Things haven’t been good this week. Please excuse me if I ramble a bit.
Wednesday at the major recycling/recovery plant in town, a 55 year old male who had worked for the company for 32 years was killed when a Volvo L90E loader came around a corner at a high rate of speed and the bucket 3ft off the ground cut his legs off, severing both femoral arteries and then crushed him.
The loader operator had worked at the plant for less than a year and had been warned numerous times to slow down. The guy who was killed was required to wear heavy ear muffs and the OSHA folks figure he didn’t hear the loader on the other side of the wall. This particular facility has killed a person a year for the past five years and if they hadn’t gotten someone to the hospital quickly in February, this would be their second this year (and it is only May!).
Just a reminder folks, be careful out there. You may work in an office or out of your home, but just take your time and be careful. It’s Friday the 13th, today. Watch yourselves and those around you.
Last night’s happenings weren’t nearly as serious. But they could have been.
Around 0130 last night, I got a call from one of my commercial trash drivers. He said that there were two men in a Nissan King Cab truck that had been following him around, stop to stop, for an hour or so. At first he thought that they might be lost but he took some evasive maneuvers and they kept following him. They were now sitting across a parking lot from him, pointing a flash light at him and turning it on and off.
But that wasn’t the freaky part; they were both wearing platinum blonde costume Tina Turner wigs.
He said he couldn’t get close enough to them to get a license plate and wondered what he should do besides call 911 and have them tell him that there is nothing the police could do.
I asked him if he felt threatened and he said he didn’t. I told him that he might want to hold on while I drove over to his location and while he held their attention I could try and sneak up on them and got their license number and called 911.
My first thought was of thieves. Here is why; After September 11th, 2001, the FBI paid my facility a visit to inspect our security. Security at the garbage truck parking lot, you ask? Yes. My company had to spend $10K in fencing, gates and pavement so as to make it even more difficult than it was before to steal one of our trucks
If you remember what happened in Oklahoma City, domestic terrorists packed a moving van with homemade explosives and essentially took out a building. Now imagine that explosion with twice the amount of explosives (30 cu yds) and more than twice the punch (wrap an charge tighter and you get a bigger bang) that can get into the parking garages of the local federal and state buildings with barely a signature.
I have two guys in costume following one of my drivers around. They don’t have to worry about getting into the parking lot and then getting the truck out, here is one running in the middle of the night with no one around but a lone driver.
I asked and made sure that he had his doors locked and that he had his sledge hammer with him. He confirmed that he did, but that he didn’t want to stay in one spot for too long and wait for me to come over.
He then decided that it would be a good idea to tell me about something that happened to him last week. Some guy in a white Isuzu Trooper followed him into a dead end ‘T’ style alleyway and then parked, blocking him in. The guy waits until my driver is turned around and trying to exit the alley and then proceeds to step out of the Trooper and masturbate in the direction the driver.
Needless to say, this floored me and I had to hold back so as to not chew his ass over the phone for not telling me this last week.
I am now pissed off enough to tell the guy he has two options: He can limp around his route for a bit and wait for me to come out to his location or he can drop his two ton forks and charge them.
He knows what is going to happen if I show up out there; first I’m going ambush and hog tie those two bastards and then chew his ass while we wait for the cops. So he turns his truck around, lowers his forks and runs through his gears in their direction.
Their little truck weighs 3,200lbs, his weighs 48,000lbs. Needless to say, they did the boot-scoot and boogie on out of there.
We never did get a plate number, but I am working on freeing up some of my office time so that I can put in some road op time in the next couple weeks.
So I guess that the moral of this rambling little post is be careful out there and don’t ever let me catch anyone fucking with my drivers.
Acme Security Consulting Co here.
Take some of that company cash and equip each driver with one of those 5 million-power hand spotlights. Intense light makes a good deterrent, as most rats scuttle to a darker place when spotlighted.
Each truck should also be equipped with a “party cannister” size OC (Oleoresin Capsicum), and the drivers taught to use it. The cannisters, about the size of a 5B:C fire extinguisher, will cover an assailant or twenty with pepper spray from almost 50 feet away. The personal size ones must be deployed inside of 10 feet.
Bill not in the mail, will be collected at next Blastorama, which, if I’m hosting, will have to be put off for at least a month due to me sailing North from your fair city in the near future.