I've been a trucker for the last ten years but now I am back home at "Camp Chaos" and I will be working at the Fontana terminal as a safety specialist. I hope now that I'm home I'll have a lot more time for blogging!


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Well I hope nobody is still holding their breath since my last blog… I didn’t know it would be so long.


I promised I would tell about how I got a speeding ticket and was apprehended by a officer on foot. So here goes. I had a goal of never getting a ticket, well actually I had three goals when I started driving a big truck eight years ago. Goal number one was never have an accident, number two was never deliver a load late and number three was never get a ticket.

My first truck was an old cabover flatnose with 400,000 miles on it and it was thrashed! They apologized for giving me such an old truck but that was all that was available. I drove that old truck for six months.. actually, I drove that old truck for about a week and broke my wrist trying to pull a pin on my trailer(that’s another story) so about eighteen weeks later they put me in another old cabover that was not quite as thrashed as the first one but it’s not much fun riding right on top of the steer tires. I couldn’t wait to get into a better truck.

I got myself stuck in a snow drift and had to dig my tires out and ended up at a truck stop hoping the storm would hurry up and pass but I got a message to go pick up a load 70 miles south and I refused to go because the weather was so bad. I got a message I had better get the load now or how was I going to deliver the load on time1 I went inside the truck stop and called our safety dept and they told me to stay put and if dispatch gave me any more trouble have them call Safety. So the next day I pick up my load in much better weather and I get a message to drop this load at our terminal in Omaha Nebraska and come see my dispatcher… Oh, Oh, I’m sure I’m in trouble now!

I get to Omaha and I locate my dispatcher. He just hands me a piece of paper. I look at the paper and it just says 20120. What does that mean I ask? That’s your new truck! So I go looking among the new trucks lined up against the fence and start looking for truck number 20120. I find it. A brand new Peterbilt No more riding on top of the steer tire! My new truck has 12 miles on it. My wife Sue was with me so we transferred all our stuff from the old cabover to the new truck. The temperature was around ‘0’ outside and there isn’t any way to transfer stuff from one truck to another without having the doors open. So with both motors running and heaters full blast we succeeded in getting into the new truck.

I wasn’t used to a truck with a big nose sticking out the front. We call them ‘hoods’. As I approached the guard shack to check out of the terminal to go get my first load I caught the front bumper on the concrete post positioned in front of the guard shack designed to keep trucks from hitting the guard shack. I bent the bumper about 5 inches out. We had to take a piece of wood and place it between another concrete post and my bumper and we gently nudged the bumper back straight. I was surprised, you could not even tell the bumper had been bent. The date was December 18, 1996.

A year or so later I was once again in the Omaha terminal and I overheard another driver asking about his one year award. I realized I had been driving over a year now so I should be eligible for my first award. So I went up to the Driver Relations window and asked for my annual driver award. I was informed I wasn’t eligible! Why? I asked? “It seems you have a preventable accident on your record.” How? I can’t recall ever hitting anybody. “You must be mistaken, I retort”. “well let’s see… we show you had an accident on December 18, 1996. Oh bummer… my bumper… so there went goal number one!

A few weeks later, I was in Baltimore Maryland, waiting for a load. At about 8:00 PM I get a message to take a load from Baltimore to Auburn , MA. Now you have to understand I was raised in northern California I had only been up to the northeast once before about 8 years earlier driving a motor home. The only Auburn, MA I knew was Auburn Maine so I obtained the necessary permit to take a 53 foot trailer to Maine and picked up my load. The trip information said I would be driving about 250 miles. It was about 9:00 PM so I thought I should be to Auburn by around 2:00 AM. Still should be able to get some sleep before delivering my load at 6:00. At 2:00 I was upset to see I was only part way across Connecticut .. Still had a long way to go… somebody sure messed up on these miles. I kept going, and going. At 5:30 I pulled into Auburn. Tired but glad at least I made it before my delivery appt.
This particular load had three stops. Three Home Depot‘s. No directions.

