Farewell

I decided last Friday would be my last day of work, leaving me a week before school starts to get ready (and goof off a little bit).

For a time, I got to be part of the world's massive goods delivery infrastructure, an infrastructure utilizing every means of transportation—cars, tractor-trailers, trains, boats, and airplanes—and made up of national mail carriers like the U.S. Postal System, private carriers like UPS and FedEx (not to mention airlines who transport U.S. mail with their spare cargo capacity), innumerable trucking companies, and many small couriers like the one I worked for, each one filling in gaps in the others' service.

In truth, though, I'm happy to be done with this job. Aside from needing a vehicle and a driver's license, and some basic manners, this is completely unskilled labor; the only reason they need a human for it is because we don't yet have cars that can drive themselves. The work is boring, once you realize that 95% of it will be spent on the road. The pay is unimpressive; you would have to work 10-hour days regularly to make any significant money with this job. And whatever money you do make, a good chunk of it goes right back out to pay for all the gas you burn doing the job, not to mention a scheduled oil change every two or three weeks.

This was an okay way to pass the time during the summer, and keep me able to pay the bills—barely—but I won't miss it.

I was hoping it would be an interesting job to blog about, but in the end, most days were completely routine, especially after they assigned me to a couple of regular deliveries. The same stops on the same route, day after day. The only things that changed were the amount of mail I was given, and the traffic. After I talked a bit about how I go about doing my job, and the tools I use for it, I simply ran out of things to talk about. That should give you an idea of how completely routine and uninteresting this work it.

So, it's been fun—sort of—but this is the end.

Mississippi

On my last day of work, I got an out-of-state rush delivery to Mississippi.

(I nearly got one earlier in the week, to Washington, D.C., but we're pretty sure that when the customer found out that it would be $930, they changed their mind about needing their item there by exactly 9 a.m. the next day.)

Honestly, doing a 400-mile drive and back by yourself really isn't much to write about. The route was I-20 to Tuscaloosa, then US-82 to I-55, and then a little ways to the delivery point. Then turn around and come back home.

US-82 is nicer than most of the US Highways I've been on. There aren't many lights or stops, and a long chunk of it in Mississippi is built to freeway standards, with controlled access. It made for a very uninteresting drive.

Breaker breaker charlie november

One thing I notice is that when I talk on the radio, I pick up a noticeable Southern accent. This is probably the result of watching too many movies featuring stereotypical truckers.

That said, I bet it's linguistically useful. The long, drawn-out vowels of Southern speech probably do a lot to aid listening comprehension over staticky channels.

Well, they would, except this is a digital radio, so the sound either gets there intact, or doesn't get there at all. Still, the sound quality is not great, and when I'm driving down the highway with the wind blowing and the tires running along the pavement, a little boost to my ability to hear things doesn't hurt.

Failure to communicate

Appropriately, the day after I wrote about the usefulness of our radios, the server for all the job information went on the fritz for most of the day, crippling our dispatchers.

During the day, we have three to four dispatchers, some for cars and trucks, some for tractor-trailers. They have to figure out which drivers to give which jobs so that all the jobs get done, all the drivers stay busy, and nobody has to drive around a lot with an empty vehicle.

Of course, doing this successfully is totally dependent on the jobs we have that day, which is really just random. Airline dispatchers have a much easier time, since their flights are scheduled months in advance. Our dispatchers rely a bit more on luck. Sometimes they'll ask me to make my way towards a certain part of town, because they know from experience where most of our jobs originate. Although usually the cause is that I just completed a delivery in some out-of-the-way location.

I'm not sure what the dispatchers did while the server was acting up; when I stopped in the office, they had access to the jobs, but couldn't edit them to mark them as picked up or delivered. They printed them out on paper so I had all the information.

Walkie-talkie-drivie

My second lifeline as a courier is my radio/phone, which I use to talk to Dispatch, and to get details and update status on jobs.

The one we use is a Motorola Nextel radio, which is large and heavy, looks like it may cost a good bit, and has lots of buttons (a couple of which I'm afraid to press because it's not clear what they do).

Nextel is the technology Motorola bought for cellular push-to-talk technology. Push-to-talk (PTT) is what most people think of as a traditional walkie-talkie—when you want to talk, you push the button, and you let go when you're done so you can listen. It's a very simple and very effective way to handle one-way (a.k.a. half-duplex, if you're a nerd) communication.

The Nextel version is cellular, meaning the range limit is "you must have cell reception" instead of "you must be within 5 miles of the other walkie-talkie or repeater". It's also directed; you get a phone number just for PTT, which has stars instead of dashes in the number. To use it, you choose a contact in your phonebook, then, y'know… push to talk.

