8/19/07

Well, I tossed and turned, per usual, and wound up falling asleep around 5am this morning. My communications system beeped at 8am and I thought to myself, "Please let me have enough time to sleep a little more." Yeah, be careful what you wish for. I'm honestly at a loss to explain it. I was scheduled to pick up in Dallas, 25 miles away, at 10pm tonight. Then I had to run to Houston overnight for two drops in the morning. I can't seem to buy a mile these days. If they don't get me something good tomorrow, I'm just going to highlight for home and take a day off. The frustration is getting to me at this point, and I'm not one who is prone to frustration.

I hung out at the T/A most of the day and took a nice nap before heading over to the customer at DFW airport. I planned my route, 35 south to 35E south to 121 southwest to 114 southeast to the airport. No problemo, senor. But when I saw the sign for 121, it said "Toll." My atlas didn't indicate that it was a toll road. Some of these suburban toll roads can be wicked expensive for trucks and I don't have much cash with me, so I kept rolling down 35E and had to re-route on the fly. The sign for 635 west said "DFW Airport" so that was a start. Once I got on 635, I started trying to find my destination in my atlas. Driving while map reading: not good. I realized after about two seconds that there was just too much traffic for me to be doing that, so I started looking for a long exit ramp where I could safely get my truck off the road.

A couple of miles down, I saw the exit for Freeport Parkway, which is the street that runs into the airport. Normally, you don't want to be taking unknown routes in cities, for fear of low bridges, restricted routes, and the like. In Texas, fifteen feet is considered a low bridge so I had a feeling I would be fine there. Since Freeport Parkway runs right into the airport, I was reasonably comfortable that I could take a truck down it. It was fine, a little tight as it weaved through an office park, but fine.

I checked in with the shipper about an hour and a half before my scheduled appointment. People often hear me carp about a lack of communication in this business. Well, here's some more carping. I went to the door with the security guard inside. He told me that the entrance at the other end of the building was where I needed to be, then added this little nugget. "They've been waiting for you down there for a while." So, I could have spent less time at the T/A with my thumb up my ass and picked it up earlier? Of course, nobody told me. I was waiting until closer to the appointment time because, under the 14 hour rule, my hours will most likely run out by the time I deliver my two drops. If I started earlier and the customers wouldn't unload me early, I would be running afoul of the law by the time I got empty. If I had known the customer was already waiting for me, I could have given myself enough time to get either an eight or a ten hour break and allow myself more flexibility for tomorrow. Of course, these concepts are completely over the head of the dude sitting at a desk and assigning loads, so what can you do?

The dock was a pretty tight one, designed for day cabs and 48 foot trailers. As time goes on though, I get more and more of a feel on how to approach the various challenges. In this case, staying wide and jackknifing the trailer sharply into the hole was the best approach. Then it took a few pullups to get my tractor squared away. The load is a heavy one, over 40,000 pounds, but it's pretty well balanced. Sometimes this overnight logistics stuff can be loaded funny, but this load isn't bad.

I pulled into a rest area north of Houston to take a piss, and the bastards lined up along the ramp left almost no room for trucks to get through. I had to put it in low gear, ride the clutch, and navigate my way through with about six inches on either side. Bullshit! Why can't someone give these guys a ticket? If you came off the highway any faster than I did, there's a good chance you were going to have an accident.

Since my connection speed here is pretty good, I decided to catch up my e-mails and pay a few bills. Payday is usually the 19th, but it was the 20th this month on account of the 19th falling on a Sunday. I got $60 in detention pay for a load I hauled a couple of months ago, so my gross actually wound up above my self-imposed $2,000 minimum. That was a pleasant surprise. Now if we can just get some freaking miles rolling and get out of this rut, I'll be good to go. I'm planning a week or so off in mid-September, so banking some extra bucks wouldn't hurt right now. I have a feeling that tomorrow won't have the kind of outcome I'm hoping for, since I'm going to be against a ten hour break by the time I get empty. If it's another bullshit run, I'll just highlight and force them to run me back north. That way I can take a day off and maybe break out of the pattern into which I seem to have fallen lately.