Your Truck is Your Office: The Unauthorized Field Manual

A Gus-approved handbook for surveyors whose workspace comes with mud, rattles, and at least one mystery smell.

Introduction – Congratulations, You’ve Been Promoted

Welcome aboard! As a crew chief, you are now the Facilities Manager of a four-wheeled office that smells faintly of wet socks, stale coffee, and optimism.

Your benefits package includes:

• One dented clipboard (still functional)

• Seventeen rogue pencils (six with no lead)

• A coffee mug that now qualifies for its own historic preservation plaque

From this point forward, your “office” is a mobile command center—part engineering lab, part diner, part rolling shed.

Section 1 – Corporate Layout of Your Mobile Office

Executive Suite (Driver’s Seat):
Primary location for decision-making, GPS swearing, and coffee spill cleanup. Also doubles as your “inbox” for unopened mail from three projects ago.

Break Room (Passenger Seat):
The designated storage for lunches, extra jackets, and that one piece of rebar you keep meaning to take out but haven’t since last September.

Supply Closet (Back Seat):
Contains everything you don’t need today, but will desperately need tomorrow.

Warehouse (Truck Bed):
An archaeological dig site containing broken stakes, empty paint cans, a ratchet strap that’s now fused into a knot, and occasionally, an actual tool.

Section 2 – Office Policies & Procedures

Coffee Policy (Clause 1.1):
All coffee must remain upright. If spilled, the nearest crew member is required to offer condolences and hand you a paper towel with “Good luck” written on it.

Tripod Storage Act (Clause 2.3):
Tripods must be secured at all times—unless you enjoy high-velocity javelin simulations during hard braking.

Seatbelt for the Total Station Rule (Clause 4.1):
If you wouldn’t toss your kid in the back without a seatbelt, don’t do it to your optics.

Cable Handling Guideline (Clause 6.2):
You will own fourteen charging cables. Only one will work, and it only works while bent at a very specific angle known only to the cable.

Section 3 – Common Workplace Hazards

The Sliding Bin of Death:
Every truck has one. The moment you park on a hill, it comes charging toward you like a Labrador in a thunderstorm.

Surprise Paint Eruption:
Caused by leaving a spray can under your vest and sitting down quickly. Results in “accidental art” on the inside of your truck door.

Wildlife Encounters:

• Bees in the door jamb (territorial)

• Raccoon in the bed (friendly but eats your lunch)

• Spider in your hard hat (vindictive)

Section 4 – Office Politics

Bipod vs. Shovel Rivalry:
Shovel says bipod never does any heavy lifting. Bipod says shovel has no precision.

The GPS Rover Diva:
Refuses to work if it’s cloudy, windy, humid, or if the stars aren’t aligned with its “mood.”

The Tape Measure Gossip:
Constantly unspools itself just to create workplace drama.

Section 5 – Office Technology Support

IT Policy:
If the data collector freezes, turn it off and on. If that fails, glare at it until it feels guilty enough to work.

Power Supply Doctrine:
Yes, you have spare batteries. No, none of them are charged.

Software Update Protocol:
Never, ever during field hours. Doing so will summon rain, errors, and a call from the client asking “Is it done yet?”

Section 6 – Employee Wellness Program

Daily Stretches:
Bending over to pick up the wrench you just dropped in the gravel. Repeat as necessary.

Diet:
One gas station breakfast burrito, two large coffees, and eight hours of self-reflection on why you made those choices.

Hydration:
Two bottles of water, three coffees, and a dawning realization that you haven’t seen a bathroom since the last county line.

Section 7 – End of Day Cleanup

Cleanup Protocol:
Push everything toward the back of the bed until it doesn’t fall out when you open the tailgate.

Decontamination Clause:
Remove old sandwiches before they require a hazmat permit.

Conclusion – Love Your Office

She’s loud, messy, and occasionally smells like a raccoon lived in her (because one did), but without your truck, you’d just be the strange person standing in a ditch holding an expensive stick.

Take care of your mobile office for land surveyors. She’s the one thing standing between you and a 3-mile hike carrying a total station like it’s a baby.