Just Keep Truckin’, America . . . . . . . . . and Don’T Think!: (Or View from a Truck)

By Frank Belcher

This is the story of a sixty-plus-year-old individual who became bored with retirement and took up a new career as an owner-operator of an interstate heavy truck, running it from coast to coast and from the Canadian border to the Mexican border for over a half-million miles. The author was the sole driver and tells of his experiences over the road. Go on these trips with him as you traverse each chapter, and learn a little about the lives of those who transport freight at highway speeds across the United States, sometimes carrying cargo up to twenty-five tons in those fifty-three-foot boxes, thirteen and a half feet high, called trailers, pulled by ten-wheel tractors, and similar combinations of double trailers, flatbeds carrying openly visible cargo.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 11, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503576872

Frank Belcher

Frank Belcher is a retired cattleman with over fifty-five years’ experience in the following: breeding and raising beef cattle, hay and grain farming, as well as being a feedlot manager, a trucker, a real estate broker in Hawaii, a one-man manager of Bishop Trust Company’s Kona office, a business consultant and paralegal in tax and estate planning for a Hilo law firm, a past president of a rotary club in California, the founder of the New Mexico Limousin (cattle) Association, a multiengine pilot, and a medical transcriptionist. He was born in San Diego in 1935 and raised near Pine Valley, California. He studied high school at College Prep Midland School, Los Olivos, California. He has a BS degree in agricultural production from the University of California (1959), and he lives along the border between Arizona and New Mexico.

Book preview

Just Keep Truckin’,

America … … …

And Don’t Think!

(Or View From A Truck)

Frank Belcher

Copyright © 2015 by Frank Belcher.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 06/10/2015

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Contents

Preface

Chapter One Beginning the Journey

Chapter Two Driver Talk

Chapter Three Trips

Chapter Four Places to Park

Chapter Five Sex And The Truck

Chapter Six Safety

Chapter Seven Customers And Carriers

Chapter Eight Highways And Byways

PREFACE

What is a truck? Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (Fifth Edition) published by G. & C. Merriam Company in 1947, among several definitions, calls it: "Any strong horse-drawn or automotive vehicle for heavy or long-distance hauling."

Indeed, such automotive vehicles for heavy or long-distance hauling is what we see in great numbers today, in all sizes, colors and shapes. They are seen rolling along at a steady pace, and in many cases speeding by us on interstate highways, two-lane roads, and country roads. With Big Wheels rolling just inches away from our easily broken bodies when we pass a truck, or are overtaken by one at seventy miles an hour, we seldom think of danger. But it’s there.

Taking a big truck down the road is like steering an ocean liner down a highway. Large and cumbersome, and packing considerable inertia, a truck requires extreme care to keep it from bumping into anything. Docking the truck to load or unload must be done with the same care as docking a freighter or ocean liner. Scraping the dock or another truck at the dock can result in extensive damage amounting to thousands of dollars, which the truck operator will be obliged to pay. Such accidents usually occur with the engine idling while moving very slowly. Staying clear of objects is a truck driver’s primary concern. Otherwise, the truck acts like a bulldozer.

Being a truck driver is a unique experience. The trucker is seated high in the saddle and has a line of sight over the tops of all the cars and pickups ahead. One can see far greater distances, in every direction, than from a car. The truck driver can see things you would miss while looking out of your car. Just as in the early days of horse drawn freight wagons, the modern freight wagon can have its horsepower detached in the same way a team of horses could be unhitched from the wagon, moved, and re-hitched to another wagon. The modern day tractor is a team of some 400-500 horses, harnessed under the hood, and this tractor can be unhooked from a trailer anywhere and hooked to another one elsewhere. The teamster needs somewhere to sit, so a cab has been engineered behind the horses, which, in over the road trucks provides living quarters as well. This simple analogy belies the true complexity of today’s trucks, but the fact remains: a truck’s basic function is to transport freight.

The cabin usually contains 2 comfortable bunk beds, plus many of the amenities of a motor home but no shower or toilet. Closets, cabinets, Tv’s and even refrigerators are common today in these sleeper cabs, the larger of which are called condos. The day cab on most short-run and local trucks that stay within a few hundred miles of home base lacks the sleeper accommodations and simply provides the driver’s and passenger’s seats only. Both kinds of tractors pull similar loads. Total gross weight of the standard semi is limited by law to forty tons. Non loaded tractor- semi-trailer combinations weigh around fifteen tons, which means they often carry up to twenty-five tons of payload legally and fit within the forty ton limit.

There are variations to the rule of thumb for weight limitations: several types of tractor-trailer combinations such as double trailers and triples are examples that we see going down the highway. Overlimit permits are obtainable under special circumstances in most states.

This book is about my truck travels crossing and crisscrossing the forty-eight states for three years in an interstate semi carrying general freight, as driver of an owner-operator truck leased to a major carrier.

The experience is similar to traveling the USA by motorhome, with the exception that loading and unloading schedules have to be maintained.

It is a story of America as seen through the eyes of a trucker, including what was not seen, but heard. It includes one view of America, which like a runaway truck, seems to be rolling downhill faster and faster to the point of losing control. Over 300,000 miles driving through my country taught me a lot about what we have lost. Patience, common sense, and courtesy top the list. Those same miles also showed me that we are a country of immeasurable resources if they are used intelligently!

