Transmission over a trucker’s Citizen Band Radio could go something like this: “Breaker-breaker, you have one Sittin’ Pretty on I-80 at mile marker 120. That’s a big 10-4.” Perfecto Aquino, one of our Goodness Greeness drivers, explains to me what this transmission means: “There’s a state trooper at that mile marker.” Sittin’ Pretty is just one of a long list of names for a trooper. Sample from these: Bandit, Smokey, County Mountie, Tijuana Taxi, Bearmobile, Jack Rabbit, Andy, Plain Wrapper, Green Stamp Collector, City Kitty, Decoy, Bear Trap, Camera, Pigeon Plucker, Boy Scouts, Pink Panther, Paper Hanger, and Wall-to-Wall Bears means police are everywhere—and slow down.
With twelve years experience on the road, Perfecto tells me more about trucker codes over the din of the Refrigerator King poised above our cab, chilling the twenty-six foot trailer in tow full of organic goodness as we travel toward our first stop in Iowa City at three o’clock in the morning. “Warning one another is part of trucker courtesy. We take care of each other like brothers and sisters. If I get in trouble, other truckers will stop for me faster than any state trooper. When I pass another truck, as soon as I have enough space to move back over, the driver will flash his headlights on and off and then I thank him by blinking my hazard lights. It’s nice and comforting to know we are watching each other’s backs because it can seem lonely out here.”
Today and every day of the week, up to fourteen Goodness Greeness drivers deliver to the Midwest region, from Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana, and Michigan all the way back to Illinois. An average route around Chicagoland looks like a Friday for Julian Avila. He’s at Stanley’s by five-in-the-a-m to unload three full pallets in exchange for three empty ones. He then exchanges full pallets for empty pallets at a few Caputo’s stores in Addison, Bloomingdale, and Hannover Park, a Dominick’s in Mundelein, Cub Foods in Arlington Heights, Peapod’s impressive state-of-the-art warehouse in Skokie, and two Fruitful Yields in Elgin and Schamburg. He finishes over at O’Hare to pick up a dozen boxes of Mycopia Mushrooms. The vast airport warehouse is crisscrossed with scrambling fork lifts and is a jolting contrast to the stops before. Relatively new to driving, with only three years under his belt, Julian remembers well what it was first like. “It was really hard for me to get used to how traffic treated me as a big truck. All the cars want to get in front of me and they’ll cut me off to do it. I had all this anxiety about getting to my stops on time. I’d worry about it while sitting in blocked traffic, getting lost on a new route, and having weird flukes like a rock hitting the radiator so it busts. It started to take a toll. But eventually I got used to my runs and I just don’t worry as much.” At the end of his day, Julian is back at our warehouse around five-in-the-p-m, a twelve hour day in total.
Perfecto’s route is a bit different. It includes just a few stops in Iowa: two New Pioneer Co-ops, a Tait’s Natural Foods, the Maharishi University, and another co-op called Everybody’s. To compensate for the lack of drop-offs, his route includes three farm pick-ups. His GPS system suction-cupped to the windshield guides him around—until he thinks he knows better and tries an alternate route. We get lost on our last pick-up because the farm’s address can not be read on the GPS. All I want to do is lie down. Perfecto tries to swat at flies that stole into the cab so they could buzz in our ears. Cell phone calls go in and out of range but we eventually find our way, soaking in the sights of a sunset and a farmer in overalls named LaVern using a tractor fork lift to place his perfectly wrapped boxes of sugar baby melons into our Goodness Greeness truck. Perfecto’s route ends up taking eighteen hours, eighteen hours of sun and darkness, around winding roads to obscure farms, loading and unloading, a buggy ride with three Amish children and their dog Frex, only to get back to the Dan Ryan to intercept a post-Sox game traffic lurch. A car of students in front of us can’t stop pumping their fists. “They want me to blow my horn,” Perfecto says aloud as he presses a button on his steering wheel. The kids respond fanatically, so encouraged they ask him to do it once more. He presses his blow horn again, remarking with pride, “They love it.”
Profound, new-found respect finds me as we finally dock at Goodness Greeness. Other drivers are there about to leave for Michigan and Wisconsin. They congratulate me on my recent travels with Julian and Perfecto but it is their hands I shake. I want to shake all their hands. They are the ones who deserve all the congratulations. I’m glad for the experience but even more, I am thankful to know our drivers are out there physically making organics work. Their invested time folds itself into perfect sugar baby melons, boxes of Cal-Organic daikon, and pallets of Driscoll strawberries. It stays there, unassuming, and helps nourish us.
“And what does Ten-20 mean?” I had asked Perfecto earlier that morning. “It’s your location.” Oddly enough, I remembered this translation as I hazily shuffled my feet back into my home, grateful, inches from a bed I could barely resist. Breaker-breaker, Ten-20 home. Down ‘n Out.
Mercedee Renz, Goodness Greeness
