1/31/10

My old business partner is a fairly religious guy. We used to have some interesting discussions involving the nature of prayer and the proper approach to religious practice and so forth. As with any issue involving me personally, you could probably guess that we didn't always see eye to eye. I have no intention to go into any great detail here, but it's worth noting that I found myself much closer to his viewpoint tonight. That's a bit of a departure for me.

After a leisurely day during which I took a couple of extended breaks, I rolled into Stillwater, Oklahoma tonight and found that the road conditions were pretty lousy. US-177 wasn't too terrible though. I missed a turn somewhere along the way and wound up heading out of town to the south, so I had to double back and try again. On the second pass, as I approached what I thought would be the street leading to my destination, I saw a completely untouched sheet of ice covering a pretty skinny little road. I couldn't see a street sign but I was certain that there was no way this could be my road. After another half mile or so, I realized that the skinny icy street was probably the one. I saw a factory of some sort to my right so I turned onto the adjacent street. Anywhere that there's a factory, there tends to be a road designed for trucks, the theory went.

Next thing to cross my mind - Fuck me! Rolling along in second gear at 3mph, there was no guarantee that I would be able to stay on the road. It was a little farm road of some kind with a crowned shape, such that it sloped off noticeably to either side. There was no place to turn around and backing up was not an option, so I had no choice but to hang on and hope for the best. Just stay off the brakes and make the tiniest possible corrections with the steering wheel, I said to myself as I watched the ass end of my truck move from side to side. This is where a lot of self-reflection and prayer comes into play. When you're asking for some sort of miracle, you tend to become keenly aware that you're really not worthy of any miraculous intervention at all. Somehow though, I made it to a stop sign without crashing.

The intersecting road looked as if it had been plowed at least a little bit. Ever so gingerly, I eased around the corner to my right and continued onward. This road was indeed a huge improvement over the prior one. I wound up going through a residential area where I'm sure trucks don't belong, but I didn't exactly have a lot of options at this point in time. Once I found another road that was wide enough for me to turn back toward the main drag, I finally managed to exhale.

Circling back to the north once again, I rolled along very slowly and kept a keen eye out for the street signs. That ice sheet from earlier in the episode turned out to be the road that I needed after all. In first gear, moving at a speed slightly above zero, I started to slide off the road as I made the turn. My tires did finally grab though, pulling me onto the road and keeping me employed for the moment.

At the consignee, I was directed to drop my loaded trailer in a door and then return to the security booth to have my paperwork signed. Getting the trailer into the door was no problem. Getting out from under it was another story entirely. The loading docks were the sort that slope downward sharply from street level to the building. Given the weather that this area has seen lately and the fact that the business is closed on Saturdays, there was a sheet of ice preventing me from moving forward.

Following a bit of advice that I received from an old Canadian guy a few years ago, I put my truck in fifth gear, revved the engine, and let the clutch out. ("Quit being such a pussy and get the damned tires spinning," he had said to me.) My tires spun like a mofo and I managed to move forward a few inches. Then I promptly slid back under the trailer. Shit. After a few repetitions of this scene, I managed to get myself clear of the trailer. I was not, however, able to get all the way up the slope and back to level ground. The security guys had been watching me on their video screens as this process went on. After a little while, one of them came walking out with a bucket of salt and sprinkled the area around my tires. I used my shoes to grind the salt into the ice as well as I could and then waited a few minutes for it to do its work. When I got back in my truck and tried again, I was able to roll up the hill. Beauty.

After getting my paperwork signed, it was time to head to the drop lot and see what sort of adventures I would encounter in hooking to an empty trailer. Surprisingly, I was able to back under an empty and hook it without any issues. I did my walk around and knocked off as much ice as possible, then got back in the truck. Seeing that I almost fell down more than once while I was walking, I had reason to suspect that I wouldn't be going anywhere once I tried to pull the trailer from its parking space. I had nowhere to go tonight but I figured that I might as well not wait until tomorrow to find out that I was screwed. If I would have to deal with being stuck in ice, I might as well do so before I had a new assignment waiting for me. So I put the truck in gear and... I was correct. No movement at all.

I grabbed my crowbar and banged it against the trailer's brake drums a few times, then got in the truck and tried again. Nothing. As a practical matter, it occurred to me that frozen brake drums were probably a non-issue. Even if the tires wouldn't turn, they were on solid ice so they should have slid pretty easily. Thus I needed to focus on getting some kind of traction with my drive tires. I chipped away some of the ice and then started rocking back and forth. One inch, two inches, three inches, five inches... I steadily started to build some momentum. After a few minutes, I was able to drag the trailer forward out of its parking space. Rather than back into the same spot, I drove around to the other side of the drop lot and backed into a different one. This side of the lot appears to have seen a little more traffic and the spot that I took is less icy than some of the others. Maybe I'll have a sporting chance of leaving without too much difficulty. Plus I was able to see that my trailer tires were rolling and not sliding as I drove over here, so that's nice.

I'm #1 on the board at the moment but my 14 hour clock is about to run out and I need some sleep, so I guess I'll have to take myself off duty until tomorrow morning. I've been to this customer once before and, on that occasion, I wound up picking up my next load here after sitting for a full day following my initial delivery. I won't be too thrilled if that's how this trip plays out but I don't suppose I have much say in the matter. No point in trying to get too far ahead of myself.