Trucker Rod Grimm is barreling down the dark Massachusetts Turnpike at 65 m.p.h., rushing toward a 1 a.m. delivery appointment in Maine, when his wife, Kim, asks: “Did you get your vitamins today?”
Rod Grimm needs the boost. The two have been driving for 73 hours, taking turns at the wheel and sleeping in the back of the rig, their home away from home. Their black refrigerated Kenworth hasn’t stopped for more than a few truck-stop meals since they picked up their load of frozen shrimp from a Los Angeles warehouse. “They’ve got to have it, and they’ve got to have it now,” Rod Grimm says.
Driving a rig has always involved racing to meet deadlines, but because shippers demand it, today’s truckers must provide stopwatch precision. Late dropoffs can shut down plants or force retailers to send away customers.
Trucks move lots of so-called air-freight packages. And team drivers such as the Grimms, once rare, are much more common. Giants such as Roadway Express Inc. have added teams in recent years. United Parcel Service of America Inc. plans to start doing that this year.
For America’s 1 million long-distance drivers, once the freedom-loving cowboys of the highway, that means some sweeping lifestyle changes. Married truckers live so much of the time in their rigs that some have sold their houses. They deal with child care and birthday presents by cellular phone, and once-grungy truck stops resemble shopping malls that sell everything from low-cal pet food to Ramblin’ Prose greeting cards written by two former truckers.
A recent Federal Highway Administration study found drivers sleeping five hours a day on average and at risk of nodding off at the wheel. Team truckers have a particularly hard time of it. If they aren’t taking pills to stay awake, they are taking pills to sleep. The highway administration is considering new rules that would require drivers to work more regular shifts.
Trucking companies say manufacturers, because they are stocking less inventory, are forcing faster and more frequent deliveries. Average delivery times for U.S. freight are expected to drop more than 25 percent between 1994 and 2000, according to an Ohio State University study.
DuPont & Co. sends trucking companies monthly report cards that sometimes note that a drop-off is five minutes late. Navistar International Corp., a Chicago maker of buses and trucks, requires suppliers to file electronic updates on each load’s departure and arrival. “Retailers expect instant turnaround,” says Jim McMenamin, who manages distribution for New York’s Godiva Chocolatier, where shipping times have dropped 50 percent in the last three years.
The Grimms, who claim to average just one late shipment a year, live on the road about 340 days a year, in Midnight Rose, a truck with a full-size bed, closets and a small stair-climber exercise machine. They paid $140,000 for their rig. Last year, the Grimms were home for Christmas, but away for New Year’s Day and Easter. When they aren’t driving, they are home in Vinton, Iowa, where their 18-year-old daughter, Bethany, has lived with a succession of live-in baby sitters since age 6. She spent some of her summers riding with her parents. When her father is away, Bethany, a recent high-school graduate, sometimes sits in his easy chair at night to remind herself of him.
“There were nights she’d cry herself to sleep,” says Kim Grimm, 39, who keeps an album of her daughter’s prom photos in the truck. “I feel real guilty about that.”
But the Grimms continue to accept grueling cross-country assignments, including this shrimp shipment from Los Angeles headed for the small coastal town of Wells, Maine. The 3,195-mile, three-day trip begins on a rainy Friday night at a warehouse. The shipment is running late because of a five-day delay at the port of Long Beach, Calif. And Shaw’s Supermarkets Inc., the New England chain that is buying the shrimp, can’t wait: Its stores are advertising them.
Rod Grimm, a burly 41-year-old, fumes as workers take four hours (including a dinner break) to pile 3,300 frozen boxes into their trailer. When the shrimp is loaded, he puts the truck in gear as Jasmine, the Grimms’ cocker spaniel, settles between the seats.
A few hours later, he is driving the speed limit through the California desert, the neon-lighted “world’s tallest thermometer” in Baker registering 54 degrees. Earlier, he passed a turnoff for historic Route 66. That tempted him, but the Grimms, with no time for scenic detours, have mapped out the fastest route through 15 states. They will make four stops for fuel, swap places behind the wheel six times and pull over at several diners, including Grandma Max’s (the home of the four-pound hamburger) in Grand Island, Neb., and the All American Travel Plaza in Milton, Pa.
The Grimms’ employer, DFC Trucking Co., in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., is keeping tabs on them. Set amid the dials and gauges of their cockpit-style cab is a mini-computer that, using satellite navigation, communicates their location to DFC. As they speed through the Southwest, the couple’s dispatcher, Annette Dearth, has gone home. But early Monday morning, she will see a printout showing the Grimms’ whereabouts and those of the 19 other rigs she is supervising.
Officials at DFC, a unit of closely held food distributor MBM Corp., say they have no choice but to use Big Brother technology. “The food industry doesn’t stop,” says Rick Lambert, DFC’s general manager. If one truck breaks down, he uses the satellite system to rush another team to the spot, so the load keeps going.
Early Saturday morning, Rod Grimm stretches out in the truck’s cozy sleeping area. Within minutes, he is snoring and his wife is plowing through snow-capped peaks on Interstate Highway 15 in Utah. Twelve hours into the trip, they are on schedule, so Kim Grimm decides to take a quick shower, a luxury on fast-paced deliveries like this one, at a modern truck stop with private showers and laundry service.
There, she gives Jasmine a walk in a parking lot, before grabbing a sweater-and-jeans outfit laid out before the trip began. Ten minutes later, she emerges, with wet hair, ready to hit the road.
When the sun goes down, Rod Grimm takes over again, sipping Diet Coke as he steers through Wyoming. “Hello, Abe!” he greets the 48-foot-tall bust of President Lincoln at a rest stop near Laramie. They then head into the Midwest, making good time and passing within 40 miles of their home. In Morris, Ill., on Sunday night, Kim Grimm calls her daughter to hash out some personal finances: A family friend defaulted on a car loan that Kim Grimm co-signed and needs to send a check. Rod Grimm gets on the line but only for a moment: “Bye, I love you,” he says quickly.
The Grimms, as they drive, are talking with a competing trucking company about a job that would pay more than the $60,000 a year they say they earn now between them, but that would impose on them even harsher deadlines, delivering news magazines, which are at least as perishable as frozen shrimp. DFC makes a counteroffer over the truck’s computer module: A regular route with weekends off. “Our pastor will fall over if he sees us every weekend,” says Kim Grimm, postponing the decision. (A few weeks later, they took the new job.)
In Scranton, Pa., Kim Grimm shakes her groggy husband awake for the final stretch. It is 9 p.m. Monday. He wants to stop for a quick meal, but his wife doesn’t think they can spare even a few minutes. He pulls over anyway. “You better hurry up!” she says as he gets out at a burger place. “I will,” he snaps. A moment later, Rod Grimm steps back into the truck. “Here,” he says, presenting his wife with a small cup of chilled fruit: “Peace offering.”
When Rod Grimm pulls into the Maine warehouse to deliver the load, his wife doesn’t wake up for the drop-off. It’s 12:30 Tuesday morning, and they have completed their haul half an hour early, having averaged more than 1,000 miles a day. Soon, their 1.5 million shrimp, which originated in Thailand, will be loaded by workers into local delivery trucks, repackaged and put up for sale at Shaw’s deli counters.
But the Grimms won’t be resting for long. In three hours, they have an appointment to pick up a load of bottled water that must be rushed to New Jersey.
