Bob Skelton

It is with tears streaming down my face that I write this.  It has been over a month now since her passing and I am not over the loss of her.  But I owe her a eulogy for all that she meant to me.  There’s not a day goes by that I am reminded of her in some way or another.  She was such a sweetheart.

Although I was against adopting her to begin with, she became my best buddy after the loss of my wife, Winky.  She so depended on me.  Not only for her care and health needs but for companionship.  She always had to be wherever I was.  Sometimes she went with me in the car to run a quick errand.  I took her to visit whenever I went to Scott and Tammy’s.

She never demanded anything but love from me.  Only if I hadn’t yet shared my meal with her would she let me know with a single bark.  We shared almost all my meals.  I never shared in her meals, though.  There were times, of course, that what I was eating wasn’t good for her and with a “no”, she would give up and forget about it. 

She came to me, quivering, for protection from the thunder and lightening of our summer storms.  Loud noises upset her and she would try to hide.  If a stranger came into the apartment it would also cause her to want to hide.  She was shy around others especially men

Abbey was born in Iowa; to a breeder of Shih Tzu dogs. And in time she became a producer.  Six years later, he took her to a vet and instructed them to either find her a new owner or euthanize her.  She must have meant a lot to him…not.  I am still angry about that.

A rescue organization got involved.  She came to them dirty and matted.  Not well cared for at all.  They cleaned her up, had her spayed and all the proper shots and offered her for adoption.  A foster parent took her in for a while.

It wasn’t long after that that Winky discovered her online.  She was always searching for a rescue dog to adopt.  After Winky continued to plead with me to adopt her, I finally relented. With the condition that Wink would be responsible for her care, Abbey came to live with us.

The fosters had given her the name Mia but Winky thought it didn’t fit her at all.  She renamed her a couple of times until she hit on Abbey.   Abbey was the perfect name for her and she soon caught on to her new identity.

Being a breeding dog and kept in a cage, Abbey was not housebroken.  The carpet still bears evidence of that.  Wink got some pads to put in the bathroom in the hope that we could train her.  She would use them sometimes but usually when the urge struck she peed where she stood. 

After a while I discovered a system that took out most of the stain if I caught it soon enough.  When it got so cold outside or the snow was too deep, I let her defecate in the apartment.  I would rather clean it up than put her through misery.  But most of the time, rain or shine, she went outside.

I was still working when Winky passed away and needed to do something with Abbey while I was at work.  I considered giving her up to a new owner but in the end couldn’t do that to her.

I had an expandable baby gate that we had used to keep our other pets confined to an area.  I put that in the doorway to the bathroom and restricted her there while at work.  It would keep her from the rest of the apartment and particularly from peeing anywhere else.

I called it ‘Jail’.

I would tell her it was time to go to jail and she would come running to the bathroom.  Sometimes she didn’t exactly run. Especially when she was completely comfortable taking a nap under my office chair.  But, though she didn’t want to, she would give in and become a prisoner.

I was heartbroken the morning I had to put her down.  I think her little heart just gave out.  She woke me up about midnight with rapid shallow breathing.  I got online to check out her symptoms and the advice was to get emergency treatment right away.  I found a vet that was open for emergency care and rushed her to their facility.  The diagnoses wasn’t good.  The Doctor and I agreed on a treatment but before they could administer it she went into a coma.  It was time for everything I hate about having a pet.  She passed so quickly.  It was only 4:30 am.  I miss Abbey so much.  I don’t ever want to have another pet.  It hurts too much when you have to let them go.

I am grateful to God that she was in my life and give thanks that I got to enjoy the time I had with her.  Goodby Abbey, my sweet girl.  Rest in peace.

I am all for keeping our nation well supplied with the fruits of our production labor. Whether it be hard goods or our food supply it must get from producer to consumer. I practiced that when I was over the road. Are self-driving trucks the answer?

When you look around you, do you notice anything you made yourself?

If you didn’t produce it, most likely a truck delivered it.

