Update #17 - The Shepherd of Trucks

Pakistani trucks come in two sizes: large, fat trucks carrying a maximum of 6 tons; and small, scrappy "mountain" trucks carrying a maximum of 12 tons. Confused? Now you are beginning to understand why a "truck shepherd's" life is never dull.

Meet Radek Spinka, ADRA Pakistan's logistics officer, on special assignment from the Czech Republic. He is our primary truck shepherd.


Today he will manage millions of rupees, analyze thousands of details, make hundreds of decisions, and dial up scores of phone calls. All this just to put 23 trucks -- carrying a total of 147 tons of relief supplies -- on the road to Bagh.

At this moment he is trying to find a truck that has disappeared since it left the steel sheet factory near Peshawar, and has taken 30 hours to make a 7-hour trip.



Stacked all over our Rawalpindi office lawns are 500 winterized tents that will take 10 trucks to deliver today. Additionally, he'll send 39 huge custom-built wood-burning heaters on another truck. These were converted into two-burner cooking stoves specially designed for the sixty 1,000-pound miracle school tents we mentioned last week -- 35 of which were delivered and erected by our ADRA team in the past three days.



Then there are the three trucks filled with steel sheets, hammers, nails, saws and shovels, which left Rawalpindi at 3:00 a.m., 5:l5 a.m., and 6:40 a.m. this morning. They should be arriving at the Bagh town of Deerkot within a few minutes. There are six more trucks filled with 2,700 quilts that will be loaded this evening, and two additional trucks filled with steel sheets from Mardan.



Radek is on the phone right now with Ismah, his counterpart in Kashmir. She is a competent 22-year-old with her BA in commerce and speaks English fluently. Recently promoted, she manages to keep about 50 ADRA employees busy off-loading trucks, putting up tents, helping people erect shelters, and coordinating estimated arrival times of the trucks with Radek's help.

Pakistani truck drivers are famous for being tough, diligent, honest, spiritual, and gracious. They are also infamous for being drug addicts, slothful, extortionists, radical fundamentalists, and exacting. You can't tell by looking at the outward appearance. Besides, Radek doesn't hire the drivers. He simply "inherits" them.



It works like this. We have three NGOs (non-governmental organizations) in Pakistan which do nothing but provide free trucks, jeeps, mules, and helicopters to those NGOs --such as ADRA -- that are registered with the United Nations consortium. When we have NFIs (non food items) to deliver to Kashmir, Radek calls up one of those three "transportation" NGOs, giving them 24 hours advance notice. They will want answers to the questions:
What will be loaded?
How much will it weigh? What is the volume?
When will it be loaded? Where will it be loaded?
Who is the contact person?
Where will it be unloaded?
Who is the contact person?

Radek uses ATLAS, a French NGO, most of the time. He gives the information, and they hire the trucks. Then Radek goes the extra mile, getting names of truck drivers, license plate numbers, and mobile phone numbers if possible, so he can help Ismah trace them if and when they get lost -- which happens about 40% of the time!

I'm not ashamed to tell you that our ADRA staff often stops to pray for these trucks, their loads, and their drivers. So far, Radek hasn't lost one of the 118 trucks carrying 812 tons of lifesaving items you have donated with love for the Kashmiri earthquake survivors.

Good news! Radek just informed me that Ismah called and said that the one lost truck has been found, and it is now unloaded.

The shepherd of trucks has done his job today. So has the Divine Shepherd.

Your donations of $3,000,000 during the next nine days will be received with joy so that Radek can faithfully keep on filling, sending, and shepherding trucks filled with shelter kits and quilts to save another 63,000 lives before Christmas.

Reported by Dr. John K. McGhee
ADRA Pakistan