Sleep Deprivation

We’re allowed by the Department of Transportation (DoT) fourteen hours of “on-duty” hours at a stretch, which can include up to eleven hours of driving. The rest of those fourteen hours are likely taken up by loading and unloading the truck, refueling, or doing safety checks on the truck.

After driving until 12:30am Wednesday – just an hour and a half from Salt Lake – I hit the sleeper bunk and Victor continued driving. He’d last woken up at 6pm that day. He woke me up at 7:30am in Vail Colorado in the middle of a snowstorm. The DoT was requiring tire chains on all commercial vehicles (us) to get over Vail pass so we needed to put them on. Fortunately I’d been trained on exactly that only two days before. We had the chains on in about a half hour and headed up the pass no faster than 40mph. No truck wrecks or crashes that we saw but a few spun-out ‘four-wheelers’ (what truckers call people in cars) heading up to the ski areas.

We took off the chains a few miles later after the worst of it, and arrived near Denver to clear skies at about noon. We refueled (see the photo) and because we bought more than 50 gallons of gas, we got free showers, normally $10. My idea of trucker showers was not nearly this opulent. Marble tile, full wall mirror, a complete private bathroom, not just a shower!

We then drove down south of Denver to Lone Tree, CO to the mall and the JC Penney within it. Our deliver time was 3:30pm but we were two hours early. I walked into the mall to publish the previous post but then Victor called to tell me Penney’s would take the load early. So we spent the next two hours unloading the truck (triggering a future post about global supply chains). As soon as we were done at about 3:30pm, I drove us out of the Denver area and back up through the passes over the mountains, requiring chaining up the tires again on Vail pass. It also involved the scariest half hour of driving in my life. No chains, coming down from the previous pass in snow-storm conditions.

Physics dictates four ways these eighteen wheelers can slide. 1. the front wheels can slide forcing loss of steering ability. 2. the drive wheels can slide jack-knifing the rig. 3. the trailer wheels (we call ‘the tandems’ ) can slide also causing a jack-knife. 4. all wheels can slide, which surprisingly is preferable, if given a choice. Coming down steep slippery roads could induce any of those slides. With chains on the drive wheels, the most likely is the trailer slide which is discovered by glancing in the side mirrors and suddenly seeing the trailer in one of them. Recovery is done by accelerating slightly and pulling the trailer back into line behind the drive wheels. Slides of all types are started by braking too hard. So while coming down hills we downshift and then apply gentle braking pressure almost continuously while praying one axle or another doesn’t lock up and slide. As I told Victor, that kind of driving is NOT what anyone has in mind when they think of the romance of driving truck. A glorious day on I-10 in west Texas – that’s what I had in mind.

By 6:30, it was dark. Victor had been awake 24 hours, and I was getting pretty tired on my less than six hours of sleep. So he climbed into the sleeper and I continued driving through some spectacular snow-covered mountain country under a full moon. I wish you could have been there. I-70 through Garfield canyon is about twenty miles of civil engineering wonder through steep walled canyons – some walls in the moonlight and others dark. Impossible to photograph.

I stayed awake until I simply couldn’t keep my eyes open any more. Victor, took the wheel and continued driving the rest of the way to Spanish Fork, swapped trailers, and started driving east toward Denver again.

I awoke at 7:30am today after sleeping eight or so hours and only being awoken by the roughest of bumps or the longest of rumble strips. Victor is wired, but amazingly alert. He will drive to Denver and then I’ll again try driving us the 500 or so miles back to Spanish Fork during the night. I’m now getting to see Garfield canyon in the daylight and while pretty, not nearly as magical as last night in the moonlight. Today I’ll get a 90 minute nap in Denver before we leave. And fortunately, the weather today is blue skies everywhere.