Chapter Two ... The Pain

Chapter Two ... The Pain

There are certain events in a person's life that change their perspective on life. The pain, and then the pain again, is for me one of those life lessons that brought to me a whole new way of looking at life.  It is the number one reason I went from a renegade trucker to one that ran legal.

Drivers are out there thousands of miles from home, and when things go wrong, are for the most part on their own. Sure, there are phone calls to the company and mechanics to call out.  Help can be found for just about any situation that comes up. Flat tires and mechanical break downs are just part of the business.  But when the drivers themselves break down, when they get sick or injured,  or perhaps  there is a death in the family, for a lot of them there is nothing that can or will be done to relieve them of their trucks and the loads that have to be picked up or delivered.  I've heard of some companies that will take up to six weeks to bring a driver in when his personal life falls apart. I've also seen them charge a driver with abandoning a truck and load because they had a family emergency and the company refused to send another truck or driver to continue on with the freight.  In this business, the only thing that matters is that it gets picked up and it gets delivered; end of conversation.

I've run into this twice in my career, with two different companies.  The first time, I was on a dock that I had visited many times before.  I would normally hire a lumper for twenty bucks to unload my truck while I got some sleep to make the return trip.  It seems, if the rumors were right, that the owner of the company had started a new business, a lumper service.  (A lumper is a person who will load and unload for the driver the freight on his truck.)  Up until now, it was just a few local boys who worked under the table for a few extra bucks. But now we could not use outside help. We had to use their lumper service (at a cost of seventy five dollars) or do the work by ourselves. Well it's not my truck at this time. Not my freight. And no way as a company driver, was I going to pay that much to unload somebody else's freight.

So, on the dock I go, and run into more new rules.  You cannot use the power jacks to unload with now.  Only qualified lumpers can use them.  It did not take long to realize that yet another company had gone the way of forcing either free labor or cold hard cash out of the drivers.  So being as I really had no other choice at this point, I did the unloading with a hand jack myself.  The first two pallets, sitting right at the tail of the truck, had to be rolled up onto the dock platform from a dead stand still.  Two thousand pounds each, I pulled them off.  I also destroyed the L3, L4, and L5 discs in my lower back.  I knew I had done something. But the pain had really not hit me just yet.

My return trip to the house was about fifty miles south of where I was.  So I told my boss at the time that I thought I had pulled something but would be okay to come on home.  Fifty miles later, with tears in my eyes, I'm telling my boss that when I get home, I'm dropping the load on the yard and going to the emergency room. Everything as far as the plan was okay at that time.  I picked up my freight and headed south through Florence, South Carolina and turned west on Interstate Twenty towards Columbia, South Carolina. I stopped at the rest area and made a check call. Cell phones at that time were not heard of just yet, so it was phone booth to phone booth.

Boss man had a surprise for me.  It seemed he had over-booked and needed me to make another run before I went to the doctor's office.  I told him how much pain I was in.  I explained that with every pot hole, the seat was knocking the breath out of me.  But all he could offer was to have someone meet me just south of Greenville, South Carolina and turn me around.  Looking back at this, I must have been either really dedicated or completely stupid.  So with three ruptured discs in my lower back, I headed back to North Carolina with another load that just could not wait.

The next morning found me at the same dock as yesterday morning.  I was in so much pain that it took me fifteen minutes just to get out of the truck.  I paid quite readily this time for the unloading.  A few hours later and I arrived at the dock for the return load.  This is where I get the great news.  Here I am; I had just stumbled to the pay phone in so much pain that tears were rolling out of my eyes, and what does the boss man tell me? The load has to go through Atlanta, Georgia before it comes home.  My heart just dropped.  I can just barely stand up.  I'm walking like, well, you really can't call it walking.  And still, they won't bring me home.

The next morning found me in downtown Atlanta.  I'm in so much traffic, with this eighty thousand pound truck, and I'm in so much pain that I have to use my hands to grab under my knees to pick my legs up off the floor.  Then I would set my foot up on the pedal and push on my knee to apply the fuel or brake.  I never knew that so much pain could be applied to the human body.  I was crying like a little baby.  Later, as I looked at my MRI at the doctor’s office, I could see why.  My spinal cord had been crushed to the point that it could not be distinguished from the disc.

So I manage, without any help, but lots of stares and people laughing at this three hundred and fifty seven pound man crying, to open the doors to bring them the freight to keep their company going.  And my luck was still not going to be with me.  When I tried to move the truck to go home, I found that a brake chamber was blown. It had the brakes locked up tight, so I called the boss. I'm just fifty miles away, one freaking hour of driving, and he would not send help. So, I had to crawl under that trailer and back off the brakes and put a dime in the air line so the truck would move.  Moving a truck like this is not only illegal, but unsafe as all get out.  But, I was ready to get home.

When I got back on the interstate in down town Atlanta, I put my foot down. I went north on Interstate Eighty Five, past the Seventy Five split, north past Two Eighty Five and Jimmy Carter, then north to the house. The speedometer on that truck went to ninety-five, and I left that way behind.  I just did not care anymore.  I had gone way beyond what any one should have been asked to go.  I should have been taken out of that truck minutes after the accident days before.  But the load had to go.  If I stop, I lose my job or get reported for abandoning the truck.  I remember praying that a cop would pull me over.  At least that way he could call an ambulance or shoot me, one of the two.  I really did not care at this point.

My wife met me at the shop.  I fell out of the seat into the car, and for the next nine months, I did surgery and rehab.  I lived off of workman's comp, which does not pay nearly what my regular check would pay from the company.  Well, the company never missed a lick.  They had another driver in my truck before I made the emergency room.  Oh, and the reason (as it was told to me later) that they could not bring me straight home the first day I got hurt?  Well, I guess it was a good one.  The relief driver wanted to take his wife out to dinner.

It was the pain again part, same thing just a different company.  I had done it again.  I told them I was hurt and they tried to get me to pull another load.  I flatly refused.  Told them the only place I was going was the emergency room.  I was in York, Pennsylvania at the time and needed to drop my trailer so I could go. Driver after driver refused to help, so I had to do that funky walking thing again and get it done.  By the time I unloaded and got the trailer dropped, then drove myself to the emergency room, I was hurting as bad as I was just a few years earlier.  As you can imagine, you just don't park a large truck at the front door of a hospital, so I had to park in the rear away from any door.  I stepped out of the truck and started my wobble towards the Emergency room doors.

Now, talk about pain. No way was I ever going to make this.  The only thing that kept me on my feet was the thought of the pain that picking myself off the ground would cause. Seeing as I had only made it about twenty feet, I just went back to my truck. And there I stood, leaning against the fender unable to move.  I stood there for I don't know how long.  Finally a nurse came by, and I guess the tears in my eyes caught her attention.  In just a few short minutes, I was in a wheel chair on a journey across the parking lot to the pain meds.  I wasn't shy about asking for a second dose either.

As you could expect, the next day they needed the truck to move.  The load I was promised straight home actually picked up three hours the other way.  I took that load, full of pain meds.  I delivered that load, and then I let that one thousand dollar piece of equipment sit in my front yard for months before I let them make arrangements to get it back.

That was it, enough, no more.
Never again was I going to let anyone push me so far for a piece of freight.  Little did I know at this time that making the decision to run legal was going to cost me any type of retirement.  It would cost me jobs and cause people to hate me.  It would bring me death threats and cost me well over one hundred thousand dollars in lost revenue.  Life was fixing to get fun.