The Sixteenth Crumb
Chicken-Haulin’
Now, if you really want to get technical about
it, it can be argued that anyone who hauls chickens in any way, shape or form
is a chicken-hauler, but I am here to tell you that anyone who would seek to
make such an argument just doesn’t get it. For being a true
chicken-hauler is a state of mind (an attitude, if you will) and this takes precedent over whatever they may be hauling in
their refer (refrigerated trailer).
In fact, it is a matter of legend that the North
Carolina good ole boys, who are credited with being the first to go down this
road, did not even have refers! For they hauled their loads of frozen
fryers on flat-bed trailers, and they would have them delivered in California
before all of the ice the fryers were packed in melted.
Hard to believe? Well, you would do well
not to. For that was an example of a typical truck-driver’s story.
Yes, a truck-driver’s story is quite similar to
a fish story told by fishermen. For they are usually very
entertaining—despite being generally recognized as being a figment of someone's
imagination by those who know better, but it should be kept in mind that not
all apparent fish stories truly are as such.
A good example of how that principle applies to
a truck-driver’s story involves a run made from Salinas, California (around 80
miles south of San Francisco) to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania (around 80 miles
north of Harrisburg). For it is a run of around 2,900 miles (taking the
southern route) that was made by a solo driver in exactly 37.5 hours, which is
an average speed of just over 77 MPH.
Not bad for a 90 MPH truck—especially when all
of the places where speed had to be significantly reduced are considered.
For the southern route passes through Bakersfield, California; Albuquerque, New
Mexico; Amarillo, Texas; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Springfield,
Missouri; St. Louis, Missouri; Indianapolis, Indiana; Columbus, Ohio; Akron,
Ohio; Youngstown, Ohio and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania—not to mention that a very
strict observance of the speed limit for the 500 total miles in California and
280 total miles in Ohio had to be maintained if you wanted to keep driving.
There is, nonetheless, a rest of the story that
needs to be heard. For an owner/operator (someone who drives their own
truck) made that very same run in 31 hours flat, which is an average speed of
over 93.5 MPH!
Yes, the truck he was driving was much faster
and more powerful than the company truck I was driving, but there is more to it
than that. For it takes a lot of nerve to drive that fast that far, and
it took some time before I was so conditioned.
No, I cannot blame anyone who was not out there
on the road during those days, for being quite skeptical. For it was a much
different world back in 1990.
Yes, I suppose it can be said that
chicken-haulers had to go about their business with reckless abandon in order
to maintain their status, but this is not to say that they were necessarily
reckless. For it is hard to set land speed records with your truck laying
belly-up in a bar-ditch out in the middle of nowhere.
The name of my new outfit was TLC out of Fenton,
Missouri, which is a southern suburb of St. Louis, and I cannot remember just
exactly what TLC stood for—if anything. Since Tommy Lange was the owner
when I worked there, it makes sense that TLC might have stood for Tommy Lange’s
Company or The Lange Company, but I cannot say for sure.
I actually met Tommy Lange once when he
personally inspected a load of lettuce I had brought out of Yuma, Arizona and
delivered to his section of the St. Louis Produce Market, which was located a
few blocks north of the Gateway Arch. He was pleasant enough, but he
struck me as being a very serious man. So, I am not sure if he would have
seen the humor in many of his drivers telling people that TLC stood for Totally
Lost and Confused.
Not that I would have admitted it to anyone at
the time, but I did feel somewhat totally lost and confused when I first
started with TLC. For I now had a refrigeration unit on the front of the
trailer to attend to.
Be assured that attend to is an
understatement—especially for someone with no experience with refrigeration
units. For they did not always start when needed. Neither did they
always stay running for as long as needed, and then there was a matter of
maintaining the proper temperature and airflow for the product(s) being hauled,
which could be a nightmare at times.
Being someone who does not always appreciate a
challenge as much as they probably should, I was a nervous wreck from start to
finish on almost every run in the beginning, and it became a lot worse before becoming
any better. For I was absolutely paralyzed with fear the first time I
hauled a load of fresh strawberries because of them being one of the most
perishable items to transport there is.
