Turning Over

[other dog]

Once upon a time I had to take a load of joists to White Plains,Md. This was after i'd been to South Carolina with a load,back to Salem, then to Suffolk,Va. with another load of joists, then back to Salem to get another load to deliver in Cincinnati the next morning. Had to be there at 7am,or else. Didn't matter if 15 trucks were going to the same job,or where you'd been already,if you weren't at the jobsite it was a $25 fine,taken out of your safety bonus. The dispatcher (we'll just call him ken) came up with this plan,so everybody would be on time.

I made it to Cincinnati-on time-,unloaded and picked up a load of coils in Middletown going to Walker muffler in Harrisonburg,Va. Got to Harrisonburg the next afternoon,it was a Thursday,unloaded,called in and they said to come on in,they didn't have any loads at the time. So I went home,figuring I was done for the week,but ken called at 4:45 and said I needed to go to Salem and get a load and be in White Plains,Md. at 7am with it. He never asked,like Teddy and even H.H.Moore himself, "would you..." or "could you..." he just told you what you were going to do,and that's all there is to it,end of discussion.

It wouldn't have been too bad to run down I-81 from Harrisonburg to Salem,but as usual I came all the way to Appomattox,went home,then had to go to Salem. I was already tired as a dog,but I went back to work. Where I work now I could here Todd telling someone "sorry,but I don't have a truck available" if they called in a load that late on Thursday,but ken would never tell anyone that,he'd put a truck on it whether you had any hours left to work with or not,which I didn't.

So I go to Salem,chain the load down,which takes about every chain you've got because you have to put chains through each layer of joists or they can spread apart on you,and take off to White Plains. When I got there I couldn't find the delivery address so I found a trucking company that was open and stopped to ask if they knew where I was going.They didn't,but they finally decided that it had to be the empty lot on the corner,right on rt.301.

It was about 3am by this time and when I got to the lot they were talking about,it was indeed empty.No sign,no nothing,just a big pile of dirt and a circle driveway.By then I was so tired I was just waiting for the wheels to stop turning so I could jump in the bunk and go to sleep. So I turned into the circle driveway and about the time the trailer got off the road good I felt a bump and came to an abrupt halt. "hmmm," I thought," trailer must be in a hole".Then the truck rocked a couple of times and I thought "gee... I believe this summitch is gonna turn over-". Then it turned over.

Come to find out the big pile of dirt came out of the couple of feet deep ditch that was on my right. That was the hole the trailer went in. The ditch was not marked,no signs,no flags,no nothing. Now I won't go to a jobsite I don't know until daylight.

I was driving the black Freightliner then and I turned it off and climbed out the escape hatch,which was also the driver side window. Couldn't sleep in there now,so I started walking to find a phone.Then I decided i'd better get my book right,so I went back and climbed back through the escape hatch and found my log book in the debris pile.I was sitting there with my log book when a cop shined a flashlight through the windshield and yelled "you all right in there?".I threw the logbook back into the debris pile and yelled back "yeah",and climbed back out of the escape hatch again.

The cops filled out a report,called a wrecker,and left.I didn't get a ticket or anything,because I was already off the road. The crane showed up at the job about 8:30 or 9 o'clock and unloaded the joists,they weren't damaged,and they set the truck back up with the wrecker. They towed it down to a garage on 301,and after they took the engine fan off because it was broken,I drove it back to Appomattox. Needed some body work though.

When the workers came to the jobsite that morning and saw a truck turned over one of them said "you know,this really wasn't your fault". I told him "well,even if it ain't,the truck's still just as turned over".

[DADDYSLILGURL]

WOW U KNOW THAT SUCKS BUT IN HINDSIGHT ITS KINDA FUNNY. BET Y LOOK BACK ON THAT AND LAUGH!!

[other dog]

WOW U KNOW THAT SUCKS BUT IN HINDSIGHT ITS KINDA FUNNY. BET Y LOOK BACK ON THAT AND LAUGH!!

...yeah... ....