The truck stops here

Truck stops are ghettos for people that have 53 foot trailers.

Trucks, being big, heavy and really hard to turn around are not allowed on most city streets and they are certainly not allowed to park wherever they want to. If it were not for truck stops, there would be humongous trucks parked all over the place; parked all here and there and everywhere. (It would be a real nuisance. You would never be able to back out of your own driveway.) Big trucks are allowed on main highways and onto just enough streets to get them to their terminals and whatnot, but pretty much nowhere else. That leaves truck stops as about the only places where they are allowed to go when they're not out on the open road.

I go to truck stops, but I really really really don't like truck stops. I try to avoid them whenever possible.

New haircut, same attitude.

Truck stops usually are from one of these brands: Pilot, Love's and TA. There are some independent truck stops too, but the company decrees exactly when and where we are allowed to buy fuel, and since it is always one of the soulless brand-name majors, I usually have to stop at one of those soulless brand-name majors.

Truck stops have lotsa parking spots that are big enough to hold really big trucks. There are usually over one hundred or more of these parking places, but there are never quite enough to meet demand so the parking lots are about full up by early afternoon. Any spots that are left over are only available because they're very hard to back into (especially for a newbie like myself) or directly adjacent to a stinky, poop-encrusted cattle truck. And instead of getting an easy "pull-through" parking spot, you have to do a 90 degree backing maneuver into a spot directly between two expensive trucks while judgmental truckers with names like "Bubba" are watching. My advice: don't hit somebody's expensive truck when you're parking.

The drivers with actual experience make sure that they get there early in order to get a good spot. I contend that they plan their entire work day around that night's parking spot. However, when one's drive finishes up late at night (and that "one" is me), one is going to find himself shit out of luck finding a suitable spot to park and one will find himself parked somewhere by the side of a busy road, at a noisy, freeway off-ramp or somewhere else that's pretty awful.

Truck stops sell just about everything a trucker might need. Besides a spot to park for the night, they sell fuel, really big tires, truck service, truck washes and public scales. The scales are for weighing the truck, not the driver (although I have seen some pretty large truckers who would need to use them).

Inside the truck stop is where all the "cool" stuff is. They always feature some sort of bland, sit-down restaurant; sometimes a Denny's, other times a restaurant that is kind of like a Denny's but without the panache. For those with less discerning tastes, other dining options include Subway  (there is always a damn Subway) and perhaps a Taco Bell or a Popeye's. And if those options are too highfalutin for you, there will be some suspicious hot dogs turning endlessly on heated, metal rollers that are available for purchase right near the cash registers. Adding to the ambiance is music; the world's most overplayed oldies are continually piped out of speakers secreted in the ceilings all over the property. Don't worry: if you're anyplace indoors or even outside fueling your tanks, you will still be able to hear the stupid songs of your youth.

The stores in truck stops sell anything and everything a discerning trucker could ever possibly want. They sell several brands of flavored chewing tobacco, overpriced T-shirts with "funny" sayings printed on them, baseball caps bedecked with Confederate flags, refillable 48-ounce insulated travel mugs, endless energy drinks, pills and potions and also feature a large rack of DVD movies created with a customer base of dimwits in mind. In addition, they sell a selection of CB radios, radar detectors, overpriced GPS units, replacement truck lenses made with amber or ruby-colored plastic and Lord knows what else. (Much falls into the "Lord knows what else" category.)

And coffee. Truck stops sell truck loads of coffee.

Truck stops sell numerous types of good coffee but they also sell hot liquids that masquerade as coffee. From the embarrassing amaretto-flavored drek to a respectable, strong-willed, home-schooled, dark-roasted Arabica drip (which actually ain't that half bad); they sell enough varieties to suit anyone. And since all of it is, after all, drip coffee and they sell it and replenish it pretty fast, the product doesn't sit around long enough to get fetid which means that it meets the needs of this fussy coffee snob.

Truck stops have public showers. My truck may be nice, but it doesn't have a hot shower, and after a few days of driving, a shower is worth whatever the hell they want for it. Though writing the words "public showers" and "truckers" in the same breath gives me the vapors, the showers are not bad at all. In fact, the ones at some of the Pilot truck stops have high-end fixtures and expensive ceramic tiles with sufficient ventilation and drainage. There are usually about a dozen of these showers. (Each in a clean, private room with a stout lock with which to secure the door). The cost for a shower is usually about $10.00, but we rarely have to pay our own money for them. Whenever you purchase 50 gallons of fuel or more, you obtain a free "shower credit" to use later.  Included at no extra charge: fluffy towels. I love fluffy towels.

