I was finishing up in Boston when I got the call from Willie. He told me to get down to Connecticut, drop the Santa Barbara trailer, pick up another one, and be in Storrs for a widow to pack and load 22,000 pounds the next morning. I laughed and told him to find someone else.
“Willie, I’ve been loading all day, it’s five o’clock. If I was going to do this crazy shipment I’d have to drive three hours to Waterbury, drop the trailer, put equipment onto the new trailer, plus packing material, which is a two-or three-hour job, arrange for six or seven helpers, get the paperwork, get a tare weight, and then drive two more hours up to Storrs. I’ll get to bed around three a.m., no food, no shower, to spend the next day packing and loading twenty-two thousand, which even with seven guys will take twelve hours minimum. No way.”
Willie laughed back. “It gets worse, Finn. You’re unloading Sunday in New Mexico.”
“Which Sunday?”
“This Sunday.”
“You’re crazy, Willie. Today is Tuesday. It’s twenty-two hundred miles. That means seven hundred and thirty miles on Thursday, seven hundred and thirty miles Friday, and seven hundred and thirty miles on Saturday. I’ve got a truck, Willie, I drive it myself. You think Scotty just beams me out into the desert?”
“You’re not calculating this correctly, Finn. You drive three hundred miles Wednesday night and three hundred miles early Sunday morning. That means you only have to do five hundred and thirty each day. Think of the revenue. I’ll put Santa Barbara on a haulaway, and you can pick it up when you’re done with Mrs. McMahon. You’ll make twenty grand on this and another twenty on the Santa Barbara. That’s forty grand in fourteen days. That’s almost as much as I make.”
“But I’ll be dead, Willie.”
“You won’t be dead, you’ll be rich. This is perfectly doable. You won’t even have to fudge your logs.” Willie loves this crazy stuff because he gets to play superman. “Who else would be able to handle a full load, at peak rates, on twelve hours’ notice, in the middle of July, for a grieving widow? Nobody but us. Joyce Van Lines, the Professionals. Wait until you meet Mrs. McMahon, she’s a hoot.”
“I don’t want to meet her, Willie. I want to get some sleep.”
“I’ve got nobody else, Finn. I told her all about you. The Great White Mover, my number one driver, my old buddy from back in the day.”
“I thought Tom Sturtevant was your number one driver?”
“Sturtevant was number one yesterday. Ancient history. He’s in Chicago anyway, I checked. Listen, her husband died this morning . . . Besides, I told her we’d be there.”
I can hear the ice in his voice. I know Willie very well. If he had to pull the trailer by hand all by himself, a Joyce truck would be there at 8 a.m., and whoever didn’t help him will have become a non-person. Willie’s life is full of ex-friends who’ve crossed him in some minor way just like this. For some reason I can’t explain, I don’t want to join the ranks of Willie’s ex-friends. Fortunately, for some reason Willie can’t explain, I often get a pass that others don’t get. Regardless of that mutual understanding we each stay in character. It’s my turn now, in this decades-old pantomime, to push back.
“You know why everyone in this business hates you, Willie? It’s because of stuff like this. You give this lady your word of honor you’ll be there, and then you expect someone else to execute it. It’s not right. Jesus Christ carried his own cross up the hill. He didn’t ask one of the apostles to do it.”
“That’s a very interesting analogy, Finn. Your theme is martyrdom, like what you’re doing right now. I’m offering you the best turn I’ve seen in years, and you want to take a shower and eat and sleep? That’s pathetic. I’m talking forty grand here.”
“Willie, I know you. When it’s all totted up, it won’t be forty grand. And another thing—I know you never hear this when people say it to you, and I know a zillion people have said it to you, but here it is again: There’s more to life than high-paying loads.”
“That’s true, Finn. Right now I’ve got a widow who’s relying on my company to move her tomorrow. It’s not about the money anymore. If it makes you feel any better, you’re right about everything; everyone does hate me, and when I give my word I do expect the people around me to execute. That’s why they’re called employees. I don’t care what they have to go through. Want to know something else? I sleep like a baby every night.”
“That’s because nobody who works for you gets any sleep at all. And I’m not your employee. I’m your contractor, and this kind of stunt is why I’m a contractor. I’m never going to put you in a position to fire me, because if I did, you would eventually fire me for some reason. You’d be out one more friend, and Willie, you don’t have that many friends. You can starve me for loads if you want, you can take your truck back, but you can’t fire me.”
“What I’m trying to do is load you, not starve you. You said you wanted to make some money. This is real money.”
“This isn’t about me making money. This is about you making promises to people. This is about you being the man who says yes to the impossible. I admire it, in a way, though I admire it more when I’m not the fall guy. OK, tell you what: You pay for the haulaway and pay me the full line haul from Boston on the Santa Barbara, and I’ll fulfill your promise to Mrs. McGann.”
“Dream on, Finn. I will pay the haulaway from Boston to New Mexico. That’s twenty-five hundred out of my pocket. You’ll get paid from Farmington, New Mexico, to Santa Barbara on the other one. The shipper’s name is McMahon, not McGann, so please don’t be disrespectful. The lady’s a widow, for crissakes. Anyway, on McMahon you’ll get the line haul and the packing. I’ll give you the whole thing.”
“That’s nice of you, Will. On McMahon I’m doing the whole thing.”
“Are we done here? Don’t worry about what time you get down here tonight. Pete and Rob will be there till midnight at least, and they’ll have your paperwork. And to lighten your load, I’ll have them pull the packing material. It’ll all be ready on the dock. You’re not the only guy in this organization losing a little sleep. I sure wish I was going with you. One of these days I’m going to pack it all in and just get me a big ol’ Peterbilt and do nothing but haul high-tariff pack and loads . . .”
I’ve heard Willie rhapsodize about giving up his multimillion-dollar business and going back on the road with his big ol’ Peterbilt too many times. It will never happen. He’s going to die of a stroke, on the phone, happy as a puppy, cajoling some poor sap into bringing the same commitment to his van line that he has. When the unfortunate day comes and his veins just give up, bang! It’ll all be over. Some of us will be sad, some of us will be relieved, and some of us will feel unmoored. The thing about Willie, and people like him, is that he gives purpose to the lives of people who haven’t, for whatever reason, found their own purpose. Willie’s a Pied Piper for unmoored individuals because he has all the answers, pays all the bills, and offers a modicum of security. In return he demands complete loyalty.