Stories From the Road: Last Day on the Job

Droopy

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Fri May-12-06 09:44 AM
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Stories From the Road: Last Day on the Job

I thought that my boss might take it easy on me today being my last day on the job. Hell, I worked for the company for 6 years and rarely asked for a favor. But noooo, I had to go in at 10 PM last night and pull an all nighter. I finished up at 9 AM this morning.

All through the night I was paranoid that something bad was going to happen, like I had somehow jinxed myself by taking another job and tonight I was going to screw up and blow the whole deal. Maybe that was a good way to think because it probably helped keep me alert through the night. Caffeine pills don't hurt, either.

I was also more tense because of the weather and road conditions. It has been raining for two days here in my area of the country so you have to deal with glare off the road at night as well a the roads being more slick. I also had to do a run that involved about 50 miles of 2 lane highway travel. If you've ever seen two trucks pass each other on a narrow 2 lane you'll know that there isn't much room for error there.

I almost got involved with some bad stuff twice in the night. A four wheeler started to cross in front of me without assured safe clearance. I guess that's an understatement. I would have creamed him if he'd jumped out there. Then a truck that appeared to be going around the scales came to a crossing with the road I was traveling. He started to come out, but decided against it when he saw me closing in. There was another truck coming the opposite direction from me, but when the scale jumper saw he was clear of me he decided to pull out even though he had to take both lanes of the highway to do it. I watched in my mirror expecting to see a deadly crash. The oncoming trucker jammed on the brakes and somehow steered around the scale jumper without losing control. I could only imagine the cuss words flying over channel 19 because I didn't have my radio on at the time. If I'd been a couple of hundred yards farther away when the scale jumper approached the highway I might have been the one doing the cussing. Either that or moving on to the great beyond. That person had to be a rookie.

But I made it back to Dayton safe and the dock worker even unloaded me an hour early. That was cool of him.

I got back to the yard and filled out paperwork for the company a final time. Then I cleared out my semi and loaded all of my gear into my pickup. I travel light so that didn't take too long.

Yesterday I got a load of popcorn. The dock worker said that they had some damaged goods from a different driver and they were giving it away. So I walked out of there with a slightly damaged case of microwaveable popcorn. Nothing wrong with the product. The boxes were just a little dinged up. After I got my semi cleared out I went in and gave the office people the popcorn and said my good-byes. Six years. There was only 1 out of the 5 office people who worked there when I signed on.

Goodbye Arnold Transportation Services. You done me some wrong, but you also done me some good. It's a good place to pay your dues I guess. If you want to get into trucking give them a call. And I'm not getting paid to say that.