Truck transportation is in high demand in this country. Even more in demand are drivers. There has been a driver shortage for more than ten years. Older drivers are hanging it up and ushering in the younger crowd.

Only the younger crowd has other ideas.

There is a way around that dilemma. “We will build driverless trucks.” the authorities said. “Then we won’t need drivers,” they said.

Driverless trucks are here already, though. Even so, right now each one has a driver ready to take over if things go cockeyed.

It could be 15 years or more before we experience true driverless trucks.
But before they arrive in earnest, I have a few questions.

As a retired truck driver, I want my chosen field to succeed and live on. I’ve had a great career. I want the same for those who choose to accept the challenge.
I am not against self-driving trucks. We need them. We need reliable transportation solutions to the truck driver shortage. But…

What about winters in the frozen north?

In the beginning, most self-driving trucks will appear in the lower half of the country. They will migrate north as they become more reliable in the snowy north. Safety, of course, is the main issue.

What about wild animals randomly wandering onto the highways?

We built our nation in the animal’s territory. They were here well before man ever set foot on the land. How can the engineers’ plan for all the random wild animals that venture out on to the highway? Are these self-driving vehicles equipped with telepathy?

Will they follow detours when the road closes for an accident?

When I used to drive, I had a night run. Sometimes an accident would force the highway closed. We would have to find our way around the closure to continue to our destination. Sometimes the troopers marked the detour. Often it was not marked and we had to find our way back to the main highway.

I remember one night in particular. The road closed due to an accident a few miles down. I thought the driver in front of me knew the way, so, I followed him.

It was like the blind leading the even more blind. A bunch of us trucks wandered around in the hills of western Wisconsin for a couple of hours; so it seemed.

Finally, we squirted out from roads we had no business being on to the main highway. Think a self-driving tractor-trailer rig could find it’s own way?

Will other truckers accept self-driving trucks or consider them a threat?

There have been times when a passing truck pulled in front of me within inches of the front of my truck. I had to swerve onto the shoulder to keep him from hitting me. Was the driver too tired to pay attention? Did he have something against my company? I’ll never know for sure.

What if another driver takes umbrage at the fact, so he thinks, that self-driving trucks put others out of a job. he’s angry. He wants to damage the driver-less rig and thereby take it out of commission. He somehow causes the driver-less rig to take evasive action and it crashes.

Or does it?

Is a driver-less truck wired to handle situations such as these?

Are other motorists at risk if they cut off a self-driving vehicle?

Many times I have had four-wheelers pull in front of me leaving no margin for error. If a deer ran in front of them after they had pulled into my lane there would be no chance that I wouldn’t crash into them. In an attempt to miss the deer they usually slam on their brakes or swerve or both.

They were so close to me that even if I saw the deer run across the road in front of them and began to decelerate, an accident would be unavoidable.

Cutting off an 80,000-pound truck is not a good idea, even if nothing happens.

Are self-driving trucks able to avoid that kind of situation?

Can we teach the four-wheelers the stupidity of their actions?

How good are the sensing devices used on self-driving vehicles?

Will the sensors be able to see through snow and ice even when caked with the stuff.

I have, as have many drivers, arrived back at my terminal with my truck caked with ice. You can watch the radio antennas whip back and forth; covered in ice. It’s a wonder they don’t break.

How will the sensing devices hold up against the elements? I have read that self-driving trucks will only travel when it is safe to do so.

Who determines that?

More than once I received a dispatch order to run in some terrible weather. “The show must go on.” according to some dispatchers.

On one occasion I did have the balls to turn around and come back to the terminal.

As the captain of my ship, I refused to put the load before the safety of the public and myself.

Will a self-driving truck do that?

Are truck drivers going to lose their jobs?

Truck drivers are very much in demand right now. They will be still in demand when driver-less trucks, given the green light, begin to roll. There will never be a time when truck drivers are not needed.

Please share your comments in the section below. I welcome all comments.

When I arrived in Ft. Wayne, Indiana on a cold winter day in May of 1976, I had little idea what I was getting myself into. I was there to attend a truck-driving school. But more than that, I was there to buy a tractor and learn a completely new occupation.

