On Sun, 1 Dec 2019 13:40:18 -0700, rbowman wrote:

On 12/01/2019 11:53 AM, wrote:
I was a teamster (local 639) in DC for a summer but it was all around
town, delivering chickens and beef. I did get to know some over the
road guys in the Children's Band radio days. They do seem to be a
different sort of person. I was working midnights and it seemed I was
always talking to the same guys at about the same time, going around
the beltway, most nights. They seemed to be making the same runs over
and over. It sounded pretty boring to me but I guess they weren't
standing at 20th and K with a hind quarter on their shoulder waiting
for the light. ;-)

The east coast is different. There are a lot of short runs between
cities. They tend to spend all day getting a load then drive all night
to unload in the morning, rinse and repeat. I don't know how they do it.

Most of my runs were at least a thousand miles. The money makers for the
company were carpets and furniture. I'd haul carpet out of LA to Dalton
GA, Denver, Brooklyn, Seattle, and so forth. Out of Dalton I'd bring
Georgia carpet back to LA or Vegas, usually. The other option was
bopping around the southeast picking up furniture and bringing it to the
Mississippi terminal. A lot of the Mississippi furniture went out by
rail, but there were always hot loads going back west.

The nature of that sort of operation meant you'd get strange loads to
reposition you for paying loads. Peanuts from New Mexico to LA, scrap
batteries from Denver to LA, and so forth. Groceries were the ones that
really sucked. Most grocery warehouses don't unload the truck. You
either do it yourself or hire a lumper for $100 or so. The lumpers were
outside contractors that were somebody's cousin or paid off the
warehouse foreman. One time I thought I was golden since the stuff was
on pallets. The dickhead informed me the stacking pattern wasn't correct
and they would all have to be restacked to meet their requirements.

It was fun for a while. Most years I'd get back home in November, clean
the truck out, and head to southern Arizona for the winter. In the
spring I'd trickle back, throw my junk in another truck, and hit the
road. Seniority didn't buy you much. Work for your dispatcher and you
got good runs. Slack off, not meet schedules, and you'd get **** runs.

I knew some guys who were running Baltimore to Jacksonville 2 or 3
times a week. There were other guys with regular routes up and down
I-95 and they liked to do it at night. One guy was running coal from
West Virginia to Dahlgren Va. It was real pretty stuff, shiny
anthracite that looked like black diamonds. I rescued him one night on
270 and we were buddies. He gave me a pile of that and it I burned it
in my coal stove for a couple years.