You say potato, I say po-tah-to.

After I dropped my “dry” load up in Boise, the dispatch message directed me to swap my empty dry trailer for an empty reefer trailer at our yard in Payette, Idaho. Payette is where my company got its start, but it’s a really boring place with nothing to do, except swap trailers, which is what I did. Don’t bother ever visiting Payette unless you are in need of an empty trailer.

I drove my empty reefer trailer over to Ontario, Oregon, which is right across the Idaho border from Payette. Ontario is the home of Ore-Ida products, a company that turns nutritious, but bland potatoes into very tasty mouthfuls of salt and fat. 

Ore-Ida is owned by Heinz.

My instructions were to turn the reefer on in advance (in order to give it a fighting chance of keeping something cold) and to show up in Ontario at the Americold cold storage facility by 8:00 am. I did as I was told, and in a couple of hours my trailer was filled with crinkle cut fries and hash browns and countless other forms of what had once been the proud, noble potato.

A really grumpy Americold dude placed a red, plastic seal on my truck, checked to make sure that my reefer was set to -10 f. and then sent me on my way.

My destination was the URM Stores warehouse in Spokane, WA. URM Stores is sort of an independent grocer distributor.  I had been there before so I knew where to go, what to do and where to park for the night. It was a short trip; only about 400 miles away. 

I average only 52 mph, in case you were wondering.

The thing about grocery loads is that they want you to deliver really, really early, usually well before dawn, but they don't want you to hang out there beforehand. The truck stops around Spokane are pretty tiny and their parking spots are always filled long before I arrive. A few blocks away from the URM Stores warehouse is a Conoco station with a dirt lot, and that was my destination. It can only accommodate about ten trucks, but I got there early enough to get a spot. It’s a pothole-filled, mud lot with a rude slant, but it was good enough for the night.

My appointment was for 6:00 a.m. the following morning. I was ready before 5:00. I got my truck over to the URM entrance gate by 5:35, set the air brakes, climbed down out of the tractor and approached the guard shack. I had my Bill Of Lading paperwork in hand.

“Late?” the friendly guard asked me. “No, early, actually” I replied, then added “I’m not due until 6:00.”

He looked at a clipboard and double checked the info on his desktop computer. Then, he made a phone call. “No,” he said, “this load was due at 4:00 am.”

He told me to come back in two days. At friggin' 4:00. “Happens” he said, as if to reassure me that I wouldn’t be the first newbie driver that had gotten totally burned by somebody else's error.

I was gobsmacked. I checked my dispatch; according to my dispatch, I was on time. I drove back to the Conoco gas station and grumbled. I called in to our main office, and, in a whimpering voice, asked them to confirm my appointment time. Their records were the same: 6:00 am on Monday morning.

Normally, my company would work around this somehow. They would, in normal circumstances, just have me drop my trailer and give me something else to do and somewhere else to go. Some other schmoe could deliver the hash browns in a couple of days. But I was way up in Spokane; kind of out of the way and there was nobody else to deliver the Tater Tots but me. I would just have to sit for 48 hours until my newly revised appointment time, which was the soonest one the guard could get for me.

Spokane is an interesting city; there are plenty of trendy restaurants and cool things to see and do. Unfortunately, I was several miles from the interesting part and, besides, I had no transportation. We are not allowed to just drive our trucks any place we want, and probably wouldn’t be able to park a 53 foot-long trailer once we got there.

The Conoco had some hot food for sale, but only whatever they could deep fry. I had my normal food stash onboard too, but I hate relying solely upon it. I treated myself to some breaded Conoco chicken parts one day and some Conoco deep fried beef and bean burritos the next. I also bought some chocolate milk. Sometimes, I like to really live it up.

Tuesday night, at 9:00 or so, I checked my iPhone’s alarm to make sure that I would be woken up in time for my 4:00 am delivery. Then, I drifted off to sleep.

At about midnight, I woke up to silence. When running a reefer, silence is a really bad thing. The reefer diesel’s engine is only a few feet away from your pillow, so you always hear it running.

I put on my shorts and T-shirt, grabbed my flashlight and hurriedly climbed down barefoot to look at the digital display and see the reefer’s temperature. The temps were climbing fast and were up to about +20 degrees. Before I had gone to bed they had been at -10 degrees. After a couple days of sitting, I had managed to run the reefer’s fuel tank out of diesel fuel.

I am clearly an idiot.

It was already past midnight, my delivery was at 4:00 and my reefer temperatures were way too high. I was going to spoil an entire load of frozen food and definitely lose my job in the process. I was ruined! I called dispatch in a panic. A reassuring voice told me to drive immediately to the nearest Flying J truck stop and buy some fuel for the reefer.

I got there and filled the tank, but then I couldn’t start up the reefer. No matter what I did, the reefer’s diesel engine wouldn’t fire up and now its battery was almost flat. The fuel tank for a reefer is mounted very low, down near the wheels, and the reefer engine is mounted way up high. It wouldn’t start because the fuel couldn’t get to it; it needed to be primed. I called Dispatch back; by this time I was imagining the worst. (In my mind, I had already been fired and sent home on Greyhound)

Dispatch transferred me over to “Over the Road Support”, the in-house department which is staffed by crusty, old mechanics. Luckily, they are staffed around the clock with crusty, old mechanics.

Over the phone, a crusty guy explained to this shaken newbie how to stand up on the catwalk and prime a reefer engine, in the middle of the night, while wetting one’s pants. After what seemed like an eternity, the engine actually fired up. Almost immediately, the temperatures in the trailer went back down to below zero. I called Crusty back and thanked him as though he had just saved my life.

I arrived to the consignee on time, load intact, got unloaded quickly and was out of there by 7:00 am.