Train Train

Today's Thoughts Train Train
By Jeff Head
Chapter Twelve - Train Train (Excerpt From running Legal Blues)
When I woke up, the sun was starting to get low in the sky, I had dozed off thinking about the doctor stuff. I still had about an hour of day light left, I was sweating, and I had been dreaming about the day last week on the highway where I met that little girl from the accident. The events were still bothering me and I knew it, I could still hear that scream as if I was still standing there. What I did not know was how to get over it. It seemed to me that I had tried to change over the years and become a responsible driver, but each change, every attempt to do the right thing seemed to piss someone else off. Drivers were, I think, the worst of all.

A few chapters ago I showed you a letter I wrote about driving on Two-Eighty-Five around Atlanta, Georgia; and how some drivers would act against other drivers that they did not think were doing right on the highway? Things were not always like that, though.

I can remember back when I first started driving a truck. There was courtesy between drivers then, honor among thieves as I always heard it put. Drivers were taught this as they came into the industry back then. All night long, we would come across country, in long convoys; truck after truck seventy plus miles an hour. The CB radio wide-open telling jokes and looking for bear (cops). If nothing else, it kept us awake for the long runs we would be on.

I can still remember the thrill of the first time I was the lead truck, coming out of Texas headed back east into Georgia, one night. I started out of Laredo, Texas around eight in the morning and had just twenty-four hours to make a delivery in Georgia. That load of pottery I had on was needed bad at the store, Spring was starting in just a few days and the big sale just could not be put off. My head was just a little fuzzy because, well, because of Boy’s Town.; that's a place just over the border in Mexico. Drivers, while at the truck stop in Laredo, could just call out on the CB and catch a ride with one of several different people that provided rides down to Boy's Town.

It was always a fun place to go, lots of beer, liquor; and, of course, the senoritas to play with. I always thought the rumors about the donkey were made up, until a few of my friends showed me one night. I just stuck with the beer mostly, like I said, I'm happily married and to this day, still plan on staying that way.

Anyway, the first thing you hit coming north on Interstate Thirty-Five out of Laredo is the Border Patrol check station. To this day, it's still the same. You pull up; they ask if you are an American. You say yes and off you go. Every now and then, you would see someone pulled over, their truck opened up and the dogs going crazy. Better luck next time, dude. Border Patrol got lucky again and some poor chap is going to jail. That's his problem, and I'm off towards San Antonio then on to Houston.

By the time I got there, I was three hundred and fifty miles into the run and I had not stopped yet. About four of us were heading east across Interstate Ten, into the Atlanta area, all of us had next day deliveries. The chat on the CB was all normal stuff, where is the bear, and check out those legs. That's something I don't think I'll ever complain about, girls that like to pull up next to truckers and show off their legs and other things as well. The way I see it, if they want me to look, who am I to let them down. I think I've seen more skin on the highway than I ever did in the bedroom over the years.

Eyes on the road man, eyes on the road. After Houston, it's just a short hop over to my fueling spot in Beaumont, Texas. I pull up to the fuel pumps and pick up a hundred and fifty gallons or so of diesel, then find a spot to park while I run in and get a quick shower. I lose sight of the guys I'm running with for a while. I know where they are, Party Row picking up there supplies while I get my candy bars and soda pops from inside the truck stop.

Forty-five minutes later and we head for the Louisiana line, there are six of us now. We head towards Lake Charles, then Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Then we turn north on Interstate Fifty-Nine into Meridian, Mississippi. There we stop for a couple of hours while we flirt with the waitresses and fill up on coffee. There was about fifteen of us now and when we headed out, I was the lead truck. From Meridian, it's about four hundred miles to my destination through Birmingham, Alabama and on into Georgia. When we crossed over that Georgia line, around four in the morning, eighty plus miles per hour, we were strung out over twenty-five trucks long. That CB was so hot that even if we did run across a bear, no one would have known it. I bumped the dock at my destination around six thirty in the morning. Twenty-two hours or so and twelve hundred miles later, I was done.

The thing about the way we used to run back then is, even in packs like that, no matter what the speed or how big the hurry, you took time to be courteous, even to four wheelers. If you came up on traffic that was caught up behind slower traffic, you stepped on your brakes and let them out so they could pass.

Drivers would look out for other drivers. If one broke down, five or six would stop and bring out the spare parts to get them going again. We used to be known as the Knights of the Highway; used to be anyway. When someone asked for directions on the CB, they got them, but not anymore. Somewhere over the years, the camaraderie in the trucking industry got lost. Sure, you can still find groups that run together, but it's just not like it used to be. Today, you best not be caught in the way of someone or they might just push you off the highway.