Upon graduation, my new career began. I was very new to the game. I was trying to learn the ropes. A few months passed and I soon learned that many drivers were good at breaking the laws. They were good at cheating the game. 

I didn’t think much of it at the time but it didn’t exactly sit well with me. Not that I wasn’t among them to some degree. I wasn’t exactly an angel. I was a procrastinator.

At first, I used the logbook the way that it’s intended. But soon it became a chore. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to fill out a logbook it was more that I didn’t want to record the actual times I stopped.

I took a lot of breaks to stop for coffee or to take a short nap and I needed to make up the distance somehow.

I recorded the date, odometer readings, and the location of every place I stopped in a steno notebook. It was easier to jot down the location and the odometer reading than to have to pull out my logbook and draw lines. 

I also kept the odometer readings of the state lines I crossed. If I bought fuel, I would record the number of gallons and the date to match what I was going to log.

I didn’t need to be tidy in the notebook. It was a tool I developed so I could be neat later. Then, when I had time to draw some lines, I would fill out my logbook. I had been a draftsman in my previous life and neatness counted.

 The times I stopped might not be accurate. I would calculate how long it took from point A to point B at a reasonable speed using the readings I recorded. Some of the time I would skip recording a stop if it served my purpose.

Some drivers found other ways around the hours of service law. They reportedly used more logbooks than the law allowed. It was not uncommon for them to be doctoring two or three logbooks. They were trying to drive for longer than the law allowed. I was too. I took a lot of breaks.

Most trucking company’s logbooks are now electronic logs. GPS coordinates and time verify the logs are accurate.

Troopers today aren’t too interested in checking logbooks unless an accident occurs. They are aware of how electronic logs operate. Drivers stopped for speeding by a trooper, aren’t even checked for their logs most of the time.

Police have handed logbook verifications to the companies themselves. Companies face high penalties when an audit uncovers a violation. Drivers are out-of-service when they commit violations. They are only allowed back in-service when they become compliant again. Some face termination if they don’t change their ways.

In the 1980s the public cried for guaranteed delivery times. This meant that you could not fool around. There would be no excuse. Unless a breakdown or family problem arose that prevented on-time delivery. Drivers paid the price for failure. But that did not stop some drivers.

Drugs and alcohol use was not uncommon in the years preceding the 1980s. I was in Alabama one time when a driver used some drug and was so out of it he couldn’t even stand up. His friend tried to sober him up; walking him around until he finally collapsed. A few hours later that driver had managed to take more of the drug and it was useless to try to straighten him out. They were already two days late with their loads.

I heard stories of drivers having a bottle of liquor within reach while driving.

Truckers tried to make more money by pulling overweight loads. They would bypass state scales by using alternate highways. The risk was great but they tried it anyway. Some got away with it. Some didn’t.

Companies today don’t tolerate these kinds of behavior. The risk of a large lawsuit demands that they hire responsible drivers.

Companies of the future will avoid that kind of risk and will ensure faster delivery times to boot. The driver-less vehicle is here now and is the future of many companies.

Trial runs, with a driver attending the vehicle at all times, have been going on for some time now.

In an article I read, a truck left California and drove to Pennsylvania in three days. It was a driver-less test with a driver present. It only stopped for fuel. That’s 2800 miles without a glitch. The trip included some inclement weather as well. It delivered a 40,000 lb load of butter to the receiver in Pennsylvania.

I’m sure there will be more tests of this sort soon. 

The authorities will not allow an actual driver-less rig on the nation’s highways yet. But that time is coming. The expectation is that it will take 15 to 20 years. The nation is already in dire need of drivers.

Qualified drivers are in high demand. Many of the older experienced drivers have been retiring. I am among them. Companies have been trying to hire more drivers to take their place for a few years. It is very difficult to find qualified drivers. 

With the prospects of a job that will only last a few more years, I don’t blame the holdouts.

What are your thoughts? Leave a comment in the comments section.

Photo by Matthew T Rader on Unsplash