by Finn Murphy
At the truck-driving school, I picked up right where I left off and deftly performed the parallel parking maneuvers, the backing maneuvers, and the paperwork. Apparently, backing up a truck is like ice-skating and riding a bike. I was doing the one-week course, but there were about fifty guys there doing the month-long CDL course. I could see immediately that trucking hadn’t changed at all. Everyone at the school was overweight, undereducated, and looking forward to the big money and free pussy they thought were waiting for them out on the road. When they saw me on the lot doing my turns, they asked me where I’d learned it, and I told them I’d been a bedbugger. That was that. How those guys, without a single paid mile behind the wheel, already knew to ignore the movers was a mystery to me, but I became an immediate pariah. They were all going to the big freighthauling outfits, which seemed to have some sort of hazy relationship with the trucking school that I decided not to be curious about. A couple of guys did ask me about moving work, but when I told them they’d need to load their own trucks and deal with shippers, they lost interest. When I told them a top driver can clear $4,000 a week and more as a bedbugger, they said they were already going to make that once they hooked up with a company. I didn’t argue.
The school did a whole morning’s lecture on the Interstate Highway System. Here’s a kind of fun primer for you four-wheeler drivers out there: On the US Interstate Highway System there’s always a mile marker represented by a small green sign on the right shoulder. Truckers call them lollipops or yardsticks. Within each state, mile markers run south to north, so in South Carolina mile marker 1 is one mile from the Georgia border, and mile marker 199 is at the North Carolina border. On a horizontal plane, mile markers run west to east, so on I-80 in Pennsylvania mile marker 311 is at the New Jersey border, and mile marker 1 is near the Ohio border. When truckers communicate with each other, they use lollipops to give a location such as “Kojak with a Kodak 201 sunset,” meaning a state trooper has a radar gun at mile marker 201 on the westbound side.
Interstate highways have even numbers for east-west routes and odd numbers for north-south routes. The larger the odd number, the further east it is, and the larger the even number the further north it is. I-5 goes up the West Coast, and I-95 goes up the East Coast. In between, the major routes are I-15, 25, 35, 55, 75, and 85. East-west I-10 (the Dime) goes from Jacksonville, Florida, to Los Angeles (Jayville to Shakeytown). I-90 goes from Boston to Seattle (Beantown to Needle City). In between are I-20, 40, 70, and 80. Three-digit numbers indicate spur routes to the system. Odd-numbered three-digit routes do not reconnect to the main highway; even-numbered routes are circular and are usually beltways around cities. Using Washington, DC (Bullshit City), as an example, I-495 goes around the city, and I-395 ends in the city. It’s a simple system that works extremely well except in massive, older urban areas like Chicago (Windy City), where the route numbers coalesce into a Rubik’s Cube of confusion.
Every driver should own and use the Rand McNally Motor Carriers’ Road Atlas. Get the one with the laminated pages so when you spill your coffee you can wipe it off. It’s the best fifty-nine dollars you’ll ever spend. Forget about online systems, and don’t rely on the voice. It can be useful as a backup, but your primary guide needs to be a map. You need to visualize the route in your mind. Willie Joyce told me that since they started using GPS, drivers get lost or confused three times more than when they used road maps.
I was scheduled to meet the Joyce driver who was to train me in new procedures the day after Christmas at the Joyce warehouse in Oxford, Connecticut. The driver showed up late, looked drunk or drugged, and immediately got into an argument with Willie in the office. The discussion heated up, and when the driver came over Willie’s desk to make a particularly poignant point, Willie grabbed one of the Bantu spears off his wall (a gift from his sister, a UN aid specialist) and pinned him against a file cabinet with the tip of the spear at his throat. “Call nine-one-one!” Willie shouted. He held him there at spearpoint until the cops came and took the driver away.
Mike, another driver, showed up an hour or so later to load material for a big pack and load in Williamsburg, Virginia, to Las Vegas that would take two trailers. The driver for the second trailer didn’t show up (lots of drivers disappear after Christmas), so Willie reassigned me to Mike’s load. Willie told me that Mike was a good mover but had anger issues so I should be careful.