No PBS allowed.

Truck stops also have a "driver's lounge", a place where cranky drivers can retreat to escape the families traveling with noisy children on summer vacation. Inside these exclusive lounges are coin-operated video games (that nobody ever uses) and free TV rooms. The TV rooms are often set up like diminutive movie cinemas and are pretty nice, except that they show nothing but crap. Reality TV seems to be in style and always seems to involve buying cars at auction, buying guns at auction or buying the contents of public storage spaces at auction. Other times, there is some sad-ass movie being shown. I have yet to watch an episode of "Masterpiece Theater" in a trucker lounge. Snooty me, I avoid the TV lounges.

Truck stops are also a source of WiFi, but they charge a lot for it, as if this were still 1996. What's up with that? Due to that little issue, my laptop stays stowed most of the time.

Instead of parking overnight at truck stops, I have been stopping for the night at roadside rests or just camping al fresco. The only drawback that I have found is that I don't get to eat tasty hotdogs that have been warmed on metal rollers.

Pre-trip the light fantastic

The "Pre-trip" is a systematic inspection of the tractor and trailer that one must perform each and every day.

There are something close to 200 inspection points on each rig that need to be looked over every single morning, no matter how crummy you're feeling or if it is raining cats and dogs outside. In truck school, the Pre-trip is one of the things that you learn by rote and have to practice every day. You need this knowledge for the DMV test, as well as for on the job. Before one can qualify for a commercial driver's license, the Pre-trip sequence is something that one must recite from memory in front of the DMV Examiner perfectly. If the hapless applicant cannot recite, define and point to 200 separate truck thingies straight from memory, they cannot proceed to the rest of the test, no matter how well they know to drive a truck.

The DMV is strict on the Pre-trip part of the exam for a very good reason.

"Essentially," the teachers said, "you are piloting an 80,000 pound bomb!" My teachers repeated this phrase over and over. It is a good meme, so I will feign originality and just repeat it here.

So every morning, I get out and check out a bunch of stuff, open the big 'ol hood and look for things that seem out of place, check fluids, check hoses, check belts, look for seepage, leaks and drips, make certain that all the lights work, that sort of thing. This inspection should take about 15 minutes when done correctly; the Company is keeping track of the time that it actually takes. Before doing the inspection, I tell the Qualcomm that I am "on duty" but not yet in "driving" mode. (The Qualcomm always records when you're driving) The Company has immediate access to live data and the Qualcomm machine is telling them in real time just exactly what I am up to. And believe me, they look. Woe to the driver who just starts driving without doing a proper inspection beforehand! No cheating! (The Pre-trip actually takes me only eight minutes, I pick my nose for the remaining minutes)

I am not only doing the Pre-trip just to please my corporate overlords; it is my very own fanny that I am trying to protect. If something has broken loose during the previous days' trip, I kinda want to know about it before I am out there on the road, driving 55 miles an hour and piloting an 80,000 pound bomb down a mountain, for goodness sakes.

I have the same Peterbilt tractor every day, but the trailer is always different. Most days, I usually start out with one trailer and end up with a different trailer. Whenever I hook up to a new (unfamiliar) trailer, I thoroughly check it out: I make sure that it has a solid frame, that all its lights work, that it has current registration and I also make sure to check the air pressure in the tires.

That would be eight tires to check, by the way, AKA "Duals". Usually, anyway. Some of the newer trailers have "Super Singles", which are big, wide, modern tires. Then, you will only have four to check with the tire air pressure gauge.There is no real shortcut, checking the tire pressure one by one is the only way to know that you're safe to roll and that you won't crash your 80,000 pound bomb into a hapless Prius. By the way: checking the trailer tire air pressure is, to put it plainly, a bothersome pain the ass.

So then, you are halfway to your destination and you pull over alongside the road for the night. The next morning, you still have to check out your tractor and look for leaks, drips and seepage, check out your lights and stuff, but you don't have to check the air pressure on the trailer tires with a tire pressure air gauge this time. What you do instead is to use a hammer, walk around the rig and "thump" it on all the tires to ensure that they're holding air and, supposedly, you're good to go.

