I drove Tractor Trailers in the U.S. Army and for a short time for a Moving Company after I got out of the Service. After what happened when I was driving for the Moving Company and then because so many idiot punk kids got their parents to buy them Tractor Trucks in the 1980s and 1990s, thus filling the roads with more idiots but these with big Tractor Trucks with Trailers that can kill a lot of folks on the road, I swore to never get back into driving Tractor Trailer rigs. For more background info, when I drove for the Moving Company, I had not been out of the Service very long and the Boss unknown to me, was using me to screw his' commission Drivers as he was only paying me salary, food and lodging (if needed). To make matters worse, one of the Drivers owned all of the Tractor Trucks we drove, was leasing them back to the Company and since he was also getting screwed by me driving, he was trying to make life hard for me. He pulled the Tractor Truck I was driving off the road saying it needed to be painted and they switched me to a beat up piece of junk. Well, that burnt him because the Ball Joints were shot on the Tractor Truck and since I could put it in a shop to have repairs done, I put it in the shop before I even got out of Knoxville with a load and it cost him a bundle. We later sat down and talked and once we both knew what was really going on, we got along very well. However, it wasn't too much longer before I quit and came close to killing the Boss. Since the Boss was using me to screw his' commission Drivers, he kept me on the road all of the time. Well, my last trip was St. Louis to the Central Indiana (can't remember the locale) farm country, then to a plush area of Evanston, Illinois...then to Madison, Wisconsin...then back to Knoxville, Tennessee. My first daughter who was only 19 months old then, went into convulsions...had to be rushed to the Hospital and was in ICU for several days. Even though I was on the phone every single day with my Boss as he seemed to have to approve all of my fuel purchases and extra funds needed every singe day, not once did he tell me what happened to my' daughter and that my' wife (now ex-wife) had called him umpteen times to have me come home immediately. It wasn't until the second night that I was home (got home late one night and delivered household goods all of the next day and got home again late) that she told me what had happened. Needless to say I went ballistic and I unplugged my' telephone even though I had a New York to Miami run at 5 AM the next morning. Got up at 9 AM the next day, took a shower and drove to Knoxville (50 miles away) to quit my job and whip my Boss's a** all over the place. Well, he saw me coming and ran into his office and locked the door. At that point, I was ready to beat him to death because I was so mad. However, it was a good thing that he ran into his office, locked the door and did not open it for some 10 minutes because it allowed me to rethink my position, think of what would happen to my daughter and wife if I went to jail or worse prison and also to calm down some. My Boss tried to apologize over top of me yelling at him, he also offered to purchase a new Tractor Truck for me to drive and pay me commission but I told him that I would not work for a him that would do any of his employees that way, told him that I quit and that I wanted my' pay due to me right then. He said that I would have to wait until payday but I told him that I would wait right there until I got paid because I was never coming back. Well, I got my' pay check, left for home and swore that I would never drive a Tractor Trailer rig ever again and then the idiot punks got on the road and that put the nail deeper in that coffin.
