Hello, my name is Karl Wiggins and I am proud to be part of the Prime family. I operate out of my most recent new Peterbilt-truck 730077 with my co-driver and partner Dolores Johnson. I have been with Prime since 2006. I have held, literally, several hundred jobs in my working life; the longest I have ever held a job is 11 months in all those years. I get bored easily and have a gypsy spirit that has led me on this extraordinary journey that I call my life.
Have you ever been to a chain store or an establishment where you need a product or service only for the employee to tell you that he or she is out of it? Or even don’t carry the product or do not provide the service that you need and they tell you this like they own the store? I personally never could understand that. I’m usually thinking something like, “this is Wal-Mart, what do you mean YOU are out of this product.”
One day, I was talking to a driver from another company. He was thinking about coming over to Prime, and I was telling him about how “we” had just bought out TRL trucking and how their drivers were very happy to see the new changes. Especially the change Prime made that gave their drivers access to their dispatchers. One of their drivers told me that the dispatchers at TRL were barricaded – like behind bullet proof glass or something – anyway, about then I thought, “wait a second, did I just say ‘we’ bought TRL?”
Trucking is the key to my gypsy soul and now I know what it feels like to belong; to be part of a family. I have been here at Prime now for almost 8 years. Being here has changed my life in a most profound way and I understand now how employees of company’s can speak in terms of “I” or “we.”
I am going to sacrifice myself here for your amusement. I considered this sacrifice carefully, and decided that my sacrifice would be worth it; if/when you stop laughing at me, you have a moment of introspection and get something from what I hope to be a “moral of the story.” I want to express my deep gratitude to Andrea and Katie for this chance to write as a guest on the Prime Blog and I hope this is not my last. I will now do a swan dive into a volcano of molten lava and offer myself to you with my own true story that I call:
CARROTS FOR MY……….HORSES?
Like most prospective drivers, I arrived here with bills; baggage and family that were depending on me and failure was not an option. After 80,000 miles of training, my last trainer and I pulled into the Campus Inn and parked, the training was finally over. I had the door open before the motor died and my gear hit the ground and I was right behind it and down on my knees kissing the grass and saying, “thank God! That’s over!”
I was now going to get my own truck and I was to be captain and commander of my own ship; for those of you that have finished training here and got your first truck, then you know what a powerful moment that is. The first place you go when you get your first truck is home, and that’s right where I went. Taking a load to Denver was a little scary, alone for the first time, but I was travelling familiar roads- and going home, all was well.
After my home time was up, my first dispatch from home made me sick to my stomach; I was headed to Perth Amboy, New Jersey. It is one thing to go there when you are with a trainer but when it is just little old you and you have never been East of Missouri on your own, well then the thought of New Jersey in a big truck is terrifying, but away I went.
I picked up my load in Loveland Colorado and rolled out to the East coast and all in all-it went well unless you consider that my QUALCOMM was broken and I was using payphones to communicate with dispatch, my cell phone had been shut off because I could not pay my bill, and I had no CB radio and my map was a two dollar atlas from Wal-Mart, so besides that it was all good.
Training here only goes so far and then you have to wing it on your own as I found out once I got to New Jersey. Fighting back visions of dark streets with burning barrels on the corners and roving gangs of thugs looking to jack truckers and all the crazy movies I had ever seen about New York city and Jersey were suddenly coming to life-well except for the roving gangs and burning barrels but it was dark and I was lost.
I finally found a guard at a guard shack after several manic “around the block, it’s getting darker, I’m going to be late” attempts to interpret the QC directions. The lady was very pleasant and told me the place that I was looking for was 2 miles up on the left not 2 lights as the QC directions had stated.
The load got delivered on time and I got lucky and picked up a load of oranges from South Africa from the very same place and headed to Florida scratching my head thinking, I’m taking oranges to Florida?
Arriving in Florida I made my delivery and with my floor littered with log book pages, drink cups and snack wrappers. After I left the receiver I started deadheading north, honestly I can’t remember where I was headed but on my way north I got myself a cooler at a truck stop, yes I was moving up-and getting civilized, I threw in some ice, some sodas and a great big bag of my favorite carrots, Bugs Bunny brand Carrots and I rolled on north to pick up another load.
