Thomas Murray's blog: "My Life"

Well I'm back!  To finish telling the story of my truck driving career up until the present day. I last left off my story where I had just been fired from CR England. I had two choices. I could get a bus ticket back to Indianapolis and look for a job there or I could go to San Antonio and stay with my Mom until I got a job. Now you have to understand something about my dear Mother. She is the ultimate bitch and I will tell some stories about her later on but knowing that my Mom is a bitch you can understand why I really didn't want to go to my Mom's house but the truck driving opportunities are bigger in Texas so I decided to get on the Greyhound Bus and go to San Antonio, Texas to look for a job. So I got to my Mom's house and my step dad Jesus (Hey Seuss)   he took me to the library and told me where to put in applications and gave me some numbers to call and within a few days I had a job at this construction place driving a dump truck.

It wasn't a bad job really. I would pull up and he would load me with dirt and I would usually take 5 or 6 loads a day over to the Terra Bella housing development in San Antonio. I usually got paid about $400 a week. I moved in with my brother Jesse and his wife and kid and I slept on the couch. His wife didn't like this arrangement. She argued that she wanted to walk around the house naked if she wanted too. Frankly I wouldn't have cared if she did lol. Anyway it was always the same stuff every day there was like something wrong like  I would leave a Dr.Pepper bottle on the table and his wife would have a fit. They didn't even have a garbage bag. Picture a broken down trailer where the door doesn't even lock and there are roaches everywhere and that's where my brother lives. I know he doesn't have much money but when you are living in a BROKEN DOWN trailer that looks like a condemned building  you are really going to complain about something as stupid as a Dr.Pepper bottle when your house looks like Beck's Landfill in San Antonio. Anyway I stayed at my brother's and he worked at a Golf Course mowing the lawns and stuff and he would have to go to work everyday at 4:00AM.

I didn't have to be at work until 8:00 but since my car was back in Indiana and I didn't have a way to get to work, he drove me to work at 4:00AM and I just climbed into the sleeper of one of the trucks there on the yard and took a nap until 8:00. I usually worked until 5 or 6 at night. I worked there for about a month and a half until one morning when I didn't have a ride to work and I had some guys from working coming to pick me up at the store across the street from my brother's and his dog followed me and my brother blamed me for the dog following me and when the dog didn't come home my brother and his wife got into a rage about it and my brother packed up my stuff and brought all my shit to my work and left me there at work without no place to go and no money no car no nothing. I asked my boss if I could just sleep there at the shop because they had a fridge I could put my food in and a shower and I didn't mind sleeping on the floor. Just a few more weeks and I could have had a place of my own but my boss wouldn't let me. 

I told my boss that I HAD to go back to Indiana to get my car and so that night my Mom swung by and took me to this broken down motel on Broadway in San Antonio called Casa Linda and I stayed there for two nights and waited for my bus. I took the Greyhound back to Indianapolis, Indiana but I didn't have any money for gas to get back so it was like a week and a half before I could leave to go back to Texas because I had to wait on my check to get mailed to me and that took forever. So I sat at my Grandmaw's house in Indiana just waiting around surfing online not doing nothing like I did for 7 years and just waited for my check to get there. Finally it did get there and I packed up all my stuff and I went to Memphis to visit my Dad and Grandmaw for a few days and then I drove back to Texas to look for a job. 

Within a few days my step dad told me to call this one guy and ask him about a job driving sand to oil wells so I did and he hired me. A few days later I went to meet the guy and he gave me the keys and told me a little bit about the truck and I left and took the truck to Dallas for orientation for the company. The first day I had the truck though I got stuck and had to call a tow to pull me out of the mud. The guy I am working for he is an owner operator and so whenever I get stuck in the mud or something like that I have to pay for the tow. So the very first day I owed him 350 dollars for the tow. I went to orientation in Dallas and when it came time for my road test the instructor said, "Finally I got a good driver!"   I better be after about four years of trying to become a truck driver. After that I drove back to to San Antonio and I got a trainer. This time though the trainer didn't share the truck with me. I had my own truck and so did he. He would just help me at the Oil Wells when I got ready to unload my sand he showed me now to work the Pneumatic Trailer. I only had him as my trainer for the first four loads and then I was on my own. That was back in September and I have been living in that same truck ever since. I think this time I might actually get to stay at this job. I am finally a truck driver and I have my own truck and I can do my own thing and its pretty easy. I just open my hatch on my trailer and they pour the sand down in there and I get weighed and if the weight is good then I head to the Oil Well where I unload the sand by hooking up the hoses and that's about it. I make 25% commission on every load that I do. Usually its around 150 per load on average. So anyway that's basically how I ended up living in this truck. Mostly I park every night at Love's Truck Stop in San Antonio or if I have loads in Cotulla I park at Loves at Exit 39 on IH35 but here lately I have been staying and doing loads in San Antonio. They don't have any loads today because its Thanksgiving week and the oil wells are down. Schlumber J is down today too. I thought I would be getting a load today but it looks like I'll be sitting here at the truck stop until morning.  

Well that about catches you up to date on my truck driving ambitions and what I'm currently doing. Hopefully I can get a load tomorrow cause I haven't yet any yet for this pay period. Until next time see you guys later and remember to like me, fan me, friend me and all that good stuff and comment on my blogs I like to receive feedback!