Now then, while this is the way that I was taught, not everybody agrees with this method. The correct way, the naysayers maintain, is to use an air pressure gauge. Thumping on tires is never a substitute for accuracy, as some clearly paraphrased sources might say.

I had parked for the night in Parma, Idaho, and was doing my Pre-trip the next morning. I walked around the trailer, looking for signs of things out of place, looking underneath the trailer to make certain that none of the previous evening's libation enthusiasts were asleep underneath and I was thumping my hammer on each tire as I went.

I heard "bong, bong, bong, bong...thud".

"Thud" is not the sound that I wanted. I scurried back to the tractor and grabbed my air gauge.  The offending tire only had 25 pounds of air pressure in it when it was supposed to have had 90.

I was suddenly a believer in the "thumping" method. I immediately sent a Qualcomm message to the "On The Road Support" department, and they sent out a nice man who put a new tire on the trailer while I sat and watched.

The really good news is that I had done everything right: I had done my Pre-trip, I had discovered a flat tire before I had departed, not while I was going down a long, steep curve with a 6% grade with a full load in an 80,000 pound bomb. Live another day.

Truculent

After spending nearly a month in training, I was owed some time off. I got a ride down to our Company's yard in Yolo County; I hitched a ride with another May driver who was headed that way anyway. Our yard in Yolo was also where my new truck happened to be parked.

I had been given an ignition key and a form to fill out, sort of like when you rent a car from Hertz; look for pre-existing dings and dents so that you won't get blamed for them later.

Newbies usually get the oldest, grottiest equipment. I didn't know much about the truck; its year and mileage were not listed anywhere. I had no idea of its condition, age or worthiness. I only knew that it was a Peterbilt and it was going to be mine to drive. Having heard tales from other drivers picking up their trucks, I had expected the worst.

I found my truck in a dirt parking lot filled with other identical trucks. I climbed inside and saw that it was relatively clean and the mileage was quite low: just under 200,000. I had expected closer to 450,000.

My new truck, as it turned out, was just fine.

My first "load" was up to Chico. I was supposed to pick up a heavy load of flavored fizzy water and bring it back up to the main yard in Brooks, OR. I had been to this particular shipper before. Everything went well as I backed up to the dock, got my load and was back on the road. As this was a "heavy load" (over 40,000 pounds) I needed to get it "scaled" (weighed) first. I drove to the scales in Corning and got the truck weighed, paid with my Comdata card (that bizarre debit card system that Truckers use) and was on my way.

A little while later, I received a message on the Qualcomm box instructing me to get 50 gallons of fuel at the Pilot station in Weed. I had only a vague idea of how to go about doing this (the mechanics of paying for fuel with only a Comdata card at that time were still a mystery to me), but I got through it with no mishaps. Apparently, purchasing fuel there is considered too expensive, so the the company gave me enough to get by but wanted me to wait until I was back "home" to do a proper fill-up.

Next on my agenda was getting my butt back on the freeway and heading north. After Redding, I encountered hills.

My new truck and I were not the best of friends yet. I kept annoying it by asking it to go into gears that it would rather have no part of. It wasn't all that sure how it felt about me, its new driver. It quickly let me know when I  had annoyed it, and I was doing that often.(I had been trained on a Freightliner, but this was a Peterbilt. Similar, but different enough to be a pain. All of our trucks, regardless of brand, have the same 13 speed transmission, but what had been smooth shifting on the Freightliner was now not.)

The hills on the Siskiyous are really not all that steep. The highest pass is only at 4,000 feet or something like that. But when you have a heavy load of flavored fizzy water and you're going up a hill, downshifting quickly quickly and smoothly becomes quite important, and I wasn't doing either well at all. Unfamiliar truck, buttons and switches in all sorts of different places, steep hills, heavy load and a full bladder. I was a wee bit stressed.

But I made it over the hill and back up to Salem where the Mothership is located. Once there, I "dropped" the trailer (another driver would be taking it the rest of the way; final destination Puyallup).

While I was at our home yard in Brooks, Oregon, they sent me a message to pick up a trailer full of C&H sugar and haul it up to a couple of Costco store locations in Washington.

I was all set to go, but the trailer full of sugar was not at the yard waiting for me; it was still en-route. Damn.

It would be en-route for several more hours, which meant that I would not be able to get going that day, for I was just about out of available driving hours. The delivery had to be made at 5:30 the next morning, which meant that I would need to be on the road by 2:30 am at the latest. (insert grumbling here) I woke up early enough and, amazingly, the first stop went fine. The second stop was the problem.

