Back in the early 80s, when Comet Fast Freight was in its death throes, there was a driver who leased his cabover Brockway on. His name was Jeff. And he was one stupid motherfucker.
I don’t know how this guy ever managed to buy his own tractor. I was more mystified by how he had gotten a license to drive a tractor-trailer rig.
But I guess sometimes people who shouldn’t buy guns buy them anyway, so there’s that.
Because Jeff was dangerous. At first I just thought he was dense, and I had met plenty of drivers who were that thick but ran their asses off and made money for my father. This goon…wasn’t one of them.
The first sign of trouble came when we got a call at the dispatch office that while trying to return a container to the Dundalk Marine Terminal, he’d panicked. Having crossed the Key bridge, approaching the toll booths, he had the realization that he had no cash for the toll.
Naturally, he ran the booth without paying and proceeded to take the next exit off I-695 toward the docks. And since transportation and toll facilities police always had a pursuit car on station at the toll plaza, he was chased down. He did not pull over.
He made the left into the pier entrance, where multiple lanes always had lines. He had to stop. By then more chase cars had joined the merry, bizarre chase. He was surrounded by cops with their handguns pointed up at the cab.
Since it was so bizarre, they pulled him out, made him lie on the asphalt, and of course searched the truck. Under the mattress in the sleeper compartment they found a film cannister, the kind people commonly hid drugs in back then. No cop ever found one of those and believed it contained film. Ever.
Lucky for Jeff, they knew it had contained PCP-laced pot, but had no stomach for booking him. He was ticketed for moving violations and allowed to continue his day.
As soon as I, standing on the loading dock, heard this fucked-up story, I was for letting him go. You know, cancelling his lease. I told the dispatcher, George, that surely there was worse in store. I had this gut feeling. You know, like the first time you had honey barbecue wings from KFC, and fell in love, yet something told you that corporate dicks would eventually stop selling them. Because, corporate dicks.
I was right. Jeff wasn’t finished and his burned-out brain was making me want some drugs for myself. Just grass. No fucking PCP, not for me, no thank you please.
One summer day, a Friday. Pay day. Dispatch got a call that dispatchers will get maybe once in a lifetime, one so scary that you never, ever forget it. George got that call. But for him, oddly enough, he’d had some other crazy phone calls come in, because this was Comet Fast Freight, so this time, he didn’t get upset. He just hung up, went out on the dock and lit a Raleigh cigarette. I followed him out. He said Jeff was on his way back to the yard, and I’d see what was wrong soon enough. So I lit a Camel and stood there with him, waiting in silence.
It was the end of a Friday, the sun was hot but getting low. We all wanted to go home.
The sound of the Mack engine coming down Wellham Avenue which, incidentally, would later be renamed Holsum Way, told us the mutt was inbound. When his tractor came into sight, I took an unintentionally horrified gasp. “What the fuck, George? How’d he do that?” I asked.
Cabover tractors are the ones that have no nose and stand taller than a long-nose tractor, called “conventional” cabs. And Jeff had done something to the top of his cab, of which I’d never seen the like. Oh, I’d seen overturned rigs towed into the yard. I’d seen one where the driver fell asleep and drove a tree into the cab.
But this? No, I had no idea what I was looking at.
All of the clearance or I.D. amber lights along the top were either smashed or missing. His air horn, that kind that sits on top like a chrome bugle, was crunched like an accordian. The rest of the rig was undamaged. So he’d hit something his truck couldn’t clear overhead. I had that sinking gut feeling again. You know. Like you get when your power goes out, and you look out the window, and everyone else has power.
He came into the office to face my father’s wrath. Because of returned checks, we were down to the last bank that would deal with us.
He was asked what happened. Because the bank had called and said Jeff had attempted to drive his truck through the drive–in window lane and struck the overhead canopy with some force. The overhead was substantially damaged.
Jeff replied that it was a lie. When asked why a bank manager would tell such a story, he said it was because he knew how to get into their vault.
“You know how to get into their vault.” My father said flatly. His eyes showed mirth behind rage. Yeah, Ralph Smith could do that. It was funny if it wasn’t directed at you.
“Yeah,” Jeff said. “I was inside and I saw the girl stand in front of the vault, and she stamped her left foot real hard three times. Then she clapped her hands real loud two times and the vault opened.”
“Let’s go outside,” my father said. Now he was disgusted and probably a bit rattled by what he’d just heard. And he led the way outdoors. George and I followed.
We went to Jeff’s truck. “Well if the manager was lying, then you tell me what happened to your horn and your lights,” my father said.
“My wife found out I was cheating on her and she got a hammer and smashed them.”
“Bullshit,” I said. “Who would cheat with you? You smell like smegma at sixty feet.”
“Shut up, boy,” my father said darkly. I shut up but part of me was amused.
“The strongest man alive can’t climb up and smash a horn flat with a hammer,” George said.
But Jeff stuck to his story. And he now looked at me as if he wanted to punch my lights out but I began wishing that if he was allowed to stay on, he would drive his rig off the side of Mount Storm.
My father needed drivers at a time when everyone else was jumping ship. Seasoned drivers know when a trucking company is going to go out of business, becoming what’s known as a “fallen flag”. They go elsewhere. Jeff was too stupid to do that.
But I had that sick feeling in my gut. You know, like you get when your daughter brings home her new beau, and reveals she’s pregnant, and the fucking guy has no education, no job, no car, and you realize they’re going to move in with you? Yeah. Like that.
Well, Jeff made my gut prove correct again. One day on Interstate 70, coming from West Virginia and only about forty minutes from making the yard, he did something. Something no one else could explain. Something that, in other words, wasn’t possible.
He blew the back half of his transmission clean out. When I say that, you can take it word for word: the housing exploded, ejecting gears all over the highway, along with shrapnel from the housing, or outer casing. I’d never heard of such a thing. I’d seen wrecks. Blown engines. Burnt tires from being run while flat. The damage from brake fires. I’d seen a hell of a lot. But never had I seen a rig towed into the yard by huge wreckers with a transmission half missing. You can flame a clutch by “riding” it. You can break teeth on gears by grinding them, but you have to be working at it to do it.
But this…this was a first, not just for me, but the mechanic as well. His guess was that Jeff somehow tried and impossibly jammed the shifter into reverse at speed.
When the housing of a transmission, as with an engine block, is broken, it means replacing the whole thing. There’s no repairing it.
But Jeff had no intention of incurring such an expense. He said he knew exactly where it happened, and he was going to drive out in his car and pick up the parts so the transmission could be fixed.
I told him, “You can’t,” and he said, “Yeah, it can be fixed.” He glared at me. He was a class A burnout, but he had looked up the word “smegma” and he hated me more than when I’d said it.
But it was true. He did smell like smegma. Even when he was sitting in his truck with the engine idling. Diesel fumes couldn’t stop the stench. I believe that was the beginning of my sinus problems, and why today I have to use Afrin like maybe six times a day, and why the spray doesn’t work. I have to turn the bottle upside down and tilt my head back and use it like a goddamn lavage.
Jeff did return with a box of transmission parts. None of the housing frags were in there, but fractured and exploded gears, yes, they were there. I busted up. I mean I fucking roared with laughter. He was told it didn’t matter what was in the box, he needed a new transmission.
He was also told to pull the company placards off his doors. And have the tractor hauled off the yard.
I never saw him again. But every time I use Afrin, I fucking remember him.
Memoirs of an American Asshole 