Holiday shopping frenzy or not, he keeps on truckin'

Dawn has yet to break when Mark Taylor, a trucker for Wal-Mart Stores Inc., lines up for his Monday morning orders at the company's Porterville, Calif., distribution center.

It's a week before Christmas, and much of the retail world is in pandemonium -- suppliers rushing to deliver new shipments, retailers struggling to keep shelves stocked and customers served.

But inside the cab of Taylor's 18-wheel International, it's a sea of calm.

"You go into the office and they're stressed out because they've got all these loads to cover, but for us, it's the same. It is what it is, the travel time to the store is the same," said Taylor, 46.

His usual workweek is a five-day, four-night route around California or the Southwest -- "running wild" in Wal-Mart trucker parlance -- delivering goods to stores, used pallets to warehouses and manufacturers' merchandise to distribution centers. Those are the nights he sleeps in a berth in the back of his truck cab, under pictures of his wife and teenage son and daughter.

"I enjoy being out and about and seeing things," Taylor said. "It doesn't get better than what I've got here."

This day, Taylor gets an assignment for a trip to the Rosemead Wal-Mart store and back, which will take about 10 hours with breaks. After checking in with the dispatcher, he walks outside to the long rows of naked-looking truck cabs awaiting their trailers. The sun is beginning to rise, shedding a hazy orange glow onto the Sierra Nevada peaks to the east of the 160-acre lot.

He drives the unattached rig to his assigned trailer, one of more than 1,300 lined up in Porterville. Taylor deftly whirls the engine around to back squarely onto the hitch of the trailer, which is filled with general store merchandise to restock Rosemead's shelves.

Then Taylor hops out of the cab with a crowbar-like metal rod, ready for the attaching procedures he might perform half a dozen times in a day.

He plugs the air line, emergency line and electrical cables from the cab to the trailer, cranks up the "landing gear" that keeps the trailer moored to the ground, rechecks tags to make sure he's got the right load, locks the trailer with a cobalt lock and checks each of the 18 wheels' air pressure by listening to the thud when he bangs on it with the rod.

Taylor climbs back into the cab to start up the machine. The low growl other drivers hear outside the giant truck is somewhat muffled inside the cab, replaced by steady vibrations that rumble through the floor and seats.

It's 7:20 a.m. when Taylor pulls his 63,000-pound tractor-trailer out of the yard and onto the road.

His quiet manner aside, in his uniform of navy slacks, crisp white Wal-Mart button-down shirt and wind-breaker, Taylor looks more like a Marine than Central Casting's version of a trucker. He is trim and fit, with hair cropped close to his head. A neatly trimmed mustache graces his upper lip. He wears small, thin, wire-frame glasses.

He maintains his physique the old-fashioned way, he said: eating well and exercising.

Taylor's wife makes a week's worth of food that he stores in his truck's fridge and heats up at truck stops or in Wal-Mart employee break rooms. And he uses his rests on the road to power walk around truck stops and -- when no one is looking -- doing a few sets of calisthenics while his trailer is being loaded or unloaded at a store or warehouse.

Taylor has heard the common criticism lobbed against his employer: that it's miserly toward employees and treats them unfairly. But the complaints baffle Taylor, who says his Wal-Mart job is the best he's ever had.

And although no one at the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer will discuss specifics, Taylor says he and his colleagues are well-paid and well-respected, with little turnover and generally good job satisfaction.

Taylor first saw the possibilities in being a truck driver when he was a child. He was born in Canoga Park and moved with his family to Fountain Valley in Orange County when he was 15. It was on his family's yearly vacations to Yosemite, Yellowstone and other great American parks that an idea about his future began to take shape.

"Wherever we'd go, I'd see trucks," Taylor said. "I thought, 'Why only do this once a year when you can do it all the time?' I like the feeling of going out and about and seeing different things."

It takes about four hours to get to Rosemead from Porterville when you're driving in a big rig. Cars cruise up the Grapevine at 55 mph, but Taylor holds his rig steady up the steep hill in the far right lane at 25.