7/25/07

Early morning traffic in Jersey... gotta love it. All things considered, today's ride on 78 and 287 wasn't too terrible. I've seen far worse on my previous trips into the Garden State. I got to the customer around 7am and tried to check in.

Habla Ingles? I used to run a restaurant in which 90% of my cooks were (legal) Mexican immigrants, so I picked up enough Spanish to make the kitchen run. Since I've been on the road, I've occasionally tried to use my time to better myself. One way was to order some Spanish lessons and pop in a CD while I'm rolling along. The program is actually quite effective, but here's the rub. I haven't yet gotten to the level where I can say, "I have twenty pallets of stuff in metal drums. Where do I take it?" So, one Spanish speaker sent me to another who sent me to another. Eventually I ran into a guy who was not a native English speaker, but he did have a better command of the language. Finally I got the info I needed and backed into the dock. The twenty pallets didn't take long to unload, so I headed inside to get my signed bills. The forklift driver had disappeared, and I am also apparently not able to say, "Where the hell did he put my bills?" So it took a while, but the guy who helped me the first time finally tracked them down and sent me on my way.

I pulled off to the side and sent in my empty call. Within five minutes I had my next assignment. I was to make a drop/hook in Westampton, New Jersey at 11pm and head toward Michigan. Since the all-knowing feds have their 14 hour rule that hamstrings us, I headed straight to the shipper in hopes that my trailer was already loaded. That way I could get halfway across Pennsylvania before my hours ran out and then get home tomorrow morning. I have to deliver at 4am Thursday around twenty miles from there. I arrived at 11am, dropped my empty, and was told to come back after 3pm when my load would be ready. Yeah, okay. At 3pm I was told that the trailer was scheduled for midnight. So I have to take my full ten hour break here. Then, assuming I can get some sleep before I go, I'll run overnight and get home tomorrow morning. I've ducked my bobtail into the corner of a local fuel stop in hopes that I won't get caught violating New Jersey's anti-idling law in the 95 degree heat. Mandatory rest with no air conditioning, right? Who makes these laws anyway?

The feds are going to find a new way to screw with our rest in the near future. At least that's what it sounds like after the federal courts have declared that the FMCSA violated the law when they adopted new rules for drivers in 2005. The driving day was extended from 10 hours to 11 hours and the mandatory rest was extended from 8 hours to 10 hours. Additionally, drivers could reset their 70 hour clocks with 34 consecutive hours off duty. The 34-hour restarts come in particularly handy when the 70 hour rule starts screwing us over. Now, who knows? I doubt that they'll go back to what they had before, so I guess we'll wait and see. In a typical twist, the rationale used for throwing out the aforementioned changes was denied as a rationale for throwing out the 14 hour rule and the split-sleeper provisions. Pick and choose is apparently the way they do business. If it screws drivers, keep it. If it helps drivers, toss it. In typical jackass fashion, they make the rules such that we have to drive tired, and claim that they're keeping tired drivers off the road.

A friend of mine e-mailed a link to a YouTube video earlier today. Most of these are not all that amusing to me, but this one was pretty clever, so enjoy...