Why would Evonik Goldschmidt ever stick out as a customer? It’s not like I was picking up anything of note there. As far as I knew, it was to be another faceless warehouse. This one was in a small town just south of Richmond, Virginia.

EG was my second last stop in a tightly packed four days of deliveries and pickups. So far, I had crammed a lot of driving and freight moving into about 58 hours.

I had begun the whirlwind trip with two deliveries in upper state New York. Then I headed southeast for several drop-offs in the Baltimore-Washington area. Much further south, I unloaded a single pallet in Virginia Beach before burning all the way down to Washington, North Carolina. One big pick up there and I was headed back north into Virginia.

If your head is spinning just thinking about doing all that mad scrambling in three days, you’re right on target.

By the time I hit Wednesday evening (June 15th – my daughter’s birthday, incidentally) I was feeling drained. More importantly, legal-wise, I was running out of service hours for the day and was trying feverishly to get parked, to stay ‘in compliance.’ Personally, I was anxious to get home to a weekend of outdoor concert fun.

EG shouldn’t have been tough to find because it’s a huge factory and warehouse complex with a clear sign, a long wide driveway and prominent gated entrance. It’s the kind of well-marked compound that a communications junkie like me loves.

My arrival ought to have been swift and seamless.

But this is the trucking world after all, and chaos often reigns supreme. So …

Wrong address.

Which led to a delay in arrival time, which meant my massive tractor-trailer trying to find its way at dusk, which created much annoyance.

Here’s where I need to tell you a bit about getting a ‘wrong address’ in trucking. There’s a lot of information shared between Canadian and American customers and third-party logistics companies. Often some of this information is incorrect, such as shipping department opening and closing times, freight size and weight, phone numbers, contact persons and yes, addresses.

This information is passed on to trucking companies which then pass it on to their drivers. Neither have time to verify a boatload of names and numbers that should have been correct all along.

The verification process for truckers is often this: we call a customer and ask, ‘What time do you close today and when do you open in the morning?’ When we don’t get a person on the line, we leave a voice message and wait impatiently for a response which may not come.

So how do logistics professionals – individuals who should have a good handle on the complexities of trucking – get an address wrong? I don’t mean by a single digit; I mean often an entirely different number and street name. I couldn’t begin to diagnose this dilemma: where it begins and how it filters down through the channels of communication.

Mercifully, in this case the solution ended up being uncomplicated. I made a call to the given number and an after-hours security guard answered.

Initially I wasn’t patient and I’m sure that came through on the phone. Yet this young lady was a model of understanding and helpfulness. We quickly deduced that the street number I was given was just one digit off. I had number 912; they were at 914.

So, only one digit away. Fair enough. However, in trucking, as in life, close only counts with horseshoes and hand grenades. In this instance that address was somehow across the street and down the block a little way.

Despite my haste, I managed to eke out a sincere ‘thank you.’

When I finally pulled into the complex, I got out and walked to the security booth and thanked the nice lady again for her help. I mentioned that I was told earlier that day on the phone that I could park there for the night. She told me that was fine and pointed in the direction of clearly marked truck lanes off to the right. I sidled the truck over there and switched my duty status to ‘Sleeper Berth.’ That’s the official ‘sign off’ for the evening.

Finally, the promise of relative quiet and calm advancing gently towards eight hours of deep sleep.

Morning came and I spoke to another security guard who cheerfully called the docks for me, to see if they were ready for loading. They weren’t quite ready, which briefly gave me pause or concern as I passed this message on to dispatch. Dispatch in turn had cause for concern. It was all for naught as the guard gave me the okay within 10 minutes.

The rain came fast and hard as I was directed down the road to the loading docks. It was the kind of pounding showers that are familiar to regular visitors of the southeastern coast. I quickly got soaked in the 60 seconds it took to open my trailer doors and rush back inside the cab.

Then I couldn’t roll down my windows to see my way clearly toward the dock, through either of my side mirrors. When I finally backed into the dock, the rain hadn’t let up at all. But the time I ran into the warehouse, I was dripping.

I figured the dock staff would make a joke about the rain and my getting punished by it. Instead, one of them hurried to retrieve dry rags. He brought a bunch of clean ones and said I could keep them all, for future use. This was super cool considering my wet state. Plus, in our business you can never have enough rags.

I was easing into a pleasant mood. Two dock guys loaded me quickly, adding to my upbeat demeanor. I looked out the door and noticed the rain had let up. I mentioned that I had some paperwork to do before I headed northward and asked if it as okay that I did it while in the dock. They said it was fine and to take my time. They said it with absolute positivity.

Wow, this must be a sweet place to work. So far, I’d met four people here and they were all nice and helpful. I don’t even recall the last time I’d gone four-for-four in that category.

Having completed my paperwork, I soon set off from the town of Hopewell toward … I think it was Ashland, just north of Richmond. I couldn’t possibly recall the name of the customer without doing the extent of research that I would find mind-numbing. Retracing emails and text messages, that kind of thing.

It doesn’t matter where I went next. Nothing about the long and grueling drive home sticks out. I just wanted to get back. The Sound of Music Festival was on in Burlington, it had been three years of Covid-caused cancellations since the last one, and we had a visitor from Australia joining us.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Evonik Goldschmidt or anyone there made my week. I wouldn’t recognize any of them if I went there again next week. I’ve picked up from and delivered to thousands of different customers in my five-plus years on the road. The only thing that matters to me any more is how easy and fast I get in and out. A 15-minute stay pays the same as a 65-minute stay, so time is priceless.

But I will say that it’s always cool when people are nice to you. That is, people you don’t know, have never met and possibly won’t ever see again. Not regular customers. People who are busy and may be preoccupied. People with little to nothing to gain by being cool humans.

Their kindness certainly helped ease the anguish of yet another wrong address. In my peculiar cerebral world, full of imperceptible fury for those who get information wrong and fail to express deep regret for having done so, that’s gold. Pure gold.