Either I’m hallucinating candy bars or we have once again passed the giant rotating butterfinger / baby ruth sign at the candy factory off I-294 near Chicago.
Sitting for hours on end can fog your brain. That’s partly why Mike prefers the physicality of flatbeds. He likes the burst of activity that breaks up the monotony of the road. Mike can’t imagine being a dry-van or refrigerated-reefer trucker who drives all day and has no part in the loading or unloading: “I’d lose my mind.”
Loading is a sustained thirty-minute-or-longer physical workout that day-vanners never get. As unhealthy and sedentary as long-haul driving is, flatbedders might get these workouts a couple of times a day as they load and unload, pick up and drop off. They hoist the hundred-pound tarps in a squat thrust, climb up and down the trailer, ascend stacked loads to drape the tarps, crank up and cinch down straps and chains with a heavy crowbar, and do it all in reverse when they unload. Mike likes that aspect of his job.
Since he likes getting out of the truck, Saturdays are the worst for Mike. On Saturdays he’s assigned the longest hauls before he goes down that night for his mandatory thirty-four hours. Most flatbedders keep that same schedule. Refrigerated-reefer drivers might pick up loads of perishable food on weekends, but flatbed loads—steel, gypsum, aluminum—aren’t weekend material.
Dale—the trucker who drove everything—drove reefers for fifteen years. They’re refrigerated coolers on wheels. After driving for Daily Express, Dale needed a break from corporate trucking and decided to give it a go on his own again. He bought his own reefer and became his own boss. Going solo didn’t mean that Dale was stress-free. Reefers came with their own built-in burdens.
With the benefit of hindsight, Dale told me he never did like reefers because all the loads were strictly by appointment. You delivered fresh food to your appointed destination on time or the load spoiled, along with your payday. If your reefer unit stopped working, you had only four to five hours to replace it. Dale knew this firsthand. When his cooling unit quit, he hightailed it to a shop that switched in a used unit, and then, when Dale came through town on his return trip, they reinstalled his newly repaired fridge. Running reefer was a lot of strain on Dale, but the money and regular work were good, so good that Dale hauled produce cross-country for a decade and a half.
Dale’s regular reefer route was from Nogales, Arizona, on Wednesdays, to Hunts Point in the Bronx, New York, by Saturday night. He always arrived on Saturday night so he could unload first thing Sunday morning. Hunts Point is home to one of the largest food-distribution facilities in the world, with hundreds of acres making up the Hunts Point Cooperative Market.
Dale even ran a California–to–Hunts Point route in that same Wednesday-to-Saturday window. He still seemed amazed by that mileage.
“That’s a thousand miles a day. I just set my governor at sixty-three miles per hour and ran fifteen hours a day.”
I didn’t ask if that was legal back then; I just listened. After all, no one would know for sure what Dale was doing without electronic trackers.
Dale’s destination in Hunts Point was always Fierman Produce Exchange at Terminal Market. He liked the consistency. “I’d worked with the same booker fifteen years and never laid eyes on him—that’s fine with me.”
No one ever mistook Dale for a social butterfly.
Like fruit flies swarming the market’s produce, Hunts Point hookers flocked to the overnight ocean of truckers parked at the market. There was crime too. The theft and prostitution were rampant when Dale pulled into Hunts Point. He described the place as “out of control.” And he added his belief that Mayor Rudy Giuliani had cleaned that up.
The high-crime environment was mostly an annoyance to Dale. He was more concerned about complying with the market’s regulations on exhaust emissions. “Hunts Point had rules about running your AC or heat overnight there. You couldn’t run your AC unless the temps hit eighty-five degrees or your heat unless it dropped below forty degrees.”
Apparently, hookers and thieves were fine, but heat and air-conditioning were another story.
Dale’s starting point in Nogales was its own impressively vast hub for receiving produce coming out of Mexico. It was a seasonal operation that ran January through June, after which the produce business shifted to California and the San Joaquin Valley—America’s produce department. In Nogales, Dale stacked his reefer high with tomatoes, watermelons, cucumbers, corn, and cantaloupe.
