Nature calls at five a.m. I slip down quietly from my bunk, trying not to wake Mike, step to the front of the cab, and use my now-empty gallon water jug. While I’m at it, I note a car parked in front of us with a woman passed out in an awkward position in the back seat. I figure she didn’t start her day yesterday intending to sleep in a car in a high-crime area, but life must have thrown her a curveball. I’m suddenly grateful for my bunk, as spartan as it is. I climb back up top with Mike still snoring.
Mike’s alarm chirps at six a.m. I heard him using his jug and getting dressed. I stay up top so as not to magnify our “too many people, too little space” reality. When I finally drop down, I realize that there’s also a young teen boy asleep in the front passenger seat of the white car still parked in front of us. That must be his mom lying across the back.
Maybe they chose this place to park because they saw our rig here and figured it was safer than their other options.
Mike enters on duty—pre-trip inspection into the electronic log. We’re eager to drop our drywall here and move on, but there’s no sign of anyone at the old brick building. We try the doors but find them locked. Mike and I walk around back, alongside the barbed-wire perimeter fence, and try those gates—no luck. I search the internet for the company’s phone number and read it aloud to Mike. He calls and speaks to someone who confirms we are at an overflow storage location, and we can’t see a forklift operator until eleven a.m. Mike asks him if we can drop the load at their main location. I can hear the unfortunate response.
“No, there’s no room here.”
When we are back in the truck and out of the 35-degree chill, Mike contacts his dispatch and explains that the day hasn’t started well for us. We still need to drive thirty miles east to Heath, Ohio, pick up our aluminum, and drop it in Wisconsin by noon tomorrow. Mike’s Wisconsin payday is evaporating. Dispatch tells Mike to try to coax that guy on the phone into giving us an earlier off-load, but we already know the eleven a.m. forklift sounds firm. The dispatcher hints that maybe he might have a word with the guy, perhaps make it worth his while to get a forklift operator to show up sooner. Mike informs me that this wouldn’t be the first time for such a negotiation.
With the prospect of some downtime, we start fantasizing about having a real breakfast in a real sit-down restaurant. Mike speaks longingly of a possible omelet in his future. I dare to dream of hot coffee. But like an illusory oasis to desert nomads, our vision dissolves when someone climbs up and knocks on Mike’s window.
I think it’s either a cop or we’re getting robbed. Thankfully it’s the forklift operator arriving hours early. Mike rolls down his window.
“Are you my lifesaver?”
He was indeed. Mike and I pop outside, quickly remove the tarps, straps, and bungees, and prepare for off-loading. We back the rig down an alley and pull up alongside a gate in the chain-link fence. Half an hour later, paperwork signed, we are on our way from Columbus to nearby Heath, where 42,000 pounds of aluminum awaits us—theoretically.
When we pull up to the security gate of a sprawling manufacturing campus that belongs to one of the biggest aluminum fabricators in North America, a large sign instructs truckers to stop and call the posted phone number. Mike calls. I see him shaking his head.
“What did they say?” I ask.
“The load won’t be ready until eleven a.m.”
We have a couple of hours to kill, so of course our fantasies return to the elusive breakfast, coffee, and—dare we dream—a hot shower. While still in line at the security entrance, we start an internet search for a breakfast place nearby with enough parking for a truck. Our search yields a Walmart Supercenter with a Wendy’s next door. Not exactly a gourmet establishment, but we’ll take it.
But before we can get on our way, Mike’s phone rings. The almighty aluminum gods want us to move to the back of the property, toward the loading bays, and wait there, but first we’re required to drive up onto the company’s weigh station. Once on the scale as instructed, we wait for lights to flash from the security building, the signal that we have registered our empty weight. We will repeat the same drill when we depart—hopefully soon—with our load. The point is to verify that we took on an extra 42,000 pounds before we leave.
Next, we climb down from the cab and enter the security house. An unusually genial security officer reminds us we’ll need hard hats once we get to the loading area. Roger that. Then he dangles the carrot of a quick load. He says the plan is for us to drive to the loading dock, load up, then just wait for “lab results” on our aluminum before we take off. He suggests that this will be faster than waiting until the results are in before we start loading. While neither Mike nor I have any idea what the lab tests are about, this makes sense to us. It sounds extremely efficient. We like this security officer.
A spring in our step, we hustle to our truck and pull around back near the loading-dock area. We don our hard hats and neon safety vests, descend from the cab, and head inside to tell someone that we are here, ready, and eager. Places to go, people to see. Well, apparently, we’re not going anytime soon.
We are not going to be loaded. At least not now. The older gentleman inside advises us that our load isn’t ready because the lab results aren’t in.
