tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20727262592681091172024-02-19T01:05:09.370-05:00Trucking in EnglishTransatlantic
ramblings...Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08925059541646913167noreply@blogger.comBlogger72125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2072726259268109117.post-39697454870585719312011-02-24T13:58:00.000-05:002011-02-24T13:58:30.338-05:00On the move!Trucking in English is moving. In the interests of having the sort of functionality I need for hosting podcasts (yes, they really are coming soon) I have bitten the bullet and begun to mess about with Wordpress.
The new location for your favourite hapless trucker is: www.truckingtales.com
If you have been following on Facebook, the new posts will syndicate to the Trucking in English page, so Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08925059541646913167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2072726259268109117.post-15970889516783916552010-10-31T17:02:00.000-04:002010-10-31T17:02:34.647-04:00Experimenting with uploading video clipsSince I'm busily editing the truckerly tales into some sort of book instead of having new adventures, I am going back over all sorts of past exploits. I really ought to share these clips of Skid School. Deliberately jackknifing a trailer so that you can learn how to survive is an interesting experiment in terror.
The voice you can hear is the instructor, each truck had a radio so that we couldCarolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08925059541646913167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2072726259268109117.post-88713382117845726072010-10-17T09:44:00.000-04:002010-10-17T09:44:38.785-04:00Stupid is as stupid doesThe plan was to turn up at the yard at noon, collect a preloaded trailer of empty bins and take them to Cincinnati. This was going to be a nice run. Not only starting in daylight but a preload. That meant the border paperwork would be all ready, I could get moving road right away. Cincinnati was about an 8 hour drive. If I hit the road smartish I could be at the region’s only truckstop in Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08925059541646913167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2072726259268109117.post-4552792251598120272010-10-09T11:48:00.000-04:002010-10-09T11:48:41.385-04:00The Little Black BookNo not that sort. I’m a little old for reams of phone numbers of eligible bachelors. Although come to think of it, being young didn’t require a book for them either. It’s a little notebook that made itself useful while I was so generally freaked out and terrified that nothing stuck in my memory at all. Dispatch would say "you went there last week" and I would stand there looking gormless, Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08925059541646913167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2072726259268109117.post-68020019383380593052010-09-28T16:47:00.000-04:002010-09-28T16:47:38.569-04:00Twiglet momentI said nothing went wrong so there was nothing to write about didn’t I? But something bizarre did happen. How could I forget? Nothing to do with driving, more a twiglet moment with regard to the passage of time and the smallness of the world.
I didn’t have time to dash to the library for more audio books and, as I think I’ve mentioned before, the wilds of North America between cities can throw Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08925059541646913167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2072726259268109117.post-74637111373090285492010-09-26T11:43:00.000-04:002010-09-26T11:43:51.088-04:00More changesWell I was mulling over whether the less-than-load, auto parts delivery life was for me when the phone rang. It was ex-employer and much-beloved, adopted extended family member Bert. The same Bert whose limousine company kept us afloat in leaner times when we first moved to Canada. Some pals of his were short of an AZ driver for a run to Montreal, would I like to bobtail the 10th tractor? Of Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08925059541646913167noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2072726259268109117.post-79308749257425456162010-09-21T10:35:00.001-04:002010-09-21T10:38:06.014-04:00Whoops.Without wishing to launch into a tedious lecture, that would never do in a blog devoted to whimsy, there are several ways that airbrakes can fail. The most spectacular shouldn’t ever happen. Overheated brakes leading to runaway trucks are down to bad driving, no more, no less. But a leak in the air line can happen to anyone and it depends a little where you are, and how catastrophic the Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08925059541646913167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2072726259268109117.post-32574930059161355632010-09-18T18:45:00.000-04:002010-09-18T18:45:10.045-04:00Be careful what you wish for.