I found out the hard way about this change. I had long ago decided to run legally. I tried very hard to accept loads where I could make the delivery, while keeping the logbook straight. I had to change the way I thought on just about everything. Slowing down to the speed limit meant that I could no longer run as many miles each week. Definitely, no more of those twelve hundred mile trips over night, bad for the logbook you see.

If one watches the freight rate, makes changes to his truck and the way he drives, then those things brings about better fuel economy instead of a faster speed and harder pull. Then one can make the same amount of profit, if not more, than by blowing the fuel out your stack every night trying to run as many miles as you could in a week. This is what I learned, as time went on. Why was I breaking every law in the book, not to mention my back twice, when by just slowing down and following the laws as they were, I could not only increase my profit, but in the process, take better care of myself and my family.

Why I couldn't, came from several different directions. The loudest was other drivers. The plain, simple fact is that other truck drivers do not, I repeat; do not have time to run safe and legal. They are in no way shy about letting you know that fact. I used to try and talk to them on the CB. Trucks are allowed in the two right lanes, usually. Drivers would come up behind a driver in the second lane running the speed limit, and just about a second later, it would begin.

"Hey Driver, slower traffic keep right." The fact that I would be passing slower traffic and would be doing the speed limit didn't seem to matter. Trying to talk to them, letting them know I would move over just as soon as the right lane cleared was a big mistake. Just made them madder because I would not slow down and get behind the people I was trying to pass. Time and time again, I've been told that the speed limit signs are just suggestions, then being taunted, like we were in the third grade. "Oh, He's just scared a bear is going to pop out from behind that bridge and give him a ticket," they would scream over the radio.

The fact is, as I see it, I have just as much right to run the speed limit in any lane a truck is allowed, as anyone else has a right to run in it. Why, pray tell, do some drivers think that just because they want to run fifteen miles per hour over, that they have the right to push everyone else off the highway? That's a big change from the way we used to run twenty years ago. Instead of being courteous and waiting for traffic to clear, now drivers will taunt and tease you until you finally get a clear lane to move into and let them get around you. I still don't understand why they just don't use the third lane. They actually believe that a bear cannot tell they are speeding if they stay in the second lane, I guess.

Trying to talk to them ended for me on one particular day. I had moved over to let some traffic get on. A few more cars piled in on my right side getting ready to get off at the next ramp, so I was not able to get back over into the right lane, I was running the speed limit, though. A couple of drivers came up behind me and starting screaming for me to move over so they could go by, they had no time for such nonsense. The exit came and a few cars jumped off but one remained, and stayed right beside me. A few more cars jumped onto the highway, on the other side of the get on ramp; and I was stuck out in the second lane. What could I do? I was running the speed limit, and the four wheelers would not get off my side. I picked up the CB and said I would move over as soon as I got a clear lane.

The answer I got back was definitely not what I wanted to hear. "I ain't got time for this shit. I'll teach that S.O.B. how to get out of the way!" The truck behind me jumped out into the third lane. He shot me a bird as he went by and as the rear of his trailer came even with my driver's door, he made a hard right turn. I’ve got three cars on my right side, and this idiot is giving driving lessons to me. I have no choice, I have to move over or die. The three cars beside me wind up spinning down through the grass, and I end up locking it up in the emergency lane. "MOTHER F***…" Did he just do that?” He's laughing at me going on down the highway. The three four wheelers that went down through the grass are shouting out the window at me calling me every name in the book, and I'm like, "What the hell did I do, besides the freaking speed limit?"

I wish I could tell you that this was the first and last time this has happened to me. Not even close. I yelled back at that idiot, "Excuse the hell out of me for being an idiot that runs the speed limit you *&#(!." With a few four letter words added in from him and then he was gone.

I was shaken up, but I needed to get off the side of that busy highway. As I did, another driver came on the CB. He said, "Hey hand." Hand is what you might call another driver in CB lingo. "Hey hand," he said again, "That driver that's an idiot for running the speed limit." I was pissed. I answered. “Well”, I screamed back, "What do you want?" He said in the calmest voice I think I ever heard on the radio. "I'm one of those idiots that insist on running the speed limit too, it's going to be okay hand" Silence.

What was I supposed to have said? My emotions were running wild and in steps this calm voice from nowhere. Finally, after about a minute I replied back, "Thanks man, thanks, Have a nice day."

I waited a minute; but he never came back to me. I reached up, and for the last time, turned off my CB radio. To this day, unless I know you, or something is happening on the road, I refuse to turn on the CB radio.

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