Up to a town called Vivian today.
Got to the address to deliver and the guy tells me to follow him, we are taking the material to a jobsite. Okay....
Paved road, another paved road and then a "primitive"paved road with no speed limits or signs of any kind. Down that for 10 miles and then a turn into a very narrow road with tall pines down both sides.
Through a gate, up this road and it gets wider. A few miles of this and the next thing I know? I am in trucking hell.
The old road ends the new road starts and whoever built the thing, obviously did not intend tractor trailer rigs to be driving down it as I am just barely making the turns without hitting trees but definitely taking out brush. It gets worse and worse and worse until finally we get to this sharp turn. They had cleared out an area to be able to swing wide. Well I didn't swing wide enough - I didn't want to drive the truck over all those bushes and junk and ended up with the trailer sliding up against a pine tree, which is where I stopped, backed up and this man comes running up.
Swing it wider! Yeah right dude. I'll guide you! Okay. I do NOT like driving trucks through junk like that and I could only imagine what might await me down the road. Was this going to get WORSE? I swung as wide as I could without hitting trees and when I say that, I mean watching the truck mirror miss tree trunks by inches to make this turn and even then, the trailer wheels were probably an inch from that truck I had gotten stuck at the first time.
Half a mile down the road and that was that. An abrupt turn into a very narrow portion with trees butting up directly against the roadway, NO way that truck was making that left hand turn. Guy jumps out again. Can't make it? No!!! I am not even going to try! I can turn right and do pull-ups until the trailer is aligned with the road and back it down there, how far is it? Well it's not too terribly far....was the reply. In a pig's eye. It took ten minutes worth of pull ups to get the truck positioned because there was not much room going right, either. The road going backward? Over a narrow bridge, and then the "road" twists and turns - around trees! This guy is like well they are going to be bringing in 53 foot spans in here!
GOOD LUCK!!! NO WAY is a 53 foot trailer going to make it in here, I BARELY made in a 48 footer! Okay, it's possible. You slide the trailer tandems forward giving you a sharper turning radius. But then you have a wide swing in the back and probably be smacking the trailer up against trees anyway. I just looked at the guy and said: MOST drivers will NOT want to drive their trucks in here!
What was at the end of this newly built road replete with new bridge? A house being built. And not just any house. A 20,000 square foot house in the middle of the forest out in the middle of nowhere! I dunno who is building that house, ie: who is paying for it, but they are obviously loaded. I don't care WHERE you built a 20,000 square foot house, it's going to cost you a fortune! And then having to built a road AND a bridge to get to it! Not to mention bringing in electricity and presumably a well for water. It wouldn't surprise me if a heli-pad was built in there as well. Someone that rich would have the wherewithal to also have a helicopter to fly them around wherever.
I can only guess why a person that rich would want to build a house that large in such isolation: A famous person perhaps? Wanting a place of seclusion? You definitely would NOT just happen on a place like that! Maybe a hunter.
That was my excitement - for the week probably. I got back to the yard and saw the 10 wheeler sitting there with a jug of DEF (Diesel Exhaust Fluid) next to it. Why don't you just take the thing to the truckstop to fill it up? Oh it ain't gettin' filled up, Ben. Huh? We're draining the DEF out of the tank on the truck. Well why would you want to do that? No clue. Ummm, cause' Terrance backed over the strapping machine and tore a hole in the DEF tank, that's why!
What? This guy has sat there and talked trash about everyone else and just the other day saying how another driver was always tearing up things. So Terrance comes up and starts talking about whatever and I'm like, you tell me about Eugene and how HE tears things up and now in just a weeks' time you tear down a chain link fence and now run over the machine AND tear out the DEF tank? There's at least a thousand dollars worth of damage there just to that tank. The banding machine around $300 and around a grand's worth of damage to the chain link fence.
I'm guessing that guy's days being employed there are numbered. Too much complaining, too much idle time, sits around on the forklift talking to whoever on the phone, complains about everyone else, takes to long to make deliveries and doesn't much care about anything including safety and how he secures his loads onto the trucks.
Well whatever. It's my bedtime and I'm outta here!
ben
