The Best Job In The World

Well, I was scheduled to run the Visteon account for Wednesday through Friday (Chrysler's Warren truck assembly), but one of the drivers for Haas Overhead Door in Wauseon Ohio was having chest pains in Pennsylvania on his way back from the east coast. So my boss called me last minute and asked me to hold tight as they figured out just what to do. The driver was going to a clinic and depending upon what the doctor found, I may have been needed to go out on a one way car rental and retrieve his truck. My boss said that they thought of me because they needed the best of the best for the job! Anyways, they decided to put me onto another Haas run for today and tomorrow, by then they should know if they need for me to go and retrieve the truck on Sunday.

I have recovered trucks before for another employer. I once recoved a truck and the female driver that was in it! She was wigged out on something. She was on eastbound I-80 just west of  the Wyoming border in Utah. I had to bring them both back to the main terminal in West Valley City, a northern suburb of Salt Lake City. I felt bad for her. She was paranoid about losing her job. I tried to calm her down. The company did have a zero tolerance policy, but they also offered rehab for substance abuse. It was kind of a second chance program. I think that she had other issues however, because she just could not stop obsessing about losing her job.

It was the first Volvo that I had driven, and it was loaded to the max. The jakes in that thing were the crapiest set I had ever had the displeasure of using. It was wierd shifting it also, had to rev the engine way up to about 2200 before even thinking of grabbing the next gear up, else it wasn't going to go in it (with or without the clutch). I was trying my damnedest not to soil my pants going down those mountains into SLC and I had to remain calm and cool so as not to set her off, and all the while try to calm her down. Talk about your multi-tasking! Did I mention that it was after dark also?

What is cool about the route that they gave me for today and Friday is that it runs me right within 5 miles of my Mother's house in Canal Fulton, Ohio. So I parked the truck at the TA at Portage Road and I-75 and called Mom up. She came out and met me at the restaurant. She had just eaten, but I was starved. So she kept me company while I ate and then we went back to her house for a visit. She wanted help learning how to use her new laptop computer.

Tomorrow morning early, I have to deliver my last stop in Dover, Ohio and then I make a pick up in Gnadenhutten for the return trip to Wauseon. I love this job. Where else can anyone get paid to visit with family members that live in another state!

It is nice to visit with Mom, but she is a chain smoker, and I have bad asthma. So I will visit with her for a while and then have her take me back to the truck for the night. I can only take so much. Three cigarettes ago I wasn't wheezing. Now my throat is sore and my voice is hoarse and raspy. I fare much better under the mildness of mere deisel particulates at the truck stops than with the durress of second hand smoke.