28 Aug. 2011
I am sitting at home right now, and thought it would be a good time to do some catch up writting. I will be here at home until tuesday morning, at which time I will head out again for another three weeks. My next home time will be spent in Utah visiting some of my close friends, and then in October I will return to Florida.
Now then, Canada. The day after my post about the most stressful day ever... I believe I even had the gall to name it "Canadian Nightmare"... I had an even worse day. Here is a diagram to help me explain...
point "A" is the area they origionally wanted me to back into. Point "B" is the Entry gate for the facility. Point "C" is the row of trailers that was making my backing into point "A" impossible. the Gold star is where they told me to head to for an easier backing situation. The Green line is what I was hoping to do, and the red star is where I hit.... So now then. I wil describe what happened, and feel free to follow along on the diagram...
Some Semi Trucks have short noses
My truck's nose was not quite that long... more like... this
Ah yes, That is it. And with some Fine Editing of the Company and licence plate by yours truely.
So back to the story... The nose of my truck was making it very difficult to back into the space they wanted me without running into the trailers opposite the dock. I was getting frusterated "Who on earth would put trailers so close to the docks... Who on earth would wedge a building in here and expect long Semis to back in here at regular intervals? I tried backing in about five times, and then someone from the shipping department told me to use one of the docks on the opposite side, where there was more room. I knew I could do this, there was plenty of room over there and I should be able to back in the forst try without any problems. I Drove over to the other side, eager to get backed in and loaded so I could get out of Canada. Well I planned on cutting past the gate like the green line on the diagram so that I could make it a nearly straight shot into the dock, but on my haste and frusteraton I made an error and misjudged the pass. At the very last second I noticed I was too close to the gate, but could not get my foot on the brake in time. BAM! is what I heard, and the truck shook. "Oh Crap," I thought; "I just scraped the side of the trailer." I got out of the truck and went back to see what had happened. My eyes first scanned the side of the trailer... No marks. I Looked at the Tires... No marks or signs of damage. I Looked at the entry gate of the facility... It was bent and the chainlink was hanging. "What did that?" I asked myself... Then I saw the Flat, blue Rectangle laying on the blacktop. It was the Driver's side door of my trailer. "I'm going to get Lynched," I thought with dispair; "And then Fired."
So there are the pictures... I thought for sure they would Fire me. in my mind (And keep in mind I had never seriously hit anything in any vehicle) It was one thing to scrape the side of a trailer, or bend an ICC bumber a bit, but I had just ripped the freaking door off the hinges. There was no way, I thought, that they would let me drive anymore. However I was shocked to find that most people on the scene (Other drivers mostly) Didn't think it was that big of a deal. I was stressed out enough though that I did not hear them. A Few hours later the repair guy showed up. He looked at the damage and said "Oh this shouldn't take long to fix... No big deal." I was Boggled! My mind was doing somersaults. My jaw was doing pressups... "No big deal?" I said, "I Ripped the door off!" The repairman looked at me with wry amusement. It must have been something like what would happen if a guy in Shorts, a T-shirt, sunglasses, flip-flops, and a hat that says "I'm with stupid" came up to a team of soldiers in Afganistan wanting to help out with clearing a cave... "Seriously?" Well the repair man chuckled and said "I can tell you are very stressed about this. Let me show you something." He beckoned to me and fingered one of the broken hinges. "Look at the hinges, what do you notice about them?" I looked at them, I mean really looked at them. He had engaged my mind and got me thinking, rather than just freaking out. "They all broke in the same spot." I said. He nodded "They are meant to do that. it is easier to replace a few hinges than a whole door. If the hinges didn't break then the door would have just crunched in on itself." That repair man did more to put my mind at ease than anyone I talked to that day. It took about an hour to make the repairs, and after they were done I got loaded and got on my way.
Well, another thing that happened on this three weeks of work was when I got sent to Blauvelt, New York. I had a feeling it would not be fun simply because Blauvelt is just a few miles north of Yonkers... I just want to say that word again, it is a fun word... Yonkers... Anyway, the place I was going to turned out to be even more cramped than the place in Canada was. Blauvelt is in the hills north of New York City, and the place I was delivering was absolutely wedged into the tinyest space possible. I spent an hour or so being sent from one side of the building to the other as they tried to decide where to put me, and finally decided to use an indoor Dock... An indoor Dock is basically a Sixty foot long garage. These are tough backing situations in the best conditions because the difference in lighting between inside and outside makes it so you cannot see where the back of your trailer os going inside the building. Adding to the difficulty, there was a trailer right next to the spot I would be backing into and I had about three inches of clearance on either side of my trailer; Concrete on one side, another trailer on the other. The set up was actually very easy and before long I was in a straight line backing situation. However in this perticular instance, staight line backing was very very difficult because of the light difference and the narrow clearance on either side of my trailer. I tried several times and heard scraping, the trailer was making contact with the concrete. Finally one of the warehouse workers called a Yard Dog (People who do nothing but move trailers from one place to another within an industrial facility. The Yard Dog, who was not only very familiar and used to all the backing situations on site, was equipped with a Vehicle that makes backing trailers very very easy, mostly because it has a very small turning radius. (Now that I am typing this, I think I need to make a post just about the different kinds of vehicles I see on a regular basis.) Needless to say, the Yard Dog put the trailer into the dock on the first try... Any pride I had gained in my forst weeks as a slo driver were violently taken from me on this set of trips.
The other day I was in Tennesse at a truck stop awaiting a repair team to come fix a large hole in the floor of my trailer, and I saw a sight I wish I had never ever seen... I was eating lunch at the resteraunt inside, and right outside my window and man walked out to his van... He was not a small man, which is fine... I am not the smallest man either... But what he was wearing drove me beyond sick, beyond nauseus, and into the relm of stark confusion. He wore no socks, shoes, or shirt. He wore only Jean shorts that were about six inches too short to be considered either male shorts or decent to wear in public, and (and this is the part that confused me) a RED cowboy hat... Some people are just perplexing.
Another thing that happened in Tennessee was that I fell out of my truck... Yes that's right. How you ask? Well it was very hard to do... I was getting out of the truck to go have a shower. I had my clothes in one hand and my shower bag in the other. My truck was also parked with a slight list to the driver's side, and that is what caused me to fall. The step was not where my feet wanted it to be and so when I let go of the rail to readjust my grip and moved my foot onto where the step usualy was, I fell... Now, Had there not have been another truck next to me it would have been much much worse. Because of the way I fell I would have hit the pavement right on my tail bone. However because the truck was next to me, it broke my fall for the most part. I still have a nasty looking bruise, but when it happened the metal grate on the step of the other truck scraped me pretty bad. It looked like I had been scratched by a Werewolf... or a Badger for those of you who like that more. So the Morale of the story is: Never get a Werewolf or badger mad at you or else you will inadvertantly fall out of your semi-truck.
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