Some of you may or may not know that my husband is a truck driver. Currently he is hauling hay into various feedlots and dairies around Kansas. This past Friday he was supposed to pick up a load from western Kansas and take it to eastern Kansas and then come home. Well, the guy he was getting the hay from was busy trying to harvest his Milo crop and said that he didn’t have time to load Brad Friday, to come out Saturday morning and he would load him then. Not really happy about the whole situation, we got up at a bright and early 6:30 and hit the road by 7:30. The place we had to load the hay was not quite an hour away and we had to be there by 8:30 – so far so good.
Along the way we encountered many a stupid motorist, believing they were the only vehicle on the two lane highway and thus not bothering to follow highway etiquette or law. Or maybe someone put a sign on the front bumper that said, “I’m cruising at 71 mph, so please pull out in front of me and only go 65 so I have to hit my brakes to avoid driving a huge semi through the back end of your fancy Escalade. “
Another instance - as we were in the process of passing a vehicle, another happy motorist traveling on a side road decided to look left to make sure he didn’t turn in front of anyone, but decided he didn’t need to look at oncoming traffic from the right. He then made a right turn onto the highway only to see us coming straight at him. He was kind enough to pull over to the shoulder before we rudely collided with his front bumper, though. Who knew that an 18-wheeler was invisible on the highway? (It wasn’t as bad as it sounds as there was plenty of time for him to get over, but his ignorance still floors me.)
A short while later Brad noticed a state trooper following behind us and as we entered town, he turned on his lights. Now, you see, tickets come in threes for Brad, and he is notorious for getting tickets. It doesn’t matter what he is doing, where he is at, or where is going. It never fails that he gets three tickets a year. A few months ago he got one for passing in a “no passing zone”, even though he was in the process of passing and almost around the vehicle before he came into the zone, he still got a ticket.
One down, two to go.
So it was no surprise when the trooper pulled him over Saturday morning for speeding. Now I preface this with the fact that Brad had the cruise set at 70, and the speed limit was 65. The usual talk of license and registration ensued along with the inspection of the truck. This time however, there was a problem - a tire on the trailer was flat. This meant that we had to find a place in this really small town to fix the tire, or pay $400 for a service truck to drive to our location and fix it before the trooper would let us continue on our merry way. So we followed the trooper through town trying to find a place that would fix the tire and thankfully we found one. In the meantime, Brad called K, the guy we were getting the hay from, and told him we would be a little late. K said that he wasn’t really going to be able to load us today anyway because he was busy in the field and his hired hand was not at work yet. What? Are you kidding me?!
About an hour later (this guy was verrrry slooooow) we had a fixed tire and, the best news of the day, no ticket! The trooper was a pretty cool guy and sat and talked to Brad the whole time the tire was being fixed and decided that since we had such a time with the tire that he would not give Brad a ticket. He said that Brad was doing about 71 all the way up to town, but once we hit the outskirts, he sped up to 76. Not sure if the cruise was out of whack, or if Brad had cancelled the cruise and stepped on the accelerator at this point. None the less, Brad was not getting a ticket and we were very happy!
K called Brad and said that his hired hand finally showed up and could load us today… more good news! A half hour later we were finally at the hay pile, but as we pulled up, Brad noticed that the field didn’t quite look like the one his boss, S, had described. A phone call to S confirms that this is a different field. Brad then talks to the guy who is loading the trailer, J, and asked if there was another field at the different location and J said there was, but that hay didn’t belong to K. Hmmm, ok, weird. This piece of information prompts J to call K and Brad to call S and somehow lead to a weird three way phone call with Brad holding two phones, one to each ear, relaying information. It was quite funny to watch. After some discussion it was determined that S was mistaken on the location and we were going to load the hay at our current location – fine, no problem right? Wrong. When J was almost done loading the trailer, S calls Brad and said that he figured out the location of the hay he wanted. Doh! Well, by this time the trailer was already full and it would have been pointless to unload it, move to the other field and reload it, so we kept the hay that was on the trailer and headed home.
Who says trucking’s boring?
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