Chapter 21

Chapter 21

It’s now February. I haven’t written as I was so busy until the 4th of December which I’ll get to in a while.
The month of November was a good month for me. I went in on the 7th for more chemo and I had to plead with Dr. Holden not to give me any more of hat 5FT! That stuff was so nasty and I still haven’t gained any weight this past month since actually I lost those nine pounds after the first 5FT treatment and am still trying to get them back! Dr. Holden read the PET and CT scan results and agreed to give me Cisblatin and that was a big relief for me!
Thank God that, that was my last chemo for the rest of my life! Just hope these words of wisdom I’ve put down make at least one person listen to their bodies and try to live a little bit healthier to keep this from happening to them!
I drove mainly to New Jersey and the North East, enjoying being back on the road making money and trying to get a grip on the bills that I ran up this past summer while undergoing treatments, watching as winter starts to come in.
I spent half of the summer wearing a sweater and now in the truck as the cold just seems to creep into my bones and won’t leave! I can run the heater up and still have a chill and I can tell you a truck can put out some heat especially when running in the hills!
December rolls around and my sons have given their Christmas lists to their mom and I and we’re going to go Christmas shopping when I get home on the 5th.
The 2nd of December finds me in upstate New York, driving in the snow to pick up a load going to Springfield, Oh and I’ll drop and hook there to come on home.
That evening at 9:15 I did what I’ve never done before, I fell asleep at the wheel and thankfully only hit the guard rail on the right side of the road. I kept the truck from climbing the rail and kept it up on all 18 wheels. A good job if I say so my self with actually minimum damage to the truck. That is if 4 tires and the side panels on the tanks can be considered minimal damage! Now, the 100 yards of guardrail is another thing and how much that’ll cost I haven’t a clue!
I do what I’m supposed to do and call in to the yard and they tell me to call the State Patrol and when the Trooper gets there I meet him at his car with all of my paper work that he’ll need.
When he’s done with me I have a nice ticket for “changing lanes unsafely” but he says is a non reckless driving ticket as I was nice and polite and didn’t give him a hard time as most truck drivers seem to do! Me? Oh hell no! The thing about police that scares me more than that gun and handcuffs is that darn ink pen! I’m ALWAYS polite to the police!
I don’t need a wrecker which is always a good thing and dispatch tells me to head on down to the truck stop I was heading to anyway for a shower and food but now I’ll need 4 tires and the corner of the front bumper pulled out from the right front steering tire! But at least the truck is drivable but it now has a nice pull to the right!
The shop has me done about 1am and I pull around to the parking lot and squeeze into a spot and hit the bed for some now really needed sleep!
I make it to the yard on the night of the 3rd and return the next day for the accident review that I’ll need to go through. I don’t have to take a pee test as there was no one else involved and the truck didn’t need road repairs or a tow which also makes this a non DOT reportable accident which is a good thing for me and the company. I think.
After several hours at the yard I get fired!
Yep, Me, fired. And just before Christmas, too. This company, which I really liked driving for, until I got back on the road, that is. A company that if they called me at home I’d drop what I was doing and head out for them. A company that for the past several months has decided that it’s going to go ALL owner operator or lease purchase with only 35 company drivers or less to save over $300,000 of workers comp payments a year for less than 35 drivers, and that’s the truth! They have been taking us (company drivers) out of the new trucks and put in the old pieces of crap that even these “just out of driving school beginners” won’t take! Us company drivers even got an invitation in the mail to lease a new 2009 Freightliner at 2008 prices!
Not this boy! If I’m going to lease a truck it’s going to be something that has a resale price at the end! Hell, a 5 year old Freightliner with over 500,000 miles on it won’t bring $20,000 dollars! A Pete or KW will bring in $40k for a POS! The only people who make any money off of a lease is NOT the drivers but the people holding the lease! I’ll match my pay stubs with ANY lease driver out there and prove it! And the owner of O&S is now running for Mayor of Springfield, Missouri? Guaranteed he didn’t get my vote on Feb 3rd! It’s all I could do not to write a letter to the editor about his “employee” problem! Oh yes he has a $70 million dollar company but only because these morons are making him rich by almost paying to haul his freight! They pick up all of the costs of running a truck and they make 98 cents a mile plus a paltry 25 cent fuel surcharge! The company is making about $2.30 a mile on the reefer loads and is screwing these guys out of the true FSC they are being paid not to mention the added pay of places like NYC and extra drop pay! Oh well I guess it’s time to move on.
Well I thought I was going to move on! Christmas came and I had only 4 presents under the tree for my 2 sons. Barbara was so depressed she actually didn’t want to put up the tree but I did and Jerry and I did our decorating but it just didn’t seem the same to me but it gave me peace of mind when I sit in here at my desk and can turn in my chair and just look at it and feel the stress drain out of my body!
We did Christmas on Christmas Eve as Jerry is 15 and didn’t want to “get up early just for 2 presents” as he put it. I had gotten Barb what she wanted in November (when I had a job) which was a new washer and dryer (I know, but that’s what she TOLD me to get her for Christmas!) as her old ones were 15 years old and starting to not do their jobs!
I stayed busy filling out applications to every freaking major trucking company and then the not so major companies and then on to local jobs such as Walmart, Burger King, Dominos Pizza, convenience stores and every other place I could think of.
I’m effectively black balled in the trucking industry for some reason, because O&S fired me for an unsatisfactory safety record and Great West Insurance (the only freaking insurance that most of these companies seem to use!) thinks the ticket I got was a “reckless” driving ticket and didn’t even wait to see what the final out come was on that in court, no one will let me get behind the wheel of a golf cart! The court in Portland, NY changed the ticket to a parking ticket so I haven’t had moving violation ticket in 3 years, thank you so very much, but they still think it’s a reckless driving! Go get them Mr. Lawyers! That is, if I could afford one as the last one cost me $450 plus the charges on the ticket of $150 that I didn’t have but had to pay anyway! That could have been a few more presents under the tree! Do I sound even a bit bitter or mad?
Then, the call came in! Would I like to come in for an interview? OH YES! I’m given a time and 10 minutes before the appointment time I’m pulling into the drive way! I go through the interview and it turns out that the assistant manager who interviews me is all to happy to put me to work, as her son is a trucker! I started my new career at Walmart on the 31st of December making $7.45 and hour for 32 hours a week! It’s not driver pay and it won’t pay all the bills but now all I need is another part time 32 hour a week job at minimum wages for as total of $463 a week BEFORE taxes to officially be able to get some of this stimulus money our new President is throwing around! Huh, what do you mean I don’t get any of it? But it is a job and less that what I'm making on unemployment but Barb is about to duct tape my ass to the wall and with hair regrowing in certain places now, I don't think so!
Any way, my life is now in the crapper, I’ll be filing for bankruptcy I guess about the first of May, almost one year after finding out I had cancer! Ain’t that a slap in the face! I guess I’ll do another blog on the anniversary of finding out about my cancer and close this blog out. That is if I haven’t had freaking a heart attack from all the stress I managed to avoid all last year that is piling up on me now! At least I DO have a nice life insurance policy which is now really funny as I’m now REALLY worth more dead that alive! ROFLMFAO