The Rolling Load
By: Lynn Bolster
In trucking, there are many kinds of freight and ways to deliver goods. Usually, it’s just going from point A to point B, maybe with some multiple stops—standard fare. But on occasion, you may be offered a rolling load. My advice: run, hang up, get lost. Rolling loads consist of freight that a broker actually has in transit to a destination unknown but doesn’t have a buyer for it yet. They might say “Drive north, and I’ll find someone.” Obviously, we can’t see his face over the phone, but I’m sure he’s winking and smiling while trying to convince us that ‘it’s a sure thing.’ So you roll on in faith, hoping it will be accepted when you get to the gettin’ place.
When hauling watermelons, a perishable product, one would think this is not the time to gamble with a rolling load, with cargo spoilage a possibility. Melons are a hot-weather fruit but they can still rot. But truck on faith we did, and things got complicated. Our agent booked us to the eastern shore of Maryland, coming up from Immokalee, Florida. We traveled through Virginia to the 17-mile Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel that dumps you into Maryland, which, by the way, if you don’t like bridges or are claustrophobic in tunnels, I don’t recommend. When we exited, the broker gave us our delivery address. We had a collision with a school bus shortly thereafter, which I won’t go into here but was probably an omen of some sort.
We pulled up to a mom-and-pop produce stand on the side of the road thinking, how can this little place take 45,000 pounds of watermelons? You guessed it, they can’t…and kicked the load. Dang it, we knew this was coming; we just didn’t think it would be on the first try. We motored away, Bill cursing as he ran up and down gears with me remaining silent. A second option dried up also so he told us “just go to Baltimore, I’ll try to get you into Jessup Market tomorrow.”
We parked at the truck stop and went home. The next morning, we saw a number of people carrying watermelons. Turns out a sideways driver we knew was selling the melons off our truck. Bill went to punch him, and the cops were called. After much ado, the cops realized this was out of their scope of service and declared: “We can’t help you because there aren’t any serial numbers on those melons.” So much for Baltimore’s finest.
We got the Jessup call. Upon arrival, the clerk told us to drop the trailer and come back tomorrow. We didn’t want to but did and ended up waiting three days before we were told to come get it. Yep, those melons were baking in the sun all that time, not to mention they were getting free storage on our trailer, and we couldn’t load anything because our equipment was otherwise indisposed. When we arrived to get it, it was empty of melons except for some hay and rotten, broken pieces sitting at the rear. We took a shovel and dumped the debris on the ground for the loader to scoop up. With that, a furious fired-up employee screamed and cursed that we couldn’t do that. We reminded him, that you buy the melons, you buy the hay used to cushion them.
While Bill yelled back, I threw the shovel at the guy, and then we tore out of there. We didn’t want to get a ticket for hay blowing out the trailer down I-95 as we had in the past. I wrote a letter to the president of the Jessup Market reporting that hideous employee. I reminded him we truckers aren’t some scum of the earth’s low lives. We are real working people trying to bring the public a fresh product. He was amazed to get my letter and told our agent about it. While our agent acted politely with him, he warned us “No more letters.” Hey, he’s not out here fighting this battle. Yes, he has a horse in the race, but he’ll never understand what drivers endure until he’s sat where we sit.
Some trips turn into death loads; they are problem after problem. How about the time we drove through Philadelphia and saw our melons flying through the air? A gang of thugs had jumped up on the trailer bumper, and then into the load. As we cruised about 10 mph looking for our consignee, they flung melons off to the guys on the ground into a pickup truck. After that when we went to Philly, we always slathered the bumper with Vaseline, and they never got a foothold again. And yes I’m winking and smiling when I say that.
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Hebrews 11:1
