Truckin’ with Bubba … and I Ain’T Bubba

Truckin’

With Bubba

… and I Ain’t Bubba

Hal Howard

CDL Instructor

iUniverse, Inc.

Bloomington

Truckin’ With Bubba … and I Ain’t Bubba

Copyright © 2010 by Hal Howard

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ISBN: 978-1-4502-7383-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4502-7385-5 (dj)

ISBN: 978-1-4502-7384-8 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010919513

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 02/04/2011

Dedication

To the people in the Prime School of Driving program and the long-haul truckers of America who spend many lonely days and nights throughout the year, often driving in adverse weather conditions, to move the goods of the nation to the consumers of America, too often the unappreciated workers in the distribution system.

Acknowledgments

My thanks to Marie Bennett Moore, my high school English teacher, for her comments and editing of the manuscript; I finally got an A from her. My thanks to Linda Brown, Steve Larsen and Jim Austin, for the many fine students, and the Bubbas, they referred to me (no Bubbas, no book); the instructors in the Prime School of Driving program from whom I learned much in the beginning; Brian Atkinson, DO, for his help regarding driver health problems; former student Paul Woolard for posing for the cover; Jerry Breeden at The Trucker for his early review; Marcel Normand, retired Community College instructor, for his review and comments; and Misty Shepherd and Marilyn Meechan for their reading and recommendations regarding the manuscript. All decisions regarding the manuscript were mine and any mistakes or errors are mine alone. I would also like to thank my friend of many years, San Francisco attorney Bob Gates, who was the first to suggest that I write a book about my trucking experiences.

In Memory

Of

Paul Woolard

May 19, 1948 to January 26, 2011

A good citizen and Viet Nam Vet who served his country honorably.

A generous friend with a merry sense of humor.

Table of Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Preface

Chapter

1. The First Bubba

2. Bubba One Gear

3. Pre-Licensed Bubbas

4. Bible Reading Bubbas

5. What’s In the Brake Lines?

6. Why Do I Have To Listen To You?

7. Obnoxious Students

8. What’s On a License?

9. The Retired Bubba

10. The Mumblers

11. The Taxi Bubba

12. Bears and Bubbas

13. The Almost Perfect Bubba

14. Prior Entrepreneur Bubbas

15. Third World Bubbas

16. The Nervous Bubba

17. The Police Bubba

18. Dyslexic Students

19. Interesting Backgrounds

20. Cell Phone Bubbas

21. Other Instructors, Other Bubbas

22. The Test

23. Chivalry Is Not Yet Dead

24. Before Prime

25. The Bunk Wetter

26. The Extreme Skier

27. What’s a Smoke Worth?

28. The Trash Man

29. Honey, I Want You Home

30. The Farmer

31. The Ultimate Conceit

32. The Last Hero Run

33. Hookers and Hustlers

34. Stories From the Road

35. Bull and Buck

36. Who’s Gonna Lump My Load?

37. The Road To Trucking

38. Dumb, Careless and Tired Drivers

39. The Life

40. The Business

41. The Gambler

Epilogue

End Notes

Preface

I have often been asked how a guy with my education became a truck driver. My father had only a third grade education and worked hard to support his family. Go to college, he repeatedly told me during my high school years. Like many working class people, he knew the value of an education.

After graduating from high school, I spent two summers toiling as a construction worker before joining the U. S. Army for a three-year hitch. While in the Army, I had the good fortune to serve in two different units with law school graduates. I decided that if they could be lawyers, so could I.

After graduating from college in Boston, I headed west to California. In San Francisco, I got a job with a bank and enrolled in the night program at Golden Gate Law School where I attended classes three nights a week for four years, including summers, while working full time at the bank. Most of the nights not spent in class and weekends were spent studying with an occasional night out to relieve the tension. I used most of my sick and vacation time to study for exams. My supervisor was very understanding. When I would call in to say I was not coming in because I didn’t feel well, he would respond, I see it’s exam time again.

