I Am a Truck Driver
I wrote a comment a few hours ago about the present state of my driving - I'm not at the moment, but plan to again soon. I got a lot of welcome comments - THANKS!
I am presently 66, and would like to work until I am 70. I am a mover/truck driver, and feel like the hard work is good exercise for my health - that I get paid to do rather than paying a gym to get exercise.
I have a couple of questions:
1) In all the years I have driven, I have never owned a CB, and now with a cellphone, you don't really need one anyway.
I know a lot of the CB lingo, even though I never really used it. I have always wondered why we call weigh stations "chicken coops". "Bear in the Air" is very understandable. Where did chicken coop come from?
By the way, given most trucker's love of weigh stations, I never go by one - in a truck or a car, whether it is open or closed - without giving it an enthusiastic finger.
I have always kept up with my annual Rand-McNally trucker atlas atlas - showing all of the permanent scales - to chart the shortest, safest route around them when overweight.
2) This is for the older truckers out there. I started driving for Allied Van Lines out of Lexington, Kentucky in 1978 - so I got east and west on I-64, and north and south on I-75 a lot. (I moved to the northern tip of Michigan 30 years ago, and continued to drive out of there.
There used to be a weigh station on I-75 - notth and south bound - about 15 miles north of Lexington and just north of Georgetown. They were later torn down, and the weigh station was moved up to near the I-75 and I-71 split many years ago.
Does anyone remember the time that a driver with a flatbed trailer pulled into the southbound scale while it was closed, and backed the truck into the scale house itself? Unfortunately for the driver, the plate from the trailer was torn off, and left there when he drove off. That driver must have really hated scales!
One other note: the truck stop at Jessup, Maryland on I-95 used to have a large bar and lounge in the basement. Given the rule for truckers of NO alcohol for at least four hours beforr getting behind the wheel, I always thought that was a strange place to put a bar.
Around 1984 or so, an Allied driver got blind drunk at the lounge, got in his truck, and headed north on I-95. Just north of the truck stop, there were two cop cars in the median side by side checking for speeders from both directions. The truck driver lost control, and went off the road into the median, heading straight for the police cars.
One driver saw him coming, and managed to get his car in gear and moving, thus avoiding being killed. The truck went up and over the other car, killing a rookie and a veteran officer.
For six months, whenever possible, I used my atlas to route my truck around Maryland - not just around scales. For that six months, if you were in an Allied truck, you always got sent behind the scale house, where they proceeded to rip you a new asshole! I could understand why they were upset, but it wasn't my fault!
That's all my thoughts for the moment. Thanks in advance for any answers or comments.
Quakertrucker
I am presently 66, and would like to work until I am 70. I am a mover/truck driver, and feel like the hard work is good exercise for my health - that I get paid to do rather than paying a gym to get exercise.
I have a couple of questions:
1) In all the years I have driven, I have never owned a CB, and now with a cellphone, you don't really need one anyway.
I know a lot of the CB lingo, even though I never really used it. I have always wondered why we call weigh stations "chicken coops". "Bear in the Air" is very understandable. Where did chicken coop come from?
By the way, given most trucker's love of weigh stations, I never go by one - in a truck or a car, whether it is open or closed - without giving it an enthusiastic finger.
I have always kept up with my annual Rand-McNally trucker atlas atlas - showing all of the permanent scales - to chart the shortest, safest route around them when overweight.
2) This is for the older truckers out there. I started driving for Allied Van Lines out of Lexington, Kentucky in 1978 - so I got east and west on I-64, and north and south on I-75 a lot. (I moved to the northern tip of Michigan 30 years ago, and continued to drive out of there.
There used to be a weigh station on I-75 - notth and south bound - about 15 miles north of Lexington and just north of Georgetown. They were later torn down, and the weigh station was moved up to near the I-75 and I-71 split many years ago.
Does anyone remember the time that a driver with a flatbed trailer pulled into the southbound scale while it was closed, and backed the truck into the scale house itself? Unfortunately for the driver, the plate from the trailer was torn off, and left there when he drove off. That driver must have really hated scales!
One other note: the truck stop at Jessup, Maryland on I-95 used to have a large bar and lounge in the basement. Given the rule for truckers of NO alcohol for at least four hours beforr getting behind the wheel, I always thought that was a strange place to put a bar.
Around 1984 or so, an Allied driver got blind drunk at the lounge, got in his truck, and headed north on I-95. Just north of the truck stop, there were two cop cars in the median side by side checking for speeders from both directions. The truck driver lost control, and went off the road into the median, heading straight for the police cars.
One driver saw him coming, and managed to get his car in gear and moving, thus avoiding being killed. The truck went up and over the other car, killing a rookie and a veteran officer.
For six months, whenever possible, I used my atlas to route my truck around Maryland - not just around scales. For that six months, if you were in an Allied truck, you always got sent behind the scale house, where they proceeded to rip you a new asshole! I could understand why they were upset, but it wasn't my fault!
That's all my thoughts for the moment. Thanks in advance for any answers or comments.
Quakertrucker
70-79, M
