1/13/10

I often hear truck drivers refer to how hard they work. Usually this would be in the context of saying that they deserve higher wages and so forth. Quite frankly, I think they're full of crap. 99% of the time we don't work hard at all. We drive down the road and stay awake, occasionally buying fuel or opening the doors of a trailer. That's about the long and short of it, at least in my experience. Perhaps some people really do believe that we're working hard out here, but I've done side jobs (construction) with my father a few times. That's hard work. I've run a restaurant that was serving $4,000 worth of burgers in an hour. That's hard work. What we do out here is just boring. So it's interesting to me when certain days (like today) leave me feeling like I actually worked my ass off.

I haven't figured out the mechanism yet, but pulling a heavy trailer through the mountains feels more physically demanding to me, even though the truck is the one doing the work. Sure there's more shifting and braking and all of that, but come on. Moving my arm or my leg a few inches would hardly be considered strenuous. I'm inclined to think that it must be psychological. Maybe it's just the cumulative effect of spending several hours paying more attention to every detail than is normally required. The timing of gear changes, the speed approaching curves, the spacial relationship to other vehicles - all of it requires more precision when the trailer is heavy and the terrain is rough. That's my best guess anyway. I'm pretty sure that, in the purely physical sense, I could move my gear shifter and press my pedals all day long without getting tired.

Anyhow, yeah, it was a long day of dragging ass through the mountains. Going through West Virginia in particular is less than fun when the payload is so heavy. The traffic was fairly light though, so good enough. I woke late enough to hit Charlotte after the morning rush but early enough to get clear of Charleston before it got too congested in the afternoon. There aren't a whole lot of parking options along US-33 in Ohio. I remembered taking a break at a little rest area outside Logan once in the past, so that's where I was hoping to find an open space tonight. I got in before 6pm and there were still a couple of spaces available, so that's that.

I have an 8am delivery appointment in Lancaster, roughly fifteen miles from here, so it looks like my recent stretch of sleeping late every morning will have to come to an end. Boo! 8am appointment! Boo!