One of the first things I learned about trucking is the word “schedule” is bounced around a lot, but rarely adhered to by shippers and receivers. In fact, the only people who are actually expected to adhere to trucking schedules are the people with the absolute least amount of control over it – the drivers.
After approximately 42 seconds on the road in a commercial vehicle, I realized the insane feats of professionalism it takes for drivers to keep anything even remotely close to a schedule. Navigating the highway on a daily basis while maintaining any kind of grasp on sanity, much less time, is like throwing ten cats and a box full of rabid mice in a washing machine and expecting a good outcome. Yet, day after day, professional drivers show up and do what they do, rabid mice and wet cats be damned.
It’s amazing.
Kind of like the amazing performance Tony Justice and his band pulled off, after Justice’s band was delayed enroute from East Tennessee by mechanical failure to the point of being almost two hours late for their gig at Eddie Deen’s Ranch, which happened to be the headliner performance for the Uber Freight “Take a Load Off” event at GATS.
Uber sponsored the event to show their appreciation for truckers and truckers showed their brotherhood by being patient and understanding about the perils of mechanical failure and life on the highway and coming together in the end to enjoy a great show.
It was amazing.
I stood backstage and watched truckers from every part of the country — different accents, different skin colors, every single one of them different, but all the same — while they unloaded the equipment so the exhausted band members could grab a bottle of water and set their instruments up.
