This is another story from my Journey’s of a Professional Truck Driver series. This particular story is from my very first night over the road after graduating from Truck Driver school. I had hoped it would be an uneventful night, but no. I hope you enjoy…
First Night Out
The very first time I took to the road in an 18-wheeler / tractor trailer outside of the bounds of trucking school happened on New Year’s day. My husband and I had gone through orientation with our new company and were excited to get rollin’. We had chosen this company because we could train together in the same truck and were looking forward to getting our new careers underway.
Our trainer finally arrived in the evening, I suspect the lure of the casino lights overcame her and caused the usual 4 or 5 hour trip from Los Angeles to Las Vegas to take 10 hours, and instructed us to do our pretrip inspection (visual inspection of the truck and trailer). I had wanted to drive nights and since we were getting a late start we decided I would go first.
Leaving Las Vegas
We started off driving past the Las Vegas strip at night and I glanced at my city as I did every time I had the chance. Excitement stirred and I felt a sense of hope and wonder that always comes with a new adventure. I learned quickly Semi-trucks are wider than the average vehicle and as such, much harder to keep between the lines. The truck had this annoying buzzer that sounded on every occasion where the line was touched (95% of the time, it was the right shoulder line) and that first night it sounded as regularly as a quiz show.
Our destination was Wyoming and we were pulling a trailer full of bottled water which I’d guess was in the realm of 42,000 pounds. The hills and canyons were slow and I found myself chugging along at less than 40mph on several occasions. It began snowing somewhere in southern Utah, but the crack of the whip from the trainer told me to continue on.
There is a tradition of “road sign vandals” I have noticed in various cities and states, but we didn’t know Utah was not immune and soon we passed a caution sign of a deer farting. I didn’t say anything because I was trying to figure out why that presented a danger when my husband asked me if we had indeed passed a caution deer farting sign. “I believe we did”, I said and then we both started laughing. I had assumed Utah was worried about climate change and the effects of deer gas on the environment. We now know the vandals add the fart stickers and the sign should have been an ominous portent instead of comic relief.
We turned from I15 to the I70 and headed east toward Colorado. I stopped for fuel around 1am and I should have been tired, but it took an incredible amount of concentration to continually try, and fail to keep that annoying lane buzzer from going off. After grabbing some truck stop provisions and refueling we were back on the road heading through the mountains. Just before 2am on a downhill grade while running heavy, in the snow mind you, I came around a bend to see 4 elk in the road. In an eerily calm and quiet voice I said, “Oh Sh*t”.
Road Hazards
Two elk on the fast / hammer lane of the road and 2 elk on the slow / granny lane. There appeared to be a gap large enough to thread the needle between the two groups and while I worked to slow the truck and trailer, I knew I couldn’t stop, I headed for the gap. I had it! I was a freaking hero as the elk froze, turned to stare at me and didn’t move. The lights reflecting off their eyes was spooky, but I was focused on the win. I lined up right between them and as I reflect back I believe there was a male and a female on the drivers side and two other females on the passenger side. The significance is this… Just as I drew up between the groups, the male sprang at me and head butted my truck with his horns. BAM! He tore both my fender mirror and side view mirror right off the truck, but surprisingly no other damage. I believe he was trying to defend his ladies, but he scared the daylights out of me. I have learned I have a very muted response to excitement or stress, but my heart beat was fire!
That’s a Wrap
There was a rest area about half a mile further down the road so I pulled in, made the necessary reports to the Company and Highway Patrol and did my best to unwind and get some sleep, because we weren’t going anywhere without drivers side mirrors.
There is a question I still ask and it’s about that elk. I don’t know what happened to him, but I like to think he had a really rough night and a nasty headache, but I can’t say for sure.
On a side note, we were going to be heading through Colorado and while we were in Colorado we learned the truck we were driving had not been equipped for winter. No Chains and the wrong windshield wiper fluid. If we hadn’t fueled in Utah we would have had the wrong fuel as well. Our wiper fluid froze up on us, which prevented us from cleaning the windshield and it’s actually illegal to not have chains in Colorado at that time of year. You can check out my article on the different types of chains and laws by state.
As for us, it was the beginning of the end of our relationship with that particular trucking company. Without naming names or specifics, I can say that not only is our safety important to us, it’s important to us that it’s important to our trucking company and that just wasn’t the vibe we were getting. We flew home from Grand Junction Colorado a few days later and never looked back.
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