I think winter finally woke up.

Well I do believe it is official, winter finally woke up. My toes are freezing from the steel toes in my boots, my bunk heater has trouble keepin up and my horribly sealed Freightliner lets air sneak in the cab from all over. On top of that, winter weather advisories are going off all over my phone and bad road conditions pierce the crackling static of my CB.

It's time for the radio to be on WX, the squelch to be set lower on my CB and the music to be played at barely audible levels. It's mother nature against my rig and I. Music on the radio disturbs my ability to listen for sudden spikes in RPM and makes it hard to hear any CB chatter thats buried in the white noise. I kinda of enjoy this time of year. It makes driving a challenge, keeps you on your game and there is never a dull moment. Just sucks that it's so cold.

However, this brings up a topic thats been on my mind. The difference between a steering wheel holder and a trucker. One big difference is whether or not a driver has a CB. Even more importantly, do they use it correctly? When I first started six years ago, I noticed a decline in the behavior and mindset of drivers. I was a student and could tell the difference. More and more it seems drivers are coming out of schools as steering wheel holders. I know the CB has a lot of garbage on it and there are more and more CB Rambo's so I can see why a lot of drivers don't bother with one but damn is it frustrating. You can never get a traffic or weather report and people just want to play music or argue. To the DJCB's out there, here's a clue... If I wanted to listen to music, I'd turn the radio up in my truck. If you want to play DJ, go do it at home.

Once in awhile though, you will find one of us truckers out there. We always have our CB's turned on, with the volume set so we can just barely hear mumblings. Most of us have trained ourselves to listen for keywords such as "bear", "yard sticker", "backup", our direction of travel and our company name. We also us the CB to let other driver's know they can manuever around us and if their equipment needs attention. Steering wheel holders are lucky to have a radio, let alone have it on.  That's one difference, I'll cover the others later.

Now that I've ranted, lets get back on topic. I have to be in NorCal by Monday night. I have about half my day today left, all of the weekend and a good portion of the day Mon. I need to be there by 1800 eastern to get it on payroll. If I'm successful, I'll make a killing on the check. If not, we've covered our expenses for the next two weeks. I've got a load comin back East and it moves south enough I might get into a tinge of warmth. I'll have the hours and make it to Dallas area with plenty of time for another good haul for the weekend.

Hopefully it all works out. Leaving the house kills me. My two year old son dies when I leave. He cries up a storm and has to be held back usually otherwise he tries following me out the door. It kills mre everytime I leave to say bye to everyone, specially him cause of how upset he gets. But my family is my motivation for working so hard when I'm out here. The great thing is his level of excitement when he sees me. He jumps and screams and cheers when he hears then sees my truck pulling into the house. I can't wait for the day I can bring him with me. It'll make it a little more tolerable being gone.

Well I think they're about to finally load me, time to go freeze on the dock while they load me. I really need to find some good water-proof composite toe shoes. Toe protection thats about equal to steel, at least for what I do, but doesn't freeze your toes in the winter.