The next pickup came through just as I pulled in to the ‘J’ for fuel. Saint Mary’s, Pennsylvania. I looked it up. It was on the way home all right but not via any main roads. On the edge of the Allegheny Forest in Elk County, it was smack in the middle of the mountains. I would be driving across the Appalachians and through the Alleghenies to get there and I had to be there by 8 in the morning. Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08925059541646913167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2072726259268109117.post-18172945016027815462010-09-12T12:39:00.000-04:002010-09-12T12:39:02.592-04:00More friendsOors’la had predicted that the 29 would be busy as well as full of mad speed limit changes; and that Interstate 81 would be nose-to tail-trucks. She was right on all counts, and I began to lose interest in trying to get to Roanoke by midnight. The nose-to-tail truck thing set me wondering how easy it would be to find a place to sleep. There didn’t appear to be an abundance of truck stops in and Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08925059541646913167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2072726259268109117.post-6441748518555569262010-09-09T17:55:00.001-04:002010-09-09T17:56:36.167-04:00New friendsAfter 20 minutes or so the news on the CB changed. It meandered from "the chopper’s landed" via "someone must be still alive” through “chopper’s leaving” to “both southbound lanes are open now, northbound still closed, you’re not going anywhere just yet, driver.” Amid thanks for the updates – well not from me, I just thought them – we gradually started to move. It was 6 o’clock when Betsy Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08925059541646913167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2072726259268109117.post-87657273073292840162010-09-06T12:55:00.000-04:002010-09-06T12:55:57.883-04:00The Pennsylvania Turnpike
Up a little before legal driving time for a flurry of wet-wipes by way of a wash. All this stopping late at night nowhere near a truckstop means that the chances of a proper shower are minimal. Once I’m off and running through the day, even if I swing into a truckstop for coffee, fuel or a wee, the pressure to cover enough miles before my 14 hours is up means that making time for a Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08925059541646913167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2072726259268109117.post-38016795722794883622010-09-04T16:10:00.001-04:002010-09-04T16:13:35.890-04:00Pick a mountain...
It sounded like it was going to be a nice trip, heading down to Virginia and starting early enough in the day to get a good distance covered in daylight. Virginia is pretty, I’ve been there in the car. There isn’t an obvious way to get there though, what with the mountains and stuff, so I spent a bit of time mulling over the best possible route while I waited to be loaded.
There was time for Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08925059541646913167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2072726259268109117.post-17623004546750440412010-08-28T14:37:00.000-04:002010-08-28T14:37:26.567-04:00Legal in Canada
A couple of uneventful runs passed by this week, and I was wondering what to write about. Perhaps I should devote a blog to how bizarrely complex the paperwork is, considering we live in an electronic age…and I will sometime because it is all truly odd but another issue overtook the mental ramblings in the end and that is the insane hours truckers are expected to work. I don’t think of myself asCarolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08925059541646913167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2072726259268109117.post-6262099847487720522010-08-22T15:43:00.001-04:002010-08-22T15:49:33.850-04:00A trip of two halves
Finding a place for the first time only happens once. So some stuff will get easier as time goes by. When dispatch called to ask if I’d go out on Friday night it was by way of asking a favour, Linamar’s drivers appear to expect to have their weekends off. I could do with the Brownie points though and it didn’t sound too bad a run, drive over to some suburb of Detroit, sleep, deliver in the Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08925059541646913167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2072726259268109117.post-1852958467462653762010-08-20T13:49:00.000-04:002010-08-20T13:49:30.977-04:00Is it wrong to exploit the accent?I’ve survived another trip, and the anxiety levels are decreasing slightly. As the list of things I’m not sure if I can do decreases and I relax a little more (for the most part of the day) everything fits into place better too. Being less exhausted before you start helps of course, and I seem to be getting a bit of my intelligence back now there’s room in my head for things other than blind Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08925059541646913167noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2072726259268109117.post-46885284380708774062010-08-18T12:10:00.001-04:002010-08-18T12:39:57.561-04:00Sliding the bogiesTrip two of the solo enterprise and things are still a little mixed. On the upside, there would appear to be a conspiracy of silence around my small incident last week. I ‘fessed up to the dispatcher on duty at the time but he would appear to have decided to let it rest. So, on to the next thing. An easyish jaunt across Michigan to deliver some empty bins and pick up new ones filled with Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08925059541646913167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2072726259268109117.post-78621987948701351172010-08-14T10:53:00.000-04:002010-08-14T10:53:08.470-04:00The Curate's EggDay 2 and things are going well. Minnesota is very pretty in the daylight, not exactly hilly but undulating enough to make a change from flatness and dozens of different shades of green. My trucker-specific GPS (what a great investment that was) seems to know where we are going and I am on time.
