I want to do a follow-up to my “Share, don’t stare” post last week. I was actually told by Technorati, based on what they read on Life On The Road, my “skills” and “interests” were not transferable outside of trucking. What nonsense. I revel in the fact that a book like “The Help” by Kathryn Stockett, was rejected by 60 literary agents before it was published. I think they’re just a lot of lazy thinkers out there in positions where they shouldn’t be. However, I have to believe the best of us will and do prevail.
OK, let me step down from my soap box. Sorry, I needed to get that off my chest. I do want to focus again on the issue of truckers “living facilities” provided to them on the road. There’s a old story told by comedian Jackie Mason (he’s old as well) where a Jewish mother was embarrassed that her son was a truck driver. It is tradition that smart sons of Jewish (and Italian) mothers need to become doctors, the not-so-smart ones, a lawyer, and the retarded ones, accountants. A truck driver, never.
So the son of a Jewish mother gets his new truck and wants to show it off to his mom. She’s not happy. If he were a partner at the trucking company, it would be better. He tells her to go out front and he’ll pass in front of her house on the highway. Well, she’s thinking, how can she do this in front of her family and friends?
He is a truck driver – an embarrassment. What does a truck driver do – he drives the truck. He pushes the buttons, he watches the dials and maneuvers it through traffic. A light bulb comes on over her head. He controls the truck! He is a COMPTROLLER in the trucking business!
That “enlightenment” made it all better for her and the son drives by in his new truck. I’m sure a lot of mothers feel the same way. It’s a question of pride or punishment. I know if my father were alive and found out I was a truck driver, it would be punishment for him and me. That was never what he intended his son to do.
So, you get the job with the trucking company you had hoped for. You survive the endless 15 stop Greyhound bus trip to orientation, do the 2 day “intensive” training and get assigned a tractor. Hopefully, it’s one you like. I know many new drivers where the relationship between them and their new company ends just when they get their truck assignment. I also know many senior drivers that turn in their old used truck, just to get another “older” model while the new guy gets a new unit. Unless you’re buying your own, nothing in the truck assignment process ever seems fair.
And, I go back to, just what the heck are the carriers and the manufacturers thinking, when a person or a couple is given a truck to spend 2-6 six weeks in, trying their hand at Life On The Road. It makes no sense to me. Right off the bat, the driver is clearly the loser. He or she has already made the sacrifice, leaving their home and family on that creepy Greyhound, shacked up in a cheap roach infested motel with someone who snores up a storm, being groped by a stranger to see if they have a hernia and then given a truck with little or no efficient space to live in.
What a way to start out a new career. I have found the job switchers, those with experience, even more dissatisfied at this point. The “recruiter” promised me as new this or that. A studio sleeper? A stand-up with skylight. A bigger mattress. An APU. An inverter. Why the truck isn’t even cleaned out. It’s a mess and I don’t smoke. The last guy probably had a cat. Why are those pens jammed in the wall? Where did that dial go? The radio doesn’t work.
We’ve all been there. I broke down somewhere in Missouri once. Operations forgot about me. After I reminded them of my existence, they sent a driver (days later) to pick me up and take me somewhere, deep in the Iowa tundra, to pick-up a brand new Pete that a driver had abandoned. I found it and was dropped off next to it – frozen in ice. The truck wouldn’t start and its former resident had left all his stuff in a large cardboard box right on top of the bunk. The carrier told me I had to keep it until I could drop it off at a terminal when I was a given a trip “through” one. They had no idea when that would be. I had other plans for it.
Obviously, there was no room for me, my stuff and all his stuff. It looked as though he got out of trucking school, went on a shopping spree at a T/A and I couldn’t even lift the box it was so large and heavy. The new Pete was pure “stock” with no options or additions. I knew instantly it was unreasonable for this company to expect time do my job in this truck. They didn’t care and after a short time, I didn’t either. So typical of many new situations with a driver and their new job. A better, efficient, better thought out truck would have made all the difference.
For me and so many others, it was sheer punishment. Yes, I’ve had pride, only after I made the necessary “modifications” to make it that way.
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