You can keep the chains

 
It's winter now, and I am on the home stretch.

By winter, I mean that the weather outside is frightful. I worry that my truck will jackknife and slide right off the side of some icy mountain cliff which would definitely end my career once and for all (if they ever recovered my frozen corpse, that is).

The company that I work for "chains when necessary", (which really means that chaining is not an option) and they also require that their truck drivers stay out there even when only mad dogs and Englishmen are out driving, such as in crappy winter weather. But just how crappy is "crappy enough to require chains"?

The driver has to make a judgement call: chaining up takes time and then you have to drive really slowly. Then you have to stop and remove the chains and that also takes up valuable time. The trick is to accurately predict when to chain but also somehow know when not to chain (sort of a truck driving version of  'know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em'). If you were to crash your truck in ice or snow when you should've chained but you didn't chain, then that would be considered a "preventable accident".

Preventable accidents tend to inhibit one's future employment.

I have only had to "chain" (it's a verb, it's a noun, it's a style of smoking) once so far. I was on I-80, heading eastbound towards the Donner summit with a load of sugar headed for Denver. I did not have the proper warm, waterproof, "high visibility" gear that all the cool-kid trucker dudes were wearing as they "chained up", nor did I have enough experience to even know what the hell that I was doing. It took me about three times as long as everyone else to "throw iron" and the end result was not pretty at all. I am quite an untidy chainer, as it turns out. The chains were sort of secure; I had also attached about a dozen black, rubber shock cords, crisscrossed every which way, but with the chains on you can only drive about 20 miles per hour and, unless they're perfect, they make an awful racket.

My truck was finally chained up, but by then I was cold, wet and absolutely soaked right through to my underpants; adjacent to an area that I generally prefer remain absolutely dry.

Further up the road, the orange overall-wearing dudes from the California Department of Transportation rejected me anyway; I had chained two of the drive wheels correctly but had not chained my two rear trailer wheels as required. And since I was somehow missing one of my trailer chains from my chain stash, I would not permitted to drive any further east than Nyack that night. That was fine with me anyway; my mood had soured, damp underpants and all. I exited down, off the road and parked atop a patch of thick snow alongside some other trucker fellas. Right about then, it got dark and stormy and the snowflakes had become a lot larger and now were sticking to my windshield which effectively blocked out what remained of my world. I typed out a message on the Qualcomm thingie to let dispatch know that it was unsafe to drive and I wouldn't be going anywhere that night.

The word "unsafe" is like a magic word. Once you say that, they can't make you and won't try to force you to drive.

By about 6:00 the next morning, Caltrans had lifted the chain restrictions and my outlook had also improved, though that was mostly the result of my changing into dry clothes. I drove back out onto I-80, continued onward eastbound, driving slowly and carefully on the Interstate of ice towards Reno. I didn't die, as it turned out, though I promised myself to never (ever ever!) chain up again. I'll simply use the magic word. And this is a very, very dry, mild winter. Imagine if I lived and "drove truck" in North Dakota!

I freely admit: I am a fair-weather weenie from California.

By "home stretch", I mean that I have been driving for over nine months, which means that I am almost to one year of being a trucker. My current employer is considered a "training company"; they are one (from a fairly small list of companies) that will take on freshly-minted truck school graduate greenhorns and whip them into shape.

While this is absolutely commendable (they gave me a job, after all), it does not come without sacrifice: newbie drivers are paid newbie wages. One is effectively an apprentice with a thoughtful stipend thrown in (should one care to purchase an occasional hotdog off of the heated, steel rollers).
If the newbie can survive his first year, more opportunities present themselves and those opportunities may include better pay and benefits.

Most newbies do not survive the first year.

After the one year mark, the company that I work for bumps up the pay by four cents a mile, which comes out to about $300 extra a month. And $300 buys a lot of hotdogs.

With that kind of money, that will make me one with everything.