Soon after I was admitted to practice, I teamed up with an old lawyer in a case against a large national corporation involving the value of a street the city had vacated and sold to the corporation. After that, I went to the California Supreme Court in a case over access to the multiple listing service owned and controlled by a local real estate board, which shook up the real estate industry and led to a change in the membership requirements for local multiple listing services. Victories in these two cases were the highlights of my first seven years of practice. I had a general practice and did the usual things like divorces, wills, and small business matters, and was involved in a lot of community activities. I was also teaching real estate law one night a week at a community college and handling a lot of real estate problems. After about twelve years, I was pretty bored with the business but it took me another nine years to get out. When I finally did quit, I moved up to the Tacoma, Washington area to go into the real estate business. I arrived just in time for a down turn in the market and soon discovered that I was a much better real estate lawyer than salesman.

I was restless and wanted to see the country. I eventually enrolled in the commercial driving course at South Seattle Community College and obtained a Class A Commercial Drivers License (CDL). Upon completion of the course, I went to work for CH Dredge, Inc., trucking company in Salt Lake City, Utah, which was acquired by Prime, Inc., of Springfield, Missouri, in 2003[1]. I had been a trainer at Dredge and soon signed up to be an instructor in the Prime School of Driving.

I met a lot of good people who were trying to better themselves economically; however, some of them just did not belong in a truck. None of them was named Bubba.

An old friend had been encouraging me to write a book about my trucking experiences. I couldn’t envision anything interesting or amusing to write about until I got my second student. He was one of those who didn’t belong in a truck. During the next five years, I rode on the joke that I was writing a book entitled Truckin’ with Bubba … and I ain’t Bubba. As I accumulated more experiences, the joke evolved into a reality.

Chapter 1

The First Bubba

I have heard it said that a family that produces a line of geniuses invariably produces an offsetting line of imbeciles. Bubba Lee was not of the genius class.

Bubba was the second student assigned to me as an instructor in the Prime School of Driving program. My first contact with Bubba was a telephone call to his motel room.

I’m stressed out from this week but I’ll survive it, God willing. Took me all day yesterday to get a ticket cleared down in Louisiana, but I managed it with God’s help, he said.

Red flag. Low stress level?

I told him to meet me at the dispatch counter in the Plaza building at ten thirty the next morning and then we would go to the practice area. As I was walking in the door at ten thirty, some guy brushed past me on the way out. When I told the dispatcher that I was supposed to meet a new student there, he said a guy had shown up at ten twenty-five looking for me and had just left, said he was going to the practice area.

Another red flag. Impatience. Can’t keep directions straight?

When I met him at the practice area a half hour later and asked him why he hadn’t waited for me, he said he wasn’t sure where we were supposed to meet and proceeded to apologize profusely.

Okay, you’re forgiven. Let’s move on. Have you had any driving experience?

I drove a dump truck back in the 80’s, same kind of transmission.

All right, get in the driver’s seat and we’ll take a drive around the practice area and see what you can do.

He was about six foot and overweight with a big moon face. He worked his way into the driver’s seat with a grin like a teenager about to get his first lay, wrapped his arms around the steering wheel, put his head down on it and said, I love it.

He loves it. Is this guy for real? I waited about ten seconds to see if he was going to get overcome with passion before pulling him away from his embrace.

All right, push the clutch all the way in to engage the clutch brake and put it in second, I told him.

He slowly came out of his reverie and fumbled it into gear.

We worked on backing for an hour before he begged off because of an old high school football injury to his clutch leg. I went to the dispatch office and got us dispatched on a three-drop load, the first scheduled for nine o’clock the next morning in Kansas City and the other two in Denver on Tuesday.

Bubba complained that he was tired from the stress of the past few days and needed some rest, so I drove. A three-hour drive brought us to Peculiar, Missouri, thirty-one miles south of Kansas City. Yes, there really is a town by that name. Sometimes I think it describes the entire state. We laid up at the Flying J Truck Stop where Bubba got a good twelve hours of sleep.

