My name is Noah Underwood, son of Co-Owner Anthony Underwood and God-Son of Roger "Top" Lalik the IT Manager of John Wood Transport. I worked at John Wood Transport this past summer. I worked for 6 weeks on the Florida route and had a lot of fun.

I learned a lot during my time on the truck and decided to share them with you. In this essay I will tell you about the driving, unloading, and loading portions of the job. I hope you enjoy it.

While driving I usually listened to music or talked with my dad because there wasn’t much else to do. We would stop for fuel sometimes, and I would go get food, and he would fill up the truck. When it was around 1-2 AM we would listen to a talk show called Coast to Coast if I had not fallen asleep. The show mainly talked about crazy conspiracy theories like aliens, and such. This usually sparked conversations and filled empty spaces.

When unloading the first time, I knew basically nothing. I didn’t know how to loosen up the straps or how to even use the cargo bar. I slowly learned and had it down in two weeks. After that, it became a routine, and I could usually take care of myself once we got to where we needed to be.

This allowed us to get work done almost twice as fast. I would continue unstrapping while a car was being delivered, and most of the time we got in and out in an hour or two.

Loading for the first time was a little bit shorter because it was just reverse unloading for me. It was still hard. This took me about the same amount of time as the unloading part to get the hang of. As the summer progressed, I got better and better, and just like with unloading. 

I could be left by myself as I had become reliable enough to unload without supervision, letting us get out quicker. I would say this was the harder of the two though because you had to be very precise when doing it or you could end up causing damage to the car/cars.

Overall, I had a lot of fun because it let me get out of the house and learn a lot of new things. I got to spend time with my dad and see a lot of different places. I will always be glad I did it, because it let me have a very interesting summer. If I could go back, I know I would make the same choice.

~Noah Underwood