Don’t Let the Little Things Bother You….Just Roll On
Another good example is something that happened a couple days ago. My trainer and I had a delivery of berries to a Walmart Distribution Center. We travelled clear across the country to make this delivery. Upon our arrival, we were treated like complete garbage. Everyone was cranky and very unpleasant to deal with. My response? Be even nicer to those I’m dealing with. Say please and thank you. One example is when I went inside to see if we were unloaded yet. We were sitting at the dock and hadn’t felt anyone on the trailer for about an hour. So I ran inside and asked “hey just wondering if we’re unloaded yet? We haven’t felt anybody on the truck in a while.” The response I got was “did we call you on the CB, driver?” I tried to respond and said “No, but……” and I was cut off. The guy said “then I suggest you go back to your truck as you were previously instructed and wait for us to call you.” I could have and sort of wanted to say “F you!” and storm out of there. But I collected myself and said, “Ok, I’ll just sit tight for a little while then. Thank you.” He didn’t say “your welcome.” :-/
In any case, I could have handled that situation in a couple different ways. And this wasn’t the first time I dealt with a jerk at that place. But instead of getting angry, I just let it roll off my back. On the flip side, my trainer dealt with these people differently. Part of our load was refused and we had to wait for a USDA food inspector to check our load. While we were waiting, a security guard came over and said we had to leave the area. My trainer tried to explain our situation, but the guard wasn’t hearing it. My trainer then flew off the handle, cursed him out, and slammed the door shut. He was visibly upset. I thought a vein was going to pop in his neck. In my opinion, there’s absolutely no reason to get so worked up! Why do that to yourself!? I think sometimes drivers are their own worst enemy.
My trainer was also furious that part of our load got refused. I won’t get into details, but basically Walmart just didn’t want to pay for everything they bought. There was nothing wrong with the berries we had. And since the USDA food inspector is paid for by Walmart, who do you think he’s going to side with? Our load was ultimately refused and my trainer was just plain cranky after that. We had to take the rest of our load to downtown Pittsburgh where a Winery was going to make wine with the refused berries. This made him even more upset since we had to go to downtown Pittsburgh (and I mean down freakin’ town). I swear, I thought my trainer was going to lose it. But come on! We drive produce in a refrigerated truck trailer. Don’t you think a refused load is going to eventually happen? It’s part of the job! I’m not saying you have to be happy about it, but why get so worked up? I’ve been on the truck for 3 months now and this is the first time part of our load was refused. It’s not like this happens everyday.
My advice to those of you already driving a truck (if a rookie is allowed to give advice to old timers) is to calm down! Choose your battles and don’t let the little things get to you. And for the sake of everyone, don’t take your anger out on other drivers on the CB. It’s not our fault you can’t manage your anger, and I really don’t want to listen to you fly off the handle about nothing. Maybe I just have this mentality because I’m new, but if I ever get to the point where I react the way some truckers do to rather minuscule situations, I’m quitting. I can find a stressful job back home and be home every night with my friends and family. Why should I stay out on the road and be stressed and angry all the time?
Things Never Go As Planned
To those of you who are getting ready to enter the industry, my advice to you is, don’t expect anything to go as planned. If you are about to enter training and it’s supposed to last 6 weeks, don’t expect on that happening. Who’s to say your transmission isn’t going to go out half way through your training? Any number of things can happen. So if you get upset that your training ends up taking 8 weeks instead of 6, that’s a good indication truck driving will be a long stressful career for you. Anything that does go as planned in truck driving is a rarity, so enjoy your luck when that happens. Otherwise, try to enjoy the fact that you will never know what’s coming next for you. I happen to love the fact that I never, ever know what is coming next for me. Heck, I don’t even know what state I’ll be in tomorrow. I could be sitting right here where I am now, or I could be on my way across the country. I don’t know, and I love not knowing. Not everybody can handle that. And that’s ok. This career doesn’t fit all personalities. But that’s how this career is. A total lack of knowing what’s coming next, and a life full of unexpected detours. Just sit back, enjoy the ride, manage your stress, and keep on truckin’.
Until next time, drive safely.
TruckerMike
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Last 5 posts by TruckerMike
- Making it Financially in Truck Driving - October 14th, 2009
- My Recent Trucking Adventures - Quite A Challenge - October 6th, 2009
- My Truck Driving Career - A 6 Month Review - September 21st, 2009
- Leaving Home - September 11th, 2009
- Seeing the Other Side of the Tracks as a Truck Driver - August 28th, 2009
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Great advice, Mike! It’s great for someone like me who just decided in the last four or so weeks to become a truck driver and hasn’t even started my training yet to know what I can expect in the coming months and years.
