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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When you pick up a product from the shelf at your local market or dept store, I wonder if people ever stop to think what it took to get that product from a raw material to something useful and then transported to the shelf for someone to buy.

This is a story about a bamboo cutting board. It just happens I’m carrying a load of bamboo cutting boards, bamboo bowls, and bamboo serving utensils to a Marshalls Dept store distribution center in a suburb of Boston, MASS.

We picked up this load in North Hollywood California. I asked the lady what we were carrying. She handed me a catalog. Totally Bamboo is the name of the company. This is their story from the back of the catalog:

In a nook in ‘NoHo’ Arts district of North Hollywood, CA, Tom and Joanne Sullivan own and operate a small design and manufacturing studio, focusing on luxury customized director chairs for the movie industry. In their quest for a lighter chair, they experimented with bamboo, long known for its strength vs. weight ratio. The resulting chair was not only lighter but much stronger than the oak they had previously used. Intrigued with using such a renewable ecologically friendly material they set out to design various houseware products using their “engineered bamboo” and in doing so developed the world’s first bamboo cutting board.

Bamboo, they discovered, is 16% harder than maple, making it perfect for a cutting surface. From cutting boards to salad bowls and plates they plan to change the way the world uses bamboo, as a viable alternative to our precious hardwood trees.

The bamboo used for these products is ‘Moso’ timber bamboo. It is not a food source, or a habitat for the Giant Panda.

I found this story fascinating… we have used bamboo rice paddles since I can remember.

Tom and Joanne Sullivan found a manufacturing plant in China and now they import the finished product to their business in North Hollywood. At first they took their new products to swap meets and craft shows where they sold very well. Then they attended a wholesale show in Chicago where the big orders started coming in. Marshalls and T J Maxx “MarMaxx” are just one of their regular buyers.

So next time you’re in a dept store and see some bamboo cutting boards and utensils you know where they came from.

Also… I never know from one day to the next what I’ll be carrying in my trailer. Keeps this job interesting.

Right now I have a student with me. Roland is a recent graduate from a truck driving school in Tampa Florida. Roland is 48 years old and finding that driving a 10 speed semi is not as easy as it looks. Of course my truck has what is called a ‘Super 10’ transmission and even though it is an easy transmission to shift, it always gives my students fits the first week or so. A ‘Super 10’ transmission is just a glorified 5 speed transmission like you would find in any car or pickup except each gear has a ‘high’ and a ‘low’ setting. Normally we start out in 3rd gear (1st and 2nd are granny low gears) which is straight up like 1st gear would be in a stick shift. 3rd gear is the ‘low’ setting for this position. Flip the switch (we call it the splitter) to ‘high’ setting, let off the throttle and the transmission shifts to 4th gear. Flip the switch again to ‘low’ setting, double clutch, and shift lever down to what would be 2nd gear in a stick shift. You are now in 5th gear. Again flip switch to ‘high’ setting, let off throttle and transmission shifts to 6th gear. Repeat procedure for the 3rd stick shift position and you have 7th and 8th gears. Double clutch and move shift lever to 4th stick shift position and you have 9th and 10th gears. Sounds easy, well maybe I have totally confused you… oh well it is easy… once you have learned it. Some students have it all figured out in a day or so. I had one student on the truck for 6 weeks and he never figured it out! He insisted my transmission was broke! It works fine for me.

We are arriving in Barstow CA so I am going to upload this to the blog. We have to be in Boston MA by Monday March 28th
posted by Tom at 3:18 PM