10/25/07

When I started at CFI last summer, I came in with my CDL from a trucking school in Detroit. Since I was not an experienced driver and the CFI-sponsored CDL programs had not yet been created, I had to go through the "boot camp" at Crowder College for a week. The last part of the training at Crowder was an obstacle course. The course involved numerous challenges, but they were all varying methods of seeing how close you could get to something without hitting it. I sat at the wheel of the truck and navigated the course, all the while thinking "this is stupid. Why would I want to get as close as possible to anything?" Mornings like this one don't come around often, but when they do I am reminded of the answer to that question.

My customer this morning was a lumber yard up in the backwoods redneck country of western North Carolina. When I showed up, there were two loaded flatbeds blocking the entrance so I pulled in behind them. The gates opened at 6am and the flatbeds moved inside. As the first truck reached the bottom of the hill leading into the place, he stopped. The second truck was on the hill and I was about halfway through the gate. It was a one lane entrance, so there was nowhere else to go. The lift truck (I would say "forklift" but these things were monsters, complete with tank tracks and diesel engines) started unloading the flatbed while the other truck and I were forced to wait. It took maybe twenty minutes, after which the other truck pulled to the bottom of the hill and I assumed his prior position on the hill.

Instead of waiting another twenty minutes when I was supposed to be picking up a load, I got out and walked down to the guy who was doing the unloading. I asked him where I needed to go and he told me to hop on board his lift truck. Then we went for a little ride. "Go down this way, turn here, around this way, turn through here, up this side, turn here, then pull up that way and back her into that middle dock there." As I was riding along and making a mental note of the directions, I wondered if he was aware that I was actually pulling a trailer. Some of those turns looked pretty damn tight for the lift truck, much less a seventy foot long tractor-trailer combo. He drove me back to my truck and I managed to squeeze past the flatbed.

Those turns were quite a bit like that obstacle course at Crowder. I had to get within a few inches of whatever random obstacle (car, stack of wood, building, forklift, etc.) was on one side, so that I could get my trailer past whatever was on the other side. Then I backed into the dock and went inside. The boss man took down my order number, then took a look at my trailer in the dock. It was squarely seated against the pads, but around three inches or so to the left of center. Apparently they drive some pretty mean forklifts on the inside too, because he asked me to move it over a few inches. He said that the stacks of wood and the foklift are exactly as wide as the trailer, so they have to be perfectly centered with the dock door. I went out, inched it over a little, and backed it in again. This time the forklift driver was taking a long hard look. Apparently I moved it four inches or so to the right, rather than three. Muddy ground, no lights, sue me. He said he might be able to squeeze it in, but he would have to let me know. I said screw it and went out one more time. This time I centered it perfectly, down to the last nanometer.

Once they got me loaded I was rolling south. I have no idea what in the hell was going on in South Carolina today, but I've never seen anything like it. There are around 110 miles on I-85 from North Carolina to Georgia. During the first 20 miles, there were cops everywhere. Some had people pulled over while others were perched along the tree lines, waiting. After the fourth big group I actually started counting. From milepost 85 to the Georgia line, I counted 26 cops with people pulled over and another 8 waiting along the road. I've seen states step up enforcement on highways before, but this was insane. People would be driving along, doing the speed limit, then jam on the brakes every time they saw a police car even though they weren't speeding in the first place. After a while it got to be awfully obnoxious.

There seemed to be something up in Georgia too, though not to the extent of South Carolina. I got a red light at the Prepass site going in and another one going out, plus I observed probably ten cops with people pulled over along the way. Weird.

The weather cleared up somewhere in South Carolina and stayed nice all the way into southern Alabama, where I find myself tonight. It's nice and cool, so most of the guys around me have their trucks off. I should get a quiet bit of sleep here pretty soon. My hours are going to be okay for the run to Laredo. After looking at the route, I'll be able to run a full eleven tomorow and get past Houston by the afternoon, then get going again after midnight to finish the run to Laredo. The practical route calls for a trip across to San Antonio and then straight down, but I would much rather run US-59 than I-35 so I'll be cutting the corner. I'll end up getting paid for 50 or 60 extra miles that way too, which is rarely a bad thing.

In the 'laughing my ass off' department today, we have news regarding this guy:

Many of us got a chuckle when the clip and the accompanying story made the rounds on the internet shortly after the incident took place. Apparently the police review board has determined that the cops acted within the state's guidelines for the use of force. Of course the kid's attorney disagrees, but that's not the funniest part. I'll have to paraphrase because I heard it on the radio, but the statement from the review board apparently said that the cops avoided using measures such as strikes to the head and kicking because those techniques would give the impression that the suspect was being beaten into submission. Ummm... yeah. Isn't that exactly what would be happening? So he was 'tased' into submission instead? I don't know. Maybe I'm just sick, but that whole story cracks me up.