Mike was annoyed at being saddled with “a friend of the boss.” He made that clear from the moment he refused to shake my hand when we met. Mike’s one of those guys who lives out on the road because he can’t fit in anywhere else. He was wearing a T-shirt that said MY TWO BEST FRIENDS ARE CHARLIE AND JACK DANIEL’S, which told me just about everything I needed to know. Also traveling south with Mike were two Joyce movers, Nate and Carl. They were to spend the week in Williamsburg packing and loading, and then take the Greyhound back to Connecticut. Neither Nate nor Carl would ride with me in the Freightliner after I told them this would be my first road trip in years. They were sure I’d hit something or slide off the road.
My job was to follow Mike down with the second trailer, help him pack and load, then follow him to Las Vegas to unload. We headed out west on I-84 for the nine-hour slog to Williamsburg. Ironically, at the toll plaza near Newburgh, New York, a four-wheeler changing lanes banged into Mike’s trailer. The trailer wasn’t hurt, but the four-wheeler was. It took a couple of hours to get all the paperwork done. Mike was sure I had brought black magic to this whole trip. He told Nat and Carl to call me Jonah.
Mike had decided to take the western route to Harrisburg and then south on US 15 to the DC Beltway and down to Williamsburg from I-64 at Richmond. It’s not the route I would have picked. It was as if he wanted to test me, a seemingly green driver, to see if I could negotiate the Pennsylvania mountains in the ice and then drive the two-lane US 15 in the dark. But I drove carefully and slowly and arrived in Williamsburg about 5 a.m. I found Mike’s truck at the Kmart outside of town, parked next to it, and slept there in my sleeper.
Nate banged on my door the next morning at seven thirty and said it was time to head to the residence. They’d all had breakfast. When I asked Mike if I could grab a coffee and a burrito, he said, “No. If you want to eat, don’t oversleep.” Words to live by. I could see myself saying the exact same thing to some slacker back in the day when I was the one pissed off at the universe.
We pulled up to the residence of Mr. Bean. He was a big shot in timeshare sales and was being transferred to Las Vegas to clean up the havoc the financial debacle had wreaked. Not a job I would have wanted, to be sure. This being a VIP corporate move, it was our job to pack everything in the house into cartons before loading the two trailers. Mike put me into the kitchen, naturally, as it’s the most difficult room to pack and takes the most time. Nate started in on the basement, Carl on the bedrooms upstairs, Mike in the garage. He took the garage because it takes no finesse and he could take breaks in his truck to smoke his Marlboros. The four of us packed nonstop for two days, and I kept right up with them. Packing cartons hadn’t changed at all during my hiatus, and I’d been trained in Greenwich, Connecticut, so packing high-value items was a breeze. That didn’t stop Mike from coming in periodically and complaining about the small quantity of cartons I had packed. But Nate and Carl kept bringing in difficult items for me to pack and giving me winks in Mike’s direction, so I knew I was doing OK. Neither one of them called me Jonah. They called me U-Turn.
Day three was really going to be the test. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to run up and down stairs carrying furniture into the truck for twelve or fourteen hours. Every group of working men has a hierarchy, and I already knew I was number four in this group. Mike was the driver, and the driver is always number one; and though Nate and Carl were pleasant enough, it was easy to see that they considered me beneath them in status and ability.
