Long Beach - a Not so Short Post

One of, if not the most lucrative trucking gigs I had was as a Teamster driving for Lever Brothers (now Uni-Lever). In the 1970s, they were basically just a soap company at that time. Breeze detergent, Rinso, Wisk, Dove, Caress, Sunlight dish soap, and a bunch of other soap products.

I was hired at the Baltimore plant as part of a new transportation scheme using a Teamster local shop that was supposed to be a cheaper alternative than being forced to continue to use Chemical Worker Union drivers. We were new and not very popular on the dock at the Baltimore plant. The Chemical Workers tolerated us, but only because we were at least Union and not independents.

Up to this point in my driving career, I had only mingled with union workers as an independent driver. I usually got along fine with them, but some loading docks were populated by aggressive union assholes who sometimes purposefully made my job hard; the Philly and New Jersey docks were the worse.

So now I was a Teamster. At first, all I knew was, I was going to make significant coin and drive solid, well maintained lease equipment. I was hired on and put on the road as a solo act when the contract with the Teamsters insisted on a team driving set up. Problem was, the dispatcher at the Baltimore plant was having trouble finding drivers with the kind of over the road experience I had from my time driving Rock n Roll bands. 

I spent the first 3 months driving the same runs as the two driver teams did.. I kept two sets of logs and successfully kept up with the 3 other teams. It was tiring, but it was an hourly rate, not a mileage pay rate. In that 3 months driving solo, I grossed close to $50K. The overtime money was insane. My dispatcher was going to continue with me driving solo, but a snitch from the Chemical Workers bitched to someone over his head. One week at the end of a round trip run to Los Angeles, I was told I would finally have a co-driver to share the driving with. 

At first, the thought of losing all that over time made me grumpy. Once I wrapped my head around the idea that another driver would make my life easier, I was okay with it. I was told to come in for the next run a few hours early in order to meet my new co-driver.

His name was Joe I think. It doesn't matter if it was or not. I will call him Joe. Joe was several years older than I was and full of himself as most of us younger drivers were. But his experience was almost exclusively dedicated to hauling containers from Baltimore docks to docks in Philly or New jersey. 

After the introduction, I told him to throw his gear in the side pod of the truck. He told me it wouldn't fit. I wondered about that when he returned to the rig with 4 suitcases for the 7-8 day run. 

"What the Hell did you pack for this trip, everything from your dresser?"

I held up my one bag that was half the size of just one of his suitcases.

"I could live out of this bag forever bud. You need to cut some shit out. We ain't got room for your whole wardrobe. I'll give you one suitcase and that's it."

He looked at me. I thought he might start something. He was not happy about me telling him what to do. I probably should have quizzed him harder, but we needed to leave soon if we wanted to be on the road early enough to miss the serious Monday commutes in and around the Baltimore/ DC area.

It took Joe another 20 minutes to sort through his stuff and settle on what he thought he would need. He finally had only one bag. He shoved it in the side pod and we booted.

This run was not the usual straight shot to the Los Angeles plant and back. We ran some dry chemical up to the Fort Lee, New Jersey plant. Dropped the trailer and hooked up to an empty trailer and headed south to Kannapolis, NC to pick up towels meant for Breeze detergent boxes. From there we headed west.

Joe's first trip west made the usual mundane run more interesting for sure. The excitement he showed when we crossed the Mississippi made me remember my first crossing as a child in the back seat of a 1956 Pontiac. There is nothing quite like seeing the Mississippi River for the first time. Add in the St. Louis Arch and man, it makes an impression. The Arch is an amazing sight you can see from miles away.

The rest of the trip West was uneventful with the exception of a stop at the Big Texan Steakhouse in Amarillo, Texas. I thought Joe would like to see what a real steak meal looked like. He was not only amazed, he took the challenge of eating 72 ounces of steak and fixins in one hour or less. If he ate it all, he would not have to pay for the steak. 

