Sunday morning. Get up at 7am, usual routine in getting ready for work and getting there. Hook up to trailer, get to plant, etc.  Get to loading rack.  Dude goes out, bang bang bang bang bang!!! It's the normal noise you here when they are using a solid brass hammer to hit a solid brass fitting snug.  No sparks, is the point and easy on and off.  Just beat the crap out of the fitting with large ears to hit onto on and then the same thing reversed to get it off.

Well, I'm sitting in the driver's "lounge", I guess you could call it, playing on my cell phone and I keep hearing this banging.  After a while, I'm thinking, this isn't normal. You hear the banging for 2 rounds and that's it. I've heard this 10 times at least.  So, I put all my gear on, go out there and find that there is a bad fitting on the trailer.  He was attempting to get the thing off of there, which obviously wasn't going to happen without some help.  Some serious help at that.  He was trying to just push the thing off with a giant plumber's wrench, I knew that wasn't going to work after 2 seconds of looking at the situation.

I did do mechanics and I still do occasional plumbing for decades.  First off, the the entire thing had had 130 below zero liquid passing through it.  Second off, you know when something is that hard to break free, you are going to have to both muscle it with your hands and bang on it with a large hammer at the same time.  I suggested to him that's what he needs to do and offered my help, of course.  There was no way on earth anyone would have ever gotten that fitting off of there in those conditions by themselves.  We wrestled with that stupid thing for half an hour before finally getting it loosed.  It eventually came off. We're talking both of us pushing on that wrench - 3 hands and me banging on the thing with the hammer at the same time.

I was a bit surprised to see they actually had this particular fitting, a brand new one, sitting out there ready to be put into use.  He stated that he could have just said no and sent the trailer out of there, but decided that since we don't current have a mechanic (he quit last week) he would help us out.  Which was cool. Getting the fitting on there was easy.  But getting the plate that goes around the fitting, that perfectly fits the octangle it is?  Yikes. That took a while.  Then, the entire thing had to be bolted back to the floor, yet another muscle versus physics situation that we eventually won.

After that, it was nothing.  Just fill the truck up and go.  But, as this day didn't start out right, it wasn't going to get any better.  Because, the time it took go to from the loading rack to the scales, about 10 minutes, the truck started dumping engine coolant. I knew this because there was steam pouring out the hood of the truck.  I could smell it, I knew it wasn't a fire so I didn't quite panic.  In fact, I just got off the scale, ignored it and went inside to get the paperwork done.  Now that I had the truck loaded, I might as well get that finished and then deal with this nonsense.  I came back out when another helpful driver came up - hey, I saw a trail of fluid leading from the scale to where you are parked and that giant puddle under your truck.  I thanked him, he was trying to help, even though I already knew there was yet another fiasco coming that I didn't really want to deal with after going through that ordeal with the trailer.

Not that I would have wanted to deal with it regardless of if anything had occurred before that.  I knew that truck wasn't getting fixed today. This is not a major metropolitan area with at least a few truck repair shops that are open 24/7.  There are plenty of repair shops here, but they aren't going to be open on Sundays. You might get emergency service out, but it's going to cost you a lot more, if it's even available, than a repair shop during it's regular business hours is going to cost.

So, after having a conversation with my manager, who had called the dude over repairs, she instructed me to take the truck back to the yard, drop the trailer on the cement (heavy trailers can actually tip over in soft dirt), unhook and the repair coordinator would see about getting the truck fixed today.  Again, I knew that wasn't going to happen.  I figured I would end up going home and I was right.  So here it is, Sunday night and I've been home since 2:00 pm.

It is obvious that the "repair" the dealership did in Tulsa wasn't a good one.  I was happy that this didn't happen out in the middle of nowhere, and that I got to go home instead of sitting in a dead truck putting out no heat because the fluid had all but drained out of it.  Amazing the thing didn't over heat coming back to the yard, I suppose 32 degree weather helped with that.

Regardless, I went into the office and waited. She eventually called me back. You might as well go home and take the afternoon off.  Yup, I thought but didn't say, I knew this was coming. A lot of other thoughts that came to mind as well that I didn't mention.

Such as this hype that was given to all 3 of us new drivers endlessly that there were 10 new trucks ordered and that we would be in rental trucks for a short time until they arrived.  This little lie, I'm calling it a lie now, started before we ever got into orientation. It was told us during orientation. It was reaffirmed to us multiple times after  orientation.  I've not said anything to management about this so far.  But they are pushing it.  The other 2 new drivers are far more upset about this than I am and I have been through a lot more than them since starting work here. They have yet to unload a single truck, for starters, but that is minor compared to some of this other stuff.

I don't have any jobs lined up. I stopped looking after getting this one, hoping that this one would be "The One". Even if not perfect, good enough. I am capable of tolerating a lot of shit in this industry, but junk trucks are not one of them.  You go from one breakdown to the next. You live inside of someone else's misfortunes in breaking things, scuffing things up, tearing up interior, filthy carpeting, etc.   Basically, someone else lived in there before you and indelible marks to remind you of that.  Most companies are now actually giving drivers either new trucks, or late model trucks that are still in good condition.

Whatever. I've given my all to make a good impression, bust my ass, get the job done, to get this in return?  There are plenty of trucking companies wanting jobs out there. There is a huge shortage of drivers right now. This company included in the dilemma of trying to attract new drivers. 

I'm in the "whatever" mood right now. I'm tired of seeing companies treating their employees as expendable trash.  The 'if you don't like it, leave" mentality.  They can sit in their offices and make all kinds of dictations about how drivers are to run their lives in their trucks and fully forget that we are human beings and, we have life experience and, we have expectations of the companies we are working for.  Really, all it would take is a decent truck, with a nice interior that hasn't been trashed. 

Okay, well, it's night time, I'm just sitting here contemplating what my next move is. I'm likely to start putting out applications again.