Hauling Secrets

I had to get a physical to renew the license I need to drive the hauling trucks. As I sat in the waiting room, it occurred to me to actually read the fine print on the form they handed me.  Under the heading “Physical Qualifications for Drivers”, there was a section called “The Driver’s Role” which did a nice summary of some of the physical as well as the emotional stresses truck drivers face.  I’m reprinting it here for your reading pleasure:

Responsibilities, work schedules, physical and emotional demands, and lifestyles among commercial drivers vary by the type of driving that they do. Some of the main types of drivers include the following: turn around or short relay (drivers return to their home base each evening), long relay (drivers drive 8-10 hours and then have an 8-hour off-duty period), straight through haul (cross country drivers); and team drivers (drivers share the driving by alternating their 4-hour driving periods and 4-hour rest periods). The following factors may be involved in a driver’s performance of duties: abrupt schedule changes and rotating work schedules, which may result in irregular sleep patterns and a driver beginning a trip in a fatigued condition; long hours; extended time away from family and friends, which may result in lack of social support; tight pickup and delivery schedules, with irregularity in work, rest, and eating patterns, adverse road, weather and traffic conditions, which may cause delays and lead to hurriedly loading or unloading cargo in order to compensate for the lost drive time; and environmental conditions such as excessive vibration, noise, and extremes in temperature. Transporting passengers or hazardous materials may add to the demands on the commercial driver. There may be duties in addition to the driving task for which a driver is responsible and needs to be fit. Some of these responsibilities are: coupling and uncoupling trailer(s) from the tractor, loading and unloading trailer(s) (sometimes a driver may lift a heavy load or unload as much as 50,000 lbs. of freight after sitting for a long period of time without any stretching period); inspecting the operating condition of tractor and trailer(s) before, during, and after delivery of cargo; lifting, installing, and removing heavy tire chains; and, lifting heavy tarpaulins to cover open top trailers. The above tasks demand agility, the ability to bend and stoop, the ability to maintain a crouching position to inspect the underside of the vehicle, frequent entering and exiting of the cab, and the ability to climb ladders on the tractor and/or trailer(s). In addition, a driver must have the perceptual skills to monitor a sometimes complex driving situation, the judgment skills to make quick decisions, when necessary, and the manipulative skills to control an oversize steering wheel, shift gears using a manual transmission, and maneuver a vehicle in crowded areas.

So next time you see a truck with its blinker on, give it some room to merge. The person driving it has probably had a rough day. Watch after they merge and you just might see a ‘thank you’ flash from its tail lights.

Wonder Boy and I did a job the other day for this old guy with a trailer full of stuff.  The guy said he was having carpet installed, and you could tell that he had put the things that had been scattered on the floor up onto every possible countertop or surface in order to “clear” the area.  It smelled, too, a smell I don’t think new carpet could have remedied.  The man seemed slightly embarrassed about it, but in a strange way, as if he was too tired of being embarrassed to really care anymore.

At one point the man was standing there supervising my bundling of some things he had laying in a pile against a wall.  Among the things were about fifteen back-of-door hanging mirrors, on which he noted there had been a “really good sale”.  I thought he was just being funny, but then, as I grabbed a handful of things, he stated matter-of-factly: “Agent Orange.”

At first I thought he was referring to something in the pile, so I pointed to something or other and asked “You mean that?”  No reply.  I pointed out something else, and again no reply.  Finally I said “What, you mean the whole pile?”  And finally he explained:

“Yup, Agent Orange.  Makes you crazy.”

Not knowing quite how to respond, and my hands now full with the bundle of mirrors or whatever I had been gathering, I headed over to load it into the truck.  On my way I noticed some old camo fatigues in a closet and a calendar with an ‘X’ on every Thursday of the month.  Next to each ‘X’ were the words “NO SHOT.”
I assumed this meant that he recieved a shot on every day not marked - meaning almost every single day.

According to Wikipedia’s Agent Orange entry, when some US veterans obtained a settlement from the US government for its use of this highly toxic herbicide and defoliant, most affected veterans received a one-time lump sum of $1200.  Yep, $1200.  Enough to buy a whole store full of mirrors.

As we were wrapping up the job, closing our truck doors and pushing in our ramp, the man called out from the deck of his trailer and echoed what veterans groups whose government “is just waiting for us all to die” have been saying for at least 25 years.  He said:

“Now you know what happens to vets.  They just sit at home making rat’s nests.”