Home Depot pays extra for a special kind of delivery. We call those loads ’JT’ loads. ’JT’ stands for ‘Just in time’.

I said, how difficult can it be to find Home Depot As I approached Auburn I called on my CB radio for directions to the Home Depot. Sure enough a driver came back and said to take the first Auburn exit and it was up there on the right hand side. I felt pretty good as I went inside to present my bills. The receiving clerk looked at me with a puzzled look. “I not supposed to have any loads coming in today, let me call the office and check on this” then he looks at the bills again and says to me…”You are supposed to be in Auburn Massachusetts!” Great!.. I’m hundreds of miles from where I was supposed to be. How could be I be so stupid! I call my dispatcher and give him the bad news. He rescheduled the delivery for the next day. I got to Auburn, MA that night and was there for the delivery the next morning.

I have two more Home Depot’s to find, no directions…. Stop number 2 is in a little town south of Boston . Determined not to be late for this one I call for directions. I get an answering machine thanking me for calling Home Depot. “Press ’1’ for directions. Good, I’m ready with my pen and paper… a man’s voice took over. In a very thick Boston accent, he said something about getting off the freeway at the Ariel exit and you’re here!” and then ’click’ the answer machine was gone. I didn’t know there were two freeways on either side of this town and I took the wrong one. I was forty-five minutes late for this delivery. I was determined to make the last delivery on time. Before I left this Home Depot I asked if there was someone there who could give me directions to the Home Depot in Medford. I said I ‘had’ to be on time for this last delivery or I might not have my job anymore.

There was a man there on a ladder painting the wall. “Yea I can give you directions. Its real easy, you can’t miss the Home Depot in Medford”, “Just get off at the Medford exit, look for Chappies bar, make a left and the Home Depot is on the left hand side.” Sounds easy enough. So with about 40 minutes before delivery time I head to Medford. Only about 15 miles.

Let me tell you something about Medford… it is a suburb of Boston. They built the roads in Boston around the turn of the century.. The previous century.. The roads had to be wide enough for horse and buggies to pass. Nowadays when people park their cars on the streets they park them completely on the sidewalk or if two cars parked on the street across from each other there might be enough room to walk between the cars. Now imagine taking a 75 foot long big truck into a town like that!

I thought I had good directions this time. I go up I-95 towards Boston and I’m looking the Medford exit. You can imagine my chagrin when I see a sign… ‘Medford, next three exits..’ I take the first exit but before I can reach the bottom of the ramp I see a big sign ‘NO TRUCKS ALLOWED!’… so I get back on the freeway and take the next exit.. This is not looking good… At least there aren’t any ‘NO TRUCK’ signs. I’m looking for Chappies Bar. Nothing even close, not any bars at all… I finally find a bus stop. The only place large enough for me to get out of traffic. I can see a payphone across the street so I call the Home Depot. “You are on the wrong side of town he tells me.” Needless to say I was half hour late for this delivery. Three deliveries, all three late. Goal number three gone.

The next year I submitted a request to be a trainer. The lady in the training department made a trip downstairs to my dispatchers cubicle and said “this driver can’t be a trainer, he had three late deliveries.. All on the same ‘JT’ load!” My dispatcher just looked at her and said “That was just a fluke!” I got to be a trainer.

So now the only goal left was ‘never get a ticket’…

I was in West Virginia, had a heavy load, going north into Ohio. The speed limit in West Virginia is 70 mph
It is 55 in Ohio.
There is a long high bridge over the Ohio River. State line is in the middle of the river. I’m coming down the far side of the bridge just trying to hold the truck back and get it down to under 60 before I get off the bridge. The CB squawks, ‘We have Smoky Bears on foot at the end of the bridge…” I think there must be some kind of roadblock. I see officers on foot, motioning to the truck in front of me to pull to side and then they motion to me to pull over.. I roll down my window and ask “What is wrong sir“… “Our aircraft caught you at 63 miles per hour…” he pulled out his ticket book and… yup you guessed it… goal number two down the drain.

posted by Tom at 8:44 AM