Trust me, I would have been more comfortable
with a full load of unstable dynamite. For at least I would not have had
to face the music for a rejected load if things did not go well with that.
No, just delivering a load to its destination on
time was not all that a driver had to deal with. For the load must also
arrive in good condition, and this could vary greatly from place to place, even
when delivering the same product to the same receiver in different locations.
A good example of that would be a load of
potatoes (in 10-pound bags) from Colorado
headed to five different warehouses of the company that had ordered them.
For two of the drops were received without any trouble, but there was a lot of
drama played out at the other three.
No, there was nothing different about the
condition of the product. In fact, two of the troublesome locations were
sandwiched between the two good ones!
Ice cream was another product that chilled my
spine. For it starts to melt at around zero degrees Fahrenheit.
It is, however, a load of ice cream from
Indianapolis that I consider to be one of my most memorable. For it
involved ten drops at military installations—starting with Ft. Knox in Kentucky
and ending with Andrews Air Force Base in California.
One of the middle drops was at The Presidio,
which I found to be particularly interesting. For it is located in the
northern part of San Francisco, California at the southern end of the Golden
Gate Bridge, and much of it looked more like just another part of the city than
a U.S. Army base to me. Sadly, what view I may have had of both the
Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz was obscured by fog.
Ft. Knox and Andrews AFB also proved rather
interesting to me. For with both of them being such high-profile
facilities, I expected to have weapons trained on me at their front gates until
my paperwork could be confirmed, but the guards at both bases were more
concerned with why I stopped before entering than anything else.
Yes, I could understand why they would be so
upset if I had of been blocking traffic,
but I had pulled off to the side. The Air Force boys were civil about it,
at least.
In time, it did become easier on me, and it progressed to where I even
welcomed challenging loads. For with each successful run, the legend of
the Goat-Roper was enhanced (even if only in my own mind).
Yes, I grew to think very highly of myself, and
this had a great deal of influence on my
decision to seek greener pastures when TLC changed their policies. For
what self-respecting chicken-hauler would stand for having to drive a 68 MPH
truck under strictly-enforced logbook
regulations?
Now, in all fairness, it was not all their
fault. For it was a high-speed road race between a white Cadillac (with
the vice-president of their insurance carrier at the wheel) and one of their
trucks (NOT ME!) that was the reason for the governing-down of their trucks so
much.
Furthermore, it was being blindsided by a surprise DOT audit that sealed
the fate of such lucrative runs as the Hershey Turnaround. For the run
consisted of picking up a load of Hershey products from their plant in either
Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania (around 10 miles northeast of Carlisle) or Stuarts
Draft, Virginia (around 100 miles southwest of Washington, D.C.) to either the
TAB Warehouse in Fontana, California (around 70 miles east of Los Angeles) or
Modesto, California (around 70 miles south of Sacramento) and re-loading at the
same location going right back to either Mechanicsburg or Stuarts Draft just as
fast as one could go, and there were just too many of them on their books to
justify.
Yes, I made several of those runs. In
fact, I became a favorite of Hershey's. For I could consistently make
three complete turnarounds in a two-week period. Hence, the stuff of legend.
Speaking of legend, I suppose I should explain
what a goat-roper is. For I am quite sure of it not being common
knowledge. For if it was, I would not have had to explain to so many
people over the radio (and sometimes in person) that a goat-roper is a cowboy,
who has to rope goats in order to have sex with something other than himself
because of being too ugly to attract a girl.
Yes, my C.B. handle (name or moniker) was
certainly an attention-getter, and invariably, the question would come up about
why I would prefer goats over sheep. To that
I would matter-of-factly reply, “Because goats are kinkier.”
A variation of the Hershey Turnaround was what I
referred to as being the Half-Hershey. For it would involve hauling a
load of candy out to one of their California warehouses, but the back-haul
would be a load of produce going to usually the Safeway Distribution Center in Landover,
Maryland, which is a northern suburb of Washington, D.C.
