The Biz

Anyone who has taken training to be a professional driver is assumed to be at fault, regardless on what happens.

When a load is delivered, it is supposed be on time and exactly when the recipient wants it, without regard to weather, truck problems etc. At the same time, the recipient may take all the time it wants to unload, so the driver may wait for hours while to be unloaded, many times making them late for any additional appointment.

For example: Dave was supposed to be at a pickup point at 9 am to load fish for the return trip. They called at 6am asking if he were ready to load. "I thought it was scheduled for 9 am." "Well, we're ready now, come on over." So we washed our faces, shook the sleepy's from our eyes and drove over to the pick up point where we waited for three hours to get loaded and leave the dock. The professional truck driver often feels he is the invisible worker. Everyone expects him to do his job on time, at someone else's convenience, without accident and without appreciation. The truck driver has not had a cost of living wage increase for15 to 20 years, yet the majority of our food and supplies come by truck.

Then there are the laws meant to protect drivers, that change from place to place. For example: In Washington drivers can drive for 11 hours, but must be out of the truck for10. When he drives in to British Columbia it changes to 13 hours driving and 8 hrs out of the truck. When he drives into Yukon the law changes again and he can drive for 15 and sleep for 8.5 hours. Back in Alaska it is drive for 15 hours and sleep for 10. What happens when you drive from Washington, through British Columbia, Yukon, to Alaska in 3-4 days.

Drivers are required by law to keep log books. They have to stop at weigh stations, and if their weights are in error, or if the weigh station operator has had a bad day, they are required to bring in "all their papers". Fines can range from a few hundred dollars to a thousands. And the driver is required to pay them.

Another problem drivers have is their weight load. Acceptable weights change from place to place like the driving, out of the truck times do. For example: In Washington each axel is within regulations at 20,000 pounds. Moving into Canada it is 13,000 for the drivers or front axel and37,500 for the tandem or rear axels. Washington and Alaska allow splitting the two axels in the back in order to balance the weight and be in compliance, Canada does not. In Alaska it is 12,000 pounds on the driver axel and 38,000 on the tandem. In winter time Alaska has weight restrictions for their roads, requiring the trucking industry to carry less weight. There are also bridge laws, and truckers must not exceed the weights or they will be fined. One driver was finded $8,000 for driving on a road he was not supposed to.

Trucks, trailers and wheels weigh about 40,000. Fully loaded it is not uncommon for a truck to weight approximately 85,000 pounds. It is extremely hard to stop anything weighing that much. Four-wheelers or passenger cars often put themselves in danger by squeezing in between trucks or not allowing enough room.

The driver must stop at open weigh stations. As he drives across the scale, he stops on each axel. If his weight is in compliance he is waved through, if it is not, his books, and often his truck are examined for any infraction - sleeping, out of the truck, if he has dirt on the landing gear, etc.
These operators can actually measure the width of the tires and determine how much weight they should carry per tire. Logs are legal documents since a driver has to sign them. In order to make sure that everything is what it needs to be legally, the driver often has to "Cook the books." Which means in order to be in compliance for each different area, where he spends three hours unloading, he may need to only record 15 minutes.

The Laws of Hard Marshmallows

1. There is no candy like a really hard marshmallow. To bite and hear the crack is near unto heaven.
2. Marshmallows do not get hard in a swamp cooler environment.
3. They do get hard when placed in a collander and left on the kitchen cabinet and left to very dry air in a desert environment, but they vary in hardness and do not harden at the same time or the same hardness. Hardness even varies within a single miniture marshmallow, with one side being crunchie and the other side somewhat soft.
4. Even stone hard marshmallows will soften if held in a regular closed hand.
5. It is wise unless you are in a humid area, like Seattle or South Carolina, to find a box, buy several bags of miniture marshmallows, dump the marshmallows out of the bags into the box and close the box. Since the cardboard in porous, the marshmallows will harden at a fairly adequate rate and be available for consumption when you most desire them. However, it is prudent to remember what you have done or you may find you have several boxes hardening marshmallows and forget where you put them.

We have a water cooler at work, with those five gallon bottles that seek to get people wet when the empty is replaced with a full one. To decrease the amount of water we have found that an X cut in the top releases less water when the bottle is changed.

I call the replacement "making water" . I have a knife that facilitates the process, but uncomfortable with asking me for the knife when I am working with a student, a co-worker came in and asked for "the water maker".

Neat Experience

Just talked to a mother who was trying to register her son for classes. He is in South America she works at Weber State College. Oh, the turmoil of long distance details. His transcript arrived but wasn't posted yet. Overrides were needed to get him in to this courses, and then there was the time constraint. She would be leaving shortly to teach at a college in Turkey, and her husband was on his way to Afgahnistan, two sons were out of the country on missions, and her baby grandaughter said, "But, grandma, it's so far away."

Me, I was excited. What an opportunity. What memories they would have as a family. How exciting, I bubbled and then felt bad because I was intruding my feelings on her experience. But, she welcomed them. She was sooo glad to hear my affirmations that she should go, that trusting in the Lord, with faith and prayers, everything would be all right. Then I restated the, should you labor all the days of your life and bring . . . I told her about my father's philosophy that God needed "shock troups" that He could send wherever He needed them to touch lives that were ready to hear. I felt the spirit so strongly. She was grateful that we had talked.

And I, once more, followed the prompting and could get fired because I talked about religious things.

The Trucking Community

Is amazing, normal people like you and I, who do the 8-5 or all in one place kind of job just can't understand this moving, dynamic from one nation through another and back kind of community, at least I couldn't.

First of all the drivers who truck for the same company become buddies, if you see a truck going the other direction that has the same insignia you do, you grab the mike and chat. How's the weather, what about road delays, any cops, and then the more normal topics that you and I do in email or phone or lunch meetings, such as "how are you feeling", "did your get that we talked about last time", and other friendly chatter. Then there are the places you stop to fill up or get a bite or, like Sallie's. It was strange to have a clerk at the local convenience stop say to another, "O, she's with Dave." And the same chatter or familiarity was there.

Other neighbors include the broker who lines up the load to be picked up. He brought us breakfast while we waited to be loaded. Or the fish company, who regularly sees this driver or that one for a load of fish, it becomes "first name basis" Or there is the comraderie with the other guy who is also waiting to be unloaded, or staying around after you are unloaded, to help a driver back into a tight space, or swapping out (dropping your load and switching with another driver and returning back where you just came from) with another driver so he can make a family reunion.

My new daughter-in-law, bless her heart, donated my only can opener to the girl's camp, and I had to by a new one. As the kids say, go fig!