“Maybe by about eleven a.m.”
It’s only nine thirty. This guy we don’t like so much. Chances are good that the smiling security officer simply gave us a well-worn line about being loaded fast just to convince us to move our truck out of the entrance lane. Mike has a question.
“Can we leave and come back?”
The guy says we can’t and instructs us to park our rig off to the side so as not to block the bays.
To park in that position, Mike must perform what he calls offset backing, which is kind of like a parallel-parking maneuver, to angle backward in limited space near the loading bay alongside other waiting trucks. Once this is accomplished, Mike quickly falls asleep in his driver’s seat.
I consider it a blessing to be able to sleep precisely when the opportunity presents itself. Mike does this at night too, hits the bunk and zonks out. I’ve not been graced with such a blessing. Nor does it look like I’ll be blessed with a toilet in my short-term future. At least not until the magical eleven a.m. hour when we might enter the loading dock. While Mike snores thunder, I watch other trucks arrive empty and leave loaded. Four trucks, to be exact. Maybe patience isn’t something I’ve been blessed with either.
With time on my hands, I become even more curious about why our aluminum needs lab tests. Where is this aluminum going—are we talking about soft-drink cans or beer cans? I google the name of the company we will deliver to in Wisconsin. It turns out that they aren’t in the soda-can business—not even close. This aluminum, if we ever get it loaded, is headed to Uncle Sam and the U.S. military.
The company is a defense contractor; its website proudly proclaims it is “the sole producer of medium caliber cartridge cases—20mm, 30mm and 40mm—for the U.S. Department of Defense.”
We’re talking bullets, not beer cans. They make cartridge cases for the ammunition used in gun systems in Apache helicopters and CH-160 helicopters; the A-10 Thunderbolt II Close Combat Gunship, or Warthog; the LPD-17 naval vessel; and even for high-velocity grenade launchers. In the span of just an hour, Mike and I have gone from helping supply the home-building industry to helping bolster American soldiers for battle.
At 11:40 a.m. we get a knock on the driver-side door. I rouse Mike. They are ready for us. The soaring door to bay number 2 opens and Mike skillfully backs the rig into the narrow loading dock. As we drop out of the truck, we’re told to start setting up mandatory safety rails along the sides of our flatbed. How nice of them to show concern for our safety. But it doesn’t take long for us to realize that the safety rails aren’t to protect us; they’re for the two workers who will stand on our trailer, eyes fixed upward, and methodically maneuver the long, heavy stacks of aluminum rods with a remote-controlled crane.
An hour later, our load tarped, tied, and tight, we pull out and start the more-than-ten-hour trip from central Ohio to Antigo, Wisconsin. Mike plans not to stop for the night until we are somewhere north of Chicago, not necessarily because he’ll run out of legal drive time but because he’s thinking ahead to tomorrow. Long-haulers are always thinking two or three days ahead. He wants to go as far as we can today so he can minimize drive time to our drop site tomorrow. That will increase the chances that he can drop off this load, be assigned another one, pick it up, and get on his way all in the same day. Mike aims for less than four hours of driving in the morning to Antigo so he’ll still have seven hours of legal drive time left for another load. As always, he’s chasing that next load and the cash that comes with it.
Mike isn’t happy. He senses we are running behind. He needs five loads a week to reach his money goals. We might not get there with these delays. So Mike explains we’ll “steal time” from the next load and the next until we catch up and can take additional loads. Mike reminds me that his company strives for $2,000 a day gross per truck. Today, our aluminum represents $2,800 gross for the company. We just need to get it to its destination. Mike is confident.
“Something kicks in when I’m behind.”
It’s the will and the thrill to load faster, stop less, keep driving with a taped hose, push the envelope of remaining fuel in hopes of the reward that comes with the next load. There’s a trucker phrase that embodies that spirit: “Risk it for the biscuit.”
I hear Mike say it often.
Mike wants to get as much drive time in tonight as reasonably possible. It’s seven o’clock Wednesday night—past the time to find an open spot at a major truck stop. The Trucker Path app confirms that all spots are full at the next Pilot. I really want a place with a shower. But Mike enlightens me on the correlation between showers and earnings.
“If I hit four thousand in a week, I guarantee you I haven’t showered. That’s a tough week, a rare week. Also, I don’t like paying for showers at these mom-and-pop truck stops when I know my company gets them for free at certain big-name stops.” Whenever I bring up showers, toilets, toothbrushing, Mike replies, “We live like animals out here.”
