War and Peace, chapter 2

Bright and early the following Monday morning (too early, really, I only got four hours of sleep!), with visions of glowing young women in my head, I got up and headed back to the drop off point and formally delivered the truck to the new owners. I then drove my car back to a nearby Panera Bread restaurant, where I had a bagel and cup of coffee, and called in to headquarters to report the truck delivered and to see if they had anything for me.

I was instructed to call our Georgia office, and on doing so was offered a truck in Atlanta to be delivered to Charleston, SC. As it was the only thing nearby, I took it, and drove over to the address supplied (which was about fifteen miles away). On arrival, I found I was going to be driving my first semi tractor, a big red Freightliner with a sleeper cab. Hooking up the lights was interesting, as this truck (and, as I learned, most if not all semis) had sealed tailights that wouldn't take my taplights.

So I spliced the wires to my wiring rig, and after a bit of effort was good to go. Here's the truck with my car behind:




This was the first truck I drove with a low/high range 10-speed manual transmission. Yikes! The way that works is that it's got a five-speed shifter (plus reverse, of course) and a low/high-range switch. If you've ever ridden a 10-speed bicycle, it's the same idea. These transmissions aren't synchronized like car manual transmissions, either, so shifting is more of a matter of matching up the engine speed to the transmission speed, or else you grind gears and miss shifts, etc. Embarrassing! I found accelerating to be no serious problem, but with this truck and the next several with the same transmission, I found downshifting EXTREMELY difficult!

Anyway, by the time I was ready to leave, it was obvious to me that I wasn't going to get to Charleston before 5pm (when the delivery location closed), so I called my contact and told him I wouldn't be in town before 8pm and suggested perhaps I should make the delivery in the morning when they reopened. He was very happy with that suggestion, as he lived a half-hour away and didn't really want to come back into work that evening. That suited me just fine as well, because it meant I could sleep in the sleeper cab instead of paying for a motel room!

So I got out on the Interstate, headed for South Carolina, and as the miles accumulated, I started realizing that four hours sleep wasn't working too well for me. Fortunately about that time I reached a rest area, so I pulled in and took a nice long refreshing nap!

The rest of the trip down to Charleston was uneventful, fortunately, and I got into the area around 9pm, found a truck stop and parked for the night, grabbed a burger and then went back and unrolled my sleeping bag in the sleeper cab. It was really quite nice and I slept really well all night, getting up early enough to drive the truck to the delivery point and dropping it off with no issues.