The second Costco store had a loading dock that must have looked pretty good on paper, but was just way too difficult for me to back into. Here I was, trying to get my set-up right, yet there was a concrete planter box right on front of my truck. Then, to make matter worse, employees had parked their cars exactly where I needed to pull forward. I just couldn't do it. I tried over and over and was getting more and more stressed and performing worse and worse each time. Finally, another driver showed mercy on me and backed the truck up to the dock for me. I would still be there if he hadn't, still trying to get my set-up right. It was very humiliating.

When I was done with Costco, the Qualcomm sent me over to Olympia, WA to do a "drop and hook". I "dropped: my trailer (no more Costco sugar) and "hooked" up to a new one filled with paper. This new load needed to go someplace near Astoria.

"Drop and hook" is the easiest thing that one can do. It is much better than a "live load" because you don't have to wait for humans to unload the truck and so, theoretically, one can get back on the road quicker. It still takes some doing, though. One must visit the Shipping office and get instructions and paperwork. Each office has a different set of procedures and each office just assumes that every other office operates like they do and you must be a friggin' idiot for not instinctively knowing theirs.

So you get the papers, slide your tandems all the way back, break the seal, open your trailer's doors and try to back up to the right door without hitting anything. You set your brakes, turn off the engine, climb down, grab your gloves, chock the wheels, pull the kingpin release handle, lower the landing gear (always a puzzle for me, as they vary and can be quite balky), undo the air line glad hands and electrical "pigtail", stow them safely, lower the airbags and drive away.

Then, you find your empty trailer (the right one, not just any old one), back up to it, set your air brakes, climb down backwards out of the truck, check the fifth wheel clearance, climb back into the truck,  release your air brakes, back up until you hear the locking jaws engage, do a "tug test", set the air brakes, shut off the truck, climb down backwards out of the truck, raise the landing gear (which way is "up" to crank? I can never remember), hook up the air line glad hands, hook up the electrical pigtail, climb back into the truck (forwards), turn on the headlights and the four-way flashers, wrap the seat belt around the trolly brake, climb down out of the truck (backwards!), grab the air gauge from the door pocket, inspect the trailer for gouges, check the air pressure on the trailer's tires, check that the trailer's lights are all functional, check the registration and DOT inspection sticker and note which month when the trailer was last inspected, check the license plate light and door latches, slide the tandems (forward this time), climb back into the truck forwards and take a sip of water.

Before you go anywhere, you must send in a message saying that you're now empty so now they can load more work onto you.

In this case, I had dropped an empty trailer and was picking up a full trailer and taking it to a place near Astoria. Getting down there was fine, but it takes time to get off of I-5, snake through the town of Longview and drive up and over the Lewis & Clark bridge to Hwy 30. I made it on time, dropped my load and everything was OK.

Three loads in one day wasn't enough. They added a new load onto me, and by this time it was afternoon. I sent a message to my Driver Manager stating that I probably would not be able to complete this load on time. She tells me to "roll" anyway. I had started driving shortly after 2:00 am and I was losing it; exhaustion was setting in and I was moving in slow motion. I was in a Georgia-Pacific facility, and, in addition to all the trailer-dropping procedures listed above, I had to contend with 15 mph speed limits, speed bumps and the GP employee time schedule which, frankly, isn't quite as time-sensitive as my own. The GP employees don't have 14 hour D.O.T. clocks, but I do. Now I have a loaded trailer, so I have to send a "loaded call" on my Qualcomm, one that takes time (it asks you for all sorts of information; fluid levels, trailer sticker number, temperatures, etc.) and a separate "departing shipper" message. And I still had to snake through the facility, over the speed bumps, stop, sign forms with the guards and have them check my seal number to show that it was intact. My Driver Manager "sees" that I am not moving, decides that I am just screwing around and sends me a snippy message.

I make it as far as Longview, WA, pass a likely truck stop, take the next street in hopes of making a U-turn and returning to that truck stop to park when my Qualcomm machine sounds a loud "gong" warning me that I had only 20 minutes left before I was in violation. So I just stopped. I didn't even return to the truck stop. I found a wide spot to pull off the road right there and stopped right there for the night. I was exhausted, I was sweaty, I was in trouble with my Driver Manager and I hadn't even finished my first week yet.

At least I am still in D.O.T. compliance. This load will just have to wait until the morning.

I am going to sleep now. Screw it.