Again, sorry it’s been so long since the last post.  Business has finally picked up enough for Bossman to announce, a few days ago, that I could finally get more days in the schedule. So to celebrate my official re-entry into the world of hauling, and to mentally prepare for the busy season, I decided to write something that would remind me why I love what I do and reaffirm some little pledges I give to myself. Now that I read over it, I realize a couple things.  One, I’m a big dork.  And two, I’m incredibly lucky. (To have a job I actually like.)    Anyway, here it is:

Today will be special.  Today I will haul things from one place to another.

I will handle things that are too heavy or too messy for someone else.  I will use some knowledge and some creativity to sort these things and take them to the appropriate places so they can be reused, recycled, or buried most efficiently.

I will resist being overwhelmed by large piles. I will swiftly tackle jobs that many people see as undoable.  I will figure out how to get bulky or awkward items out of cramped spaces and around tight corners safely.

Today I will get some exercise.

Today I will get to travel to many different places. I will see little corners of the world that many people do not get to see. I will learn about how people live by studying what they discard.  I will get to know the city better by navigating its streets and actually entering homes and talking with residents in all of its neighborhoods. And I will witness a little bit of history in every piece of ephemera that passes before me.

I will spend much of today outside, feeling the sun on my face.

And then I will be let into people’s homes and trusted to see things even their own families may not be allowed to see.  I will help them deal with difficult changes in their lives, like death, divorce, and moving, with sensitivity and respect.

I will do all this unsupervised and unsurveilled by management, in the good company of a partner who I like and trust. I will be friendly and foster solidarity with any others I come into contact with working to transport and process waste.

I will make some mistakes, and I will keep learning how to do my job better.

I will do the same things today that I do every day, and that is why today will be special.  Because every day is special when you’re a hauler.

Maybe it’s ridiculous to be so invested in wage labor.  Maybe my happiness serves the capitalist machine by keeping me docile.  But another thing I could add to what I wrote is that every day, the difference I make - in making sure things get reused and recycled, etc. - is very tangible, even measurable in weight or volume of actual items/materials.  That feels good, even if what I’m doing is only a sort of damage control and does little to change the system.  I’ll try to effect change in other ways when I’m not hauling.  But I’ll also resist the tendency to go through life stubbornly dis-identifying with what I spend a huge part of my time doing, like some day-job waiter going on 40 who still thinks of himself as “really a musician”. When I haul, I’ll haul with pride.  And I’ll post about it here more regularly, I promise.  Thanks for reading.

What do haulers do when our trucks break down?

Haul them to the scrapyard with another truck, of course.

The City recently put in a dog park on a big tract of land close to an intersection that’s right on our usual route to the MRF.  It’s an interesting location for a dog park, because people who bring their dogs there - perhaps inspired by thoughts of their dogs running free or catching frisbees or something - are reduced to watching their beloved pets run up and down along the fence barking rabidly at passing vehicles.  Especially big, loud vehicles like our truck.

Today as I was stopped at the light, I got to witness the precise moment when a dog set its sights on the truck.  It had been barking without focus in the general direction of the intersection, but when I pulled up, its barking quickened and I saw its muscles tense as it did a little pirouette in anticipation of the upcoming chase.  And there was its owner, leash in hand, watching helplessly in the distance.  When the light turned green I took off slowly, keeping my eyes on the dog.  It ran at breakneck speed straight along the dog park fence, somehow managing to turn its head and bark every few strides.  As I reached the speed limit and the dog reached the limits of its physical abilities, we proceeded neck and neck for a short while.  Looking over at the dog, the way it ran with such single-minded abandon, I felt for a second like a woolly mammoth or something must have felt millions of years ago being pursued this way by an ancestor of this dog.  I have no idea if dogs were around at the same time as woolly mammoths, but you get what I’m saying, don’t you?  How beautiful pure instinct can be?

Anyway.

And then there’s learning.  Environment.  Suddenly the dog stopped dead in its tracks, and I realized that what neither I nor a dog going 40 miles per hour could  actually see - the precise location of the end of the roadside section of the dog park fence - was indelibly etched into its memory from so many of these chases.   It stayed there in the corner jumping and barking until I couldn’t see it anymore in my side mirror.

Usually having to use elevators is a pain for a hauler. Sure, they make things easier, but they also slow things down. But the other day was different. Handyman and I were entrusted with unsupervised operation of the oldest working elevator in the state. You know, the kind you can get to stop between floors. I took this video with my cell phone, to share the experience with you, Dear Readers:

[Apologies for the recent lack of posts - I got really busy with other work and have gone down to one day a week of hauling.  It’ll pick back up again soon, though.]

