FanStory.com - Truckin, Ch 5by Wayne Fowler

In the last part Clyde continued his campaign against bad truckers. He had a surprise call from his daughter, temporarily bringing him back to Earth. He then tried the night shift for a spell.

Ramp sleepers. Once Clyde let his mind focus on them again, they became far more extreme irritants than previously considered. Truckers knew which rest stops were full. They had routes, most of them. They had phones and radios – rest stop forty miles ahead – that gave them half an hour to learn whether there was a slot. But even lacking that option, drive through, no empties, go on. Driver cut it too close and his time clock says to break, go on to the next exit, and pull over – not on the on-ramp, but on the off-ramp, where after his rest, he can cross over, and use the full on-ramp to build up speed for a safe merge. Simple. Oh, but he doesn’t like it when other trucks exiting that ramp use their super loud jake brakes to slow a heavy vehicle down, thus disrupting his slumber. “Too bad! Welcome to America,” Clyde mused. He briefly thought about mounting a super-speaker on his hood and playing a ramped-up recording of jake brakes as he slowly crept through truck stop after truck stop. A nice idea, but not very practical.

Clyde pulled off at every exit, immediately re-entering the freeway in search of on-ramp sleepers.

Night work insufficiently rewarding, he returned home to readjust to daytime life. As soon as he turned into his driveway, the rising sun gleamed off his side yard painted plywood target. .22 caliber bullet holes peppered all about targets that were clearly not bull’s eyes, but more like very large tires, Clyde’s heart leaped into his throat. Anyone could see or surmise that he’d been practicing shooting at tires. Anyone aware of the recent plight of over-the-road truckers could add two and two. He cut the plywood into manageable pieces and burned them before even unloading his car, his blood pressure again pounding when he remembered that there might well be a burn ban in place. Blaming the night shift and his fatigue for not thinking things through, he resolved to be more deliberate in the future.

Which led to an intensified search for a replacement for the gun, a different method of truck disabling. And it was time to rid himself of the Taurus, switch to a different make and color.

Which took him to Dr. Geek, renewing his quest for a ray gun. "Afterall," Clyde thought, "if sun spots with its gamma rays could fuse solid state electronics, then why couldn't someone make a miniature version of a gamma-ray gun?"

+++

Thurman Gibson felt himself fortunate to be on the side of the highway upright and not laying on his diesel rig’s side. Horsing the slightly overweight 53-foot trailer onto the shoulder was the struggle of his life. Just as he was about to eject the CD and call his wife on his cell phone, the left front tire suddenly blew, a trucker’s worst nightmare, aside from falling asleep and ramming a stopped vehicle at full speed.

Losing the left tire always resulted in the truck’s veering into traffic. Hard braking, a driver’s natural instinct would most certainly jackknife the rig, or throw it on its side. Full weight on the steering wheel, check the surroundings, apply air brakes, set the flashers, pray to ease the beast to the shoulder, and hope for the best. After what seemed ages, Thurmon first called his company’s number for roadside service, then his supervisor, and finally his wife.

“Hard ta say for sure, Mr. Gibson, but I’m gonna say you been shot,” the road service technician said.

“Shot?”

“Yup. Twice is my guess. See? Look here at the rim. The bullet didn’t go through, but right there on the lip. See that indent? Nothin’ on the road could cause that. Shiny an’ all. That’s a bullet. Tire’s all shredded, but I’m bettin’ a second shot got the tire, blew it up.”

Thurmon called 911 for a Trooper.

“No idea, Officer,” Thurmon replied to the question. "Just normal. I remember it was light traffic. One, maybe two four-wheelers. Can’t say, really. Didn’t hear anything but the rig and Willie Nelson. Mighta been a car passing me, but I had my hands full. Know what I mean?”

“I do,” the Trooper said. “I’ll have the state look at the wheel and pieces of tire we can gather and send a report to your company. Oughta help with insurance.”

“Yeah, if I was private this’d cost me a couple thousand bucks, lost time and all.”

As the Trooper left, he advised Thurmon that the State Police, who had authority over commercial vehicles would be along, probably directly.

It was nearly four hours before Thurmon could resume his route, his timetable completely skewered. He was paid only a fourth of his hourly rate for downtime. And the downtime did not count as official rest time. Eleven hours was the limit. Downtime could be counted in the thirty-minute required break after eight hours of driving, but Thurmon had already taken that. Legally, he was already past the eleven-hour limit before he retrieved the safety triangles he’d placed behind his rig. He would have to stop for the mandatory ten-hour break no further than the next legal truck stop or rest area.

