Father Bill speaks

It’s a different life out on the road

Bill Packard

Thu, 05/23/2013 - 12:00am

I was sitting on a side street in Bangor the other day by the Civic Center waiting to get to Main Street while a trailer truck was backing into the new Cross Insurance Center. The name on the trailer told me that this was not going to be good. I sat patiently for a while but knew after the first attempt that this was going to be a long process. Driving a truck down the highway is a huge responsibility and requires a certain amount of skill. Placing that trailer into a loading dock in New England requires a great deal of skill and patience. I gave up and took another side street to get to Main and when I went by, he was still trying to get backed in.

Between Maine and Boston creates a special bond between drivers because they all are looking out for each other. Going to the city (New York) or Jersey is about the same, just a little further.

Back in the day, I was fortunate to have some excellent mentors to learn to drive a truck. There were no schools back then. You had to find someone who would take you under their wing and give you a chance. If it was someone who knew what they were talking about, it was a plus.

I learned to drive a truck at Marriner’s Inc. It was not a formal education. They put me in a dump truck with directions to Washington, Maine, and sent me on my way. Things were very different back then. That’s the way everyone learned. There were some good mentors there and for me, Gene Conary was the best. There was one little challenge learning from Gene. He could wheel a truck on back roads in a way that I couldn’t keep up. Over time and not wrecking, I thought I was pretty good. Then I started to break stuff. My first summer driving I broke three axles in my truck. Their mechanic, Maynard Pierce, showed me how to changes axles on the side of the road and I soon learned that it was easier to not break the axle in the first place than it was to replace it. If not for their tolerance, I don’t know if I would have continued on.

My foreman there was very demanding and expected us to go full throttle all day long, so that’s what I knew. Yes, we would break things, end up in the ditch from time to time, and the cops would come, but we had to keep going. Keep producing. We never focused on the challenge at hand. If a truck was in the ditch, broke down or upside down, we just did whatever it took to get the truck back to work. Blaine Richardson was a taskmaster for sure, but he taught me life lessons that I still live by today.

After some time, I moved on from dump trucks and had an opportunity to haul lobsters from Rockport to Boston. Sandy and Jimmy Graffam, the Graffam Brothers, were great to work for and very particular about their equipment. Bob Hoppe was the other driver and he didn’t care for Boston, so I did Boston five days a week. Every day in afternoon rush hour traffic. I tell you what. I was a force to be reckoned with at the downtown Camden intersection on the weekends. When I first started driving trucks you only needed a license. No special training or endorsement. If you had a driver’s license, you could legally drive anything with an engine and tires. While working for Marriner’s the new license standards came into play and since I was not driving a trailer truck, I didn’t get grandfathered for a Class I license, only Class II, which is what Graffam Bros. truck was. If I was going to drive a trailer truck, I needed someone else who would give me a chance. That person was Tim Terry.

Tim and I met in my days at Graffam Bros. out on the road. Driving is a whole different culture that you just can’t understand unless you’ve been there. Tim hauled chickens from Belfast to Boston four nights a week and then produce from Chelsea Market back to Maine. He agreed to let me work for him, riding to Boston and unloading chickens, loading produce, and “watching the truck” in exchange for teaching me how to drive and letting me use his truck for my test. This was a huge deal. You have to understand, it was Tim’s truck and Tim’s trailer. That’s a tremendous investment and to let someone else drive your truck takes a very special person. That truck was his livelihood and if anything happened to it, he was out of business. I will forever be indebted to Tim for what he did for me. Tim was best man at my wedding and that whole wedding deal has turned out pretty good, too.

Now, I thought I already knew how to drive a truck. This was one of the first times in my life that I learned that I was coachable. There were so many things that Tim shared with me that I never thought of. We went into places in Boston that were designed for trucks half the size of ours. Patience and building relationships with people were the two best lessons I learned in those days. Years later, I delivered paper to a place in Connecticut that was really tight to get backed into and when I went into the receiver with my papers, he said to me, “You must have hauled chickens.” I replied “How did you know?” He said that only chicken haulers could get backed in that quick. I always wore the badge of a chicken hauler with pride.

I went on to teach truck driving at Region 8 for a few years, became an owner operator a couple of times and drove tanker for two winters. I ran into one person who cut in front of me, and a little old lady ran into me. One speeding ticket. (In that rocket ship, one time caught meant I still won.) Pretty good for all those miles. People thought that I was a pretty good driver, but really it was Tim’s teaching of the little things that made a big difference. I try to remember that in everything I do. It’s the little things extra that make the difference in everything in life.

It’s a different life out on the road. Between Maine and Boston creates a special bond between drivers because they all are looking out for each other. Going to the city (New York) or Jersey is about the same, just a little further. I’m glad to have known what life out there is all about and I’m glad for Tim Terry to give me a chance and great direction.

Bill Packard lives in Union and is the founder of BPackard.com. He is a speaker, author, small business coach and consultant.

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