The L.T.L. Life

This is not where I actually work. The trees are too green.


So I work at a freight dock or terminal or the more "sensitive" named "Service Center" as most trucking outfits call them now. My job is simple: come in in the morning (6-7 AM), load up my route and deliver it. Deceptively simple.

Here's how it actually goes:

Arrive at 6-7 AM.

Help unload inbound trailers from Dallas and Houston (this can be a pain as things shift and topple in transit).

Figure out how in the heck I'm gonna fit all this crap into my 45' trailer.

Leave the yard hopefully by 11:30 with 15+ stops only to have to wait at the 1st stop because they are on lunch break.

Receive stops to pickup from the dispatcher and have to work around the newly acquired freight while still trying to deliver the stuff I originally loaded in the AM. (Kinda like playing Tetris)

Get back to the terminal and unload the picked up freight onto an outbound trailer to Dallas or Houston.

Punch out and go home for a cold one and a shower.

The 1st 2 weeks at the job were tough. I didn't know where anything was despite living in the area for 7+ years. My last job was ALL out of town stuff (All over Texas and points beyond). I knew where restaurants and shopping was but that was about it. To be honest, towards the end of the 2nd week I nearly threw in the towel and went back to my old job! I'm glad I didn't because I became more used to the route as it has pretty regular stops and I have Google Maps on my Blackberry to help me find my way.

I have done this type of work before. Kinda. I worked for Con-Way in Ft. Worth 2 different times back in '95 and again in '97. Up in Ft. Worth, pretty much every place had a dock to back up to and those who didn't had a forklift on the ground to get the freight. The places I go to now are MUCH MORE RURAL and they require a liftgate and a pallet jack for me to get the freight off. Instead of nice 40x48 pallets of freight that are easy to deliver, I get those with an endless combination of oversized / overlength goodies. 22' long bundles of pipe. Tractor implements. 15' long crates of who knows what. You have to plan for those things and how to get them off the trailer at the customers location. I had 2 crates that were 7' tall, 10' long and 1' wide (wrought iron gates for a ranch) and needless to say they were a challenge to get off the truck but me and 7 other guys did it. Couldn't have done it without them.

So the job gets easier. Just a little bit. There are those days where I can't get all the stops delivered but overall, I'm faster than I was when I first started this gig. I'm 36 and I'm pretty sure I couldn't have started this job 5 years from now. My body would surely give out by day 5.