So, I spent some time trying to make this thing I called a “driver degree chart”. Sounds fancy, right? It really wasn’t, just something I cooked up.
It all started during that big local flood we had a couple of years back. I was part of a volunteer group trying to get supplies out to folks who were cut off. We had a few donated vans and trucks, and a bunch of people willing to drive them. The problem was, figuring out who should drive what, and where, was total chaos. Everyone said “Yeah, I can drive that!” but you quickly realized not everyone was comfortable with a big van on muddy back roads.
Trying to Make Sense of It
My first thought was simple: just make a list. Who can drive? What can they drive? But that didn’t quite cut it. John might have driven cars for 30 years but never touched anything bigger than an SUV. Sarah was new but had experience with delivery vans. How do you compare? How do you track who’s actually good under pressure?
That’s when I got the idea for the “chart”. I pictured something visual, maybe plotting experience against vehicle types or something. I thought maybe I could assign a “degree” based on skills or past experience. Total pipe dream, looking back.
The Messy Middle
So, I started trying to gather info. Here’s what I went after:
- Years they’d been driving.
- Types of vehicles they’d actually handled regularly (cars, vans, maybe small trucks).
- Any specific experience like driving in bad weather or tricky roads.
- If they ever had any major driving slip-ups (had to ask this carefully!).
Getting this info? What a headache. Some people were honest, some clearly puffed up their experience. Nobody keeps detailed records of their driving history, obviously. Trying to put a number or a “degree” on it felt completely arbitrary. One guy insisted his one trip in a U-Haul made him an expert truck driver. Okay, buddy.
I tried sketching out a chart. Had axes for ‘Years Driven’ and maybe ‘Vehicle Size Handled’. Plotted little dots for each driver. It looked… messy. And honestly, not very helpful. It didn’t capture the real stuff, like who was reliable, who stayed calm, who actually knew the local roads well.
What Actually Happened
In the end, I scrapped the whole “driver degree chart” idea. It was too complicated and didn’t solve the real problem in the heat of the moment. What did we do? We ended up with a super simple shared spreadsheet. Columns for:
- Name
- Phone Number
- Vehicles they felt comfortable driving (we just had to trust them mostly)
- Their general availability
That was it. Not fancy, no degrees, no chart. But it worked. We could quickly see who was available and felt okay driving the van that needed to go out next. Good enough.
Why did I even bother trying to make that chart? Well, truth is, I couldn’t do much else. I’d stupidly twisted my ankle the week before the flood hit. Couldn’t drive, couldn’t haul boxes. I was stuck at home, managing communications. I guess trying to create that chart felt like my way of imposing order on the chaos, my little contribution from the sidelines. It taught me that sometimes the simplest solution is the best, even if it doesn’t have a cool-sounding name.