I knew better, having already taken the challenge several years earlier. Joe tried hard, but in the end, he fell more than a few ounces short. I thought I was going to have to hold him up to get him out of there. He was a suffering bastard through the rest of Texas, through New Mexico and well into Arizona. I decided to let him lay in the sleeper and I finished the drive to the City of the Angels.

When we finally got to Los Angeles early afternoon, I dropped the trailer and found the motel. I was really beat. I told Joe to cool his heels, we would pick up our return load in the morning. Said I was going to shower and hit the hay. Wake me up in the morning.

Two, maybe three hours later, the phone in the room starts ringing off the hook. Being almost comatose, it took me several seconds or more to wake up enough to answer the damn thing. I was not friendly.

"Hello, what, what the Hell do you want?"

"Mike, Uh I..... Well you see..."

I was very awake now. Hearing Joe's voice on the phone told me he was not in the room and probably nowhere near it. I sat up and started looking for my glasses. Seems I always felt I could hear better if I had them on. This time was no different. I groped on the nightstand, under the pillow, finally locating them on the top of my head where I had pushed them back before I passed out.

"Where are you?"

I climbed out of the bed and reached for the window curtain.

" Uh, well, I 'm in Long Beach."

"Hold on."

I opened the curtain and noticed there was no longer a fairly new Leaseway GMC cabover bob tail sitting in front of our door.

"And you took the tractor, didn't you?"

A long moment of silence followed. So I repeated myself.

"You took the truck didn't you?"

"Yeah, I did, but, .... but I can explain."

I kept my cool. I had learned from my time hauling Rockm Roll that staying calm was more important than the satisfaction of blowing my top.

"Go ahead, explain to me why, what, and where..... And do it quickly."

More silence and then, "Well, you see I ain't never been to California, Hell, I ain't never been West of the Mississippi. And since we had a layover, and since you were asleep, I figured there'd be no harm if I borrowed the tractor and did some sight seeing."

The silence switched sides as I contemplated what this might mean to me, to our run, to the Universe in general. Finally, I asked the dreaded question I had been avoiding to this point.

"Are the cops involved in this "sight seeing" trip of yours?"

"Well, yeah, but it's all okay, I'll pay the ticket out of my first paycheck."

"The ticket?"

"Uh yeah, I kinda got stuck on a beach in Long Beach. Uh Huntington Beach actually.  Seems the beach I drove on was not a drive on beach. ........ I would have been fine and not been caught, but I got stuck in the sand."

"You got our 15,000 pound tractor stuck on a fucking beach?"

I was wide awake now.

"Uh yeah. but the cop , hey did you know the cops out here are real friendly, he only gave me a ticket for blocking the access lane and not the driving on the beach ticket. Says it will....."

I had stopped listening to Joe. As lead driver, I knew any blowback was heading my way, not his. Then something told me I was only getting part of the story.

"What are you not telling me? Are you still stuck?"

"Well, that's why I called. See, I don't know who to call out here other than you, so ......."

I remember sitting there on that tired mattress at the Days Inn and realizing that my job was probably over, no matter what I did to salvage the situation.

"Are you at a pay phone?"

"Yeah"

"Give me the number. I'll call Leaseway and let them handle it and get right back to you."

I was finally awake and up to speed and now fully engaged in my crisis handling mindset. 

"Well, that's a problem too. There's folks here who want to use the phone."

"Okay, call me back in 1/2 hour. I need a shower and some time to talk with the Leaseway folks."

Joe was more than happy to get off the phone. His last words before he hung up were regarding how he could pass the time watching the naked people at the beach. I remember sitting there staring at the phone. Finally, that something he was not telling me came into focus. He had said he was at Huntington Beach, maybe the most famous nude beach in the USA.

As it turned out, my call to Leaseway solved the logistical problems of the trip. They arranged to have the tractor towed, and when it was determined that Joe had burned up the differential with sand, they put us in a brand new, never been driven, GMC COE (Cabover) for our return trip to B-more. I was never told how expensive this fuck-up was, but from my previous experience having crashed a lease truck on ice in Pennsylvania, I knew it was an expensive mistake.

