4/10/2015: Some days you eats the bear...

...and some days the bear eats you, but not before catching you, playing 'clawsy' with your soft skin, and 'toothsy' with some of your bones.

That was kind of my day yesterday. First there was New Hampshire, the state of my ancestral home and a place I haven't visited in 40+ years. We - Mr. Trainer and me - had a load to drop way up in the White Mountains. Along the way, we passed names long-forgotten from my childhood: Lake Winnipesaukee. Franklin Notch. Tramway. The Old Man in the Mountain.

And we passed snow and open, active ski areas. It was chilly and there was a winter storm warning in effect for the area, something that was hard to believe considering that it was sunny and not that cold. But the next morning,mafter sleeping in the truck in a dirt lot across from our delivery location, we awoke to 6" of snow and a considerably colder temperature.

Untarping a load in the cold with wet gloves would prove not to be the worst part of my day, however, because New Haven, Connecticut, would be.

Many hours of driving later, we found ourselves on the outskirts of New Haven on I-91, headed for our fuel stop in New Jersey on I-95. Rush hour traffic was beginning to build and there were some blinking caution lights inside the cab - nothing urgent, just advisory - and I was driving in the #3 lane, as I almost always do, when I kind of heard some chatter on Mr. Trainer's CB radio about debris in the roadway. I was paying attention to the road and not the radio and aiming high when I saw a small car in front of me move away from what appeared to be a lawn chair in the middle of the travel lane.

Mind you, reader, I was carrying about 47,000 pounds of lumber and was probably close to my 80,000 pound gross weight at the time. Lumber is a very unstable load and moves easily, so moving quickly to avoid debris in the road during rush hour would have been unwise.

So I didn't. And couldn't have anyway, because of traffic to my left and behind me. Instead. I hit the "lawn chair" and instantly realized it wasn't a lawn chair. Steering became a challenge and there was a very loud grinding sound. My reactions were to control the vehicle first and slowly pull into the right-side breakdown lane, right under the "Emergency Stopping Only" sign because I surely had one.

Before I got out of the truck to survey the damage, I saw the rather large amount of green liquid accentuated with red liquid, flowing down the right side of the lane.

Diesel fuel and transmission fluid. Judging by the amount and speed, I figured I had severed a fuel line or something. Inspection, however, showed a very different scenario: what I thought was a lawn chair was a very substantial piece of heavy steel bracing, one leg of which was impaled deep into the driver side fuel tank through a 4" hole. It was from that hole that all 50 gallons of remaining fuel was leaving the truck.

There were no injuries and no property damage to anything but the truck, so the next six hours or so were a chaotic jumble of fire department, State Police, and State Department of Environmental Protection investigators and cleanup crews.

Mr. Trainer and I are in a hotel waiting for the truck to be fixed.

And to think I was so close to getting to our destination, our yard in Nashville, Tennessee, for me to test out and me finally getting off this truck and out on my own. We would have been there as I write this, but for a steel brace in a heavily travelled roadway on an Interstate highway near New York City...

So yeah. Today, near New Haven, Connecticut, became my worst day. But even in this badness, there is at least one good thing - at no time during this incident did any law enforcement officer ask me for my driver license, medical card, and load paperwork. So no citation or report.

Sunday, 4/5/2015

Really, this is just another day out on the road of life and this is just another entry on that road. I've been with my trainer for more than the one week originally planned and it's because he is taking advantage of my experience level and didn't do what he was supposed to do. Let me explain.

As a trainer, he gets paid for every mi,e the truck rounds while he has a student on. The student, in this case, me, gets a flat weekly salary regardless of the miles driven. The policy makes sense because new drivers come all levels of experience and ability. In my case, my experience and ability are good, so there was almost no adjustment time. I was up and driving right away, so to speak.

And that's where the issue started.

You see, there is what is known as "team driving" in trucking in which two drivers share one truck. Both have individual hours-of-service logs that must be managed, but there are more available drive hours. Each driver is limited to driving 11 hours per 24-hour period. A solo has 11 hours available; a team has 22 hours available. If a truck averages 50 miles per hour (an accurate average), a solo truck will get 550 miles befor having to stop for a mandatory 10-hour rest period.

On the other hand, a team truck will get 1,100 miles in the same day, having to stop at the 550 mile mark to change drivers. While Driver 2 drives, Driver 1 goes to sleep in the sleeper berth. In effect, a team truck can keep moving 22 hours in every 24. A solo truck can only move 11 hours.

My trainer got the picture very quickly and that is what we've been doing. He drives while I sleep. I drive while he sleeps. And the truck mileage increases, as does his pay. Mine stays the same because I am not paid by the mile while in training. And he didn't make contact with the mother ship early in my training process because he saw a golden egg. To do so would have ended the arrangement he clearly enjoys...higher pay and a second driver who knows he has to keep his mouth shut.

So, good for him, not good for me. I wrote an email to my contacts and guess what? His golden egg will most likely die tomorrow and he will revert to a solo driver again. Without me. And I will head back to Nashville on Greyhound to test out and get my own truck.