Since most of the back-hauls involved only one
or two pickups fairly close to either
Fontana or Modesto, one could usually make out almost as well on a Half-Hersey,
but there were times when things would get out of hand. For unlike most
companies, TLC paid their drivers per trip, which was based on what zones a load came out of and went
to—not miles. If I remember right, a load coming out of the western zone
(California, Oregon and Washington) going
to either Landover, Mechanicsburg or Stuarts Draft (all part of the eastern
zone) paid $500.00, which was not bad at all for the time, but deadhead miles
were generally not taken into account.
Things getting out of hand (as in regards to not
being paid for deadhead miles) happened to me twice after emptying out in
Vacaville, California (around 30 miles north of Sacramento). The first
time, I was deadheaded over 800 miles to pick up a load of apples around
Yakima, Washington, and the second time, I was deadheaded almost 700 miles to
pick up the load of lettuce out of Yuma,
Arizona that Mr. Lange personally inspected when I delivered it to St. Louis.
Thankfully, I was able to talk my dispatcher
into getting me an extra hundred dollars on both of those runs. Of
course, this worked out to be just 12.5 and a little over 14 cents per mile
respectively, but it was certainly better than nothing.
It was coming toward fall in 1990 when I placed
my bid to rise even farther above the mundane and make my mom happy at the same
time. For one of the most infamous of all of the Missouri outlaw trucking
companies to have ever existed was located just up the road from Cassville.
Of course, it was going to have to be one of
those, it’s the thought that counts, sort of things. For with me being
out on the road so much, where I was being based out of didn’t matter a whole
lot. Nonetheless, my mom was still thrilled.
Such was not the case with Sherry,
however. That is, at least not at first. For she had lived her entire
life in and around Columbia, and she was VERY reluctant to move a couple of
hundred miles away.
However, her objections eased a bit when she
started seeing the paychecks I was bringing home, and it was not long before we
were able to put down money on a nice little place near Bethlehem, Missouri
(around 20 miles west of Cassville) which she was excited about. For she
thought the place had a lot of potential,
and to sweeten the deal for her, she found a job doing home health nursing in
the area, which was something that she liked to do.
Just to be clear, it was not on account of what
they hauled that my new outfit was considered to be an outlaw trucking
company. It was the way they wanted the freight hauled that was most
definitely the different story.
Sorry, this is another company that I would
rather not disclose the name of. For I am fairly sure that they are still
in business, and I have heard that they have worked really hard at changing
their ways.
I can tell you that they were a relatively small
company, especially in comparison to the first trucking company I went to work
for. For they usually ran less than 50 trucks at a time while the first
one ran hundreds.
Nonetheless, there was nothing small about their
aspirations. For they ran some of the fastest and most powerful trucks
around, and it took much more than a mere mortal to keep up with their expected
pace.
Greener pastures? Oh my, I believed that I
had found chicken-haulers heaven. For it was not long before they put me
in a truck I called my purple rocket-ship, and thus began the most fun I ever
had out there on the open road.
Oh yes, my purple rocket-ship was most
definitely a force to be reckoned with. For I could start at the bottom
of Cabbage Patch (a mountain just east of Pendleton, Oregon on I-84 that is
very steep on the Pendleton side) going just 55 MPH because of there almost
always being a lot of Oregon bears around (and I am not talking about the furry kind, either!) with a full legal
load (the combined weight of truck, trailer, and load totaling 80,000 pounds)
and still be going at least 35 MPH at the top.
In fact, I once did that while weighing over
84,000 pounds—according to the scale house just west of La Grande,
Oregon! All that saved me from being in really big trouble was still
having the inaccurate scale ticket from the place I picked up my load of OREGON
Bing cherries near The Dalles, Oregon.
So? Well, in a typical company truck at
the time, going 20 MPH at the top of Cabbage Patch would have been the best that
could be hoped for under the same conditions, but this would not have been the
end of the misery. For on grades where my purple rocket-ship would not
pull down a bit, a typical company truck would lose several miles-per-hour,
which adds up by the end of the day.
