Chicago

The big windy.

Chicago is different then most big city's in the United States when it comes to the trucking industry. The only other city comparable to it is Los Angles. New York only lets trucks into one part of the city and the rest of its merchandising is done out of the city and brought in by smaller trucks. Atlanta does not allow big trucks into the city, it has the smaller trucks do all the work, same with Baltimore, Washington D.C. . Most other big city's do business with trucks during both day and night shifts. Chicago and L.A. on the other, hand have a very busy night time hustle.

The trucks come in during the day to points outside the city, like Gary, IN and Portage, IN or south of the city in Chicagoland or Joilet, IL and in the north its Beloit, WI. They wait like racers waiting for the starting gun to go off. At around 7 PM a silent bell rings and they are off. By that time, traffic has died down enough that movement in the city is not impossible. The way in witch Chicago is different is the factories and warehouses are mixed into the very heart of the city and the city is very old, so the streets are small. To combat this most of the truck unloading and loading is done at night when the regular workers go home. This does not mean the traffic is gone, quite the opposite happens by doing it this way they created a double commute. Day workers are going home and a line of trucks as far as you can see are headed into the city along with the night warehouse workers.

I would take pictures of the lines of trucks headed into the city but my camera doesn't do all that well at night with pictures taken from inside the truck.

When you work for a big company that services the Chicago area you get sucked into the area for a few days. Most big truck company's have a trailer yard or terminal in the area where they stack loads to be delivered into the city. So you get a load coming into Chicago and do your delivery, then take the empty either back to your company terminal, or another warehouse to be loaded. Then you grab another load going back into the city. These types of loads are called shags. Since they don't have many miles connected to them company's pay an extra shag fee on top of the miles to make it worth your time. So you do two or three shag's and then ( hopefully!) you get the load out of the Chicago area.

Some company's have local trucks that do a big portion of the shag's in and out of the city but they never seem to be able to get them all, and most O.T.R. (over the road) drivers will not put up with doing shag's for more then 2 days before they start to whine. So in a way the system has been perfected down to this for most of the big city's; deliver to big city, shag 2 loads, get load out of big city area.

Another difference in Chicago is that the citywide freeway system is not a citywide freeway system. It's all toll roads. So you stop every 5 miles or so to pay tolls unless you have a toll transponder in your truck. They automatically pays the tolls as you go past the toll booths.

If you ever find your self in Chicago with nothing to do around midnight go to one of the bridges over the toll roads and watch as nothing but a endless line of trucks passes by in both directions moving the goods of Chicago.

Until next time, be safe.