Mike and I finally come to rest at a vast, shiny, revamped truck stop near Racine, Wisconsin. It is a Petro stop, owned by TravelCenters of America—self-described as “the largest publicly traded full-service truck-stop company” in the country. Corporate revenue is over ten billion dollars a year1 across 270 locations in the United States and Canada. They also own the TA truck stops you’ve seen along the interstates, and they used to control the Quaker Steak and Lube restaurants right off the highways. It’s an intriguing operation, but it isn’t a Flying J or a Pilot, places where employees of Mike’s company enjoy member benefits and credits. Because of this, Mike isn’t thrilled with where we find ourselves, but maybe he’s sensed my desire to check out a big-time stop—and grab a shower.
Or maybe it’s fate. I will later learn more about this truck stop from an entirely different perspective—from victims who were trafficked there. We are also just fourteen minutes from where Rebecca Landrith was last seen before she was shot twenty-six times by trucker Tracy Ray Rollins last year.
Mike hasn’t been at this stop since they underwent a major remodel, but he’s heard good things. The Trucker Path app tells us that plenty of the 185 parking spots are still open—which is strange, given the late hour. Once we pull in, we find out why. Their spots aren’t free—none of them. It costs fifteen bucks for the night. The first two hours are free, presumably for drivers who just want to shower, have a meal, take a nap, or, maybe, have a “commercial” guest.
It looks like we are paying a premium for a fancy truck stop. This doesn’t sit well with Mike. In fact, he doesn’t want to pay. But I am ready for a clean toilet, a hot shower, and a sit-down meal, which are all vanishing before my eyes. Plus I want to see this operation. I tell Mike I’ll spring for the fifteen-dollar fee. Big spender.
I watch Mike’s expression as we walk in. He’s a big kid in a big candy store. He stops in his tracks, takes it all in, then starts telling me what the place used to look like before the major renovation and expansion. I am impressed too. This place is vast. It has a grocery store with cheese and meat cases. There’s a wine and spirits aisle—which strikes me as a bit odd, since U.S. DOT regulations prohibit truckers from having alcohol anywhere in their tractors. You can buy a whole bottle of Tito’s or a nice cabernet here, but what will you do with it if getting caught means an automatic violation?
The showers are fourteen bucks each, and paying that will violate Mike’s deeply held convictions. He tries haggling a bit with the well-seasoned lady behind the counter, looking for a discount and getting her to see if his old account with Petro is still active (it isn’t). Eventually, we pay up. She hands us our tickets, which have numbers that will be called over the PA system, indicating which of the many private shower rooms are now clean and blissfully ours. It’s been a long time since I appreciated a simple hot shower and clean bathroom as much as this.
After our showers and a change of clothes, Mike and I make our way upstairs to check out the Blue Badger restaurant. In addition to table seating, there’s a long wraparound bar. Truckers of all shapes, ages, sizes, and colors perch at the bar, quaff beers and cocktails, and talk—not to each other but on their headsets to friends or family. It’s an odd sight, a trucker version of the Star Wars bar scene. I also can’t help noting that since it’s a Wednesday night, it’s unlikely that these guys are on their thirty-four-hour downtimes. Many of them will be on the roads in the morning, maybe in a few hours.
The alcohol issue prompts me to ask Mike about the minimum age to obtain a commercial driver’s license. He tells me you can get a CDL at eighteen, but that’s only to drive within your home state. You have to be twenty-one for an over-the-road, or OTR, license.
While it’s no longer unusual to see a bar at the big truck stops, back in Dale Weaver’s day, it was an exception—at least legal bars. Dale recalled a place in Wheeling, West Virginia, that had one of the first truck-stop bars he ever saw. If you walked through the bar, there was an illegal poker game in a backroom casino. At one Oklahoma City bar, Dale had a gun stuck in his face. There was this guy next to Dale, a driver from C and H with a Boston accent, who had been chatting up the lady bartender. Then her boyfriend walked in. The boyfriend assumed Dale was with the Boston guy. He aimed the gun at Dale’s head and backed both the other driver and Dale right out of the bar. No wonder Dale chose to keep to himself.
Mike and I have every intention of dining at the Blue Badger, but the waitress informs us they are shutting down for the night. It’s late and Mike doesn’t feel like cooking in the truck. We decide—again—to Grubhub it. We check the app for what is nearby, fast, and mutually agreeable. Our food is delivered to the front door of the truck stop, and we eat our dinner alone at the empty food-court tables.
Back at the truck after dinner, Mike lets the logbook know that we are down for the night. He says truckers sometimes enter unloading at night even though the off-load won’t happen until the next morning. This can allow them to drive longer the next day—but it can also be disproved by someone who is looking for signs of cheating.
It will be an early day tomorrow and we have a load of aluminum to deliver to Uncle Sam. It’s lights-out for us.