My one complaint is that while it's great 90% of the time to not have to listen to everyone else's conversations with the dispatchers, sometimes it would be useful, like if someone is reporting a traffic jam we should all avoid. I suppose it's a fair trade, though: I get to drive in relative peace and quiet.

The other part of the phone we use a lot is called "Net Alerts". I'm honestly not sure what technology it is behind the scenes, although I'm pretty sure it's HTTP or something similar. (Oops, my computer science background is showing.) With this I can use a menu system to update jobs; I can accept (or reject) a job, let my dispatcher know when I've completed pick-up or delivery, and enter the name of the person who signed for receipt of the item.

The job comes to me with all the information I need: job number and type; pick-up name/address; delivery name/address; contacts and phone numbers for both; notes on paperwork that the job requires, if any; etc. I copy most of the info on to my paper clipboard, which is much easier to look at while I'm driving, but I do occasionally come back to it for reference.

When I enter the name of the signee, I use multi-tap… the old system where you press 2 once for 'A', twice for 'B', thrice for 'C'. I haven't used multi-tap in about 10 years—come to think of it, did I ever own a phone that didn't support T9?—but I picked it up like I had never stopped.

Motorola's implementation of multi-tap confuses me a bit. Backspace is on * instead of a dedicated "backspace" or "clear" key. I can't figure out how to capitalize letters. Fortunately I don't really care, but it bothers me that I can't figure it out; I don't think I'm strange for wanting to spell people's names using both uppercase and lowercase letters.

Suspicion

Driving down a surface street, I passed a cop who was pulling out of a shopping center. As I watched in my rear-view mirror, he pulled up behind me and followed me for a mile or two. I could tell he was checking up on me; he was entering data into his computer and talking on the radio, all while keeping a close eye on me.

I'm not sure what got his attention. Was it my damaged hood and front bumper, the cosmetic remains of a low-speed highway fender-bender over two years ago? Was it the company signs with a DOT number on my doors? It couldn't have been the out-of-state license plate, which he wouldn't have seen until he was directly behind me. In truth, the license plate is what worries me the most, because I misplaced the annual registration sticker, although I have the correct paperwork (somewhere, still paperclipped to the sticker). Having an out-of-state plate, though, cops tend to not notice that the sticker is the wrong color and a year or two out of date.

Then again, maybe it was the damaged hood. I think it's a law that you have to report all accidents, no matter how minor, although in practice this is not followed and is largely unenforced (and arguably unenforcable). Not that he would know from looking at my car whether I had reported the accident. (Like I said, unenforcable.)

I made sure to stick to the speed limit religiously while keeping a keen eye on the officer in my rear-view mirror. He talked on the radio, then got on his cellphone for a while, then went back to the radio. Eventually, he looked disappointed, and when I turned in to a parking lot he kept going past me. I guess he was hoping to bust me for something, and felt put out when everything checked out okay.

Roads

The city planners in this wonderful city have really done a number on street names. (Although it's not as bad as Japan.) Here they have a penchant for creating many streets with similar names, all right next to each other. There might be Sesame Boulevard, Sesame Parkway, Sesame Road, Sesame Drive, Sesame Circle, Sesame Court, all close to each other… and only one of these is the correct one.

They'll also sometimes prefix it with a cardinal direction. That's not difficult to mess up, because people usually put it in the address.

However, almost all the roads here are suffixed with an intermediate cardinal direction (that is, NE, NW, SW, or SE). I assume this indicates what quadrant of the city the road is in, but it's not clear where the division lies from the suffixes I've seen.

Almost nobody includes the suffix when giving their address, so I usually have to guess in the satnav which one is the correct one. That might not be so bad, except that sometimes the same building number is valid on more than one of the roads (for instance, 287 Yeti St NW and 287 Yeti St NE). That's usually when the iPhone comes out for some sanity checking.

The end result is that I have to be very careful when looking at addresses, because I never know which parts of it will be vitally important. Just the other day I copied down "Parkway" instead of "Boulevard" and turned a 2-minute drive into a 10-minute goose chase.

Global Positioning System

GPS. These three initials are my lifeline as a courier.

In the bad old days, couriers would carry around one or two maps that detail every street in the greater area around their city. The dispatcher would have the same map, and could help the driver pinpoint the location they were being sent to.

Today, I have a satnav. (Most people would call it a GPS, but strictly speaking, that just implies that it tells you where you are. I prefer to call it a satnav to specify that it also tells me where I should be going.)

Mine is a refurbished TomTom I bought a few years ago. Most people prefer Garmin models, but I find I like the TomTom interface better. It's really a wash, though, so long as you know how to operate the unit and it gets you where you're going.

I know my way around the city fairly well, so I ignore 90% of the directions it gives, since they consist of highway directions that I don't need help with. I just glance at the overview map it gives after I input my destination, and then make my own way there following highway signs and my instincts. It's only as I approach the destination that I start paying attention to its turn-by-turn directions.

