Readt for a Change
Posted By admin on April 1, 2009
I am wondering if Tuesday will be one of those life changing events for me. Here is my statement I had to give to the insurance company-
I was driving south on highway 63 just outside of Columbia, Missouri, when I lost control of my vehicle. It was raining pretty hard and the wind was gusting from west to east. I had just passed a car and I started up a small hill that had a slight curve to the right. I was driving about 65 mph in a 70mph zone. I am not sure what happened to cause me to lose traction, if it was just hydroplaning or if a gust of wind caught me in the side. I just felt the drive tires start to slide to the left, pushing the front of the tractor to the right. It felt like I was on ice. When the truck started to skid I did what I have always been told to do, I turned the steering wheel into the skid (left) and tried to correct. I did not hit the brakes, accelerator, nor the engine brake. I just steered and waited for it to catch, which unfortunately it never did. I continued to head for the right shoulder of the road with the tractor turning slightly to the right. I ran off the pavement and the tractor jackknifed into the trailer on the passenger side. I held on and waited for the truck to stop moving. After it came to a stop I got out of the truck to see what had happened and if I was the only one involved. My tractor was off the road and my trailer was just hanging out over the shoulder but was not in the travel lane of the highway. Several vehicles stopped to make sure I was alright but none of them were involved in the wreck. I put out my warning triangles over about a 300 foot span to make sure to warn oncoming traffic and then waited for the police to arrive.
It pretty much sucked. I still can’t believe it happened. I have been driving for 12 years now and I have been everywhere in every imaginable weather and road condition. I have driven through ice storms and blizzards so bad that you would not believe it was possible to get through. I have driven past thousands of cars and pickups and big trucks that had slid off the road because they lost control, but I never did. Last year I drove through a blizzard around the Iowa-Minnesota border that was totally crazy. I was warned before I left Waterloo, Iowa that if anything happened to me no one would be coming to get me until the storm had blown over. It was absolutely brutal. The temperature was around -10F with a wind that was blowing about 25mph. The snow was coming down hard and it was coming down sideways. There were several times I had to stop and wait for the wind to die down a little bit because I literally could not see the end off my hood. It was the worst thing I had ever driven through, but I made it.
Now, after having this wreck I have really had to step back and look at things. I have really thought about what I am doing and why I am doing it. What the fuck am I doing? Everyday I am in such a hurry. I hate this shit. I am always trying to get ahead. I rarely sit down and eat anywhere other than my truck. If I am stopped to load or unload I can sit and eat in peace, but most of the time I have a bag of food in the floor or a plate sitting on my passenger seat and I am eating going down the road. That sucks. I am tired of trying to squeeze every minute out of the day that I can. It just isn’t fun anymore. When I was younger it was like a challenge to ride all night and be 1000 miles from home by sunrise the next morning. It was proving I was better than everyone else when I drove through that blizzard in Iowa, that I could make it where others couldn’t. Now I look at it and I think “who gives a fuck? You could have died dumbass. And over what, a load of cat litter? So you could prove something?”
The truth is truck driving is all about being in a hurry. You try to leave your home as late as possible so you can spend time doing what you want, like playing with your kids, spending time with your wife, working on your house or yard or whatever the fuck you need to do while you are there. Then you spend the rest of the week trying to get in as many miles as possible because miles=money. If you stop and eat that cuts into your driving time. You start leaving later because you know you are not going to stop to eat, you can eat while you drive. When you are out during the week you don’t stop to eat because that could be an hour you could be sleeping. God knows you can always use more sleep. You never know when you are going to call in and hear “Can you be there in the morning?” Yeah, its 700 miles from where you are loading and you are not even there yet but it would really help us out getting these loads covered. Now you have to ride all night to get there, you lose a day at home, and when you get home you are going to be tired and irritable and yell at your kids you haven’t seen because you just want to relax and they are all wound up because they are excited to see you and just want to play. Your wife wants you to help her with stuff around the house, the lawn, the laundry, dishes, cooking, cleaning, and everything else a normal husband does. She missed you too, and probably wants to talk about everything that happened to her all week long. You know, how bad the kids have been while you were gone, how her/your parents are driving her nuts and you need to do something about it. What kind of things need to get done before you leave for your next trip. All this crap gets dumped on you when you get there and all you want to do is sit down and decompress from the week. Maybe have a beer and watch some TV or play some poker.
It is just so hard to fit life into a truck driver’s schedule. I am really starting to hate this stuff. I think about some of the things that have happened out here. All the times I have gotten mad at people for holding me up. I have screamed profanities at cars who are driving too slow in front of me. I don’t know how many times I have finally gotten past the car to see a little old granny looking lady driving who has no idea that she was in my way. It doesn’t make me any less angry at her though. But why in the hell am I getting so stressed out at this poor old woman anyway? Why am I stressing that someone has cost me five minutes of time? Why should I push as hard as I can no matter what the weather or road conditions or traffic or any of the other shit that happens out here? I gotta get out of this thing somehow before it is too late. It just isn’t fun anymore.
