Big Trucks: They are big, noisy, and they hold us up in our daily routine. Without them our lives would not be the same. Everything moves by truck. Stop and think, the wood we build our houses with is transported on a flat bed big truck. Gasoline for our automobiles comes by tanker trucks. Our food comes by refrigerated trucks. Everything that comes by ship over seas and by railroad is still unloaded onto trucks and delivered by trucks. Without them we would not have much.

My Job Shadow Day in the Trucking Business:

We are up at 5:00 a.m. A hot shower and some breakfast and make our lunch for the day. We are on the road at 6:00, arrive at work at 7:00 in Portland, Maine. Before leaving we must do a pre-trip safety inspection.

The next part of our trip is onto the scale to check our weight, which was 31,620 pounds and then off we go to Sanford, Maine. We pull up beside our loaded trailer and unhook our empty trailer and hook to the load. We hook up air lines and light cord and crank up the landing gear. Safety inspection of new trailer, check load, and we are on our way back to Portland, Maine.

Upon arrival at the shop we get on the scales to weigh the loaded truck. We ended up with 37,260 pounds, there was 5,640 pounds of empty soda and water containers. We drop our trailer in the assigned destination and are assigned to another trailer for another run. On a normal day we would leave the shop on Rand Road in Portland at 5:30-6:00 a.m. We would run to northern Vermont, 20 miles south of the Canadian border. Today is a clean up day to catch up on the short runs. Steve, our dispatcher, sometimes gets overwhelmed with short runs, and uses all of his drivers to catch up on the runs.

Run #2 consists of picking up trailer #1809. While we are picking up a trailer beside the weighing scales, a Canadian driver from Quebec slams right into the side of the scale, ruining his steering components. My father calls a tow truck from T & J Towing out of South Portland. We are next off to Saco to pick up trailer #1915. When we arrive in Saco, the subcontractor who loads up our trailer is just finishing. This is a very smooth drop hook and go, another easy trailer. BACK TO THE SHOP, thanks to the Dillmeister.

After a quick sandwich and drink, Steve dispatches us our third trailer and that is R.S. 106 in South Paris. Upon arriving in South Paris, we find a muddy yard. Drop and hook, and we are on our way back to the shop. We leave our trailer in a door to be unloaded in the morning. We pull to the fuel pump and fuel our truck, and park it in the parking slot # 12. Lock up the truck and into the drivers’ room we go. We fill out our logs and mileage sheets and turn paperwork into Denis, the plant manager. Denis states what a wonderful job I did and what a great help I was. He reached in his pocket and pulled out some money for working with my dad and handed it to me and said I deserved it because of the amount of work that was accomplished.