Me and Joe Rogan: My Podcast Plan

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The Joe Rogan Experience

Photo taken from Twitter.com

The Joe Rogan Dream

I have this dream – a recurring vision, really – that I’m sitting across the desk from Joe Rogan. He’s asking me questions about my past: my decade-long battle with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, my erstwhile journalism career, my unlikely odyssey to a second career as a long-haul truck driver, and my lifelong ambition to become an author of memorable fiction. For the sake of comedy and biographical context we go way back to my school days, where I was tall and gangly, shy and awkward, a bullying victim and deathly afraid to talk to girls.

Joe’s never had a guest quite like me. Okay, let’s settle down with the hyperbole. The truth is, he regularly welcomes guests – scientists, journalists, musicians, media personalities – who are unlike him because he’s highly curious. He’s also refreshingly prepared to change his perspective on just about anything, after being convinced by facts or a compelling argument. Note to self: conjure a compelling argument. Continue reading →

City Truck Driving: Thrilling or Soul-Killing?

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driving in the city streets of Cambridge, Ontario

Steering through the streets of my old haunt: Cambridge, Ontario.

Feel the Fear

I’m going to scare the hell out of you without even trying, if you’re up to the test. Hop into my cab and we’ll go for a ride around the city – any city. I want you to see how tricky and dangerous it can be driving a tractor-trailer through busy streets. By the end of this unique day, I’ll want your answer to this question about city truck driving: Is it thrilling or soul killing?

Pretend real hard that you’re sitting beside me in my Freightliner cab. I know most of you won’t know what that looks or feels like. So, imagine that you’re in a massive truck that’s loud and powerful. You’re sitting up high and have a superb view of all nearby vehicles. If you look down into any regular car driving beside you, you can stare at people on their phones. Yes, it’s illegal for drivers but they do it anyway. You’ll also have a bird’s eye view of passengers playing with their hair and slouched in their seats looking unabashedly bored. Sometimes they will look up at you with ostensible fear. In this case it’s probably your truck they’re scared of, not you.

My cab has a sleeper bunk in the back; it’s called a sleeper cab. The added length makes driving even harder. Plus, I have no rear windows. I rely entirely on my side mirrors to see what’s behind and beside me.

I’m pulling a 53-foot trailer. The tractor and trailer combination weighs between about 32,000 to 80,000 pounds, depending on how much freight I’m hauling. That number is important because it affects everything, namely how much time it takes me to come to a complete stop. If I’m heavy, it could take 5-8 seconds to stop. It may take longer than that to build speed again. I do a lot of stops and starts in the city, so you’ll need to use your patience. I use mine hourly.

One more thing: the cab and trailer are each just under 4.14 metres high. That’s 13 feet 6 inches. When we’re nearing a bridge, we’ll want to look for a sign that says the bridge has enough clearance. On the highway that isn’t usually a problem because most every highway bridge is truck-friendly. Not so in the city.

Are you scared yet? Continue reading →

The Truck Stops Here

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Pilot truck plaza in Wytheville, Virginia, mostly empty in the late morning

“They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”

The classic Joni Mitchell lyric has been attributed to many ‘doom of green space’ scenarios: I’m sure Ms. Mitchell was thinking of urban landscapes where beautiful trees and kid-friendly greenery have been bulldozed in favour of dreary asphalt. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t thinking of truck stops.

Fortunately for inner city park lovers, most truck stops don’t infringe on their trees and grass. They’re out in the boonies at major highways junctions, where noisy air brakes and massive trailers aren’t a problem. Out there in the open air, there’s big money to be made from filling giant fuel tanks and feeding and showering hungry, dirty truck drivers.

The Wytheville – Fort Chiswell corridor in southern Virginia is such a place. This is where Interstates 77 and 81 cross in the southern section of Virginia. The area is a de facto gateway to North Carolina, namely the nearby populous Piedmont Triad of Winston-Salem, Greensboro and High Point. Charlotte is a couple of hours south.

I use this stretch of highway as a convenience. It has a half dozen or so giant truck stops – they’re called ‘travel plazas’ – including three from the Pilot/Flying J company. That’s where my company wants me to fuel. Continue reading →

Sharing The Road Is A Bitch For Us Too

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Just a sample of a random car cutting off a random big truck. Image from livetrucking.com

We’re Big and Slow; You’re Small and Fast – We Get It

Let’s pretend I understand. You’re the driver of a small, fast vehicle. You’re in your sedan / hatchback / SUV / pickup truck –or on your motorcycle – and you want to get where you’re going as fast as possible. You’re willing to put up with some traffic, stop signs and lights and even a bit of bad weather. You’re even prepared to cope with smaller delivery trucks, garbage trucks and the like.

But evidently, from my experience, you’re not much ready to deal with the big boys of the road: the space-hogging tractor-trailers — the very same vehicles that bring all the things you love including food, clothes and cars themselves, to the places where you flock to buy them.

I appreciate that you don’t want to be behind, or even beside or near, one of these monsters. They’re huge, they move slowly (especially when gearing up), they need extra space to make wide turns and they’re scary to be nearby because they will crunch you in a collision.

Maybe most annoyingly, they often block you out even when they don’t intend to. Continue reading →

Duffer and the Deer

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Highway I-79 near the West Virginia - Pennsylvania border

I-79 near the West Virginia – Pennsylvania border

Steve Duffer III

Steve Duffer III died on I-79 in West Virginia, just north of Meadowdale. A homemade memorial dedicated to his memory is perched on the hill beside the highway. It’s legible even from a passing trucker’s vantage point.

