That’s pretty much my opening gambit. What happens in the first five minutes usually establishes the tone on any move. In fact, I only really know a move is going well when the shipper disappears. They see us work, they gain confidence that we’re professionals, they get bored, and all of a sudden they have to do a few errands, pick up the mail, or meet a friend for lunch. It never ceases to amaze me that these suburban hypersecure control freaks, who have an ADT sign on their lawn, never let a kid out of their sight, and change their garage door code every month, take off after twenty minutes leaving all their stuff under the care of three Latinos and a gray-haired gringo drifter.
I will grant the point that many of my colleagues, while very possibly great movers, might be lacking in certain social lubrication skills. My friend Bill, a longtime Joyce driver, regularly receives negative reviews from shippers. I don’t understand why. Bill has the finest trailer setup I’ve ever seen, with all the right equipment perfectly stowed, custom-designed uniforms, and a full crew who travel with him everywhere. Bill is a tall, lanky man of some kind of color. I think he’s half black or half white or a quarter Irish or some other kind of perfectly American mix. Bill is well spoken and generally pleasant, though I wouldn’t call him genial. He certainly has that short fuse all road drivers seem to have, but he doesn’t take it out on the shipper. Bill’s the real deal way more than I am. He literally lives in his truck and has done so for over thirty years. He has a Direct TV antenna on the roof of his tractor and a generator to keep the rig warm or cool at night. He’s redone the tractor interior to house his crew. I was asked to talk to him by Joyce management about his shipper problem when I was flown to Pendleton, Oregon, to finish one of his jobs. The shipper had called the office and told them she didn’t want Bill at destination. She said she was afraid of him. I flew into Portland, took a puddle jumper to Pendleton, and met Bill at the Motel 6. We went to dinner at the Waffle House next door, where I buttonholed him.
“Bill, Pete asked me to talk to you about what’s going on. Your shipper ratings are uniformly negative, and having to fly me out to drive your truck to residence to complete the move naturally has them concerned.”
“I knew this was coming,” he said. “Why’d they ask you to talk to me? Can’t Pete ask me himself? I’ve been out here my whole life, and it’s nothing personal to you, Finn, but having someone fly in to finish my job is completely humiliating. You and I have always got along fine, but I’m not glad to see you. You’re not a better mover than me.”
“I know I’m not, Bill. This isn’t about you and me or about you and Joyce. It’s about you and the shipper. She’s terrified of you. She feels threatened. This is a VIP move and we’re going to get rated on it. You know the game. We can’t have a terrified shipper. As regards Pete, I suppose he figured a driver-to-driver conversation would be better. You and I go back a long time. I’m not a spy for management and I know how things can go wrong with shippers, but this happens all the time with you. Why do you think that is?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. I used to think it was a race thing. Maybe the shippers didn’t like black guys, though I’m not really a black guy. I don’t know what they’d call me. Besides, Perry and Richard are black, and they get great ratings. So it’s not that, though I’d like it to be. Before I got my teeth fixed, I thought that was the problem. But it wasn’t.” (Bill had been missing his two top front teeth for years. Willie paid to have them fixed up, thinking his menacing mouth was putting off shippers. Whatever people might say about Willie, he’s loyal to his longtime drivers.)
“What happened here with this shipper? Any words exchanged? How about your crew?”
“Not a thing. I hardly even talked to the shipper. I did the inventory and loaded the truck. My guys were in and out of the house. To be honest, I’m getting gun-shy about interactions with shippers.”
All of a sudden tears sprang into Bill’s eyes.
“My whole life’s been like this. People just don’t take to me. It’s like there’s this hostility they grab onto when they meet me. Sure, I have a temper when things don’t go right, but I’m under control. I’ve spent my life out here alone on the road mostly because nobody wants to be around me. Why don’t you tell me what’s wrong with me?”
“My impression is that you do a good job, you’re always prepared, always on time, and you want to be liked. I don’t get a hostile vibe from you at all.”
“So what’s wrong with you that you don’t get my bad vibe?”
“I’ve wondered about that. So has Willie, so has Pete. We’re all on your side on this. We want to try and figure it out.”
“Maybe. They’ll probably just fire me and I’ll have to go work for Atlas or Mayflower. I like working for a small van line, and I like corporate pack and loads.”
“Nobody wants to fire you, Bill. They want to figure out a way to keep you. They know the way you operate, they see you have no damage claims, they see you’re totally organized and on the job every day. There’s just this thing with the customers. You scare the shit out of them.”
The tears sprang up again. “It’s not fair. I’m not a horrible person. I overcompensate by keeping my truck perfect, my paperwork pristine, my jobs go smooth, but none of it matters because people don’t want me around. I’m a human being. I take up space. I have to be somewhere and I have to work. Now it’s looking like I can’t even have that because I’m so toxic people have to fly around the country to finish my jobs.”
I had no answer to any of that. I just looked at him across the counter.
“You know what else, Finn? I’m not the only guy out here like that. I can’t see it in myself, but I can see it out there at the truckstops. I see the guys with the empty eyes. The sociopaths. The crazy drivers holding on to reality with Twinkies, coffee, and Marlboro Blacks that don’t have a single thought from one mile to another. They scare me! I never thought I was one of them.”
“You’re not, Bill. This conversation proves you’re not.”
“What are you going to tell Pete?”
“I don’t know, Bill. I really don’t.”
“Tell them I’m doing my best.”
“They know you are.”
“Maybe I should just be a freighthauler and never see anyone from one month to another except forklift drivers and robots. Then I wouldn’t scare anybody, but shit, it’s such a dumb job. I’m a skilled mover. I can do anything out there that needs to be done.”
“You can. Except you don’t seem to be able to square away the shippers.”
“Yes, except for that. Isn’t the rest of it enough?”
“Not when I need to fly to Oregon to finish your job. Perry’s not half the mover you are, but you have to admit, he’s got charm. Perry has damage on his loads all the time, but shippers don’t complain about Perry. You know why? Because they like him.”