Hence, the importance of having speed AND
power. For going over 100 MPH is not that much of an advantage if it
cannot be maintained, and draggin’ fly trucks would generally spend an awful
lot of time on the side of the road at the bottom of hills, with a highway
patrol cruiser or two behind them. For a draggin’-fly truck needs to fly down hills in order to make up for all of
the speed they lose draggin’ up the other side, and it is at the bottom of
hills where state troopers like to hang out.
Suffice to say, I did not have to take such
chances, but this is not to say that I was out there taking it easy. For
the chief mechanic of the outfit told me that my purple rocket-ship was set up
to go up to 126 MPH, and all doubts about the veracity of his claim were
quickly proven to be unfounded.
No, I never saw such a reading on the
speedometer. For 85 MPH was as high as it would go, but I have seen the
needle up against the peg at around 2100 RPM (if I remember right) in
thirteenth gear.
Yes, those who know a thing or two about big
rigs back then might be scratching their heads about now. For it was
fairly common-place to set up a four and a quarter Cat (425 horsepower 3406B
Caterpillar engine) to turn 2100 RPM, and a thirteen-speed transmission could
be found in many a truck.
Subsequently, all we would be talking about here
would be that the truck had an under-power top-end of around 85 MPH if that was all there was to it. It
was not—be assured. For my purple rocket-ship was pumped up to turn 2650
RPM, and I still had two more gears to go.
Furthermore, fifteenth gear was turned
around. For in a normal H shifting pattern, the progression of gears
would be top-left for twelfth to bottom-left for thirteenth to top-right for
fourteenth to bottom-right for fifteenth. Whereas, the shifting pattern
on this transmission was top-left for twelfth to bottom-left for thirteenth to
bottom-right for fourteenth to top-right for fifteenth,
which made it into an overdrive gear and gave an entirely different meaning to
having it (the gearshift) up against the dash.
Obviously, I never saw a reading of 126 MPH on a
radar gun, neither. For I am still alive, and I am not writing this from
the incarcerated side of prison walls.
On the other hand, with a friend of mine, who
drove another company truck for the same outfit, running the front-door
(running ahead of me) I made a run clear across Pennsylvania one night in three
hours flat. Considering the fact that this is a stretch of around 350
miles via I-84, I-81 and I-80, I think we
made pretty good time (just under 117 MPH for an average).
I must admit, however, that he could have made
even better time. For his truck was even faster and more powerful than
mine (just how much so was classified), and he had to wait on me to catch up several times along the way.
No, I cannot remember if it was a full moon that
night in Pennsylvania, but such was the case on another night on another part
of I-80. For I can remember looking out at the expanse that lay before me
when I topped the summit of the fairly small mountain just west of Wendover,
Nevada (around 120 miles west of Salt Lake City, Utah) and it appeared that I
was the only one on the road for miles.
So, I decided to keep the pedal to the metal and
the gearshift up against the dash, and I wound up scaring myself pretty good
before I was halfway down the five-mile slide to the bottom. For that was
when I could feel the front-end of the truck starting to lift up with 12,600
pounds of weight on the steer tires, and 140 MPH came to mind.
No, I really did not think that I was doing
anything exceedingly reckless. For the grade of the downhill slide was
not very steep at all, and there were no thoughts of possibly blowing a tire or
two rattling around in my head.
Anyway, it was not until it was time for the
rest of this story to begin that I really became scared. For this was
when my radar-detector sounded off with all it had, and then I saw the
tail-lights of a vehicle coming out of the median and heading back east toward
Wendover.
I pooped my pants for real that time, and I had
to wait until the truck slowed down on its own some before I could stop and
clean up the mess. For my brake pads (all 20 of them) would have surely
burst into flames if I had of tried to stop while still going that fast.
Besides, I figured that hitting my brakes
immediately after being shot by a radar gun would have been a dead giveaway that the unit might not be as much out
of calibration as the trooper may have been thinking. On the other hand,
it may very well have been that it was at the end of the shift, and the cop
just did not feel like having to fill out all of the paperwork required to
justify the use of deadly force.
For they did not write speeding tickets for 140 MPH back then, certainly not
when a chicken-hauler was involved.
