West Chicago, Illinois.

I’m sitting here waiting to be loaded at a place called _______. I just finished sweeping out the trailer (it had a lot of fine dirt and some debris in it), and am mostly waiting to see if these grumpy sumbitches approve. I have my doubts, since the forklift driver, after assigning a dock to me, said “Make sure you get in there straight!” as if I had already tried several times and had failed. That irritated me a bit. But, of course, I have to remember where I’m at. Although this fella sounds like he was Southern by birth, he has bad enough of an attitude that I imagine he’s been up here for a long time. All this is irrelevant to the trailer being dirty or the trailer getting loaded. At the moment I figure I’ve done my part, and have possibly gone above and beyond the call of duty.

Huh. Here’s an interesting tidbit. Two employees just walked out to their cars to smoke a cigarette. The one guy was playing Looks That Kill by Motley Crue on his stereo. That was a bit of a shock. Although I’ll have to admit that the radio stations typically rock a bit more up here than they do in North Carolina. And people tend to appreciate older rock (whereas in North Carolina it seems like folks try real hard to be contemporary).

Well, Dude just put down the dock plate. It looks like I can reasonably expect to be loaded. I suppose that means that the trailer was up to snuff. Good thing, too. When I got back into the truck I had to clean a film of fine dust off of my glasses. I had no intention of doing any more to the trailer, and was dreading the dust-up (no pun intended) that might be coming.

It looks like I got here just in time. I was the first truck in, and have been followed by three other trucks (all of them U.S. Xpress regulars). This is a small yard, and I expect that those other trucks will have to wait until I’m loaded. So for once it has paid off that I got up off my ass this morning and came on over.

In other news, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about R&K and trucking in general. I don’t much care for being out here on the road anymore. That’s a given. But with Mara at home this really feels like a prison sentence of some sort. I’ve tried to make my peace with it, and I keep telling myself that we couldn’t make this kind of money anywhere else, and that this is the only way that I’ll ever get my recording equipment, but it doesn’t help. I started driving in 1999 with high hopes and spirits. It seemed to me back then that this whole driving thing was a temporary hardship, and that we would come out of it after a year or two better off than when we started. And while it would be hard to argue that we’re not doing better now than we were in 1999, one of the goals of coming out here (buying equipment) has not even been touched upon except for that receiver I bought in January.

We’ve done well. We bought three computers last year. We bought Mama and Loretta a cheap car. We took over payments on their house. All in all we have had the money to solve various problems, and we have generally improved not only our lives, but Mama and Lo’s lives, as well. So I shouldn’t complain. Still, we’ve given up a lot to be out here. And what we’ve gotten out of it so far pales in comparison to what we’ve given up. That’s one thing that was driven home when I was in Kings Mountain. While it was certainly a difficult time for Mara and her family, with her dad having surgery, doing poorly, and then dying, I think we both quickly got used to being a part of the general public again. We felt like we belonged. We reacquainted ourselves with the idea and warmth of family, and we both liked it very much.

I suppose that even when we’re together out here on the road it’s still a lonely existence, because truck drivers are cut out of society. We see these guys all the time in the truck stops who seem to cling to the so-called trucker culture because it’s really all they have, and it’s the only way they can feel like they belong somewhere. I don’t want to be like the guy who was eating Thanksgiving dinner in the booth behind us last year, who, with quivering voice, thanked the waitress for the turkey and dressing dinner, for doing that for the folks who couldn’t be home for Thanksgiving. If I hadn’t had Mara with me, I might have been that guy.

There are a lot of reasons I’ve been thinking about this stuff lately. A lot of it has to do with the fact that Mara is not here with me. Perhaps being alone only reinforces the alienation and loneliness of this job. But also I’ve been stung by how indifferent our employers have been to our lot. I’m mostly talking about U.S. Xpress. USX couldn’t give a fuck about Mara or I as people, or feel any sympathy for Mara over Tom’s death. I’m still smarting over our encounters with our fleet manager, Johnny _____, in which he essentially tried to make us feel guilty because we went home at all (“There’s two sides to this,” he told Mara. “If my father died, I would have to be back at work in three days.”).

