By BILL ARCHER
All of the steel-haulers I knew who loaded out of the Pittsburgh area mills would leave out every week on Sunday afternoon at about 2 p.m. My work week started then and lasted until sometime Friday night or early Saturday morning when I loaded for the weekend — primed to leave out again at 2 p.m. on the next Sunday. All the things that happened from the time I left until I got back off of my second round of Chicago or western Kentucky were all designed to put me under a load waiting for me to leave out with on the next Sunday afternoon.
I kept a Rand McNally Road Atlas on my doghouse, a little red book that listed all the truck weighing stations and low overpasses in the U.S., and a log book or two, or three ... well, four. Many cities have different systems of streets and avenues, but the U.S. highway and interstate systems are all logical. The interstate is the best, with odd-numbered highways traveling north-south (for example, I-77) and even-numbered interstate highways going east-west (for example, I-64). But once you enter a city, the plan can be shaky. Chicago is a little more logical than most cities because it was essentially rebuilt after the Great Chicago Fire of Oct. 8, 1871, but cities like Pittsburgh with roots before the French and Indian War (1754) emerged along the contour of the rivers and hills that give the town its character. There’s no logic in that.
In my five-year trucking career, I only felt lost once. Sure, several times I was out of control like the time I crested a mountain outside of Louisville, Ky., and encountered an ice-coated highway on I-64 west of the city and realized that God was in absolute control of my life. I was also out of control the night that the air reserve in my trailer air-brakes drained off, and the brakes released, sending my driver-less Japanese Freightliner rolling through a truckstop parking lot and headed straight to a huge utility pole.
During my Kentucky ice moment, I watched the drama unfold as God maneuvered my 1965 Freightliner through more than a dozen cars and trucks scattered like metal beings with arms akimbo, wondering what would happen next. I found it fascinating that I didn’t hit anything and God sent me into some gravel on the berm of the road where I regained my traction.
The brake release moment took place at a truckstop in Somerset, Pa. I moved faster than I have ever moved in my life, jumped into the truck and regained control before I hit the pole. The moments I spent afterward contemplating what might have been, gave me great insights into the here and now back then.
One Sunday afternoon back in those days, I left out heading for somewhere up in northern Wisconsin. I can’t remember the name of the town I delivered to, but it was way up I-94, but not all the way to Eau Claire. I had a load of pipe from the “oil country” section of the Wheeling-Pittsburgh mill in Allenport, Pa. I loved that name, oil country. It wasn’t any oilier than anywhere else in the mill, but they loaded thick-walled pipe there. I took several loads of that pipe to different places in Wisconsin and a few short hauls up to Slippery Rock, Pa.
It was late in the afternoon when I got empty in Wisconsin near Eau Claire, and when I called the closest dispatcher in East Chicago, Ind., she told me to deadhead back to Gary, and I could load out of the U.S. Steel plant there Tuesday morning. I started driving back, but by 8 or 9 p.m., I was getting so tired that I pulled into a truckstop near Milwaukee just to rest my eyes for a few minutes. I parked in a row of trucks, left the truck running, crawled back in the bunk and slept the sleep of the dead.
In what seemed like no time at all, the sound of air brakes releasing prompted me to open my left eye slightly. While the murmur of 100 loping diesel engines had been my lullaby, seeing my truck moving past a freight box trailer sitting next to me was my nightmare. I leaped from the bunk into the driver’s seat and stood on my brake treadle. I’ve written about this before. The truck pulling out next to me gave me the sensation that I was moving. In the moments that followed, my confusion was total. Something had snapped and I didn’t have a clue as to where I was or what — other than driving a truck — I was doing.
I regained enough of my composure to grab my jacket, get out of the truck and walk to the truckers’ lounge. On my way to take a seat, I asked a waitress for a cup of coffee before I walked over to sit down in an over-stuffed chair. The coffee was hot with no cream or sugar. I took a sip and leaned back into the chair to get my bearings. Of all things, a Monday Night Football game was on a television. It wasn’t the Steelers, but it was football. I can’t recall who was playing. It was just a game and I smiled.
Apparently, that was all the rest I needed to give me enough energy to drive down to the Ace Doran terminal in East Chicago. I’m pretty sure that I loaded and ran a load on Tuesday; delivered and reloaded on Wednesday; drove and delivered someplace on Thursday; picked up that day and delivered Friday and loaded someplace else Friday night or Saturday morning so I could be ready to leave out again that following Sunday. That was the rut I was living in at the time.
Anyone who works an unpredictable job could attest to how hard it is when you lose sight of your place in the bigger picture. All I can say for sure is, thank God for football and when does the next season start?
Bill Archer Daily Telegraph senior editor. Contact him at barcher@bdtonline.com.
