My first job on a refrigerated trailer didn’t last long. After three months it turned out that the company was ending its partnership with another company and changes were coming. The most important one was that the other company took all the trucks and we were left waiting for a new delivery, with nothing to drive. Three weeks of waiting with no information at all about when the trucks would be available, when the next trip would be or whether this downtime would be paid in any way. Since I live alone and rely on a single income I couldn’t wait any longer so I decided to quickly find something else. As it usually goes, a job found in a hurry is rarely a dream job, but as the saying goes, if you can’t have what you like, you learn to like what you have. 😁
Within just a few minutes I found a job on a curtain-side trailer. From the very beginning, I knew it wouldn’t be easy, because this kind of work is much more physical—tightening straps, securing the load—and for a woman with no experience in this field, it can be quite a challenge. The boss, however, reassured me during the interview and said I shouldn’t worry about it. Some loads were indeed very simple, where securing them was easy even for me, but there were also loads that were a real challenge. Most of the time I was lucky—either the warehouse workers helped me secure the load or other drivers nearby stepped in.
But that day I wasn’t so lucky. The dispatcher called and sent me to load steel coils. At the time I had no idea what that involved or what was waiting for me. He only told me that if I had any problems, I should call a driver named Artur, who would guide me over the phone. Before calling him I looked online to understand what this type of load actually was. That’s when I discovered that the trailer floor could be opened, although I still had no idea how to do it. 😁
I also had no clue how to prepare the trailer—whether the loading would be from the top and I’d need to open the roof or from the side and I’d need to open the curtains, because every company does it differently. When I arrived it turned out that the driver I was supposed to contact was unreachable, there were no other drivers around and the Italian warehouse worker was not at all friendly toward women in trucks. That’s when things started to get difficult. He didn’t understand English, German or Polish and I didn’t speak Italian, so communication was almost impossible. From gestures I only understood that he was in a hurry and clearly unhappy that I had no idea what I was doing.....
Eventually I figured out how to open the floor. It wasn’t easy, because these floors are not exactly light. But as it turned out, that wasn’t even the hardest part. Under the floor there were beams—four of them. Each one weighed about fifty kilograms!!! They had to be pulled out so the coil could be placed into the openings and then positioned at the front to prevent the load from shifting. Of course, I didn’t have the strength to pull them out and the Italian worker wasn’t willing to help. He stood over me, shouting that I should do it myself. I tried to show him that I physically couldn’t even move them a few centimeters, but he didn’t seem to care. Only after some time did he finally pull them out for me, but instead of placing them properly, he just left them lying to the side.
He loaded the coils onto the trailer, but that was only half the job.
This is what the loaded steel coil looked like:
Now I had to secure them and I had absolutely no idea how! I drove out of the company yard, parked to the side and honestly I just stood there not knowing what to do. The weather didn’t help either; it was almost 40 degrees Celsius outside and on the trailer, it felt even hotter. Time was pressing and I was probably facing hours of securing the load. How do you do it quickly when you have no experience and no idea what you’re doing? 😟
That’s when I hit my first real crisis. From exhaustion, lack of help and no contact with the colleague who was supposed to guide me. I sat down on the trailer and started to cry. I began wondering why I had chosen this path. I had a comfortable office job, I earned well, I felt good there—and now I was standing somewhere in Italy, alone, without help, without knowledge, under time pressure and with little hope that I would manage to do it right.... 🙁
I cried for about half an hour, but eventually I pulled myself together and thought: girl, this is what you wanted to do! You can’t be defeated by one load! You’ve handled difficult situations before, and you’ll handle this one too!
So I slowly started securing the load. At some point I managed to reach the driver, but I was so stressed that I couldn’t even understand what he was telling me. He didn’t have much time either, as he was driving, but he gave me contact to another driver who had just woken up and could spend more time helping me.
This is not how this load should be secured:
And it shouldn’t look like this either:
After I calmed down a bit and spoke with him he sent me photos showing how the load should be secured. In the end I managed to do it properly. It took me about two hours in total but when I finished, I was really proud of myself. Proud that despite all the stress, pressure and difficult conditions, I didn’t give up and I made it!!! 😊
Because of all the stress, I didn’t take a photo of how I secured it properly or at least I couldn’t find it anymore. So I’ll share a photo from my colleague that I received, so you can see how it should look. Notice that at the front there are those beams placed in position—something I unfortunately didn’t have. They were too heavy for me and as I mentioned earlier, there was no one there to help me put them in place. So I drove very carefully and kept hoping that I wouldn’t have to brake suddenly anywhere along the way, because the force would have been huge if the coils had shifted forward. All of those coils together weighed 24 tons.
At the same time this situation taught me something important—that maybe I should look for a lighter type of trucking job. Securing loads like this is extremely physically demanding and it might not be the best option for a woman. I proved to myself that I can do it if I really want to. But maybe this is the moment to find something that suits me better. 😉
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This post is based on my own experience and original photography. AI was used for grammar correction and for supporting the translation process.