I pulled into the Pilot truck stop in Wildwood, Florida in the wee hours of the morning to take my 10 hour break and finally have the time to square my truck away and catch a short nap. By the grace of God, I found a parking spot and felt rather proud of myself for surviving Jersey, and then Florida. I fell into my bunk and into the sleep of the dead and exhausted.
Four hours later, the screaming, meanie alarm stabbed at my brain like a thousand icepicks and I sprang from my coma like sleep. I was completely disoriented, confused, and in the dark. I tripped over the new cooler, spilled a coke and finally found the offending device and shut its mouth. With my ears ringing, I cleaned up the soda spill and located my coffee cup because now all I could hear was a voice chanting, “coffee, coffee, coffee.”
Walking with my coffee mug in my pajamas to the entrance of the Pilot, like a coffee zombie, I could see the palm trees and eerie Jurassic park type foliage and fauna behind the chain-link fence. The spooky morning ground fog was swirling and lifting in the growing light of my new day.
As I walked along, I could see between the trucks, and no, I was not seeing things, there were horses behind the fog shrouded fence. In the mist I could make out what looked like a palomino with just his head sticking out from the palm fronds and I saw a couple more horses grazing amongst the palm trees. Did I mention just how foggy it was? And did I mention also that it was pretty dark out there…in the fog?
Sipping my coffee on my way back to my truck, I remembered my great big bag of Bugs Bunny carrots. And being a lover of animals, especially horses, the thought of sharing my Bugs Bunny carrots with some cool horses and having my coffee and a morning smoke would be just short of a religious experience.
By the time I started toward the fenced in-area, the morning light was just creeping up the back of the palm trees, Drivers were out of their trucks in small groups having coffee, smoking and talking. As I passed by them, clutching my great big bag of Bugs Bunny carrots, my coffee and my Marlboros, I could feel their eyes on me and I sensed a change in the drift and tone of their conversation.
I ignored this and kept stepping with the purpose of a man on a mission. I was going to chill and sip my coffee and feed Bugs Bunny carrots to grateful horses. I only looked back once at the guys staring after me and I saw the looks and smiles and I thought to myself, “What the hell are you looking at? You never saw anyone feed horses before?”
By the time I looked back to the enclosure where the horses were, I was a couple steps closer and my first thought was, “that’s weird, those horses haven’t moved at all,” and in the time it took for that thought to process I had another thought, “those horses sure are shiny,” and by that time, I was right up near the fence.
I stood there in my pajamas holding my great big bag of carrots and my steaming hot mug of coffee and stared at the horses that were staring back at me. Well they weren’t exactly staring because they had no eyes. They were statues, plastic or fiberglass replicas and very realistic, did I mention how foggy it was that morning?
I have never felt so embarrassed in my life, as I could feel the drivers looking at me. So I figured that there was only one thing I could do, I sat my coffee down and reached into my great big bag of Bugs Bunny carrots, pulled one out and took a big bite.
Chewing slowly, I turned to the drivers behind me and to their grinning faces I said in my best Bugs Bunny voice “yeah, I knew that! So.. What’s up doc?” I turned back and forced myself to stand there in the wet grass while they got a good laugh, and really, “it was pretty funny,” I thought, as I stood there looking at the “horses” eating my carrots and drinking my coffee and smoking Marlboros like it was something I did every morning.
It was a very long walk back to the truck but I kept my cool as I left my dignity behind only to find that I had run out of luck, there was no refuge to be had……I had locked my keys in my truck.
I took it all in stride and with a borrowed coat hanger I got back inside.
The moral of the story is this:
#1 rule: Don’t sweat the small stuff
#2 rule: It’s all small stuff
#3 rule: Have the grace to accept your mistakes and be able to laugh at yourself when you make them.
#4 rule: Please do not feed the plastic horses in Wildwood, Florida at the Pilot Truck stop.
#5 rule: Always carry a wire coat hanger hidden somewhere on the outside of your truck.
Driving is a tough job and for all the support personnel that make Team Prime what it is, learn to relax, have fun and smile in the face of the storm and use your off duty time to refresh your spirit.
Laughter truly is the best medicine and I hope you had a good laugh on me. Thank you for your time, sincerely:
KARL WIGGINS