“You go down, meet your bird dog”—that’s the guy who escorts you to your various load pickups—“and sign for the loads that dispatch assigned you. There are about fifty produce houses in Nogales. A driver might have five or six pickups from various houses in an afternoon.”
That split load meant the trucks would have a partitioned mix of fruits and vegetables. All of that bounty had to be kept at precisely the right temperature and controlled climate. There was more to reefer trucking than simply steering a rolling refrigerator. That’s because the driver became a part of the ripening process. Dale received daily instructions to carefully adjust the temperature so his tomatoes—or whatever fruits or veggies he hauled—would appropriately ripen as they rambled across the country.
“You might even have to ice it down—get a block of ice and have it blowing across the produce to maintain the proper moisture level. Or maybe grapes might have to be covered to prevent them from freezing.”
Of course, Dale had to sample some of his cargo, and he was quick to point out what most of us already knew about artificially induced ripening: “The taste of those tomatoes wasn’t worth a damn.”
A temperature tracker on Dale’s reefer spit out data on the refrigeration levels at various points along his produce’s path. Dale printed out that temperature data and stapled it to his paperwork to prove he made the required adjustments.
Dale’s reefer loads included what truckers called swinging meat—entire sides of beef or pork carcasses. Fierman’s market also had meat brokers and sheds for eggs and everything else you could imagine.
For Dale, swinging meat was a terrifying load because it hung from the ceiling of the truck and constantly shifted its weight as the rig rounded curves or climbed hills. That was 45,000 pounds of unpredictable cargo that could flip your truck in an instant.
“The biggest risk of this was on little town roads with rough shoulders or slopes—you can lose it in a heartbeat. It’s also dirty work. You need to wash down your truck after the load—there’s blood and gristle everywhere.”
Young Mike has no experience with reefers or bananas yet, but he knows how to execute what he calls a NASCAR pit stop. That means speed is of the essence. We make such a stop on the way from Sheboygan, Wisconsin, to Brazil, Indiana. We’ll pump only as much fuel as the time it takes for us to pee. Normally, it costs about $1,200 to fill up with diesel, and Mike fills up every two or three days.
There are two tanks, plus a third fifteen-gallon tank for “diesel exhaust fluid.” DEF was mandated by the EPA a decade ago to reduce the dangerous emissions otherwise churned out by diesel engines. Researchers say it does a decent job. That’s good, because big-rig engines run all night to power the AC or heat, refrigerator, and electricity. Some companies don’t allow idling because of the environmental and fuel costs, but the alternative is to buy a generator unit at a price of $8,000. Too steep for most firms.
Mike warns me in advance that our gas-tank top-off should take about four minutes. I jog into the truck stop to use the restroom, and when I return, Mike is still at the pump—there’s time to spare. I grab what must be a seven-foot-long squeegee pole out of a king-size water bucket, loft it above my head, and start speed-washing our windshield clear of bug guts and road debris. There’s even time to hit the tall side-view mirrors and the driver- and passenger-side windows. On cue, we both jump back into the tractor. Four minutes on the dot—$500 on the fuel pump.
Keeping your truck clean is part of good trucker practice and culture according to Mike. He washes his rig once a month, more when the winter roads are coated with sand and salt.
Old Dale Weaver echoed this advice.
“I kept a clean truck, a clean-shaven face. Inspectors can tell when there’s a problem—grease on the truck, worn-down brakes. But a good record pays off. After about a year of good inspections, you’re more likely to get that green light when you pass an inspection stop or weigh station.”
Young Mike shares his own simple truths and rules of the road that he says make the company name on his door look good:
Our path to Brazil, Indiana, where we’ll drop our engineered wood, is flanked by corn. Cornfields, to be exact, as far as the eye can see. There are green farms dotted with grazing cows and horses whose coats gleam a brilliant brown in crystal spring sunlight. Truly beautiful American countryside abounds in all directions.
As we near Brazil, dispatch calls about a possible pickup nearby for delivery to San Antonio, Texas. I am instantly happy at the prospect of getting somewhere closer to home as my week with Mike nears an end. When I embarked on this adventure, I didn’t know where we’d be when the time came to depart. I just remained flexible on timing and location and hoped for the best.
