The Other Side

I'm baaack! Jury duty is over...for a year, anyway

They say "The grass is always greener on the other side." Well, I've been there, and it ain't
pretty. Now we're at the end of 2004, and I'm pretty much miserable - frustrated with the back-breaking job I'm working, pissed off about the prospect of another winter in Michigan.
So, I polish up the ol' resume, and start looking around. That's the one thing about this business - there are always people looking for drivers, sometimes more than others. It's like nurses - there always seems to be a need for experienced pros. I went out on a couple of interviews; I
remember one was a union job driving dump trucks, hauling gravel out of the Thornton Quarry.
I went in at like 7:00am; it was cold as hell, and I remember firing up this old Kenworth (must have been 100 years old), backing up to a gravel trailer and taking off for the quarry, my "road tester" watching my every move. That road test didn't go so well, and I didn't get the job. But there was another outfit that did offer me a job - and I took it!
Looking back, it was probably a mistake to accept the first job that was offered to me, but I
felt a sense of desperation, so I went for it. This was a smaller, family-owned company based in the south (I won't mention their name here), that was doing local P&D (pick-up and delivery)
in the Chicago area. Like many of the larger outfits (Yellow, FedEx, Watkins, et al), they would send us out on deliveries in the morning, and once the deliveries were done, we would go do pickups in the afternoon. All the logistics were done from the warehouse. However, unlike the larger companies, we would make deliveries in some unusual locations (nursing homes, country
clubs, even at people's homes). Undestand I'm driving a day-cab pulling a 13'6" high, 48' trailer,
and trying to wedge myself into some of these places was, let's say, a "challenge." They had a
couple of pup trailers, and one straight truck, which were always busy. So, we were forced to attempt the deliveries best we could under the circumstances.
I was assigned the near North Shore area (Evanston, Skokie, Niles, Glenview, north side, etc),
which was no picnic, let me tell you. I was "filling in" for an older driver, who had been on sick leave due to surgey of some sort. We would arrive at the base about, I dunno, 7:30, mandatory meeting at 8:00, and then assigned a trailer, given our paperwork, etc. The trucks were basically permanently assigned to us, so that was no worry (although we did have to turn our keys in each day). The trailers were all supposed to be loaded and ready to go when our meeting broke about 8:30, but it was rare that they were. I remember days waiting hours before I had a load ready to go. They might have to wait for another truck/trailer to come in and get unloaded.
Needless to say, the warehouse operations wasn't the most efficient in the world.
Then we would take off. It was usually an hour or so for me to get from the near southwest side to my first stop up north. Don't get me wrong: most of our stops were at actual companies, with actual docks we could back up to. You just had to learn the "procedure" at each one; sometimes you'd have to check in first, sometimes you'd have to wait for other trucks that "beat" you there, you might have to back in from the right side, and so on. I actually became pretty good at "blind-side" backing, which is a helluva lot easier with a day cab, where you could look out the back window (you had to make sure the window was clean - in the winter, salt dirties it up bigtime). Nonetheless, I did get into a couple fender-bender type accidents (no injuries, minimal damage at low speeds). Once I took down a tree branch in front of some guy's house. It was a pretty substantial branch, and it fell right on top of the cab. The person wasn't home (Thank God), so I removed the branch and took off. I would make sure to call dispatch in cases like this,
to cover my ass. Another time I was backing down an alley, and brought down a telephone wire that was hanging too low. And on a couple of occasions, while backing in from the blind side I cracked up the driver's side front quarter panel, which included the headlight housing, because I was not paying attention to both sides. I remember duct taping the fuck out of that headlight and housing to keep it in position (the headlight still worked!) Another driver even lent me some packaging tape one time, so I could reinforce the taped area. Nice guy! I almost took out a traffic
light standard at Devon and Western trying to make a right turn, from the right turn lane! (silly motherfucker!) Those right turns in the city are always fun, as are the low overpasses. As a driver, you soon find out which streets are "friendly" and which aren't (Thank God for Foster Ave.) The south side boasts(?) of having a lot of them, but the north side has many also, especially the city of Evanston - a truck-driver's nightmare! There is really only one street (that I know of) to enter the town, and you must be aware of exactly what streets you're taking to arrive at your destination. The east-west streets are the ones that pose a danger, due to the north-south elevated train tracks. Those are the underpasses that cause problems. I was on Howard St., heading eastbound toward the lake, and passed my delivery address. Lo and behold directly in front of me was a 12'6' or something overpass. What to do? This is a busy city street, one lane each direction, with cars parked along both sides. Fortunately, I was able to pull into a gas station on the left, and, with the help of a "street person" holding up traffic, I managed to back across into the parking lot of the garden center across the street, then pull out heading the opposite direction. Not fun. I had a few situations like that. Of course, I'm, cursing and swearing the whole time. WTF!
Believe it or not, the tricky situations I was put into was not my biggest complaint with this outfit: no, it was that they did not pay overtime! Can you believe that? You go out there, put into a fucking meat grinder, and just get paid straight time for all hours worked. You worked until all the work was done, even if you had to double-stack pallets, cramming stuff in any way possible. I had taken a pay cut to move over to this company, and I remember the manager dude telling me they didn't pay overtime. And I still took the job! Now, I ask you, is that sane? My wife was, obviously, livid. We got paid weekly, and I was bringing home $400-500 checks. It was not a good situation, and I'm actually surprised I hung in there as long as I did. After three months, though I was, again, looking around. I had actually been back in touch with my former boss, Frank, who was looking to see if he could fit me back in...

More soon,

Steve