My friend, thank you for the load. I look forward to working with you over the next 32 hours straight. Name’s Svyatoslav Rozhdestvenskij, but do not call me Mr. Rozhdestvenskij—that was my father’s name. Call me Svy. Truck number 003, and here is my cell phone number. Your heart may skip a beat the moment your tracker tools detect it is a VOIP. You must understand that an internet phone keeps my costs low and my transparency murkier than the Missouri River. You want a fancy Verizon number? That’ll cost you more than seventy cents a mile. Call me anytime. If I don’t answer, call dispatch—and if they don’t answer…Tebe Konets!
On our 1,800-mile journey together, we’ll traverse mountainous terrain, wintry conditions, and rigid OSHA regulations, so buckle up—because two of those things are no laughing matter.
It is good that this is a weekend transit. Fewer stressed-out, aggressive drivers on the road will make life easier for both of us. Not that I’m calling a broker’s job easy. We are both responsible for moving this freight from A to B. One of us will do it between cat naps, half-baked on the couch. The other will do it with their gnarled hands interlocked around the cold steel of a steering wheel, decked out in full PPE, sleeping like a dolphin in the few moments when the snow isn’t falling harder than the ash at Pompeii.
Of course, this could’ve been picked up yesterday and saved us both some stress—but who could blame you for forgetting the shipper’s abbreviated hours after one too many Fireball shots at the Feel-Good Friday company lunch? Let he who is without sin—or regard for the well-being of a hotshot driver—cast the first stone.
Protracted drives like this allow time for reflection as I traverse this broad land of yours. I often think we’re all running from something, you know? For some, it’s an abusive relationship or a troubled childhood. For others, the suffocating weight of societal expectations. For me, it’s the Wyoming Highway Patrol after I careened through their barricade on the I-80 Kunley Street overpass in Cheyenne when the wind gusts were deemed a “safety hazard.” I didn’t see it that way, and we are on time because of it. Maybe it’s lost in translation from my native tongue, or just the fog of ambiguity—but I’m a man who believes in delivering direct.
That is enough chit-chat for now. I must focus on the road—we’ve got a deadline to make. Come tomorrow, after I’ve screamed myself hoarse upon discovering that the factory you assured me would shut down without these two boxes of widgets is closed for the holiday, you’ll be the one doing all the talking.