Unfortunately, Mike doesn’t like what he hears about the weight of our proposed load. It’s a steel coil that the broker first posted at 46,000 pounds, but then the broker informed dispatch it was 48,000 pounds, “plus or minus.” That risk pushes us over our total legal weight. It could also mean not being able to fill our fuel tanks. The load sounds to Mike like the kind that usually requires a truck with an additional axle to bear the extra weight. He calls the boss man for an opinion.
The boss man is not inclined to take the load, but in a display of his trust in Mike, he leaves it to Mike to decide. It’s a big decision with a potentially big payday, but it doesn’t take Mike long to do the right thing and decline the coil. How many truckers will risk the weight for the money? How many owners will let them? In a flash, my trip toward home vaporizes. Texas is a no-go—at least for now—and dispatch cancels the already booked load.
The dispatcher negotiates some money out of the broker for the bad initial posting. Later, the dispatcher tells Mike that the company got $150 for the canceled job. That meant Mike’s cut was $45. That’s called TONU money. Short for “truck ordered, not used.” That coil will have to be hauled by someone else, but there is another one in our future.
Dispatch advises that after we drop off the wood in Brazil, Indiana, we will deadhead two and a half hours to Ghent, Kentucky, pick up a giant steel coil, and haul it to Bryan, Texas. That will put me close enough to where I need to end my week. Maybe my road time with Mike will end without the need for a flight from some distant locale after all. I pull out my phone and help calculate our drive time to the Kentucky site and then on to Texas. Mike cautions me about getting too excited; we don’t know how long loading will take, and since we started very early this morning, Mike’s concerned we will come perilously close to hitting his maximum drive time and get trapped somewhere, unable to drive legal.
Heading west on Route 36 along the Ohio River in Jefferson County, we pass through the quaint downtown of Madison, Indiana. The place is the perfect pairing of original architecture inhabited by new businesses. It’s Friday night, and hardworking citizens mark the occasion at outdoor cafés, craft breweries, coffee roasters, and their favorite watering holes in refurbished spaces from decades past. I want to join them, but a coil awaits us across the border in Kentucky.
Most flatbedders consider heavy metal coils their most dangerous load. Mike keeps some six-by-six lumber strapped to the front of the trailer in case he gets a load that isn’t palletized. He positions that lumber where a load will be set down on top of it so a forklift has room to slide under the load when off-loading. And when placed between a load and the cab, the six-by-sixes serve as potentially lifesaving speed bumps in case whatever we’re carrying goes rogue and attacks us from behind.
This route puts us in the same spot, on the same Kentucky road, where Mike witnessed the almost certain fatality in his rearview mirror. I understand how it played out. The rural road lined with simple homes is even narrower than I imagined. I see the double yellow line; I envision the deluge of nighttime rain, the dark slick pavement, the crashing clash of steel on steel. I’m relieved when we roll beyond it.
“If you have to break out the chains, you’re getting dirty—you’ll need a shower that night.” That’s what Mike says about the big, heavy, high-paying loads that require extra securement. It turns out the chains will roll out tonight. As for the shower—that never happens.
In the late afternoon, we arrive at a vast, sprawling steel plant in Ghent, Kentucky. After pulling up to one entrance gate and being directed to yet another down the road, we are advised that our paperwork isn’t quite right. We’re missing a five-digit number that has to start with 91. Mike’s papers display a veritable math class’s whiteboard full of numbers—but 91 isn’t one of them. Without that number, we’re told, we’ll be stuck in Ghent until morning.
They direct us farther down the road to a small trailer with a bank of phones in it. I figure maybe that’s the time-out trailer, where troublesome truckers get sent to serve detention. From there, Mike calls a number posted on the wall and pleads his case with a lady on the other end. Mike reads off all the various numbers that appear on his paperwork, but I see from the look on his face that he might as well be reciting the nuclear-launch codes. He hangs up, and we step out of the trailer as dusk descends.
