Chapter 3 - On the road in the city

If cross-country driving calls the gypsy in us, it's in-city driving that brings out the workman.

There is nothing glamorous about driving a truck in the city, regardless of it being a straight truck, or a short semi.

A few years after learning to drive a big truck, I found myself at a company that did mostly local hauls.  Some of these were a few miles from a warehouse to a factory, others involved 1/2 day trips to Chicago.  This covered a number of summers and winters in the lovely city of Milwaukee, WI.

My days were long.  My first duty was to pick up trailers that were parked at a large retail distribution center, and deliver these "catalog" ordererd goods to the various retail outlets, where the customers would pick them up.

So, from a 40 ft trailer, rain or shine or snow, I drag my ass up into the trailer and pull out all of the items returned by customers.  You wouldn't believe the things they return, and their condition.


Then I graduated to "spotter".  This lovely duty involves moving trailers from dock to dock at the aforementioned distribution center.  Your entire day is spent backing trailers into incredibly tight spaces.  I was grateful for the duty because it honed my backing skills to a fine edge.  I was ungrateful for the fact that for every trailer, I had to get out of the tractor, hook up at least one air hose, and roll up the dollies.  Then drag it over to the correct dock (there were exactly 100 docks at this particular distribution center), get out of the truck, open the trailer doors and hope that nothing would fall on my head as I did, get back in the truck, and back it in.  Then, get out of the truck, roll down the dollies, chock the rear wheels, unhook at least 1 air hose, release the fifth wheel locking mechanism, and get back in the truck to do it all over again.  Once in a while, I was lucky enough to get the "spotting tractor", which has a fifth wheel attached to a hydraulic hoist, so that at least the step of rolling the dollies up and down is removed.  It also has a very short turning radius and power steering, so that backing in even a short trailer (which is more difficult to control) is a breeze.  But one still had to get out to hook and unhook the air hose, open trailer doors, and release the fifth wheel.


Perhaps the worst duty was spending an entire day unloading two or three trailers full of boxes of paper towels, or canned goods, by hand.  Inevitably, this duty would fall on the hottest or coldest days of the year.  (Aluminum trailers are NOT good insulators, so don't ever wind up living in a semi-trailer.)  Cases of paper towels are heavy and awkward.  They slip out of your hands.  All that paper and cardboard produce lots of brown dust.  So much so, that you wind up your day looking like you got a great tan.  Second degree cardboard burns is more like it.




But once in a while, you'd get a sweet load that would take you out into the country for a day; perhaps to a small factory or warehouse.  Perhaps so small that there's only one guy running the place, so he takes his time unloading your trailer with a forklift, in between taking phone calls and updating inventory lists.  Since I was getting paid by the hour, with time-and-a-half for overtime (double time on Sundays), I didn't mind at all.  If I was lucky, these would come in the summer, and I spent many a beautiful evening enjoying the sounds and smells of the Wisconsin farmland areas.  And on the way back home after a 14 hour workday...

I find myself in a diner, with eggs on my plate, a good looking woman across the counter, and an empty trailer to bring back to the yard..  Hmm.

I call her babe - she calls me hun.  This goes on night after night.  The warmth of my truck is nothing to her. She has a a warm bed to go to, and a man.  I have diesel fumes, parking lights, and the promise of 30 thousand pounds of paper towels  tomorow.   It makes me just want to  drive, and see the mountains.