Last Tuesday my brother turned 60. I got a present.
I need you to focus here. I didn’t say I got him a present. I simply said I got a present. I really need you to keep up now.
Last spring the company I drive for told us we’d be getting new tractors in August. No, not farm tractors, what good would it be for a John Deere to pull a 53 foot trailer down an interstate highway?
If you keep jumping ahead of me like this it’s going to be an extra long blog post, so just focus. Please.
Semi trucks are also called tractors. Actually they’re not technically trucks. Trucks have an attached bed or box. Tractors are removed from the trailers they pull. I hope you’re caught up with me because I think I’m going to leave you behind if you don’t understand me.
Okay, I’m about to take a chance here and continue with my story now. If I leave you behind I’ll try to come back around and pick you up on the return trip…maybe.
When I got to work Tuesday I was told to take the rental tractor I had…no, I wasn’t driving a company tractor at the time because a temporary driver wrecked my tractor when he jack-knifed it in Oklahoma City while I was in prison.
No, I wasn’t arrested for anything. I was there on official Kairos Prison Ministry business. Three day prison sentences are extremely rare, especially in Texas maximum security prisons. I…nevermind, where was I?
Tuesday I was told to turn in my rental tractor to trade it in for my new tractor. Yeah, August came very late this year. Although you wouldn’t know it by the cold temperatures lately.
I won’t even go into the details of how I was handed the wrong keys for the new tractor for fear I’ll lose you at the truck repair shop.
The first thing I discovered about my new tractor I was given by the company on my brother’s birthday was the number on it…23549.
My mind immediately flashed back to my dad’s favorite TV show, Hee Haw.
I saw Junior Samples standing in a used car lot holding a sign up with the phone number for folks to call. It was BR549. No, I have no clue why they used that as the phone number. I had nothing to do with putting that show together. That’s just what it was.
Junior Samples always blew his lines. They showed several takes of him trying to read his lines off a cue card next to the camera. I knew this wasn’t going to be a good omen.
When I signed the paperwork I noticed that I’m now responsible for keeping a 2020 Freightliner Cascadia dent free during the rest of my driving career. This is still 2019. That means this tractor is newer than new.
Not only is this not August but it’s not 2020 neither. Somebody’s holding the wrong cue card for Junior to read. Yikes!
So, I get into the tractor and start it up. First thing I notice is the shifting pole isn’t sticking out of the floor. The good news is it’s an automatic transmission. The bad news is it’s an automatic transmission.
For most of my 30+ year driving career I’ve had to shift gears. Now I don’t. My left foot is going to get lazy not needing to push in the clutch pedal at each and every stoplight.
Since I’ve been driving for a temp agency for quite a few years I’ve driven automatics already. Auto transmissions in semi tractors still leave a lot to be desired…they don’t work that great yet neither, too.
Another thing I saw was the slot for CDs in the radio was missing. I don’t know why the company didn’t swing a few extra bucks for that little luxury.
It might not mean much to the office people but for those of us trying to stay awake everyday it sure is a nice perk. Now I’m perkless.
Okay, so the basic setup of the rig is fairly much the same as the older tractor I drove. The steering wheel is still in front of the driver. So is the windshield and hood.
So I hook up to the trailer and go to my first stop on Wednesday evening to deliver first thing Thursday morning. So far so good, especially after a successful first day dent free on Tuesday doing local deliveries.
I set the idle speed on the controls and crawl in bed to get some shut eye. About an hour and a half later the engine shut off. No, it was supposed to run all night like my last tractor did. Somebody better start perking some coffee at this rate.
It’s bad luck to wake a sleeping truck driver in the middle of the night unexpectedly like this. So, being the thoughtful God-fearing man that I am I texted my dispatcher about this issue. No sense only one of us being awake. That’s what I was thinking in my half awake state.
He texts back to call the leasing company. So, for some explicable reason I did. They send out a repairman or technician or mechanic, to tell you the truth I had a few names to use for whomever was messing with my sleep.
He gets there about an hour later and plugs in a computer to my newer than new tractor only to tell me that he doesn’t have the proper software to fix my problem. He won’t get 2020 stuff until April…which probably means August at the rate things are going.
So he leaves. I do my best to get some sleep in the remaining three hours of my night shift. They’re not perking enough coffee for me now.
Since the temperatures were in the 60s I didn’t struggle to stay warm enough in my sleeping bag that night. Thursday night was another animal altogether when it hit 40.
Fortunately I hit the sack with about twelve hours available to sleep. That made up for having to get up and turn the engine back on a few times when I got too cold to sleep.
Oh yeah, I’m going to the dealership to have this issue unissued before I go out again. What weren’t they thinking? Why have the engine shut off when you know there’s going to be a cranky driver needing to sleep in the bed installed behind the driver’s seat?
Yes, it’s hard being Wade Webster some days…or most days actually. But somebody has to do it.
I’m just doing the best version of me that I can do.
Please pray for me. I need all the time help I can get.
Thank you.
I’ll see you later. Wade