The foundry my load of empty bins was destined for was visible from the end of the street, which madeCarolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08925059541646913167noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2072726259268109117.post-84701560461797532642010-08-13T22:45:00.001-04:002010-08-13T22:47:04.972-04:00Anything To Declare?Well, I’m somewhere north of Chicago, knackered and stressed but still in one piece. I decided to take yesterday one step at a time and not get anxious about the next thing until I got to it. This served me well right through sorting out the paperwork, checking over the truck, securing and sealing the load, fuelling up and getting over the border. So far so good. With the slight exception of a Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08925059541646913167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2072726259268109117.post-81868898458789151912010-08-10T17:20:00.000-04:002010-08-10T17:20:07.008-04:00Bit of a milestone...I was scheduled for a road test on Monday. I wasn’t terribly confident that I’d meet the ‘experienced driver’ benchmark required for freedom from trainers, mainly due to last week having had a depressing sense of one-step-forward-and-two-steps-back about it. In my defence, this was mainly due to a couple of dirty tricks that Dispatch chose to play on us by way of annoying trips. Not that I mindedCarolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08925059541646913167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2072726259268109117.post-51485951108089639872010-08-08T12:05:00.000-04:002010-08-08T12:05:11.645-04:00Border guards and golf shirtsTwo weeks of hard knocks and difficult lessons. Driving for the automotive industry after a spot of experience with a general freight company is a different kettle of fish altogether. (“A DIFFERENT KETTLE OF FISH”, I must be tired, lame Airplane jokes don’t generally feature in my blogs.)
A lot of the work is ‘less than load’; rounding up several shipments from a few suppliers in one region to Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08925059541646913167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2072726259268109117.post-64033209779289459412010-08-01T11:42:00.000-04:002010-08-01T11:42:34.862-04:00Oof...Did I say I was tired last week? Stupid woman that I am, there was worse to come. Admittedly though, there has been some beetling down the Interstate with the a/c on and the radio playing; there has been some wearing of the baseball cap and feeling like a real trucker, but mostly there has been Too Much Information.
More places to find, new procedures, a trainer who yells about details and then Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08925059541646913167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2072726259268109117.post-7532156359109015502010-07-24T11:38:00.001-04:002010-08-05T08:17:58.187-04:00Reversing and more reversing.Oof, tired, it’s been a long week. It looks as though we will be hitting the highway and crossing the border soon, but the remainder of week involved a lot more driving round in small circles. The new cab, you see. These people know a thing or two about getting you up and running and independent. The smaller wheelbase on the daycab was perfect for learning a bit about the tight spaces for Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08925059541646913167noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2072726259268109117.post-23142669202251181742010-07-18T12:43:00.003-04:002010-07-24T15:36:53.698-04:00Thoroughly oriented...Another company, another orientation day. Odd how the work can be so much the same and so different. Although some things are bound to have changed in the 18 months I’ve been trying to get fit enough (and employable enough) to climb back into the cab. And of course some things have been, well, to be brutally honest, sort of forgotten.
It took a full day to learn Linamar ways. They are not Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08925059541646913167noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2072726259268109117.post-40982246413436486912010-07-09T14:30:00.001-04:002010-07-09T14:31:54.927-04:00Why would anyone want to go trucking?Well, it looks as though Trucking in English really will be about trucking again very shortly, as I have managed to produce a tolerable test drive and am almost employed again. The paperwork and other bits of admin begin next week, with an eta of the week after that for actually being back in the cab. 13 speed gearboxes and 75 foot trailers seem to be similar to bicycles in that it all comes Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08925059541646913167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2072726259268109117.post-85981022330926555242010-07-01T10:06:00.000-04:002010-07-01T10:06:07.409-04:00Mr Hollywood HotshotOk, back to the B&B for a while, and part one of the tale of Mornington Cresent's ultimate nemesis...
They arrived one Sunday afternoon in the depths of a miserable and empty winter. They checked out our pet-friendly room, with a view to an extended stay of about six weeks. She was quiet, with a friendly smile. He was large, loud, and faintly objectionable. But the dollar signs in my eyes Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08925059541646913167noreply@blogger.com0