United States of America

I was but 21 years old fresh out of the USCG (4 years) and wanted to do one thing, drive big rigs. My time in the USCG had peaked my interest in becoming a truck driver. With  the small amount of experience I had from the service I convinced a truck driving school to let me tag along  with a class that was prepared to go for their driving test, I did not go thru the training at all. Too make a long story short, I walked away that day with a CLASS I license, in my eyes a certified professional truck driver.

I then tried to get a truck driving job but with no experience no one would hire me. Now before my time in the service of my country I had worked bagging groceries at a local super market chain, thru high school. I went back to see if my ex boss could help me get a job as a driver with the chain but all he could do was call a friend at the main warehouse and get me a job as a warehouseman. I was married and needed a job to support my family so I took the job and put my dreams of driving the big rigs on the back burner. I started my job as grocery selector in the warehouse the next week, I soon was introduced to the fact that this was a Teamsters Union job and had to join the union, something I did not fully understand but soon understood and realized this was the way I would realize my dream to become a truck driver. I worked very hard and made the grade I was now a TEAMSTER and I thought this would be the way I would slowly work my way to becoming a truck driver.

For the next 8 months every coffee and lunch break I spent out watching and observing the truck drivers. Soon I became friendly with a few drivers and they would let me back their rigs into the loading dock for the experience. I lived for these chances to drive the big rigs to the point where I was being a pain in the butt to some of the drivers.

Then one night I came to work and there was a truck driver bid on the bulletin board, I signed my name and thought well just maybe I might get lucky. Everyday for the next few weeks I rushed into work to check the bid .my signature was the only one. Then one night the shop steward came to me and said the company called him in to talk about the job bid. It was the company's position that I was not qualified and had no previous experience. The steward told the company he thought a union business agent should handle this and meeting was arranged between the company. The union and me. After allot of somewhat heated negotiating we made an agreement that I could get the needed company requirements on company equipment as long as I did on my own time. For the next month or two I spent allot of my off time trying to gain the experience I needed to satisfy the company. It finally paid off and the company let me have the chance at a driver's position.

My job was to hook up to a loaded trailer and drive it to a company store drop it at the store loading dock and haul an empty trailer back to the warehouse. This was a fairly simple task and I quickly got pretty good at it. Then one night I came into dispatch to get my assignment and was told that there was no loads ready and my assignment was to hook to an empty trailer in the yard and go to a warehouse less than 2 mile from ours to pick up the sugar order for the warehouse. I preceded to carryout my assignment I drove over to the sugar warehouse with the empty trailer. When I arrived there I went in talked to the shipper and told him what I was there for, he seemed very busy but handed me clip board full of orders and pointed to an area in the dock area and said that my companies sugar orders where there. He then said to back my trailer into an open dock space and load up my order. This seemed fairly clear to me what I needed to do and I proceeded to load my trailer. One thing to me was not quite right the pallets of sugar where about waist high and as I loaded them on the trailer with an electric pallet jack I saw there was allot a space between the tops of the loaded pallets of sugar and the roof of my trailer. I preceded to hand load more sugar on top of each two pallet I rolled onto the trailer right up to the roof of the trailer. I was a complete rookie and had no concept to how much weight I was loading on that truck. It took me some four hours to load this trailer. Normally someone would have wondered what was taking me so long to finish my assignment and called over to the sugar warehouse to check on my status but some how I slipped below the radar and no one missed me.

The other part of this story is the tractor I was assigned that night, was one of the oldest in the fleet. An old B-MODEL MACK with a tri-plex transmission I had absolutely no experience with, I had only driven tractors with MAXIDINE transmissions before this and I was not going to let anyone know of my inexperience.

Well after finishing this mega-load I proceeded to try and drive this load back to my company warehouse .I could barely get the truck to move, I thought it was because the tractor was so old. I soon learned this was not the case I had gone maybe a few hundred yards and the fifth wheel plate on the trailer had ripped right off. The trailer was nosed onto the pavement with such force it did quite a bit of damage to the pavement and the trailer itself. What a scene and I still had no clue that I had done something wrong.

Short of a long story is that soon I was so embarrassed of my action as I was being told of all the stupid things I was trying to complete and all I needed to do was ask someone to explain I almost lost my job but after all things considered I was Given another chance and I was pretty sure if I ever was unsure of how to proceed with an assignment I was going to ask for help. I did allot of growing up and maturing at that time in my life .Almost thirty five years later I can laugh about it, but also reflect on what valuable lesson I learned.

THANK YOU, --- RON CROSS.

PS. I still ask when I don't know.

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