I often find myself backing the truck into the MRF and stepping out into what we call “MRF sludge”. It’s the leachate that the city trucks empty out onto the floor after they’ve emptied their trucks of residential trash. The collective drippings of thirty to forty compacted cubic yards of municipal solid waste. And it gets slippery.

The other day I spied this sad teddy bear lying in a pool of MRF sludge:

And I had to take a picture after I almost slipped and fell into this bag filled with deer carcass:

To make it as a hauler, you have to be able to just ignore what’s always being ground into your shoes/gloves/soul.  And some people just can’t.

Technically, two faces this time:

[This post is an update to demolishing a dying woman’s piano. If you haven’t already read that, I suggest you follow the link and do so first.]

When I parked the truck at the end of the day we demolished the dying woman’s piano, I just couldn’t get the cute little lady out of my head. How sad she was to see her piano go to waste. So I took another look in the back of the truck to see if maybe there were some salvageable pieces. There were. So I carried them home, got out some screws and wood glue, and fashioned this little table:

A hectic schedule made me wait almost exactly two weeks, so when I finally drove back to the lady’s apartment, with the table I made from her piano in the back of my pickup, I wasn’t sure if she’d still be there. The first thing I noticed was that her balcony was still full of potted plants. A good sign. But her name was no longer on the mail slot. I buzzed up, hoping she was still alive.

After a long minute I saw a figure peeping out at me from the balcony. It was her. I called up, awkwardly, “Remember, I hauled away your piano a couple weeks ago…Well I found a way to recycle some of it….” She said of course she remembered, that she’d be down in a minute.

As soon as she saw the table, before I could lift it down, she scrambled up into the bed of my truck to inspect the workmanship and generally fondle it. I remember thinking how limber she seemed, for someone who’s supposed to be so near death.

It turned out, I soon discovered, that she actually had up to a few months to live, and that she had only recently been told this by the doctors when we removed the piano. And by then, when I returned with the table, she had told her family. “Wait till I tell my family about this,” she said. She kept looking at me and saying “Oh…” the way a grandparent does right before they grab a baby’s cheek. Until finally she broke down and started crying. We had one more overlong hug. I didn’t know what to say, but she pretty much summed it up:

“This is the sweetest send-off,” she said.

I wasn’t really trying to do something “sweet” per se. I didn’t know what I was doing there, but I felt compelled to do it. Maybe I felt guilty about wasting the thing. Or demolishing it right on the other side of her apartment door. I know it’s sick, but maybe part of me wanted proof, two weeks later, that she was actually dying. I don’t know.

When she was done thanking me, I said goodbye pretty quickly and pulled away in my truck. It was awkward for both of us. I felt like I already overstepped some boundary, and I didn’t want to linger.

Again, I’m not that good at telling stories because I try too hard to relate things exactly the way they happened. And sometimes I give away the kicker right in the title. But I think all the little details are important, and they’re what I use this blog to try to remember….

It was the Friday before last. Last day of the week for me, since I don’t work Saturdays like others. 6:30pm, almost 12 hours from a 7:15am start. Me and Handyman and Pancakes are wrapping up for the day, putting our trucks back in their parking spots and finishing up the paperwork, when an add-on comes through on my phone. (An add-on is when a client books an appointment onto our schedule for the same day when they call.) Usually we get add-ons with enough time to call client’s in advance and let them know exactly what time we’ll be arriving. But today our phones haven’t been working right, so we’re only just now getting notice of this job, which was scheduled for an appointment window of 5-7pm, the latest possible window. It’s 2 hours late when I make the call to tell the client we’ll be there shortly.

A woman answers the phone. I start to apologize for calling so late, “We’re usually better at…at….” I fumble my words. “Communicating with people?” she says for me. “Yes, communicating.” I tell her we’ll be there soon and she says not to worry, that she’ll be there waiting.

Since Handyman and Flapjack are across town parking a truck, I - at this point the solo man on today’s three-person crew - am the first to arrive to the jobsite. It’s a bi-level apartment complex. I ring the buzzer to the woman’s apartment and she lets me up. The door opens to the world’s cutest little old lady. About 5 feet tall, no more than 100 pounds, with little round glasses. As she walks me around the apartment to show me a couch and some chairs she wants removed, I notice there’s something a little strange about her, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.

Then, at the end of the apartment tour, she stops at a giant old upright piano. “And I was wondering if you guys could take this…” I tell her we just took a similar looking piano the week before. “Are you sure you can get this?” she asks. “I mean it’s really heavy.” As we discuss how it might be done, she repeats things like this, as if she wants to convince me we can’t take it. Like most haulers, I hate to admit there’s something we can’t handle. But this time I’m not so sure.

