Stories From the Road- The Jamaican.

[Tobin S.]

I'm posting this as a companion to the other story I have in the lounge right now. This is a story that I wrote 2.5 years ago. I find it interesting to see how my perception of my trainers has changed in that time. I thought I'd re-write the beginning of this one to make the stories match in that regard, but I'll leave it and maybe you guys can offer some insight on it.

I went through three different trainers after I got out of truck driving school. It wasn't through any fault of my own, though. The first guy was a painfully conservative 50 something year old dude with a crew cut. At the time I had very long hair and I'm sure that guy got pissed off just looking at me. He was very strict and I thanked God when his truck broke down and it was going to be in the shop for a week. I called dispatch and told them to hook me up with someone else so I could get done with my training and start out on my own. Fortunately, we were in Atlanta and they were able to hook me up with another trainer quickly. Or maybe that wasn't so fortunate. We will see.

My new trainer was from Jamaica. He was a pretty nice guy, but he didn't really want to get to know me personally and he always kept his distance. I think he was trying to preserve a student/teacher relationship. "No, Grasshopper, you need to give the truck more RPMs when you downshift," that sort of thing. I call the guy the Jamaican because I forgot his name and I don't know any Jamaican names to give him. I did get out of the guy that he was 42 and he had a 25 year old wife at home who had just had a baby boy.

We got a load going up to Chicago after a week on the road and then we got a gravy round trip run from Chicago to Las Vegas and back. That was my kind of run. We're talking about 4000 miles of easy running.

It was in the middle of winter and the Jamaican was concerned about the weather because we had to do much of the trip in the northern part of the country. If you've ever been in Wyoming in January you will know what I'm talking about. But everything went smooth on the way to Vegas. I looked at an atlas when we were driving through Wyoming and I asked the Jamaican why we didn't head down I-76 to I-70 in Colorado and run that across to I-15.

"Are you crazy, mon? I-70 in Colorado goes through one of the most treacherous mountain ranges to drive in this time of year. We're talking miles of 7% grades and snow measured by feet, not inches. Besides, the company forbids us to run that stretch of road. We cannot go that way," explained the Jamaican.

So we caught I-15 in northern Utah and made a left that took us all the way to Vegas.

On the return trip I drove the first leg from Las Vegas to Salt Lake City. Then I turned it over to the Jamaican after he said, "Mon, you've driven enough for one day." I didn't feel much like sleeping, though, so I sat in the passenger seat for a while smoking cigarettes and watching the day turn into night. The following fact is very important. We were in a cab-over truck- the kind truck that does not have a hood. The cab sits over the engine. Cab-overs used to rule the road, but now they are getting increasingly rare.

After we had driven about 100 miles into Wyoming I finally felt like I could sleep. The Jamaican had let me have the bottom bunk which was very kind of him because the bottom bunks in those trucks were much more comfortable. There is also a safety net that you are supposed to put up while you are in the bottom bunk if the truck is moving. It will keep you from getting launched through the windshield in the event of a wreck. I did not engage the safety net on that particular night. I just went back there and went to sleep like I was in my own home.

The next thing I knew my upper body had slammed into the back of the driver's seat, the mattress from the top bunk fell down on me, and there was shit flying everywhere. There was a roaring screeching sound as our truck jack-knifed and skidded off the road. I was terrified. I thought we were going to slide off a cliff because I could not see. But it turns out we just slid into the median of the highway.

The interior of the truck looked like a tornado had hit it. I started calling out the Jamaican's name and I didn't get an answer right away. My left knee was throbbing and I saw that the Jamaican's metal clip board had gotten between my leg and the partition from the cab to the bunk. The clip board was bent and useless and I thought I had a broken leg. But I moved the leg and it was okay- just bruised. I threw the mattress off of me and looked around the seat to see if the Jamaican had been injured. He was slumped to the left side against the window with his eyes closed, but he looked okay. Then he raised his hand to his forehead and let out a long sigh and then slapped his hand down on his thigh. He knew at that moment that his job was lost. He knew he might have seriously hurt some people.

I looked over at where I had been sitting a few hours before and realized how lucky I was. If I would have been sitting in that passenger seat at the time of the accident I would have lost both legs from the knees down and probably would have bled to death in the Wyoming high desert. There wasn't a town of any size anywhere close to where we were.

Here's the way the Jamaican explained it. He was traveling along at 60 MPH (our truck's governed top speed) when a U-Haul hauling a large pick-up truck on a trailer pulled off the shoulder right in front of him. He said he thought the U-Haul was going about 30. He looked to the left and a truck was coming up beside him at about 80 mph. He only had time to touch the brakes before the truck got by him and he tried to steer into the left lane to avoid the U-Haul, but he caught the back left corner of the pick-up with the right front corner of our truck. He was cited and we were given a ride to the nearest bus station after the Jamaican gave a urine sample at the police station. Truck drivers have to give a urine sample after an accident if someone is injured or if a vehicle is towed no matter who is at fault. No one in the U-Haul was injured, but our truck was towed.

The Jamaican was horribly sorry and I said it was ok- I was going to be alright. But there wasn't going to be anything I could say to make him feel better. I didn't give a damn about that pick-up or the semi. I just thought of the poor guy's wife and kid back in Atlanta.

[marzipanni]

1. Yikes, that be a skeery stary, yah mon!

I'm glad you only got a bruise!
:scared:
One March years ago my husband and I were driving a rental van, not a big rig, through the dark, taking cabinetry materials up over the pass between California and Oregon. It was snowing in those higher elevations. In California the road was okay because the freeway had been plowed and salted/sanded but as soon as we went over the border into Oregon the back end of the van started to fishtail and I thought we might fly off the ledge onto the oncoming side of the freeway below. My husband steered us out of the spin, but it was pretty scary in that out-of-control moment!

That's sad if the Jamaican guy lost his job because the U-Haul driver was doing something stupid, and the passing truck was going too fast.

[Tobin S.]

2. I just got the Jamaican's side of the story about the accident

and I was asleep when it happened. It seemed to me that the U-Haul driver should have been at fault the way he described it. It is not unheard of for people to be biased against truckers, though, even cops. I hope he took that citation to court and beat it if it happened the way he said it did, but it's doubtful seeing as how he was 1500 miles away from home when the accident happened.

[Tobin S.]

3. kick

:dem:

[Suich]

4. Again, thanks Tobin!

:kick:

[cabbage08]

5. and another kick