Introduction
Ah, the glamorous life of a trucker! Let me tell you about the time I unwittingly welcomed some uninvited guests into my cozy rig. This was by far my worst experience since becoming a truck driver as my normally neat and tidy truck became infested with bed bugs and the whole ordeal nearly drove me insane!
When most truckers think of team driving they might think of maybe a husband and wife or two brothers or two business partners. One drives while the other sleeps and then they switch. They are more productive by working together.
And then there was my experience as a team driver. I had good-for-nothing stowaways that slept in my bed all day and then kept me up at night. And to make matters worse they had awful hygiene and smelled to high heaven. In other words, I had a team driver’s nightmare.
Welcoming Them in and Discovery
The episode occurred early on in my trucking career when I was still a company driver for Knight Transportation. The typical mattress in a semi-truck is about 6 inches thick and is made to serve a functional double duty as an absorbent if ever you have an oil or fuel spill. Therefore, it’s adequate, but it’s not luxurious.
So I had the bright idea of getting an extra mattress from Knight’s supply terminal and using two instead of one for some extra cushion. Turns out, that mattress came with its own squatter community. Welcome to my new bed bug Airbnb on Wheels!
One day fairly soon after getting the new mattress I noticed I had some bug bites on my arm. They were a little peculiar because there were three bites and they were all in a row. Now, before this bed bug saga, I was clueless about these little bloodsuckers. So I researched what type of bugs bite in that manner and it was pretty obvious right away that bites in a neat little row were the unmistakable marker of bed bugs.
I soon learned how sneaky these little devils are. They don’t venture out during the day and seem to instinctively know when you’re sleeping and when it’s safe for them to come out. And they don’t have a regular nightly schedule you can anticipate because they don’t feed off you every night. They feed periodically like once every 5 to 7 days.
Nevertheless, I vowed to catch them in the act, and it was these nightly battles that were the hardest part for me and what almost drove me crazy. I would lie in bed trying to be as still as possible to trick them that I was asleep and then I would jump up and turn on the lights to see if they were there but they never were. I started wearing tights and a long shirt but then I was terrified that, due to the lack of delectable real estate elsewhere, I would wake to find bites all over my face.
So one night as I lay awake in ambush, Sun Tzu’s quote came to mind, “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” Therefore, I resolved to do more research on my foe.
So over the next few days, I tried to learn as much as I could about bed bugs. I learned that they mate masochistically with the male actually stabbing and puncturing the female’s body with his little prick. The whole episode creates a bloody mess. That’s one of the signs you have bed bugs is that you see blood spots on the walls or on the bed. So I looked around and I found a bloody spot on the wall under my bed but the bugs had vacated that spot. I always seem to be one step behind them. I also learned that what often happens is that, while attempting to find them, amateurs will unintentionally drive them deeper into hiding and into better hiding places when searching for them and that’s exactly what I did.
Luckily for me, I don’t think there were many of them to begin with. I assume this because I only had one series of three-in-a-row bites. And each subsequent time I found bites–every 5 days give or take–there was still only a straight line of three. However, my research indicated that I should be on the lookout for little baby carcass shells that the youngsters shed as they outgrow them. After a couple of weeks, I found one such shell. Thus, I knew I didn’t have much time before this newlywed couple turned into what looked like an extended family.
How I Finaly Got Rid of Them
Further research indicated a couple of different ways to kill them. The first one I tried was a kind of sticky glue trap that had female bed bug pheromones on it. It was supposed to attract the males and catch them on the sticky surface. This was a disaster. The female smelled the pheromone strips and thought there were some foreign invader females encroaching on her man and so she emitted an even more powerful dose of her own pheromone. Now, a semi-truck is a fairly small space and this super-strong, stinky-sweet, animalic, musky smell of bed bug sex pheromone became so intense that I started questioning whether I was still a truck driver or if I had become a pimp in a bed bug brothel. This invasive ever-present smell was the last straw and I was really losing it. That smell was a constant reminder that my truck was infested and that I was losing the battle for my space and my sanity. I can never forget that smell. To this day, whenever I walk past another truck that has that smell I know when a trucker has bed bugs. So now I had officially had it with these funky, hitchhiking, nymphomaniacal, procreating, moochers. It was time to pull out the big guns.
This big gun came in the form of a no-pest strip that emitted a clear, odorless vapor that the manufacturer claimed was deathly to insects. It seemed to have promise, but the issue was that it came with so many warnings about being dangerous to people and animals, that I feared I might kill myself in the process. Specifically, it stated that it should not be used in a place where a human or animal would spend more than 4 hours. This was definitely going to be an issue since, on a typical day, a truck driver may only spend a total of 4 hours out of the truck. So I would need to vacate the truck to use it. Determined, I got a hotel, took all of my food out of the truck so it wouldn’t get contaminated, and I put the strip in the truck over about a 24-hour period. But it didn’t work. I received new bites a few days later. Because the bed bugs don’t come out every night to feed, they weren’t exposed to the poison and it wasn’t a long enough period to let the poison penetrate every area of the truck.
But I would not be deterred and, learning from my mistake, vowed another attack. So I bought two more (the first time I had only used one). This time I wasn’t taking any chances of defeat. I took vacation time, went home, and left the strips in the truck for about a week. That finally did it and rid me of my harem of bed bugs.
I hope you enjoyed my story about how I acquired bed bugs and how I rid myself of them. I also hope you learned more than you’ll ever need to know about the little critters and how to get rid of them.