After the Kansas City drop, we took Interstate 70 West across Kansas with Bubba driving. Along the way, he told me that his early education had been neglected because his parents had been following a damn fool evangelist who was predicting the end of the earth on a certain day, which day had long since passed. This story was intertwined with a story of how he had gone to school at times but had left to work in the oil fields and had become a spot welder at his father’s insistence. He said he had taught himself to read and write but didn’t say anything about arithmetic. He also said he thought he was smarter than most men but didn’t say anything about women; but then, he was a redneck. I never told him about the extent of my education. I doubt that it would have made our relationship any better.

After we fueled in Junction City, Kansas, Bubba went to a nearby Walmart and returned with a large bag of sunflower seeds. When I told him I was afraid he was going to throw the hulls around in the truck, he assured me he wouldn’t and I reluctantly withdrew my objection. After he left my truck, I discovered that I had been right in my basic instinct; he had left a bunch of them in the space between the bunk and back wall of the sleeper. After him, I added sunflower seeds to my list of prohibited evils.

We left Junction City with Bubba driving. After awhile he started wandering out of the lane. When I called his attention to it, he responded, Haven’t you ever wandered out of the lane?

That’s not the issue, I told him. Pull off at the next exit ramp. He had been driving about three hours, which was okay for his first day. We switched drivers and continued on our way with me continuing to coax his life’s story out of him.

Bubba said he was a Bible reader and felt sure he would go to Heaven. After my experience with him, I have a different opinion.

What do you consider sin? I asked.

He hesitated, and after some urging, said, Greed and lusting after a woman along the roadside,

So, it’s okay to lust after a woman as long as you don’t do it along the roadside. Maybe I still have a chance at Heaven. With Bubba? Are there any options?

We drove until eight o’clock that evening and stopped at Oakley, Kansas, about three hours from Limon, Colorado. I told Bubba we could sleep for an hour and drive on or lay up for the night and get an early start. He said he could drive to Limon and then sleep late; that he needed straight eight hours of sleep. Considering his earlier performance, I didn’t believe for a second that he was capable of three hours of night driving. We laid up for the night.

The next morning, we awoke to a snow-covered parking lot and a very slippery Interstate 70. We left with me driving. We’re one good skid from the ditch and Bubba is sitting there beaming and telling me how much he’s enjoying the experience. After a couple hours of poking along at half speed, we laid up at a tacky little truck stop where the only information about the road conditions was scuttlebutt from the other drivers who were also waiting for driving conditions to improve. After awhile the temperature rose and the ice melted and we went on our way to Denver. That night, we laid up at Sapp Brothers Truck Stop in Denver after making our last drop.

The next morning I engaged in the daily struggle of explaining to Bubba how to do his driver’s log. "We finished at six o’clock last night. Draw a line up from the on duty not driving category to the off duty category."

I do my log; takes me five minutes.

Have you drawn a line? I asked.

No.

What’s the problem?

I’m studying it.

What’s there to study?

I don’t understand it.

I explain it again. "The log has four categories listed vertically starting at the top and working down as follows: off duty, sleeper berth, driving, on duty not driving. Each category is represented by a horizontal line across the page with the time of each hour indicated by a short vertical line. Each hour is broken up into four quarters designated by short vertical lines between the hour lines. You draw a vertical line from one category to the other when you change categories and a horizontal line from the time you started in that category until you finish in that category. I take his log. See, this is how it’s done." I draw the lines for him.

Now, add the time spent in each category and list the time in the blank space provided on the right side of the page.

I wait.

I wait some more.

Finally I ask, Got that done?

Not yet, he replies.

I wait.

How do you add the quarters again?

I explain it again. Four quarters make a whole. There are 15 minutes in each quarter. Four 15 minute periods equal an hour.

Finally he gets them added across.

"Now, the time spent in the four categories should equal twenty-four.