Tag Archives: truck driving

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Because I Can – It’s That Simple

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The inner voice has a way of motivating

Decision time. It’s 9:30pm now and you thought you’d be stopped by 7:45. It was six degrees Celsius then and now it’s two degrees. You’re a little tired and you still have paperwork to do – not much but enough to make you a little more weary.

I get it. You’ve wanted to get outside to exercise a while ago, while you still felt vibrant and weren’t yawning. Now you have a choice to make: Do I still go for it despite the fact I’m nowhere near 100 percent? Should I do what I can, for as long as I can? Or do I pack it in and hope for a better day tomorrow?

You know that tomorrow might be just as busy and tiring as today was. Meanwhile, you have two hours before you need to sleep. You won’t sleep right now anyway. And you’ll feel much better if you get out there, start slowly and build momentum. You know it’s true. It happens every single damn time.

So, take a few minutes to relax and unwind from your long day of driving. Put those pain-in-the-ass dock workers out of your mind. Forget about all the drivers that cut you off, failed to use their turn signal and drove without their lights on.

Dust your dash if it will make you feel better for tomorrow. Vacuum the floor or your seat if you like. You know you like the cab super clean, and that’s okay. But consider putting the paperwork off until morning.

Done! See how easy that was. Now get your workout clothes out of your duffel bag and put them on. In the meantime, don’t psyche yourself out by thinking. Thinking means second-guessing your choice to get outside and do it. This isn’t about thinking. It’s about preparing and doing.
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Oh, The Glow

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Last evening, July 19, 2019, as dusk turned to dark, Kim and I sat outside on our stone front porch, each armed with a wonderful Cranberry Rosé Cider from the No Boats on Sunday beverage company. I had just return from inside because Kim rightfully suggested that we drink from classy beer glasses rather than straight out of the bottle. We were looking around our neighbourhood and discussing who lived where when we first moved into the townhouse directly across the street 17 years ago. That was seven years before we made the gargantuan leap across the road to our semi-detached backsplit.

It was a particularly warm evening, on the heels of a hot day. Here in Burlington, Ontario we were considerably above the 30-degree Celsius mark, not figuring in the humidex. But that’s nothing compared to what New York City and the rest of the American Eastern Seaboard was facing. We had just returned from NYC a day earlier and were reflecting on the amazing sites we had seen there, having scoured much of central Manhattan and the lower west side. We were grateful not to be there now, because walking around in 30-degree Celsius heat was arduous enough. Now it was closer to 35 and feeling like over 40.

There was little unusual about this evening, other than we only get the chance to do this sitting around and enjoying a beverage in the late evening once every few weeks. That’s because I’m away in the truck so much and Kim is often in bed by nine o’clock. So, here we were together around 9:30pm, with our Maltese Poodle Sydney resting on Kim’s lap. Continue reading →

City Truck Driving: Thrilling or Soul-Killing?

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driving in the city streets of Cambridge, Ontario

Steering through the streets of my old haunt: Cambridge, Ontario.

Feel the Fear

I’m going to scare the hell out of you without even trying, if you’re up to the test. Hop into my cab and we’ll go for a ride around the city – any city. I want you to see how tricky and dangerous it can be driving a tractor-trailer through busy streets. By the end of this unique day, I’ll want your answer to this question about city truck driving: Is it thrilling or soul killing?

Pretend real hard that you’re sitting beside me in my Freightliner cab. I know most of you won’t know what that looks or feels like. So, imagine that you’re in a massive truck that’s loud and powerful. You’re sitting up high and have a superb view of all nearby vehicles. If you look down into any regular car driving beside you, you can stare at people on their phones. Yes, it’s illegal for drivers but they do it anyway. You’ll also have a bird’s eye view of passengers playing with their hair and slouched in their seats looking unabashedly bored. Sometimes they will look up at you with ostensible fear. In this case it’s probably your truck they’re scared of, not you.

My cab has a sleeper bunk in the back; it’s called a sleeper cab. The added length makes driving even harder. Plus, I have no rear windows. I rely entirely on my side mirrors to see what’s behind and beside me.

I’m pulling a 53-foot trailer. The tractor and trailer combination weighs between about 32,000 to 80,000 pounds, depending on how much freight I’m hauling. That number is important because it affects everything, namely how much time it takes me to come to a complete stop. If I’m heavy, it could take 5-8 seconds to stop. It may take longer than that to build speed again. I do a lot of stops and starts in the city, so you’ll need to use your patience. I use mine hourly.

One more thing: the cab and trailer are each just under 4.14 metres high. That’s 13 feet 6 inches. When we’re nearing a bridge, we’ll want to look for a sign that says the bridge has enough clearance. On the highway that isn’t usually a problem because most every highway bridge is truck-friendly. Not so in the city.

