Even for the most seasoned drivers, passing through the narrow, dimly-lit Midtown Tunnel can be a white-knuckled affair.
But for Tony Bolen and the 3,000 to 4,000 short-haul truckers in Hampton Roads, who several times a day in 18-wheelers traverse the route that connects Norfolk and Portsmouth, it's hardly an issue.
"Sure, it's a tight tunnel," says Bolen, who has been driving trucks for Gilco Trucking for 10 years. "But when you're driving hundreds of miles a day, you don't even notice it after a while."
Bolen, a long-haired, tattooed 34-year-old who likes to spend his off days at the beach or playing golf with his buddies, drives his father's 1999 white International Pro Sleeper five days a week, routinely logging more than 400 miles a day without leaving Hampton Roads.
Since he's paid by the move and not the mile or minute, Bolen tries to move at least six containers a day.
"The more I move, the more money I make," he says.
Most of his moves are to and from the terminals in Norfolk, Portsmouth and Newport News, the primary profit-drivers of most local trucking companies.
Of the thousands of imported containers that move through the Port of Hampton Roads each year, nearly all of them are handled by a truck at some point in the process.
On a Monday in early July, which was, by Bolen's account, "extremely slow - like a ghost town," he started his day by hauling an empty container to Norfolk International Terminals. After a 20-minute wait, a large, fork lift-like crane plucked it from his chassis.
About 15 minutes later, the same crane loaded a new empty on Bolen's truck, which he hauled to Canon Inc.'s Newport News facility.
There, he exchanged it for a container stuffed with printer parts destined for Tokyo. Then it was back to NIT, where a straddle carrier pulled the container from his chassis and staged it to be loaded onto an outgoing vessel that was supposed to hit the pier later that week.
As soon as the box was off his back, Bolen cruised to the other side of the terminal and picked up another empty that he had to carry to a Suffolk warehouse.
All this before lunch.
"It keeps me busy, and that's the good thing," Bolen said. "I'm not just sitting somewhere behind a desk, and I don't have anyone breathing down my neck. That's the best part."
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