The Spirit Of Adventure

One of the most satisfying things to me about this job is that it sort of scratches my itch for adventure. I take considerable pleasure in the variety of places that I get to see. I keep a personal blog for my family to see all the kinds of stuff I do, and I share a lot of my thoughts about the trucking career in there. I once overheard my wife telling someone how to view it just so they could see all the places I go to, and she added this caveat, "If you want to know about how to become a truck driver you can learn a lot about that too while your looking around in there."

Yesterday, after delivering to one of my regular customers on this dedicated account I picked up a back haul in Chicago at Superior Graphite. I know most of you have seen a small tube of Graphite powder that you can purchase to lubricate the inner workings of a lock. Well here is what 45,320 pounds of Graphite powder packed into 22 large bags and then palletized looks like.

I wish that I would have taken a few pictures of the crazy place I picked this stuff up at. Those of you who deal with Chicago a lot can surely understand, but there are places there that it really is crazy to try to get a big truck into, but people do it everyday. Several of the turns into this place had large concrete pillars built at the corners of the buildings just to keep the trucks who cut the turn too short from tearing the building down. Those protective concrete barriers were well scarred too.

After wrestling with my tarp for a good 4 or 5 minutes (hehe!) I had this load all covered up and protected from the weather...

I realize this post should probably go into Pat's well read Flat Bed Variety thread, but I wanted to tell you all about the place that this Graphite will be delivered to tomorrow morning. My destination is Port Fourchon, LA. It's an interesting part of the country, a good ways south of New Orleans, down just about as low as you can go before you start getting under water.

I was in Port Fourchon about two and a half years ago delivering, at that time, some large bags of salt, and I posted a thread in the forum about it. I wanted to provide some of the new folks in here a link to it just to give you an idea of some of the interesting things we see and do on this job. Some weeks you just never know what you might get to see or experience. Take a look at this Past Trip to Port Fourchon, and see if it doesn't make you want to jump into this career and start enjoying the sense of adventure that it provides.

At the shipper , was everything black? Seems like it would be hard to avoid.

Yes Kurt it was. I sat in my truck most of the time, until I had to get out and strap down my load. I never even touched anything directly because the bags had shrink wrap around them, but when I got done and sat down in my truck I looked down at my khaki pants and realized they had a grey looking layer of dust on them. All the employees had black looking hands, and when the fork lift driver handed me a pen to sign the bills with, it was one of those Bic pens made from clear plastic, you could no longer see through the pen - it was a silvery looking dark grey color now. Everyone was wearing dust masks that were covered in a dark dust like covering. There is no way that working at that place could be good for your lungs!

There is no way that working at that place could be good for your lungs!

Yeah.........But I'll bet they can squeeze into real tight spaces!

There is no way that working at that place could be good for your lungs!

Yeah.........But I'll bet they can squeeze into real tight spaces!