Severence Foods, Hartford Connecticut
Waiting. Being a truck driver is as much about waiting as driving.
I am a local driver so there are days where I wait more than I drive. A delivery can take anywhere from a few minutes to six or eight hours. Pickups can take a few minutes or several hours as well. With a pickup I am entirely at the mercy of other people. I don’t have much control over the situation. In fact I have none. If the pickup is taking too long I can sometimes get a dispatcher to cut me loose so I can go home. That does not happen too often.
I am sitting in my truck in a parking lot, with people walking and driving around me, while I tap away on this keyboard and take in the strong aroma of cooking tortilla chips. I am thirty minutes from the Chicopee truckstop, and I have another 3 and a half hours left on my driving clock. Getting home tonight should not be an issue, and neither should meeting a friend for a run after work. I am a truck driver who believes it is possible to do this job and still have a life. 
I am here to pickup six pallets of tortilla chips. I called ahead and was told the order would be ready when I got here. At least they would try. It is 2:00 and I am early. The driver in the Estes truck tells me the crew here is on lunch break til 2;30. He also shows me where the docks are, and he points out the worst dock that if I am lucky I will not have to back up to.
That is it. That truck is leaving the dock and I will be going in.
The waiting continues after the crew comes back from lunch. With alot of swearing and laughing I get the trailer around the corner and into the dock.
I have time to check out the bodega on the corner before anyone thinks of loading my trailer.
It’s getting close to 4:30 and two pallets of chips are on my trailer. It occurs to me that I could run out of hours before I am done with this pickup. I send a text to my boss (one of many bosses) to request use of the 16 hour exemption. A local driver can request an extra two hours to the 14 hour work rule once every 5 work days. If traffic holds me up and I will need it.
I get out of there at 4:35 and the traffic cooperates. I don’t have much time to spare, but I roll into the drop lot with 20 minutes to spare.