CHAPTER ONE

Beginning the Journey

Happiness Is a Truck, glared the bumper sticker in its brilliant array of psychedelic colors. It was attached to the tailgate of a Ford pickup directly in front of our ’86 Mercury as my wife braked to a stop at the bottom of a ramp, just off eastbound Interstate 84 at Troutdale, Oregon. We had just arrived on a nonstop drive from our ranch in New Mexico, spelling one another with driving chores while the other tried to sleep. It was the second week of September, 2001, and we had just completed the 1200 miles in twenty-two hours. Airlines weren’t flying after demolition of the World Trade Center the previous week, and I had an appointment to pick up my new 2002 model Freightliner Columbia this day, so we drove our car to Oregon. First we had to stop at the Troutdale terminal of my lessee-carrier to sign papers before going over to the Freightliner factory.

The bumper sticker was on my mind for a few minutes, as forty-five years’ truck driving experiences raced around my brain as a virtual kaleidoscope of trucks I had owned or driven for others for supplemental income to as many years of negative margin cattle ranching. Both cattle ranching and truck driving can be addictive, and I wondered if I was nurturing addiction. From my days as a livestock hauler in the 1960’s in trucks powered by Cummins 220 horsepower non-turbo (normally aspirated) diesel engines, to 350 horsepower Cummins powered Kenworth log trucks, to laying asphalt on Arizona highways with 425 horsepower Cat powered bellydumps, I was now about to get my hands on a modern, soundproofed, over the road, ten speed, four hundred plus horsepower Detroit powered Freightliner, and go interstate for the first time. This would be the first time I would not own a trailer – just a tractor, leased to a major carrier to pull their trailers. Happiness is a Horse would be more my style – I just didn’t think of a truck as happiness. And I had never considered myself a full time professional truck driver. I had more than one professional driver tell me a truck is nothing more than a torture chamber, and some of the old ones were, to say the least! I was not crazy about trucks.

The odometer had seven miles on it when I fired up #23667 at The Freightliner plant. The seats were covered by protective plastic that I had to strip off, as were the upper and lower bunk mattresses. I noted the red and black in the Columbia logo on the passenger side of the dashboard and wondered if the acquisition of Freightliner by the Chrysler-Mercedes (Daimler Chrysler) group caused the colors of the Nazi flag to be placed there or it was just coincidence. This would bug me during the next three hundred thousand miles, and it provided many negative thoughts about extreme nationalism and fascism as I toured my country and heard stories about the things truck drivers talk about, including the state of our country.

Very cautiously, I eased the tractor out of the manufacturing facility, after giving our new cell phones a try and advising my wife to follow me to one of Weyerhaeuser’s nearby paper depots where a trailer loaded with rolls of paper was waiting. I had been assigned by Qualcomm message to pick up this load and take it to Sacramento, California. The four mile trip to hook up to the load gave me little opportunity to become familiar with my new acquisition, a shiny metallic-blue tractor with full condo accommodations.

With the Mercury in front of me so I would have no worries of losing sight of my wife on the trip to California, we rolled along in tandem down Interstate 5 past Salem, Eugene, and Roseburg, stopping for the night at the small truck stop across from the Indian casino near Canyonville. I had a heavy load of paper rolls which required the Mercury to slow up on the hills south of Roseburg to keep pace with my trailing Freightliner. I dropped into lower gears for the climbs and slowed the descents by use of engine brakes and occasional foot braking. We were anxious to try the condo as our motel for the night. After dinner and a half hour of playing the non-productive slots across the highway, we settled in. It was a crisp fall evening, and I left the engine running to test the cab heating system at both the upper and lower bunks. This cab had a full windshield and side window wraparound curtain in addition to the usual rear cab sleeper curtain. I pulled the big curtain around and left the sleeper curtain open. The immediate effect was that of creating a spacious apartment. It was warm and comfortable, with reading lights for both bunks. I got my paper work out of the way, while I heard light snoring from the bunk below. Soon I shut off the bunk light, adjusted the heater vent, and fell asleep.

We were in the truck stop café for light breakfast at six in the morning, and then started on our way south. Stopping briefly at the Weed airport rest stop on I-5 after crossing the Siskiyous into California, I took a first picture of the truck, dwarfed by Mt. Shasta in the background. Delivery in Sacramento wasn’t until that evening, and we were about five hours away at noon. The afternoon was warm as we pulled into the T/A truck stop on the north side of Redding for fuel. The ride on down the upper San Joaquin valley was uneventful through Red Bluff, Orland, Williams, Wodland, and finally my destination at Sacramento. It was a clear day, and Mt. Lassen with its vertical streaks of the previous winter’s snow was visible to the northeast of Orland.

Sacramento’s south side after dark leaves nothing to a truck driver’s imagination. Upon leaving I-5 as we were eastbound on a city street I called my wife over the cell phone and told her to drop behind me until we reached the destination. Soon a car with three dimly silhouetted figures within moved over from the left lane and squeezed into the car length between