Each time I drive by the memorial, I quickly read the name and return my eyes to the road. For some reason I can’t recall much else about the memorial besides the dedication. I think it’s a white wooden cross that’s been hammered into the ground.

Research on Mr. Duffer’s death reveals a tragedy. He died in February 2007 when his southbound red Nissan Frontier pickup crossed the meridian on Jennings Randolph Expressway (what I-79 is named in West Virginia) and hit a tractor trailer.

The 2001 Mack tractor trailer in the northbound lanes was running out of Hickory, North Carolina – where I have picked up and delivered numerous times in my nine months as a truck driver. Continue reading →

Green Mountain Optimism

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mountain highway in Virginia

Somewhere on a mountain highway in Virginia or West Virginia

Driving along I-77 in West Virginia and Virginia can be riveting. The green mountain scenery is astonishing, the air is fresh and cool, the highway curves are long and well-marked and there are several well-maintained roadside rest areas. As a rookie truck driver, I can see that stretches like this are what driving a tractor-trailer is all about.

While many friends and former coworkers are nestled in restrictive office cubicles, I’m out on the open road, enjoying the vistas while maintaining good speed and keeping a cautious watch for bad or distracted drivers … in cars, small trucks, motorcycles and even other tractor-trailers.

Eager for Enjoyment

I’ve been driving on my own for over six months now. Each week I head to North and South Carolina to drop off and pick up an interesting array of goods, including machinery, auto parts, clothes and toys. In this time, I’ve found there’s one thing that sticks with me and comes second only to safety: the desire to enjoy this career and all its trappings. Continue reading →

The Stresses of Truck Driver Testing

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This is a reminder to me, to make everyone feel safe when I’m driving.

A Test of Patience

Damn all of the tests and exams I did in high school, university and college. Yes, I graduated from all three institutions. In doing so, I succumbed to the opinions and whims of many teachers, professors and instructors.

You want to know what’s the most damning? Look where all that learning and eternal quizzing got me: a career path that’s disheveled and endlessly discouraging. Sometimes I long to live out the rest of my years on an Nepalese mountainside, actively practicing Buddhism. This past summer, I decided on a career path that’s designed to rescue me from visions of eternal career failure. Guess what I unwittingly pitted myself against? That’s right: more tests and exams.

In the truck driving business, you get trained to get tested. Yeah, I realize life in general is like that. But for the longest time I was evaluated on the type of work I was very good at: writing and relating. Continue reading →

I Have My Truck Driver’s License, Now What?

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Where will the road take me now that I have my truck driver’s license?

Driving Beyond Fear

A few months ago, I hastily vowed to do something every day that scares the stuffing out of me. I was thinking along the lines of ordering a drink at Starbucks that I’d never tried before. I figured I’d work my way up from there. Eventually, I would try something like parasailing. Then along came this goofy idea to become a truck driver. It was my vision for salvaging my career, post journalism.

It’s a good thing I’m a little fearless. Otherwise, the last two months might have overwhelmed me. Driving an 18-wheeler is not for the faint of spirit. I learned to do it through many hours on the road and in the trucking yard. Recently, I learned that as scary as it is to drive the giant truck with an instructor beside you, it’s even more daunting to take a driver’s test with an examiner next to you, critiquing your every move.

If that’s not scary enough, how about driving a big rig with manual transmission, when you’ve never learned stick shifting in a car? Upshifting and downshifting is tough enough, but try doing it while still paying complete attention to all 70-plus feet of your tractor-trailer. That’s my current challenge. Judging by the buildup of tightness in my neck muscles, it’s been arduous. Continue reading →

Backing Up Badly and Driving Guardedly: Weeks 2 & 3 of Truck Driver Training

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Erich gives backing up his best shot.

You’d Better Back Up While I Try Backing Up

In my experience of regular – non-truck – driving, there’s two things people don’t do very well: parallel parking and backing up. Then there’s all the stuff they simply fail to do, like looking both ways at an intersection and always signalling before a turn or lane chance. But I’m not here to rant.

In the business of operating a tractor-trailer, parallel parking is something you’ll do once in a while, I’m told. But backing up is a daily occurrence. You have to reverse into a loading dock every time you deliver goods to your destination. Being proficient at it isn’t just a good thing; it’s essential.

And it’s hard to do. Consider how long a tractor-trailer is: a combined @ 65-71 feet. Bear in mind that you have two separate units joined only by a steel pin and a coupling device. Obviously, you’ll never master this on your first day of trying. I definitely didn’t.

I don’t think I was horrible at backing up, although my more experienced co-trainee Eric might disagree. As might the two instructors who were looking on. The purpose of training is to work together to make everyone a good driver. So, they may have decided to encourage me and not tell the truth: ‘You suck at backing up.’

They didn’t have to tell me anything. I did suck at it. But it was day one of reversing for me. I’d never backed up anything bigger than a small U-Haul truck and that was many years ago. Continue reading →

Circle and Check: My First Week of Truck Driver Training

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Me and the red truck I have been training with.

Secure and damage-free.

Working (in proper working order).

Free of obstructions.

These are key measuring points in the circle check, the round-the-truck pre-trip inspection that every driver needs to complete each day before hitting the road. This is what I have spent the majority of my first week of truck driver training on, trying to memorize.

Most people don’t spend a lot of time walking around their car or truck and carefully examining it for possible defects – namely that everything in view or under the hood is secure and damage free, working properly, and free of obstructions. In the trucking industry, it’s a whole different story. You spend a lot of time doing exactly that, in the name of safety. Safety matters most in this business. Nothing else is even close. Continue reading →