First up on loading day were Mr. Bean’s hickory bedroom sets. Hickory is very heavy wood, and there were five
bedrooms, each with a handmade triple dresser, bureau, headboard, and nightstand all built by Grandpa. I had nudged a couple of pieces to check their weight the day before; these were certainly the heaviest pieces I’d ever encountered. We started with the biggest set in the master bedroom. Nate and I padded up the triple and with me going backward we snaked down the curving stairway. I could handle it, just. At the bottom of the stairs Carl was waiting with the dolly to wheel it into the truck. Next came the bureau. and this time it was Carl and me, with me going backward again. Carl was holding the top with a humpstrap, so he had the easy end. When a tall piece like a bureau is being carried down a flight of stairs, it’s the bottom guy’s job to press the entire weight of the item to clear the top step. I did this one too, with a stop in the middle for a rest. Piece three was the triple from the boy’s room. This was slightly smaller than the master but still a serious piece. Nate came up, and with me again on the bottom, we took it down. I was getting a bit shaky, but I was still in the ring. The fourth piece was the boy’s bureau. Another monster. Carl grabbed the humpstrap, and we carried it to the top of the staircase for me to press it up. I couldn’t do it.
“Carl, I can’t lift it. Sorry. Can we switch ends on this one?”
At that moment, Mike came to the bottom of the stairs. “Where’s my fucking base?”
Carl, my erstwhile buddy, casually tossed me under the bus, saying to Mike, “U-Turn here says he can’t lift it.”
Mike ran up the stairs cursing.“I guess I have to hump all the furniture and load the truck. Get the fuck out of my way.” He pushed me aside, pressed the bureau against Carl’s humpstrap, and carried it down and out to the truck.
I was crestfallen. Defeated. I was too old for this work. I grabbed some chowder in my arms and went out to the truck to face the music. Sure enough, there were Mike, Nate, and Carl all standing in the trailer looking at me. I set down the chowder and looked at Mike. “I’m sorry, Mike. I just couldn’t lift that last piece.”
Mike looked at me and pointed to the pile of chowder. “What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?” He paused. “You’re not very good at math, are you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you guys just took down four pieces. Nate took two and Carl took two, and they were both on the top.”
“I don’t count who’s doing what, if that’s your question. I just want to get the work done.”
“Well, you won’t be worth shit by lunchtime if you take everything. You’re not worth shit anyway.”
Then Nate started in. “Hooowee, ol’ white man!” He was talking to me. “I just made forty bucks on you from cousin Carl here. I owe you one, U-Turn.”
“What are you talking about?”
“What am I talking about? We’ve been looking at you the last two days. We seen you can pack, and we know you’re an old fart, and we know folks can pack can’t carry shit. I bet Carl ten bucks you’d fade on that first big bastard. When you carried that down, we went double or nothing on the bureau. No way were you ever going to press that muthafucka. When you carried that down, we went double or nothing again on number three. I figured you were for sure going to fade on him, but I was even and had nothing to lose. Carl here’s a good guy, but he’s got no faith in an old white crystal packer like you. Tell you the truth, I didn’t have any faith either, but I for sure wanted to watch. When that third fucker come down, I was impressed and forty bucks ahead. I asked Carl if he wanted to go again, but he declined. You have to respect a man who knows when to quit. I told Mike to come and watch you do the last one, ’cause there’s no way any mover can take down four of them monsters in five minutes. When you stopped topside and gave up, I was relieved. No reason for anyone to get hurt here just to please Mike. You an all right mover . . . for a white guy.”
Mike broke in. “Nate, are you gonna talk the rest of this shit into the truck or are you going back to work? Everybody, back to work.”
I felt a lot better after that. The packing had taken two days, and the loading of the two trailers took two more. Two trailers of household goods is not typical even for corporate hotshots. The next part of the plan was for me to follow Mike out to Las Vegas with extra stops in Dallas and Scottsdale. At least I’d get lots of driving practice. I have to say this was a good plan of Willie’s to break me back into the business. If Mike hadn’t been such an asshole, it would have been perfect.
We left Williamsburg Saturday morning for points west. Nate and Carl both gave me their numbers and asked me to use them for labor when I was in Connecticut. They grabbed the bus and went home. I was supposed to follow Mike, but that unraveled in the first hour. Mike drove very fast, with his longnose Pete and his big Cat engine and his thirty years on the road. He left me in the dust well before Richmond. I called Mike from Spartanburg, South Carolina, in the early evening. He was already at the truckstop in Atlanta. He told me that when I got there I should stay at a motel he knew nearby that had truck parking and cheap rates.