R&K has largely been understanding in regard to what Mara has been going through, and have gone as far as to give her extended leave. They may never know how much we appreciate that. But I was still stung when Bob _____ called Friday evening, wanting to know why I was at home. I had told Johnny that Sis had died, and that I was going to go by the house. In fact, we had a little dust-up over it. I was angry that they forced me to go out on Thursday, and that the load was already gone when I arrived, and then the next load I was assigned picked up on Friday morning just 6 miles from the house. Mara called early Friday morning before I headed out and told me that Sis had died. On the way to Gastonia to pick up, I got to thinking about everything, and determined that since I had such a large delivery window, I was going to go by the house; if for no other reason than to see Mara and check in on Loretta. As I mentioned, I wrote Johnny and told him this, and that it wouldn’t affect delivery, and “God forbid that anything should interrupt U.S. Xpress’ cashflow.” He wrote back and told me that writing that was unnecessary, and I apologized. But I meant every word of it. I just figured that it was best to smooth things over. After all, Johnny is not only our fleet manager, but our load planner, as well. It wouldn’t do to get on his bas side.

Anyway, Johnny must have called R&K, because Bob called me at the house. He essentially wanted to know why I was at home, and expressed concerns about on-time delivery on my load. I told him that my aunt had died and that I had stopped in to pay my respects. I don’t think Bob believed me. To be honest, I couldn’t give a shit if Bob believes me. Sis is dead, and I wanted to go by the house. Bob and R&K’s sensibilities don’t even enter into this. But I was a little offended that he would call and question me like that. I imagine that R&K wonders if we’re working our way up to quitting or something. Or maybe they’ve just reached the outer limit of their patience. I don’t know. It still bothered me.

I’ve also had other concerns about R&K of late. Perhaps that’s why his phone call bothered me. I’m trying hard not to cast too critical of an eye onto R&K, because I know that everything they do will be shaded by our experiences with Mr. Bill and B&L. There are uncomfortable similarities. Thus far none of our paychecks have not been what we expected them to be. We’ve yet to receive a single settlement sheet, though we’ve been working for them since early March. Our Direct Deposit hasn’t been activated for our Comdata card, so we haven’t been able to make any deposits from our Comdata card to our checking account (which has bitten us in the ass several times). I hope I’m just being paranoid. If all things work out and they prove to be above board, I will be suitably ashamed of myself for doubting them. But right now that’s hard. We ran good for R&K those weeks we were out, and should have gotten at least one really good paycheck. But so far we have only drawn for around 3,500 miles a week. That’s a shock when we ran over 6,000 miles two weeks straight.

I don’t know. I suppose everything will work out as it’s supposed to. I just can’t help thinking that I was more than willing to give B&L and Mr. Bill the benefit of the doubt, and it took us a long time to dig ourselves out of that hole.

I’m about to go over and talk to one of the U.S. Xpress drivers. She came over to ask me if we had to sweep out our trailers, and then told me that she had thought I was someone else who works for R&K (apparently R&K has three trucks just like this one). She and her husband used to work for R&K. I’ve been sitting here wondering why the don’t still work for R&K, and am thinking of pulling a Mara and going over and finding out.

All in all, I’m not in such a bad mood. Mara bought a Cricket cell phone so that she would have a way of staying in touch while she’s at home. So this won’t be like it was when she was in Medway, where I was constantly trying to get in touch with her, and was always failing. This time we’ll be able to stay in touch, so the road couldn’t get too lonely. I’m still out here, and she’s still at home, and I miss her dearly. But home is never too far away when we can talk to one another. She seems to miss me as much as I miss her. That in itself makes me feel like I belong.