OK folks, I got a story for ya, you’re gonna love this! So I’m southbound hammah down the other day, somewhere south of Medway, and the CB radio crackles: “Coops are open in Old Town.” Well, for you that aren’t truckah literate, that means the weigh station is open.
A few minutes later, the radio lights up again, and I hear a couple of drivahs talkin’ about what they are checkin’ for. One fellow says, “just runnin’ ya across, checkin’ ground pressure,” but the other drivah says, “I don’t trust ’em, ya never know,” and I agreed with the latter of the two.
So, I’m thinkin’ to myself, no big deal, been through thousands of these before. But I never had to explain an ELD, or electronic log device before. This is gonna be interestin’ for sure. Just what I really wanted to do!
Well, these devices are such that when you’re moving, you can’t really check them to figure out if all is well, you have to stop. Well, me being me, I’m not stopping. I got a lovely new bride, Ms. Sue, to get home to! And besides, I bet she has supper waiting too!
So I roll into the scale house, and sure enough, it’s my lucky day. The officer asked me to pull over, as he wants to do a quick check of my paperwork to see if all is updated. Right, I’m thinkin’, I just bet he does.
So I pull over to the side and the officer comes up to my truck. The first thing he asked about is what? You guessed it, my brand spankin’ new ELD! “Yup, got it right here officer,” so I hand the tablet to him and I, in my most professional voice, tell him, “Thing ain’t worth a damn, give me a paper log any day.” “Ya, I know,” he says, “but I don’t make the laws, just enforce them.”
So he’s looking at this thing and I can see he’s not doing too good figuring it out, and he starts putting the questions to me, like where did I start and where did I load and all that good stuff.
“It’s right there on the tablet, isn’t it?” “Well, no,” he says, “it says you’ve been driving nonstop since you left Bangor at 6:30 this morning, and it’s after lunch now and you have a load on!”
“Officer, I don’t know what to tell ya, the damn thing won’t let me tell it where I am and what I’m doing half the time, but I can tell ya this, officer, I’d like to tell somebody what they can do with this computer thing in a truck!”
“I know,” he says to me, and he starts on this spiel about compliance and all this crap, and I’ll just have to figure it out. “So,” I says to him, “just for safety’s sake, I did do my old-fashioned paper log today, and it’s right here, want to see it?”
So I pass it down to him and he takes a second and a half to really do an in-depth study (not) and passes it back to me. “Probably it’s a good thing you did a backup, drivah, or we might have a problem.”
So I says to him, “Officer, this is my first trip north since I had a triple bypass last summah, and just before they cut me open I had a long chat with God, and I promised him if he saw me through this trip, that I would try to be not only a better man, but a better drivah too, and not discounting being a better man for Ms. Sue, a better boss, father, and maybe even a better guitar picker!”
Well, he seemed to like all that, and says to me, “Get some help figuring out that computer, drivah.”
“10-4,” I tell him, “but don’t you want to look at all this other paperwork, medical card, registration, etc?” “Not today,” he says, “computers are down!”
“Really?” I says, “You got to get some help, I guess, figurin’ out that computer deal, huh?” He just smiled and wished me a good day! I’m tellin’ ya, can’t make this stuff up some days!
Well, we have good old St. Patty’s day comin’ up this Saturday, and I can’t wait. Dear friends of mine throw a huge corned beef and cabbage feed, cooking off 30-odd pounds of corned beef, one of my favorites. I don’t know how Ms. Jane and Mr. Bruce do it every year, but it has become one of my favorite nights out all winter long.
And after a wonderful feed, with lots of old and new friends, we break out the guitar and attempt a little “Danny Boy,” or whatever Irish tune we can muster up! Hope you all find your Irish time this week and we’ll talk about it down on Main Street! Till then …
Larry Sidelinger
Yankee Pride Transport
Damariscotta