The return trip from Los Angeles was a quiet trip. Joe and I settled on occasionally grunting at each other. He was fired as soon as we landed at the Leaseway lot in Baltimore.

I was dressed down hard for the fiasco I had no part in as dispatch determined that I should never had allowed my keys to leave my person. I sucked it up and kept my mouth shut.

Joe was not yet out of my life though. A month or so later when I got back from my weekly run, he was waiting for me at the Leaseway lot. He was shitfaced and angry. He began a tirade about how it was my fault he lost his job because I didn't have his back and the only Teamster gig he could get was as a yard rat moving trailers around. Because of me his family was suffering also, blah, blah, blah.

I had stopped listening. I was dead dog tired and all I wanted to do was sleep on a mattress that was in constant motion. I told him to shut the fuck up, that what happened to him was his own fault and godammit, get out of my face.

Then he said, "What did you do with my gun?"

That stopped me cold. I turned around and stared at him. "What gun?"

"The gun I stashed under the mattress in the sleeper."

"You fuckin had a gun with you on that run to L-A."

"Well yeah, ya never know when you might need one."

I remember staring at him for the longest time. I was astounded. I didn't know where to start.

"You know hauling around a gun as a commercial carrier is a crime and a Teamster no-no. Besides, just how dangerous did you think the road was going to be? I have over 1 million gun free miles under my belt. The only situation I ever felt the need for defense, well, my tire thumper was more than adequate."

"Fuck you", Joe said, "I don't want to hear it. Do you have my gun or not? ... I stashed it under the mattress in the sleeper."

At this point I was heading to my car.

Over my shoulder, I said:

"I know nothing of your gun. It's probably still where you left it. But the tractor is locked up in the garage now. You'll have to wait until I come back for my next run tomorrow night. I'll find it and have it for you then." 

I got in my car and left the lot.

Sunday evening when I showed up to grab my tractor to start my weekly run,  Joe was there in his car waiting for me. He was out of his car and next to my car before I had even turn off the engine. As soon as I opened my door, his bullshit picked up right where it left off the day before.

"Did you find my gun?"

"No, haven't looked for it yet." 

"Gimme a minute to check it out."

"Hey, I'll look for it."

Joe seemed in a hurry. I was not feeling very accommodating.

"You stay right here. You are not getting in my truck ever again."

I continued on to my rig, opened the door and climbed in. I found Joe's gun deep under the mattress. It was wrapped up tight in a paper bag. I hopped down from the truck, turned and gave Joe the bag.

Joe opened the bag, looked in, and then looked at me.

"What the fuck bud? What did you do to my gun?"

"What? ... I did nothing to your gun. You saw, I just found it."

"The rust guy, the rust. it's just a lump of rust."

"Calm down. It's the way I found it. Remember, you are the one who stuffed it under the mattress. The sleeper is a damp place, hiding the gun there was a bad idea. It's all on you asshole, not me. .... you're lucky I didn't throw it out. ............ Besides, the rust is superficial. Haven't you ever owned a firearm before? ..... It'll clean up just fine."

Then Joe opened his mouth one time too many. "Well, why didn't you clean it up then?"

I punched him in the mouth and walked away. If memory serves, that may have been the last time I hit a man.

Keep it 'tween the ditches .........................................

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Musical choices are probably many, but at the moment, I am drawing a blank. Something related to Trucking? Maybe Greatful Dead of Little feat? Nah. This story needs something different. Maybe some California music from back in the Day: Beach boys, Mamas and Papas, Sonny and Cher? .......... Hmm.

"Hotel California" by The Eagles fits I think. It certainly fits my mood and overall attitude about the Golden State. Here is a live version recorded at the Capitol Center in Largo, Maryland in 1977. I hauled more than a few tours to that venue.