I also have an iPhone. It comforts me to know that if my satnav stopped working, I could use that as a backup until I can fix my satnav. (This is a legitimate concern, as I've twice accidentally removed the memory card from the satnav while it was running, which usually corrupts all the data on it and turns it into a brick.)

I try to avoid using the iPhone while I'm driving, as it's pretty distracting, but it's good for verifying the location of an address (sometimes it's not quite where the satnav thinks it is) or just looking up the company I'm supposed to be delivering to, as Google Maps often knows its precise location by name alone.

Independent contracting

Although there are full-time employee drivers at some couriers (especially large ones like UPS or FedEx), I an independent contractor. This means that I'm basically a business entity consisting of myself. Each delivery is a separate job offered to me from the company, and I can choose whether to accept each one. This gives me a lot of flexibility: I can pretty much choose when I want to work.

Of course, if I choose to work at a time when there aren't many deliveries to run, then I won't have anything to do and I won't get paid. It is convenient, though, if I want to end my day early, or finish near a certain part of town so I can go out at night. Or, conversely, when I don't have anything to do and am willing to work for 10-12 hours to make more money.

As my own business entity, I'm responsible for my own tax payments, healthcare, and equipment. Every week I have to pay the company to buy into their umbrella vehicle insurance, to rent my radio, and a couple other things.

I also have to buy my uniform T-shirts from them, my car door magnets with the company logo and registration number on them, and some other equipment I need to do the job.

All of that comes out of my pocket.

In compensation, I'm paid a fixed percentage of each delivery I complete. I'm not paid mileage compensation, flat fees, or salary. Any gas, oil, car maintenance, etc., comes out of my pocket as well.

The end result is that because of the mandatory fees I have to pay the company, I start off each week with negative earnings; if I only worked part-time and didn't take on enough deliveries, I could end up owing the company money come payday. Working full-time, though, this isn't a problem.

Long live the King and Queen

Here's something interesting: one of my deliveries took me to the King and Queen.

The King and Queen are the local nicknames for an iconic pair of high-rise buildings adjacent to a busy highway intersection. Both buildings have decorative lattice tops: one square, one round. Whence the names.

They are not cheap property.

Example: On my way out, I told the doorman, "Have a nice day," and he replied, "Yes sir." I guess that's how rich these buildings are, that couriers get to order the doormen around.

Unexpected clients

One of the deliveries I made today was some pharmaceuticals and medical supplies. (We do a lot of these; taking bundled medical supplies from the independent provider to the patient's home.) The patient lives outside a small town about 30 miles south of the city. Since I was coming from the north, this meant it was almost an hour's drive for me. Oh well. That's a courier's life.

I couldn't tell from the initial map my satnav displayed where the final location was, so I was mildly surprised when it had me keep driving, and keep driving. Only mildly, though; I may be in a metro area of 5 million people, but there's plenty of open land farther out.

I finally ended up on the correct road and started looking for the house number. After I had gone a mile past it's supposed location without finding it, I turned around and tried again. Even with a better idea of where it should be, though, I still couldn't find it.

Fortunately, there was a contact number given in the job, although my previous attempts to call and let them know I was on my way had just given me a busy signal.

This time, though, the phone call went through. The man on the other end told me to come back the way I originally came, and look for a big black fence on my left with a stone gate. I remembered seeing the fence and the gate, but I brushed it off as being a farm, or a mansion, or both.

As it turns out, I was right… it was a mansion, and also a farm. The driveway was about a quarter-mile long, and edged with pavers. There was a tiny pond on one side, which fed into a stream that crossed the driveway; rather than a bridge, though, you have to actually ford the stream. Heaven help anyone in a low-slung sports car, because their bumpers would get stuck on the edges of the ford.

I parked and brought the delivery to the front door, which had an iron gate in front of it; I had to reach through the gate to get at the latch. I was pretty sure that was the intention, though, given that the doorbell-intercom was located behind it. Except that the button was missing, leaving two exposed wires. Touching them together didn't seem to do anything, so I knocked.

Nobody answered, and after knocking again, I started to wonder if I was at the wrong building; maybe I should have taken the other fork in the driveway? But then the patient showed up, creeping along using a walker.

As I was having him sign the paperwork (most of our medical deliveries come with several copies of paperwork from the medical supplier, in addition to my own delivery manifest), another car pulled up, and a nurse got out. I decided I should wait for her to come in before leaving, just to make sure everything was settled and I had done everything I possibly could.

As the man and I talked, the subject of my hometown came up, and he mentioned that he owns a large shopping center in my hometown. I know that shopping center; I went there a couple of times a year to shop, as well as every time I went to the movies. He owns it. This is not someone I expected to meet.

