Gee wiz, what can I say? A picture is worth a thousand words? – wish it was worth a thousand dollars – which is what I made this time last year.
Today, after sitting MT for 3 days, I picked up a load of rusty old steel headed to Laredo. It delivers Friday and I’m pretty sure I’ll sit another 2-3 days waiting for something going anywhere. I got a call tonight from Homeland Security informing me that my new TWIC card is ready for pick-up.
Great, now I’ll have one more useless card that’ll mean nothing as far as getting more freight is concerned. I took advantage of the downtime the other day and spent about 90 minutes filling out an application on-line for a non-driving job, but still in the transportation industry. I doubt if I’ll hear anything. I hope I don’t have to buy a tie.
I was talking this morning to the shipping supervisor at the place I was loading in Iona MS. About a month and a half ago he was laid off from his job at a factory that made stuff for the auto industry. He had worked there 27 years and was going to retire soon. It was not that the plant was losing business because of the down economy – the company decided to relocate its factory to Mexico.
He told me that about two weeks after he left the company and was sitting at home angry and depressed, wondering what he was going to do now – his old company called him and asked him if he would consider coming back to work for them on a per diem basis - not as an employee with benefits – but as a temporary quality control coordinator. The job was to work with the Mexicans to correct all the defects that had shown up in the products shipped to a bunch of very upset customers from the (Mexican) new factory. He told them - “Never.”
He had filled out several applications on-line and was extremely lucky to get this job at 1/3 of what he used to make. He is not eligible for any health insurance for 120 days. At 57 years old, figures he’ll be about 77 before he can “retire.”
Photo credit: Marshall J. Gruskin
