Back in the early 2000s I had a job I loved hauling tropical plants out of Florida to the Pacific Northwest. These were high-dollar multi-drop loads that required the driver to physically unload around 3,000-4,000 loose plants. One January, I even teamed a load to Alaska. But it seems like any sweet gig in trucking has its own shelf life and expiration date.
Things began going south when the old man hired his grandsons to help him run the company. The race cars began taking up residency in the diesel bays. With the race cars occupying the spaces where trucks were once serviced, the checks started getting “lost in the mail.” When the checks started getting lost in the mail, if you got hung out over the weekend you were lucky to even get a cash advance there toward the end.
One Thursday I was loading Christmas trees in North Carolina that needed to be in Miami the following morning. This was pre-cellphone American trucking. At least it was for me. As I recall, I got hung out too long at the farm and missed my chance to phone dispatch during business hours. So now I had to be in Miami the following morning. I was broke, desperately broke, and in dire need of a cup of coffee.
On I-95 I spied a sign that spelled salvation:
Free Coffee for Truckers
Santee Truck Stop
I wheeled in there, sighing with relief. I thought I’d just slide through the diesel pumps, get parked up, grab my coffee and go. The parking lot of the truck stop looked like its own truck show. Pressed-out Peterbilts with chicken lights, stainless steel trailers, chrome everywhere. I’d never seen such a concentration of chicken trucks in one space anywhere outside of the Mid-America Trucking Show. There was one problem, though. I couldn’t find any diesel pumps to slide through.
“What kind of truck stop doesn’t even sell diesel?” I asked out loud.
