Tag Archives: truck stop

latta, south carolina, truck stop, swamp, snakes, gators, bears, boars

Swampy Southern Things

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“There could be gators in there,” said the short round trucker in overalls. “Probably three footers.”

“Oh yeah?” I exclaimed.

Both him and his friend nodded their heads in agreement. The three of us were standing a few short feet from the swampy muck at the back of the truck stop. We had just met after I returned from relieving myself behind my trailer.

I rounded the corner and there they were: two short, oval, middle-aged locals who appeared every bit a stereotype of a southern hillbilly. They were standing next to their flatbed tractor-trailers on this unseasonably warm September evening.

It’s my nature to just start talking. So, I did.

I joked about the possibilities of there being snakes in the swamp, an unruly mixture of disgusting pea green liquid, long grass, garbage and mud. They seemed to be sizing me up for a few short seconds.

The talkative one then pulled out his phone and showed me snapshots of a skinned and mounted python that he’d killed with his shotgun in a town to the nearby south. He mentioned some specific detail about the gun. It meant nothing to me. I tried to look impressed.

Soon came the revelation about gators. The next photo was of a wild boar. They both assured me it was possible to see such a monstrous creature here in the dead of the night. Continue reading →

Image of my comping shower bag

The Makeshift Shower Conundrum

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Picture the startling scene

It could be any truck stop or rest area, at about 11pm, on a warm late summer evening. A large and nearly naked man stands beneath his truck’s ajar passenger door. In his hand he holds a spout that trickles water from the droopy bag which hangs above. He moves it quickly over various parts of his head and body, trying for a decent initial soak. He turns the small lever on the plastic spout to the off position and reaches for his container of Nivea Men Shower Gel – the ‘Energy 24 Hour Fresh Effect’ kind – that sits at the edge of the open door. He squeezes a medium amount into one hand, puts the container down, pours some into the other hand, then speedily spreads it over his exposed body, legs and feet. Within a few minutes he reopens the spout and fastidiously washes away all the gel, making sure to leave no skin untreated. Once satisfied with his work, he looks around, twice, to confirm there’s no one watching. Why would they watch, he wonders. He clumsily pushes his free hand down into his quick-dry shorts and feverishly soaps then washes the parts that will forever be unknown to unfamiliar eyes. All before the water in the bag runs out. Continue reading →

Lot Lizards, Lamentably

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lot lizard, truck driver, trucking, truck stop

Lot lizard graphic from topsimages.com

Imagine a long-haul truck driver hundreds of miles away from home. He’s at the end of a long day of delivering and picking up freight. He’s found a parking spot in a truck stop and has decided he wants company.

Now picture another truck driver who arrived at the truck stop earlier, only to have the first guy park beside him. This driver wants nothing but an evening of peace and quiet, a decent dinner in his truck, a hot shower and a Leafs or Raptors game on the satellite radio. This driver is me.

I don’t care anything about the first driver. What he does on his own time is his own business, so long as it doesn’t affect me in the least. I certainly don’t want to see or hear about his ‘company.’

Check out these interesting “insane” lot lizard stories.

I Want To Pretend That I Didn’t See Anything

Unfortunately, this brings me to an evening a few weeks at my favourite Pilot truck stop in Gaffney, South Carolina. As usual, I parked in the far back corner of the lot. Typically, that’s where you get the most seclusion and least disturbance from the noise and headlights of the incoming trucks in the fuel aisles.

I was sitting in driver’s seat at around eleven o’clock, trying to decide if I should lie down in my bunk. I was fiddling with the radio and looking around when a car pulled around the corner. Continue reading →

Tragedy at Jane Lew Truck Stop

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truck stop image, tractor-trailer

A random truck stop parking lot, at dusk

Sadly, it’s not news when a truck driver dies. At least it’s not news to most truck drivers. But what happened on Wednesday, December 5th puts a devastating new spin on truck driver deaths. A young trucker was walking through the Jane Lew Truck Stop and was run over by a rig that had just entered the lot.

I learned of the tragedy on the Twisted Truckers page on Facebook. Initially, I saw the altered image of a truck driving upward toward heaven. That was unusual. Then I read the text and discovered the horrific truth. The last sentence of the post read: “Everyone needs to slow down in these truck stops and pay more attention to everything and everyone around you.”

A follow-up post on Twisted Truckers, a day or two after the tragedy, showed a picture of a set of truck keys, which the author said belonged to the deceased driver. She said the driver had a wife and children who now had to spend the holidays without him. She said she can think of no reason that anyone should be traveling fast enough through a truck stop to kill someone.

Details unknown

I asked my friend Tony if he had heard any of the details. He stops at Jane Lew frequently when he’s passing through West Virginia on his way back from the Carolinas. He later told me that he talked to a waitress at the truck stop’s restaurant. She said the truck in question came barreling into the lot and ran over the victim with all five axles.

How exactly the calamity happened, I don’t know. No doubt an investigation has started that will look at all the possible angles and answer key questions, such as:

  • Was the truck travelling at too high a rate of speed?
  • Was hitting the victim unavoidable? (Were his clothes too dark to see? Was he wearing reflective clothing or carrying a flashlight?)
  • Is it possible that the driver was unaware that he hit the victim?

Continue reading →

The Truck Stops Here

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truck stop, pilot, flying j, tractor trailer, trucking, rest area

Pilot truck plaza in Wytheville, Virginia, mostly empty in the late morning

“They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”

The classic Joni Mitchell lyric has been attributed to many ‘doom of green space’ scenarios: I’m sure Ms. Mitchell was thinking of urban landscapes where beautiful trees and kid-friendly greenery have been bulldozed in favour of dreary asphalt. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t thinking of truck stops.

Fortunately for inner city park lovers, most truck stops don’t infringe on their trees and grass. They’re out in the boonies at major highways junctions, where noisy air brakes and massive trailers aren’t a problem. Out there in the open air, there’s big money to be made from filling giant fuel tanks and feeding and showering hungry, dirty truck drivers.

The Wytheville – Fort Chiswell corridor in southern Virginia is such a place. This is where Interstates 77 and 81 cross in the southern section of Virginia. The area is a de facto gateway to North Carolina, namely the nearby populous Piedmont Triad of Winston-Salem, Greensboro and High Point. Charlotte is a couple of hours south.

I use this stretch of highway as a convenience. It has a half dozen or so giant truck stops – they’re called ‘travel plazas’ – including three from the Pilot/Flying J company. That’s where my company wants me to fuel. Continue reading →