I’m one of those that likes to know what to expect, which is why I’ve spent a lot of time here reading as much as my time and slow reading ability allow me to over these weeks. It’s kind of strange, but very interesting, that just knowing that what I can expect is to not know what to expect is all I need. I guess having a mind that’s wired in a kind of twisted way means I’ve got one of the main requirements to be a truck driver, right???? LOL
Anyway, moving right along. The advice about handling some of the unpleasant situations and people in life is great for anyone, not just truckers. As a teenager, I’d lose it often and in ways that got me in a lot of trouble, and sometimes I did things that to this day I wish to God I hadn’t and I’d give a lot to be able and go back and undo. At one point, I found myself in a place where going off on someone physically was going to get me a quick ride into a few years in the kid equivalent of prison. One of the things I learned real fast, and which is why I’m where I’m at in life now, is that 99.99999% of the time the thing that had me furious at the moment I wouldn’t even be able to remember in a year. Those few that I’d even remember weren’t going to have any impact at all on how my life was a year later though. So I started asking myself, why do something now that will result in me both remembering this in a year and having how I reacted make my life a year later worse? In the 31 years since I first started looking at it this way, there are perhaps two or three that I’ve even remembered a year later and, at best, one that may have made any difference in my life in the years since. Even that one, if I had reacted, didn’t have as much negative impact on my life as my reaction would have. I am big on having control and I learned that allowing the things other people do and say to effect me puts them in control of me and how I feel and there is no way on earth I’m going to give someone else that kind of power over me. Why let someone else have the power to cause you to develop high blood pressure, get ulcers, die younger and suffer more while you’re here?
Okay, I just used a lot of words to say what you said in a few. Good job and thanks, Mike!
P.S. Just remembered one of my favorite quotes…..”God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the ones I can and the wisdom to know the difference.” That was St. Francis of Assisi and some of the best words any man has ever uttered.
Hi Paul,
Thanks for such an awesome reply! I’m glad my blog is helping you and I wish you the absolute best of luck. Please, feel free to email me anytime personally if there are any questions I can answer for you. If I don’t know the answer, I’ll either try to find it or will simply tell you I don’t know. But either way, it never hurts to ask questions. It’s good that you’re doing research on this before jumping in. I’m sure glad I did. Some of these people jump right in not really knowing what they were getting into. Those are the ones who have the hardest time adjusting to this life.
Anyway, only 6k more miles and I’m on my own! It’s been a long 3 months / 54,000 miles but I’m almost there.
Mike
TruckerMike@TruckingTruth.com
It’s good that you have it figured out, Trucker Mike, because so many don’t. Stress IS a killer. Average life expectency for truckers is 62. Have you noticed or talked to drivers that are weatherbeaten because of lack of sleep, healthy food, too much coffee/cigs etc? They look like they’re 60, but are actually maybe 45-50. The disrespect/rudeness come with the job, so you need thick skin. The best thing is you only have to deal with these fools for a couple hours, then you never see them again. FFfF
Well put Fred. This is an unhealthy profession as it is, but the stress just adds to it. I look around at some of the people at truck stops and can’t believe the condition they are in. I’ve promised myself that I won’t end up like them. I’ll be going solo here in about a week, and I’ve decided to stay far away from the buffets once that happens. Do you ever look at the people at the buffets? I know it sounds mean, but sometimes just seeing the people there makes me lose my appetite. I hope I’m not offending anyone here, but weight is just such a huge problem in the trucking industry. It’s about time we take it more seriously. Hell, I’m paying $40 / week for my health insurance and I don’t even have the best coverage. Buying into group health insurance doesn’t mean much when the group you’re sharing it with is full of people who are vastly overweight, heavy smokers, stressed out, and those who have very little physical activity in their life. It’s time truck drivers wake up and start taking care of the most importaint piece of equipment on the truck…themselves.
Mike,
Very well written website. I drove for 18 years and trained for 9 of those years. That is one of the most important things I always tried to teach my trainees, was to take things as they come and let them roll off your shoulder. Wal-Mart is one of the worst places to order more product than they need and then accept them first come first serve and refuse the rest of what they didn’t need. But, if you let stress take over and you get mad and upset at the littlest things and problems, then what are you going to do when your trailer jackknifes on you? You will flip out and end up recking instead of getting it corrected and back on track. This is another reason that it is very important to learn to remain calm in all situations. If you ever need someone to talk to send me an e-mail.
Tami
Hi Tami, thanks for reading! And thank you for being a trainer for 9 years. Wow! I don’t know if I could ever be a trainer. I have good blood pressure, and I intend to keep it that way. HAHA! I think a lot of trainers fail to do what you teach. I’ve heard so many stories of trainers breaking things on their truck because they are upset about something. Not the best way to teach a student how to deal with situations out on the road!
And thank you for the offer to contact you. Be careful what you wish for, I might just take you up on it!
Mike
lol…Training isn’t bad….Trainers are. However, there are the few exceptionally good ones. Most trainers anymore are just out for the money. I always had the philosophy of teaching them to drive like I do. I am a perfectionist so I don’t know if that is always good though because I did always push them harder than most trainers do. But the upside of that is everytime I talk to one of my old trainees and they tell me that I taught them to run hard or I taught them this or that. That gives you a feeling that no one can take away. I extend to you again the offer for you to contact me along with anyone else wanting too learn, learning, or any other driver. Just do not come to me thinking you know everything, b/c the day a truck driver knows everything out here is the day he/she is going to die or kill someone else. I have 2.5 million safe mi. I no longer drive but I will never know anything. If anyone contacts me just make sure to put something about trucking in the subject of it so i don’t throw the letter away or deny you. Keep the shiny side up and the dirty side down.
Tami
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