Parked on Memory Lane
By
Phil Madsen, Expediter
(Written July 7, 2004. Edited May 6, 2007 for publication on SuccessfulExpediters.com)
As I write this, I am sitting in the truck cab, in the Mall of America truck parking area in Bloomington, Minnesota (Minneapolis/St. Paul). The sun went down about a half-hour ago. Diane is asleep in back. I just woke from a nap. We are waiting to pick up a 2:00 a.m. load at the airport, about a mile away. It is a short run. The freight is going to Saint Cloud, about 75 miles northwest of here.
We will not need a map or routing info for this run. The Twin Cities area is home to us. We have been here the last couple days to complete our house sale and move into rented space in a relative’s house, which will be our new residence. Working on the road as we now do, our cars, house and household goods are no longer needed. All have been sold (the house sale will soon close).
We stopped by the government center today and ordered new driver’s licenses with new addresses. We were careful to make sure our CDL status and HAZMAT and air brakes endorsements would not get dropped in a bureaucratic error. We registered to vote in our new community.
The few possessions we kept will not fill a small room. The only sign that we ever lived in the house we owned for many years is the large pile of trash waiting curbside for a special pickup, improvements we made to the house itself, and a dozen trees we planted in the one-acre yard. The dog we loved died a little over a year ago. We still get sad when we think of him. We miss him more than anything else we left behind. The rest of the stuff is hardly missed at all.
It is official now. We have become as property free as employed folks can be. We have given ourselves entirely over to trucking. While we maintain an official and legal residence for tax purposes, words we are fond of saying are more true than ever. The truck is our home; the nation our back yard.
At the moment, my mind is bubbling with memories of the past and thoughts about what we have done. We are truckers now. We parked here at the Mall of America to have access to bathrooms as we wait for our freight. This parking lot is huge. The truck parking area is on the far side. It's a long, long walk to the bathrooms. Though, many malls have no designated truck parking area at all and some will run you out. I guess I should be grateful for this evening’s accommodations.
The mall is on the I-494 strip. When we pulled in here to park, memories of our past lives flooded our minds. We noted there is not a building within sight that we have not done something in. Diane worked as an attorney. I was a financial planer for eleven years and a computer consultant after that. My office used to be on the I-494 strip, just down the road
We have shopped many times at this mall. We have attended political events, continuing education classes, wedding receptions, and sales presentations at the various hotels around here. We once treated ourselves to a weekend getaway at the Embassy Suites nearby. We have met friends for meals here. I have been in and out of the nearby office buildings countless times to meet with clients.
I wore business suits back then, putting on $500 worth of clothes just to go to work. Now I am a trucker. The woman I love is asleep in the back of a Freightliner. I have to walk a half mile just to pee. If we don't leave soon, a security guard will likely run us off (no overnight parking). My tire thumper is close by because I don't trust the U.S. Express driver idling next door, and I am irritated at a different driver that just dumped his ash tray in the parking lot.
While I am distrustful of one neighbor and irritated by another, I am also pleased that the other truck drivers parked here used the bathrooms to relieve themselves, instead of the parking lot, as often happens at truck stops. I used to worry about my $50 neckties going out of style. the ties the news anchors wore on TV told me when it was time to change. Now I worry about urine puddles under my doorstep. The smell tells me when it is time to watch your step.
Directly in front of me is a brand new IKEA home furnishings store. This is the kind of place Diane and I would have visited when it first opened. Now I just look at it and laugh. I don't know why. It just strikes me funny that I am sitting here, face to face with a trendy international furniture store.
Did we make a mistake trading our white-collar lives for new lives as truckers?
Nope!
We are not looking back at the home we sold. We are instead looking forward to the truck we bought. We have friends who live and work near the I-494 strip. Nearly all of them say they envy our freedom.
Tomorrow morning we will deliver freight in St. Cloud. We have no idea where we will be the day after. Our non-trucking friends will wake in the same house and go to the same office tomorrow, the next day, and the day after that. A couple of them can tell you to the day how long it will be until they retire, and their retirement date is over a decade away!
We are making more money as truckers than we did as white-collar professionals. Our expenses have all but disappeared; no more garbage collection fees, property taxes, auto insurance payments, home improvement expenses, or bills for chimney cleaning. Of course we have our trucking expenses, but those are easy to pay. They're a cost of doing business. They generate an immediate profit. Most are tax deductible.
Our finances will change when we get our new truck and run as owner-operators, but it is nothing we cannot handle. While we left our white-collar jobs behind, we brought our skills along. Our business plan is sound.
Besides the dog, we miss the ability to wake up in the middle of the night, walk a few steps to the bathroom, and take care of business. That will be fixed. Our new truck includes an RV-style bathroom (shower and toilet). As I walked across the parking lot tonight, it occurred to me that the in-truck bathroom would be a bargain at twice the price.