The Rookie

The Rookie by John Ferguson Sixty-four, sixty-two, sixty, that's when the engine surged, Full Power! Fifty-nine, fifty-eight, fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-nine, the brakes were fading and it was still two and a half miles to the bottom. "Oh my God . . . !" I remember when Bob came to the office and told me he wanted to drive a truck. He was pure country, had never been out of the state of Kentucky. The closest he'd ever been to a truck was working behind the fuel truck desk at the local Union 76. I wondered if he had any idea of what trucking was really like? Had he only been listening to some of the cowboy drivers as they talked about shiny twostack -Macks with a sack-in-the-back and the pretty seat covers in the passing cars? I asked him. Perhaps not knowing what answer I was looking for he shook his head. I said, "Trucking is long hours, sleepless nights, and shippers who don't care how long they take to load you just so they get you loaded before quitting time. Then they'll hand you the paperwork, tell you it's a hot load, has to be delivered first thing next morning. You'll drive all night, pull up to the dock, go in, and hand the papers to the foreman. He'll look at you and start cussing, complaining that he's got a whole warehouse full of what you brought. Just when he's got you convinced he's not going to take your load he'll pull out a sheet of paper and show you how he wants it-two layers off the top of this and all the rest on small pallets. "Then you've got the four-wheelers, no matter how big you look in their rearview mirror, when they get ready to pull out from a side street, they'll never see you. They'll cut over in front ofyoujust as the light turns yellow, but if you're like every other truck driver I've known, when it comes down to crunch time, you'll take the ditch, you'll go through the guardrail-anything to keep from hitting someone." I told him a few more things and then looked him in the eye, "Bob, are you sure you want to be a truck driver?' In that country drawl he said, "Yeah, I do." He met me at the truck on Sunday afternoon for a trip to Birmingham, Alabama . Thus began his training as I took the wheel and began to point out some of the gauges: Pyrometer, tachometer, speedometer, oil pressure, manifold pressure, air pressure, water temperature. Then I explained how to shift an unsynchronized transmission; how you had to match the engine rpm's with the ground speed, and the gear you selected. I made a point of telling him how much farther it took to stop a truck than a car, how a truck had to take curves slower because of its high center of gravity. I was explaining that this was 20 ". . . pay attention to signs." Oh my God . . . !" why it was so important to pay attention to road signs when I noticed that he wasn't even listening to me. We were crossing the state line just then as he turned and in all seriousness said, "Tennessee don't look no different from Kentucky!" I drove on through Nashville, then found a place to pufl over and let Bob take the wheel. It took a good deal of coaching to get him through the gears that first time. After that I settled into a running monologue on what, how, and when, with a few whys thrown in for exElanation . I've always found that it's etter to explain things to a rookie driver while they're willing to listen. That only lasts until they think they've got the hang of driving. I told him to pull into the "Big Rooster"-that's what we truckers call the Shady Lawn Truckstop at mile marker six in Tennessee. So what happened? Bob came up to the exit at...