I pulled into the motel parking lot after dark. It did have truck parking. It also had very dim lighting, and as I walked to the office I saw several women leaning against the second-floor balcony rails yelling greetings to me. I also saw several parked cars idling with men inside. The girls were working girls, and the guys in the cars were pimps. In the office was an Indian guy behind a thick glass partition. I asked him for a room with a trucker’s rate, and he asked me how long I wanted the room.
“One night, please,” I said.
“The whole night? That will be fifty dollars.”
I handed over my credit card, and he said, “Cash only.” I carefully forked out a fifty, taking care not to show my wad. There were girls in the lobby too. He handed me a key and showed me where the room was on a map under some Plexiglas on the counter. My room was at the back side of the building at the very end. I asked him if there wasn’t a front room near my truck, and he said, “Those are the trucker rate rooms.”
I grabbed my bag and walked into the dark. The girls on the balcony were asking me if I wanted a date. I was polite and said I was tired. There were three or four more cars on the back side with engines running. I walked all the way to the end and was just about to insert the key to my room when I saw the curtain move inside. Then I heard a car door slam behind me. I sprinted around the building and back to my truck. Nobody followed me. I drove across to the Days Inn that had a fenced-in yard and stayed there. The next day I called Willie and told him what happened. He laughed. “Mike sent you to that pussy patch? Drivers get killed there.”
“I know, Willie. I was about to get rolled. I’m glad you think this is funny.”
“Welcome back to the road, laddie. Things don’t change much. I’m glad you had the sense to take off.”
“Thanks, Willie. Things haven’t changed much, and I think your driver is trying to kill me.”
“Don’t get paranoid, laddie. You’ve only been out in the wild a couple days.”
Our first delivery was an extra stop at a mini-storage in Dallas, where Mr. Bean was dropping off one of the bedroom sets. This load was so full, we we were using the tailgate on Mike’s truck—a slideout on the back of a moving trailer that you can load a storage vault on. I met Mike at the mini-storage, and we emptied the vault. Then we had to take the vault off the tailgate, so Mike told me to loosen the straps holding it on until we got to the top one. I did that, and the empty vault was sitting on the tailgate with just one strap holding it. Mike grabbed the ladder and went up high on the driver side to loosen the last strap. I was on the other side, and he called me over. When I moved around to his side, the strap went slack and the vault tipped off the tailgate toward me. Fortunately, the front side of the vault had been taken off to remove the furniture. The vault fell over me, and I was trapped inside. Had the vault still had its fourth wall, I’d have been crushed like a cockroach. These vaults weigh about 600 pounds. Any corner could have caught me too, but I was lucky. I started banging on the sides of the vault and ye
lling. Mike got a guy from the office, and with a cargo bar they pried the vault over onto its side and let me out.
“What the fuck, Mike? You trying to kill me?”
“I can kill you anytime I want. The strap let loose.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Believe what you want. Take the clamps off the vault and leave the pieces here. We’re going.”
We dropped the other stop in Scottsdale and proceeded to Las Vegas. We unloaded Mr. Bean’s trailers the first day with a local crew for help, and the next day was to be the unpack day. Mike had locked up the trailer the night before himself. I saw him. On arrival the next morning he tossed me the trailer keys and told me to open the rear doors. Standard procedure when opening a trailer door is to stand a little left of center and open the door a few inches so you can peek inside to see if there are any cartons or furniture against the door. Since we had unloaded yesterday, I knew there was nothing against the door, so I opened it without peeking in. When I did, an eight-foot, 50-pound steel cargo bar crashed down onto the pavement. Had I been looking inside through the crack, as procedure dictated, the bar would have fallen on my head and crushed it like a melon. Someone had leaned the bar against the door just so to make it fall the right way. It was hard to believe it could have been an accident. I’m not sure if I was more frightened or angry.
I went into the house and found Mike. “You missed with the cargo bar, asshole.”
“Too bad,” he snapped back. “Time is on my side. I won’t miss forever.”