…Actually, I hate that shopping center; it's on the opposite side of town from my home, so it's a bit of a trek. Worse than that, it's what's called a "power centre"; there are a lot of big anchor stores, but they're not connected; you have to drive from one to the other even if they're practically right next to each other. Imagine a strip mall, only the strip is broken in to half a dozen small strips and distributed across as big a distance as possible. The traffic is also terrible, as it's quite crowded and there are only a few small roads into the centre.

I refrained from telling him any of that, though.

First run

After completing the hiring paperwork, I showed up at 8:00am for a training delivery run. My "trainer" was the same guy I had been doing paperwork with yesterday afternoon. He seemed somewhat laid back, maybe a touch of a fratboy, but at the same time someone I would want to think twice before crossing… someone I wouldn't particularly get along with. But I didn't care, because I probably wouldn't see much of him, being out doing deliveries all day.

We got the job notification, and he walked me through accepting the job on my radio. Then we jumped in my car and headed off. Along the way we made some expected small talk about girlfriends (and boyfriends), jobs, weather… the usual. It was actually a bit of a quiet drive, compared to other co-workers I've shared a vehicle with.

We arrived at the pick-up site and got the goods. He coached me to take the time to be polite and talk to people. Introduce myself and my company, be friendly and talkative, that sort of thing. Don't just rush in and say, "I'm here, where's the package?"

Another 10 minutes and we were at the delivery site. The recipients didn't know who the package was intended for, through which I learned to check my job details and any invoices from the sender for clues. But it only took a minute to sort things out.

My trainer, I had learned, was the son of one of the three owners of the company. He ran deliveries for a couple months, just to make sure he pulled his own weight and didn't give the appearance of landing a cushy job at daddie's company without putting in any work, but now did a mix of things for the company. Before that he had spent some years with the army, but left (partly due to girlfriend pressures, I think).

Stop for gas, back to the office, and then go outside so my trainer could have a smoke and go over some company procedure. Some of it was routine stuff—be in uniform and look clean and neat, fill out paperwork, turn in paperwork on time—but there were a couple items that were particular to certain customers or jobs.

After that, he said see you later. Not just because I was now fully trained and on my own, but also because today was his last day at the company. He wasn't really interested in following in dad's footsteps; he was off to work at a financial company downtown.

Suddenly I felt a connection with him, more than I thought I'd ever feel. He'd gone from being the fratty-dressing tan guy at the office to being my sole source of training and help. Initially I had brushed him off as working for HR, and thus evil (I've never met an HR person I liked); now he was a bit more human and personable. And as I realized I would never see him again, that by itself made me feel that much more attached to him.

Hiring

I got hired today. I really didn't expect it to happen so fast.

Yesterday I was making my rounds to a couple of places to drop of my resume. I figured doing it in person would help show my dedication to the job to any potential future employers.

I found one company where the boss-man, in a weird sort of rambling discussion, explained how terrible it was, because business was booming there, and he had taken on 10 new drivers in the last month. And while he would always love to have one more driver, he wasn't sure whether it would make sense to take me on given the unpredictable nature of the work.

However, when I told him that I'm willing to work any time of day, and don't care whether I work in-town or long-distance/out-of-town deliveries, he said they might be able to use me, and that he'd talk to his dispatchers about it.

This morning, he called me up and asked if I wouldn't mind coming in to fill out an application.

I made it there around 2:00 in the afternoon. I met the boss-man, and he said that when he told the dispatchers about my availability, and where I live in town (apparently I'm really close to a client who does a lot of after-business-hours deliveries), they said "Bring him on."

So it actually wasn't just an application I was filling out; I was getting hired. I spent the next hour or so doing paperwork, and trying to gleam as much as I could about my new job from the hints buried in the legalese.

Welcome

Let's skip over the introduction and get right to details, yes? I found myself unemployed for the summer, with no research to do or classes to TA at my university, and no other job lined up. And I had just realized the month before that my bank account was in bad shape—as in, in two months I would be flat broke.

So, I brainstormed with a few friends to come up with some short-term jobs that I could get hired for quickly, in order to pay the bills until something more permanent and substantial came up.

That's when we hit on the idea of being a courier driver. I actually didn't really think couriers were a big operation; all I knew about them came from Neal Stephenson's dystopian future in Snow Crash, where couriers ride high-tech skateboards and use magnetic tow ropes to get free rides down the highway.

Being a courier driver would suit me pretty well, I think. I like cars and driving, and I know my way around the city pretty well. And I hate to sit still or go slowly (my driving record can attest to that). I also have some experience from internships at doing on-site work—deliveries and such—and I know that I like jobs where I don't have to plan more than a day in advance… and I'm quite good at them.

I'm going into this with no real idea of what it will be like, aside from a bit of on-site IT experience, so I thought, what a perfect thing to blog about.