8/12/07

One of the lessons I learned early on in life was to manage expectations. In this business, I find that it's best to expect very little. That way, if things go well, I'm pleasantly surprised. If not, I was prepared anyway. Today I woke up expecting the worst.

Worst-case scenario for me today would have been to receive a dispatch to Joplin after spending the day yesterday sitting a couple hundred miles away. As such, I fully expected this to be the outcome. After all, I find that the 'planners' operate much more in a reactionary manner than in a forward-looking manner. A typical decision would be to see the computer screen indicating my truck highlighted for Joplin and to react by sending me to Joplin.

Alas, my lowly expectations were greatly exceeded. I was dispatched instead to pick up a load at our drop lot in Kansas City and take it to Wichita. Now, in a perfect world this information would have been conveyed to me yesterday, but we're starting from minimal expectations, remember? So instead of no miles other than my deadhead to Joplin I got almost 400, plus the deadhead that was sure to follow.

I was pleased to see that our new Kansas City drop lot is much more suited to big trucks than the old one was. We used to have to make a hairpin turn off of a busy street, then navigate a weirdly configured lot in very tight quarters. The new one is actually designed as a drop lot for big trucks and sits back in an industrial park. Very nice.

The time it took to drop and hook at the lot was certainly less than pleasant under the wicked hot conditions. My mirror said 111 degrees at the time, and that was about how it felt. The loaded trailer was over 40,000 pounds and I had a hell of a time getting the tandem release pin pulled. I was in and out of the truck at least half a dozen times and sweating my balls off by the time all was said and done. Why the driver who dropped that trailer had the wheels so far back, I have no idea.

Anyhow, loaded and rolling for Wichita, I received my "Next planned load info." Yeah, yeah, I know, deadhead to Joplin. Nope. Another nice surprise. I'll be heading up to McPherson, Kansas and grabbing a load to take to Joplin. It doesn't add a ton of miles, but every little bit helps. By the time I get to Joplin, my gross pay for the month will be at roughly $1,830 with the 14th and 15th still to come. I like to treat $2,000 per check as the minimum, so that should be pretty easy to exceed.

I pulled into the last service plaza on the Kansas Turnpike in time to catch the last few holes of the PGA Championship. Grabbed some grub, turned the TV on, set the channels to 'auto-program' and started looking. No PGA Championship. I got eight channels, which isn't bad, but none of them had golf. I think we're really fortunate to have someone like Tiger Woods to watch. Someone who transcends a sport in the way that he does only comes along once in a generation, so I enjoy watching the major championships unfold. But today it just wasn't meant to be. Oh well.

For anyone looking for a different type of movie, I would recommend Mail Order Wife. I'm not going to ruin the plot for anybody who may want to check it out, but I will say it was refreshingly different from a lot of the crap that's out there these days.