Are you scared yet? Continue reading →

Duffer and the Deer

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Highway I-79 near the West Virginia - Pennsylvania border

I-79 near the West Virginia – Pennsylvania border

Steve Duffer III

Steve Duffer III died on I-79 in West Virginia, just north of Meadowdale. A homemade memorial dedicated to his memory is perched on the hill beside the highway. It’s legible even from a passing trucker’s vantage point.

Each time I drive by the memorial, I quickly read the name and return my eyes to the road. For some reason I can’t recall much else about the memorial besides the dedication. I think it’s a white wooden cross that’s been hammered into the ground.

Research on Mr. Duffer’s death reveals a tragedy. He died in February 2007 when his southbound red Nissan Frontier pickup crossed the meridian on Jennings Randolph Expressway (what I-79 is named in West Virginia) and hit a tractor trailer.

The 2001 Mack tractor trailer in the northbound lanes was running out of Hickory, North Carolina – where I have picked up and delivered numerous times in my nine months as a truck driver. Continue reading →

Green Mountain Optimism

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mountain highway in Virginia

Somewhere on a mountain highway in Virginia or West Virginia

Driving along I-77 in West Virginia and Virginia can be riveting. The green mountain scenery is astonishing, the air is fresh and cool, the highway curves are long and well-marked and there are several well-maintained roadside rest areas. As a rookie truck driver, I can see that stretches like this are what driving a tractor-trailer is all about.

While many friends and former coworkers are nestled in restrictive office cubicles, I’m out on the open road, enjoying the vistas while maintaining good speed and keeping a cautious watch for bad or distracted drivers … in cars, small trucks, motorcycles and even other tractor-trailers.

Eager for Enjoyment

I’ve been driving on my own for over six months now. Each week I head to North and South Carolina to drop off and pick up an interesting array of goods, including machinery, auto parts, clothes and toys. In this time, I’ve found there’s one thing that sticks with me and comes second only to safety: the desire to enjoy this career and all its trappings. Continue reading →

The Stresses of Truck Driver Testing

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This is a reminder to me, to make everyone feel safe when I’m driving.

A Test of Patience

Damn all of the tests and exams I did in high school, university and college. Yes, I graduated from all three institutions. In doing so, I succumbed to the opinions and whims of many teachers, professors and instructors.

You want to know what’s the most damning? Look where all that learning and eternal quizzing got me: a career path that’s disheveled and endlessly discouraging. Sometimes I long to live out the rest of my years on an Nepalese mountainside, actively practicing Buddhism. This past summer, I decided on a career path that’s designed to rescue me from visions of eternal career failure. Guess what I unwittingly pitted myself against? That’s right: more tests and exams.

In the truck driving business, you get trained to get tested. Yeah, I realize life in general is like that. But for the longest time I was evaluated on the type of work I was very good at: writing and relating. Continue reading →

The Trying Road From Journalism to Truck Driving

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long distance trucking, digital journalism, trucker, journalistHow do you go from digital journalism to long distance truck driving? This isn’t a riddle; for me it’s my disjointed career path in progress.

In 2011 I was content in my work at CBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. I was part of a great team producing a fantastic project, the CBC Digital Archives website. The site is a treasure trove of Canadian historical content through the eyes of the national broadcaster. I’ve never had a better job or worked with better people. Then cuts to the team hit me and I got moved to the post production department. I did well but was never a good fit. Then in late 2012 the entire department was eliminated. That was that for my CBC years.

What came next started with hope and optimism. I applied crazily for jobs and started to build an online presence with a simple LinkedIn profile. Then slowly, throughout long weeks and months, I was hit with brutal reality. The world of journalism – and digital communications – was in a perpetual state of chaos. There was little room for an experienced and skilled worker who demanded reasonable pay and benefits.

The four years that followed would lead us to about now. I can’t easily condense the heartache and disappointment that I’ve endured into one short blog article, so I’ll try to summarize. You might be amazed if I told you the combined number of jobs I applied for, interviews I had for jobs that didn’t fit my skills and experience, networking meetings I attended, emails and letters I sent and responded to, resume and LinkedIn profile revisions I did, former colleagues I spoke with about my plight, politicians I contacted about said plight, job search programs I completed, counselors and therapists and doctors I consulted about losing hope in my life, freelance projects that I did and hated, freelance projects that I tried in vain to get and wasted a lot of time trying, one four-month contract that proved slightly fruitful and not too painful, and (whew!) number of hours I spent running and working out just trying to keep my sanity intact. Continue reading →