The tanker driver who keeps a second book
He records every stop twice. One book for the office, one for himself. He showed us both.
By Maya Shrestha
InterviewsThe driver — we will call him R.N., because his employer checks the routes — has driven water tankers in the valley for eleven years. He agreed to talk on a day off, at his house, with both books on the table.
The office book holds the trips the company files: time, ward, meter reading. His book holds the same trips plus the ones nobody files — the private stops at triple the posted rate, the nights the meter was never shown because the buyer didn't ask.
He is not confessing. He is keeping score. "If the rate says four hundred and someone pays twelve," he said, "that's not my line to write in their book. But I write it in mine, because one day somebody will ask when the water went missing. And there it is."
We compared eleven weeks of pages. His book records 96 unfiled stops in that window. The department says it has no record of any of them, which is the point of both books.
“I write it in mine, because one day somebody will ask when the water went missing. And there it is.”