The stop turned out to be a rest area in which all available parking spots were occupied, some by motorhomes pulling automobiles. Thurmon pulled to the shoulder on the onramp leading back onto the freeway, several hundred yards from the facilities. He was counting on a hot meal and a shower at his regular stop, the station where his company had a contract and he would have to pull into for fuel anyway – more downtime at this point. "At least the Company paid for the damages," he thought.

+++

It was hours after he’d finally fallen asleep that Thurmon woke with a start. He’d dreamed of the lady flipping him off. She must have been tall because it was the longest middle finger on a lady he’d ever seen. And so unladylike. She was the passenger in a black Honda pickup truck. He remembered the occasion distinctly. It was half an hour, maybe a little more, before losing the left front tire. He remembered that it was approaching in the passing lane, but thought he had time to move over in front of it in order to clear the shouldered J.B. Hunt trucker on the side of the road.

“Show some respect!” he remembered the trainer shout. “Passed by an eighteen-wheeler when you’re on the shoulder is like being passed by a Boeing 747. It can blow an empty rig over. A little professional courtesy, girls. Always! Always give your brothers room, move over to the left. It won’t hurt those four-wheelers. They can ease up a second or two. They’ll appreciate it when you move over for them, too.”

Seeing the practice just about universal, every new driver adopted the routine, in part, to avoid taking flak from fellow drivers at the next stop.

Thurmon didn’t recall any other issue with any other driver that day. He resolved to call the investigating officer the next day.

Clyde, driver of the Ford Taurus several car lengths behind the woman that Thurmon remembered, would not be mentioned.

+++

Thurmon, for the first time in his driving career, began to take notice of his fellow driver’s practices. It wasn’t that he’d not been aware of driving mistakes and infractions, but that he’d never before consciously observed the effect on four-wheelers, or even on other truckers.

The first thing he saw was what truck drivers failed to do. After passing a tandem – a tractor pulling two trailers – he noticed that the driver never flashed his lights indicating that it was safe to pull back over to the right. Paying attention, he noted that none of the truckers exercised that courtesy throughout the day. In connection with that, he saw that on average, most truckers remained in the passing lane two or three times as long as necessary.

“Would you look at that.” Thurmon was on the phone with his wife.

“What’s that, hon?”

“An impatient four-wheeler passed a truck on the right. The trucker just passed a Roadway rig and the car passed him on the right even after the trucker put on his blinker.”

“Did the trucker take too long getting back?” Thurmon’s wife Sara asked.

“Nah. Textbook. Might be a newbie. Did it just right.”

“Well, I wish he’d get a ticket for unsafe driving. It would serve him right to get run off the road. The trucker could say he never saw him in his blind spot.”

“He wouldn’t be lying,” Thurmon agreed. “The car would be in the ditch, maybe rolling over and over before the trucker ever saw him. But it would cost him half a day. Maybe even his job.”

“I hate people that make your job unsafe,” Sara offered. “And I hate companies that fire drivers when it isn’t their fault. Makes it hard for them to get hired on to the good companies.”

Thurmon grunted his agreement.

“Just make sure you don’t get another ticket, Thurm. One more…”

“Yeah, I know. I’m careful. You know, hon, I’ve been watchin’ lately. I don’t know if it’s the kids they’re running through the classes these days, or if there are a lot more foreign drivers…”

“What? What do you mean foreign?”

“You can drive big rigs across the Mexican border and take your load to its destination. Can’t pick up another load, but they gotta get back. So there’s a lot of foreign drivers coming and going.”

“Do they have to follow our laws?” Sara asked.

“Sure, but who knows what they’re taught. And what’s the penalty? A fine that their company pays. That’s it.”

“How can that be right?”

Sara didn’t hear the shrug of Thurmon’s shoulders.

“Just be extra careful around them,” Sara said to Thurmon’s silent chuckle. As if he could know the details of other drivers.

“Wish I had a rear camera. You know, like some motorhomes have? I’m being passed by a tanker whose going maybe one-mile-an-hour better. Gonna take him miles to pass me. Wish I could see the line of cars behind him.”

“Why don’t you, you know, slow a bit, get it over with?”

“I could but it would cost a few bucks in fuel.”

“A few bucks we don’t have since I had to quit my job.”

Sara’s retail job stopped allowing her to end her shift in time to care for their kids after school. All other retail positions were the same, or worse, requiring new hires to work into the evening.

“Yeah, I could,” Thurmon said with respect to easing up and letting the tanker pass. “But the last time I did that I had to pass him on the very next grade,” he said, referring to an uphill climb.