No, I never pulled a stunt like that again, but
this is not to say that I started pulling back on the reins all that much after
my miraculous rescue. For I was just having too much fun, and I certainly
did not want the party to end anytime soon.
Much to my delight, it did not. For I
continued to criss-cross the country just as fast as was humanly possible for
quite a while.
It could even be said that super-human endurance
had to have been involved (naturally-speaking, of course). For I took
home over $1,000 a week for nine straight weeks while only being paid 18 cents
per mile!
Yes, the numbers can boggle the mind of the
inexperienced, but after breaking it all down into smaller bites, acceptance of
the truth of the matter should become much easier to swallow. For it only
takes 17 hours to travel 1,020 miles at an average speed of only 60 MPH.
Nonetheless, it still took a great deal of
endurance to maintain such a demanding pace day after day, and with an increase in mileage came an exponential
increase in stress. For like what was said before, there were all sorts
of things out there on the road that could bite a driver on the buttocks at
some very inopportune times, and not the
least of these were speeding tickets.
Well, not exactly. That is, at least not
for me. For as long as I did not get a ticket in Texas and made enough
money to pay all of the others (around 12 per year during my really wild days)
on time, no points would ever show up on my Texas Class A Driver's License
because the state did not recognize infractions in other jurisdictions at the
time.
It was, however, the obligatory logbook check
that went along with a speeding ticket that was a big problem for me. For
on top of the fine involved if found in violation, a stoppage of at least 8
hours was almost always also included, and that was enough to throw a schedule
way off.
Yes, concerns over being caught in violation of
the Hours of Service Regulations were quite stressful, but all of the effort that went into trying to avoid being caught
was almost as bad. For the miles had to be accounted for, and the faster
and farther traveled, the harder it became to do so.
To give you an example, it legally took 28 hours
to drive to Buffalo, New York from my outfit's home-base (1,003 miles).
Whereas, I once made it in 10.5 hours (around a 96 MPH average).
Therefore, it would take three different
logbooks to be safe while making such a run. For I would start out with
one that would have my time of departure backed up just a few hours in order to
account for my speed, and after I had driven around 500 miles, I would stop and
fill out another log book that backed up my time of departure enough to account
for the total length of legal driving time and 8 hours of off-duty time.
The other logbook would be used to provide the company with the original of
each day’s log to keep on record as required by law.
It was (of course) those originals that the DOT
would audit from time to time, and my company was a prime target. For
their wild reputation was well known far and wide.
No, I do not know how they did it. Perhaps
some deft sleight of hand being employed, or maybe something much more
conventional—like…bribery? For they survived every audit relatively
unscathed while I was there, and I was sure glad they did.
Despite all of the fun I was having purely from
tearing back and forth across the country like a bat out of Hell (yeah, I
really did go there, Pete) with its tail on fire, I would still become bored
from time to time, and that is when I would take my turn at tormenting some
greenhorn over the radio. Some of my favorite targets were drivers of
Schneider trucks, which were nick-named pumpkin trucks because of generally
being painted orange.
I hit the jackpot
one day while having to behave myself north of Columbus, Ohio on I-71.
For after seeing a bunch of pumpkin trucks ahead of me, I asked over the radio
if it was true that I could make a lot of money driving for Schneider. Lo
and behold, one of their drivers answered me by saying that it was indeed
true. I then asked him if he would tell me the truth about something, and
after he said that he would if he could, I asked him if it was true that one of
the bonuses for signing on with the outfit was that when a person completes one
year of safe driving, they are given the location of the great pumpkin patch.
Yeah, I suppose you would have had to have been
there, and I am sure glad I was. For there was nothing but dead silence
over the radio for a good five minutes after I asked about the location of the
great pumpkin patch. I mean, even the stuff that had nothing to do with
the conversation I was having with that Schneider driver shut down.
Finally, someone else said that possibly
learning the location of the great pumpkin patch was enough to get them to at
least think about signing up, and then the radio went silent
again. Since no one ran off of the road from laughing too hard, I
think a good time was had by all—except for maybe the Schneider drivers within
radio range, of course.
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