My crew was reasonably diligent, and we emptied the truck by eleven thirty. We were just finishing up the last loose ends, putting beds together and bolting legs onto tables, when I realized I didn’t have any money to pay the crew. I had left Connecticut the day before with $2,000 to cover labor, fuel, and lodging, which would normally last over a week. But the tow truck had taken $1,600 and I had a labor bill of two men for fifteen hours and twelve additional men for eight hours, for a total of more than a thousand dollars. In my pocket I had $175.
Temporary employment offices like Manpower operate on a cost-plus basis. They charge a certain rate per hour per person, and they pay the person a certain portion of that hourly rate and keep the rest for taxes, overhead, and profit. The Manpower people had given the work invoice to one of the men, and I was instructed to pay the crew the rate on the invoice; Manpower would bill Callahan for the rest, and Callahan would then debit my account. This wasn’t how Manpower usually worked, but nobody from the local office was going to be around at midnight to distribute wages, and it’s not like the guys in my crew could wait a day to pick up their pay. These folks needed to get paid so they could eat.
I was in a quandary. I was too young to have a credit card. A personal check would have been a cruel joke, since none of my workers would have bank accounts. In the end I called up TC just before midnight and asked him to wire me $2,000 via Western Union. TC wasn’t too pleased about being called at home in the middle of the night, but he wasn’t too miffed either. He knew I’d had a bad day because Mr. King had called him several times complaining about what a fucked-up move he’d gotten. TC never minded too much when a driver called late at night with a money request because, as he told me once, he was going to be back in bed in less than five minutes, whereas we were still dealing with the flat tire or the accident report or the freezing cold or the blazing heat or the tow truck or, in my case, the help.
I told the crew I had to drive to the truckstop in Doswell, north of Richmond, to pick up the cash to pay them. This was about thirty minutes away, and they grumbled a lot. I told them they’d all be paid for an extra hour and I’d add in taxi fare for everyone to get home. That settled them down. I put five of them in the tractor, four in the sleeper and one in the passenger seat, and put the other nine in the trailer. You see this often with straight trucks where a crew is inside the van with the door strapped open, but you don’t see it often with a trailer.
At the truckstop, I stopped at the fuel island and let everyone out. In the dark, it must have looked like a Rio Grande coyote was unloading a shipment of border crossers. I bought some fuel, and they cashed my Western Union check, thank heaven, and I paid everyone off. For the first time in months I splurged and rented a motel room. This trip was a total bust. My labor bill at destination should have been about a hundred dollars; instead it was over a thousand. I’d paid the tow truck bill, plus there was body damage to the trailer that I’d have to have fixed before I brought the truck back. You can’t swipe a tree aside, even a small one, with the side of a trailer. I knew that now. I crawled into bed at half past midnight and set the alarm for 5:30 a.m. I’d left this same truckstop exactly eighteen hours earlier.
Just before falling asleep, I thought through the day: I had lost money on the job, the shipper was extremely dissatisfied, and the management at Callahan Bros. were probably reviewing their options with respect to my contract. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that from the moment my truck was wedged between the trees and I put Mr. King out of my mind, my judgment and actions had improved. It was my first big lesson in aggressive problem solving. Nobody was going to help me. No excuses would improve the situation, and there would be nobody around to blame or lean on. I don’t think I had ever before been thrown completely onto my own resources without a backstop. Lying in that motel room I started to giggle, realizing in that wonderful moment that I’d been a mewling child my whole life. Getting stuck in the trees in order to prove my skills to Mr. King and TC and even Frog had certainly proved everything about my skills. I had none. As I thought about it even more, my giggle turned to a laugh. When I turned off the truck in the woods and climbed down to meet Mr. King, my destiny was balanced on a knife edge. I could continue the way I had been or I could change. It could have gone either way, but something smart within me decided to leave the man-child behind. It was by no means a conscious decision. When I flicked my smoke into the woods and took a good look at Mr. King, I was no longer a scared kid. I got the truck out, found the labor I needed, emptied the truck, and paid the help. Goddamn! It was funny and energizing to know that I was leaving a lot of things behind, but it was also terrifying to understand that I was now committed. The King saga was the beginning of my life as a real long-haul driver.
I had a long way to go, but I’d started.
PART II
THE POWERLANE
Chapter 4
HAMMER DOWN
“Driver Murphy, 6518. Howzitgoin, good? Good. I’ve got news.”
It was Gary Greene, my longtime dispatcher at North American Van Lines in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I was shooting a game of pool at the Boot Hill Saloon in Daytona and waiting for a load north when he called. It was my ninth year as a driver and I was a grizzled veteran. North American had assigned me to the Florida Powerlane, which was the coveted run from the Northeast down to Florida. The Powerlane was reserved for furious and frenzied drivers like me who could turn loads fast. The beauty of the Powerlane was that I’d always go down with a full load; the ugly part was that because so many more people moved to Florida than from Florida, it was always difficult to get a full load, or any load, coming out.
“Stop fuckin’ around, Gary. Whaddya got?” Gary talked to road drivers all day long. He was completely impervious to bad attitudes or impatience. Besides, we’d been working together for years. We were like an old married couple except I was looking to do some stepping out. Not with a new dispatcher, but a new life. I was almost thirty, had some money put away, and the years on the road had made my world very small.
“The good news is I got you a full load. The bad news is that you’re loading in Vermont, someplace called St. Johnsbury, which I think actually is in the United States, though barely. You’re loading Monday morning, and according to the tariff book it’s only 1,688 miles from Daytona. Since today is Friday I know you can get there in plenty of time. Ready? OK, listen up.” Then he gave me my load particulars in the quick deadpan of a horse race announcer:
9/21AM OA Woodway St. Johnsbury Shipper Murray 1,000 SIT line haul $1,500 DA Kendall
9/21AM OA Woodway Shipper Howell 1,000 res line haul $1,600 DA Accredited Largo
9/21PM OA McClure Essex Junction Shipper Gross 2,200 SIT line haul $1,800 DA Atlantic Sarasota
9/21PM OA McClure Essex Junction Shipper Warren 1,200 SIT line haul $1,600 DA Murray Fort Lauderdale
9/22AM OA CMS Bangor Shipper Taylor 3,000 res line haul $2,400 DA Ray Naples
9/23AM OA Ray Manchester Shipper Fowler 4,000 res line haul $4,200 DA Accredited Largo
9/24 OA Stewart Liner Newburgh Shipper McNab 8,000 res line haul $6,000 DA A1 Key West