Make a Stand for What's Right

When was the last time someone who drives for a living make a stand for what's right?

Besides, the common Joe wouldn't want the Professional Driver to do whats right anyway.


You see, when a "company" driver tells his dispatcher he's too tired and has to pull over and go to sleep, he knows he may be messing up his chances of any happiness in the near future. It's rare to have a dispatcher who will grant you immunity from the elimination round! That's no joke by the way. There will be a fight over the phone as a man tries to explain how tired he is. Hopefully he does the right thing and actually pulls over. But if he does, as the dispatcher hangs up or throws down the phone, he's got a star next to your name, and it's not a shiny one!


You see, the dispatcher's ass is on the line because it's his job to orchestrate the movement of freight in the best possible way to ensure on-time delivery through the fastest means possible. That means, if Bill says he's tired and pulls over, the dispatcher simply has to wait until Bill wakes up again. The freight stays with Bill until Bill wakes up, maybe has a shower, a breakfast even, if he's really lucky he will properly fill out his logbook and then arrive at his destination several hours late. After arguing his case with the dispatcher the night before, now he has to argue his case with a cranky customer, then after several days of this, he has to go home and hope his wife is not cranky because he couldn't find the time to call home.


Now here comes the punishment from Mr. dispatcher, sometimes referred to as the second wife mainly due to the fact if the dispatcher don't get what they want, there will be hell to pay...BIG TIME! The dispatchers have all the info written down and when you ask for a good short run so you can get home early to see little Jeanie's graduation from elementary school, you get the long dirty loads because you went to sleep one night because you were a big baby and wanted to sleep.



It's a tit for tat world and it destroys people, their marriages, their lives, their very identity sometimes. Driving is similar to farming or fishing, it gets into your blood and you learn to love it and hate it. You try to make everyone around you happy from hundreds or thousands of miles away, dealing with the laws, the weather, time restrictions, traffic congestion, mechanical failure, ever changing rules, or routes, directions, loads, lack of rest, health, hygiene, lack of mental stimulation, lack of camaraderie, short on money, short on food, no way to communicate to loved ones for some and dealing with morons racing around in little cars and vans, and have no idea what they are messing with. It's hectic.


With all this said, the vast majority of Professional Drivers are really good people, and when the chips are down, they would help anyone out. They are the ones who supply most everything within their own continents or countries. I wonder if the common joe in his Ford Mini Van or brand new Audi really knows, that a truck driver does not have to park his truck and make a stand for what is right, weather it be on his own or a large scale strike, all a truck driver has to really do, but the "entire" country of drivers would have to do this too... is simply follow every law to a "T" for about a month and they would cripple the country. They would bring the nation to a grinding halt as if it were a virus.


Why? Because the rules that are set down for drivers to follow are broken everyday on a massive scale all over North America so everyone can have their BBQ right on time for the flyer sale, so the gas makes it to the pumps on time, so the parts get in to a mill that loses a drivers annual salary's worth every hour that it's down, so the mail with all the tax returns gets in on time, so Mr. Man's new Lincoln Town Car gets in as promised. The list goes on, and on and on.
When a driver gets to any given spot and has to choose, do I lie on my log book just to get the load through, do I pop another pill just to get the load through, do I risk innocent lives just to get the load through, or do I pull over, go to sleep and go through all this again on a few days plus the punishment of a crappy load, something that doesn't pay.


If you guys reading this are thinking the driver should always pull over, maybe the next time your windsheild gets sprayed with muddy water from a semi, or a semi is driving too slow, or a semi is gaining on you too fast, or your ugly expensive blinds are not in as promised, maybe you might stop and think, I wonder where he's going, I wonder how far from home he is, I wonder how long he's been pulled over, and maybe my blinds are on his truck.