My major in college was Political Science. (Shocker, I know.) My minor was Mathematics. This apparently random combination existed for a reason, believe it or not. Politics, to me, is the most subjective topic in the world. Where political beliefs are held, one man can believe that President Bush orchestrated the terrorist attacks in 2001 while his neighbor can believe that President Obama's parents planted a phony birth announcement in the Honolulu newspapers in 1961. (Then there are people like Alex Jones who probably believe in both hypotheses, as well as a thousand others.) This dynamic, and the vast array of real-life consequences that it carries, has been intriguing to me since the time I got a bad grade on a paper that I wrote in elementary school, merely because the teacher disagreed with the opinion that I expressed. (It was an English assignment. The grammar was supposed to be the focus.)
Math is on the opposite end of the spectrum. Even in the theoretical fields where there may be some present disagreement, everyone knows that one competing theory will be proven correct and the other will be proven wrong. On the settled end of the deal, two plus two will never equal five. The square root of nine will never be four. A curve with two values on the Y axis for a given value on the X axis will never meet the definition of a function. These are facts. There is no room for interpretation. Compare this to the competing views on taxation in relation to economic growth and you'll see the dichotomy that I found so compelling.
Today we focus on the subjective. To my mind, subjectivity is merely a way of expressing the ways that each of us has been influenced. Whether it was by practice, by active (theoretical) learning, or by passive (environmental) learning, each of us has established a framework of views against which our future experiences will be judged.
Get to the point, you say? Fine.
I left Michigan on Sunday night with a load of empty milk crates. After a breakfast break in Kentucky, I arrived at the dairy in Murfreesboro, Tennessee on Monday morning. I dropped my trailer full of milk crates and hooked to an empty trailer, then headed back northward. I got into Kentucky before my hours ran out. After ten hours in a company-paid hotel room, I resumed my trip to Michigan and arrived in Livonia before the sun came up on Tuesday. (We all know that this equals Monday night in my little world, right?) My assessment of the trip for which I was paid $523.92 - awesome. Another guy made the same run with me. He would disagree completely with my assessment. He hated the trip from start to finish.
It was the same trip for each of us. Same payload, same route, same schedule, etc. Our different viewpoints can not, in any way, be based on objective factors. To me, it was nineteen hours of holding a steering wheel, listening to the radio, and having no weight in the wagon. To him, it was two super-long driving shifts, a day away from his wife, and an intimidating route that he had never traveled. I was wishing that I could make that trip two or three times a week. He was wishing that he would never have to make it again.
That's interesting enough, but I think it continues a little further. Since my prior experience involved similar work, I didn't pay much attention to the schedule. I was pretty jazzed about the 20% pay hike. Since his prior experience involved a daily shuttle run to Grand Rapids and back, the schedule was overwhelming for him. '11 on - 10 off - 9 on' was more driving in a short time than he had ever done. Since my prior experience involved varying payloads and varying terrain, I thought that it was awesome to set the cruise control and relax as I rode through the hills. Since his prior experience involved a relatively flat route along I-96, he was full of tension with each hill and curve that we encountered.
You can take this A-B thing as far as you would like to go. The upshot is that my only experience had been OTR and my colleague's only experience had been local. If I had to guess, I'd say that he won't last another two weeks at Quickway, even though it's a local job. The work is demanding and the breaks are not much longer than the federal minimum. It's a shame too because he's a good guy and I can see that he wants to do well. He simply has been conditioned to perceive truck driving in a certain way and that way isn't going to happen here. I've been conditioned to see it in a different way and, given my minimal expectations of the world around me, I'm never shocked when things are a little worse. In this case things were a little better, but...
Time for bed now. More milk to haul on my Tuesday night shift.
Sounds like you've got a keeper there Joe, $526 for 20hrs time, cant really call it work, can we lol. Maybe the occasional runs to TN and VA will keep the "boredom factor" of local driving at bay. Did you run with the other driver (meal/break stops together) or merely running the same route as him? I am a "conditioned otr" driver also in that when went on family roadtrips, my goal was to get on the road and GO, whereas wife and kids wanted to stop here and there, take side trips etc. If our destination was Detroit from Ft Walton Beach, FL, the only stops "I" wanted to make was to fuel, grab some munchies, go pottie and GO, often making the trip w/out a overnite stop in motel (WHAT $80 to sleep in a bed for 6 hrs, NO WAY).
ReplyDeleteI'm definitely not as hardcore as you are. Eleven hours of driving is a little long for my taste, but it's nothing that I haven't had to do a hundred times before. At .447 per mile and $13.45 for the drop/hook, in addition to the nonexistent payload, free meals, and a schedule that avoided rush hours, the trip was a good deal.
ReplyDeleteMy colleague and I were attached at the hip on this one. He had never driven outside Michigan before, believe it or not. He was a little paranoid about the whole thing, so he just kept an eye on my tail lights all the way down and back. We were both pretty tired by this morning, to be sure.