This doesn’t look good. Mike calls dispatch, who calls the broker who gave us this load. Dispatch connects Mike directly to the broker. The call is on speaker so I can hear. The dispatcher has not a clue of what a 91 number is. This makes no sense to me. We are standing at one of the largest steel plants in the nation. Trucks come and go at all hours ferrying steel out of the plant. Mike has been here before. The same brokerage must have matched a thousand loads to drivers at this plant, maybe every day. How can the broker match a job but not include the magical 91 number in Mike’s paperwork? The broker has never heard of a 91 number—really? The call gets us nowhere.
As we stand outside the trailer on a patch of Kentucky bluegrass, I point out a door in the ground labeled tornado shelter—truck staging lot. It’s a portal to an underground bunker. Mike reaches down and opens it. Steps lead down to a large concrete room. We joke that we might have to spend the night down there if we don’t clear up the 91 number snafu. It is getting darker, and so are our prospects.
We walk back to the truck and Mike searches his app for nearby truck stops to spend the night. There aren’t any within a reasonable distance.
Mike’s phone rings. I hear a female voice on the other end telling us to come back to the gate. As best we can tell, the clueless guy at the brokerage has worked this up the chain and found someone who came up with a 91 number and passed that number on to the plant.
Once inside the gates of the plant we find ourselves surrounded by thousands of steel coils. They sprout like metal mushrooms on a field of asphalt waiting for harvest. I can’t help but notice that almost none of this precious product is covered. They can be rained on, snowed on, hailed on. Since we are about to spend an hour carefully covering and securing our coil cargo, I ask Mike why we’re bothering. His answer is interesting.
First and foremost, Mike’s paperwork says the load must be tarped, so tarped it will be. If a coil is damaged in transit, it won’t be our fault. But Mike also tells me he asked the same question his first time here.
“I was told that this company’s competitors are interested in knowing which types of coils are headed in which direction, and they would love to scrape a shaving off a coil that can give away its composition.”
This is intellectual-property protection—a large part of my professional career. Mike is speaking my language.
Dale Weaver also divulged his brushes with secrecy—both corporate and government.
“When I was driving double-drop lowboys for C and H, the U.S. government contacted us. They found me at a truck stop in New Jersey. These government types came to my location and dropped off what looked like a communications trailer and escorted me with two black SUVs all the way to White Sands, New Mexico. There were three guys in each of the SUVs. They never said a word about what I was hauling. I figure those guys were DOD or FBI or something like that.
“I’ve had loads that had secret stuff on it. One time, at a manufacturing facility where they made double-knit fabric pants in Orangeburg, South Carolina, I had to put my hands over my eyes on the way to the men’s room so I wouldn’t see the secret manufacturing process.”
Dale made me wonder whether China ever succeeded in purloining America’s proprietary fabric formula, relegating millions of its citizens to a future filled with plaid polyester.
Mike’s trailer audibly groans under the weight of the coil painstakingly lowered into place by a gargantuan overhead crane. The lumber he pre-positioned to serve as bumpers on each side of the coil cracks as the load settles in. My eyes widen as I check to see if our tires show any signs of strain. Nope.
As with each of Mike’s loads, we send photos to the boss man to confirm how we wrapped and secured it. I became the official photographer. Mike is particularly proud of this load job, so I take progressive photos, first to show our use of six chains, then another with the tarps wrapped tightly over the tubular coil in a custom fit worthy of a Savile Row tailor, and then a final photo with the straps crisscrossed over the whole enchilada. Our coil looks like a Christmas colossus or a birthday present for Iron Man. Mike transmits my photos to the boss man via Viber, an encrypted app like WhatsApp.
Despite all the glitches and delays of the week, Mike will still pocket his target payout figure.
We finish loading and securing at 9:30 p.m. Next we have to weigh out as we exit the grounds. Here, this is an efficient, contactless process. We drive onto the scale and the truck is electronically scanned to confirm our identity and our destination. Mike grabs a receipt from a machine outside his window that looks like an ATM on steroids. In front of us, a digital display proclaims our gross weight: 78,280 pounds.