things go through my mind that always makes me feel worse later for thinking them.  I don’t like those feelings and want to change ever having them enter my mind.

As it all turns out the next day I deliver the load and my dispatcher thanks me for the work I did helping out at the Wal-mart DC and for taking care of the load I just took.  He tells me to go ahead and drive an empty trailer all the way to Florida so I can be home before Christmas!! I can’t tell you how rare that is for a company to let you drive that many miles empty.  I was beside myself with joy and elation.  The good things like that don’t seem to happen to me often so when they come about, I feel overwhelmed with joy.  So know I’m sitting at home with only a couple more days before I must get back on the road for another 3-4 weeks.  Lets see what happens then.