She tells me she tried to donate the piano, but no one will take it. I tell her that when we tried to recycle a similar old upright a week ago, our piano guy swung open the door to his shop and instantly, from some 40 feet across the parking lot, took one look at the thing and said “No way.” I could’ve lied (as many haulers do) and told her it would be recycled. But I don’t like to lie about hauling, especially to such a cute little lady.

So when Handyman and Flapjack show up, I’ve had a few minutes to size up this giant piano. It takes us all a few more minutes to muster up the courage to do it and to decide how. Meanwhile, the little old lady is pacing around the apartment, trying not to listen to us. She fumbles and fidgets more than most of our clients who are having a hard time seeing something go. At one point she even says something like “I shouldn’t be here for this” and goes and hides in another room.

We decide to take the thing out in one piece. I leave the apartment to make a call for reinforcements, but no one else on our staff is available. We’ll have to do it ourselves. When I come back, Flapjack and the little old lady are playing a duet on the piano, some sort of Chopsticks number or something. The piano is tuned perfectly and sounds great, and it’s apparent that the little old lady is a good player. As they finish what would be the lady’s last song on the piano, Handyman and I position ourselves at both ends to start the lifting. We hear the lady console herself as she walks away again, muttering “I only have two weeks left to live here anyway.” It’s cute the way she’s struggling with the situation. She’s managed to charmed all three of us, and we hate to make the old lady sad. But the job must be done.

The piano ends up being the heaviest upright I’ve ever lifted. We have to take the apartment door off just to get it out. And after a difficult job of getting it through the doorway and around a railing to the top of the stairs, we’re forced to reconsider taking it down the stairs all in one piece. For safety’s sake, demolition is the only way to go. But I know that the sounds of her piano being demolished will not be easy for the little old lady, so I go in and give her some warning. I tell her that it’s the only safe way to get the job done, and that it may be a little bit emotional for her. She says it’s okay, that she needs it done, and to go ahead.

So I leave the apartment again to get sledgehammers and crowbars from our trucks, and when I return this time, Flapjack is talking with the little old lady inside the apartment. So Handyman and I start the two-person job of putting the door back on (so at least we can close it while doing the demo work), leaving Flapjack still in there talking to the old lady. After a few minutes with the stubborn door, Flapjack joins us out in the hallway and asks us if we heard what the lady said. We didn’t. Flapjack is whispering now. “She’s dying. That lady is dying.” Apparently, we had misheard the lady earlier. What she actually said was, “I only have two weeks to live,” period. Suddenly her behavior up to this point all makes sense.

So here we are outside the doorway of a dying woman’s apartment about to demolish her beloved piano with sledgehammers and crowbars. Any courage we had mustered earlier to tackle this job has spiraled back down into our stomachs. We feel awful. But again, the job must be done.

Handyman makes the first strike. The sledgehammer drives the crowbar in between the mahogany panels. You know what it sounds like when you smack your hand across the bottom register of a piano, that eery death-thud sound? Well hitting a piano with a sledgehammer sounds like that. Demolishing a piano sounds like that for ten minutes. We can only imagine what the little old lady is feeling on the other side of the wall. That ten minutes passes like some weird dream, none of us entirely conscious of what we’re doing. When we finally get the entire thing into manageable pieces, we solemnly carry them down the stairs to the truck, like paul-bearers.

When the last piece is in the truck, we’re all eager to get back in there and see if the little old lady is alright. Flapjack grabs the clipboard and heads upstairs while Handyman and I close up the truck doors and put away the tools. Normally it wouldn’t be necessary for all three of us to go back up to a client’s apartment, but this time is different. When Handyman and I get up there, Flapjack is sitting at the kitchen table with the little old lady. Both of them have been crying. Among the details she’s revealed to Flapjack, a hauler - someone who no one expects to ever see again, is that she hasn’t even told her family yet.

We stand there awkwardly for a minute before remembering to grab the vacuum we saw in the closet to clean up the debris in the hallway. When we finish vacuuming, Flapjack is still sitting there. We watch as the lady struggles to write the check. She keeps making mistakes and has to void two of them. When she finally gets it right the third time, she hands it to Flapjack and the two of them start to get up from the table. They exchange the usual post-job niceties before giving in and embracing. Then I step forward for my turn. The little old lady squeezes me for a good twenty seconds. “This really means a lot to me,” she says. I’m crying now too. Then she lets go and it’s Handyman’s turn. All in all, the hugging and crying session takes a couple minutes. Even Handyman sheds a tear or two.

We leave, dazed. Another job done.