8/22/07

First things first, I still don't give a rat's ass about Michael Vick.

I ran my ass off today, efficiently and happily, so it was a good day. I am wondering if someone in Joplin is messing with me, but more on that later.

I was asleep in Champaign this morning when thunder woke me up. I've been wondering when all of that rain in the northern states was going to find me, so I assumed this was it. As it turned out, it was much sound and fury signifying nothing. A lot of thunder, but hardly any rain. By the time I got rolling everything had blown through.

I was running up 294 on the west side of Chicago when I saw the dreaded orange barrels and brake lights. Shit, here we go... Actually there was someone stalled in the left lane and everything got rolling once we passed him. Nice. I didn't have much extra time, so a traffic jam would have sucked.

At the customer, I was told to wait in my truck because they had a truck scheduled ahead of me. As I sat (watching five other trucks come and go), I was actually quite taken by the spectacle on my windshield. A bunch of bees were hovering around my truck. They took turns working on the carcasses of the bugs that had met their demise as I rolled through Illinois yesterday. By the time the guy came out and told me to back in, they had cleaned my windshield almost completely. All that was left was the dried-up white residue. Pretty interesting.

The forklift driver worked quickly, having me empty within a half hour. As he counted the boxes and pallets that he had pulled off my truck, he looked a little puzzled. The 21 pallets matched the paperwork, but he counted 295 cases while the bills said 554 cases. Great, now what? It only took me a second to figure out the problem. There were eight huge boxes with different piece counts written on top. One had 34 cases, one 36, and so on. The forklift driver had counted each one as a single box. The boss man started giving me shit about how they only count what they can see, and the shipper shouldn't have loaded things that way. Yeah, well tell the shipper then. What the hell did he want me to do about it? I helped the forklift guy open up the big boxes and count the cases inside. No big deal, but the boss man made a point of bitching at me a few more times. Okay dude, I'll drive back to Houston and have a talk with your shipper. For Pete's sake, man...

Anyhow, on my way to that stop I had received a pre-plan (yes, you read that right, a pre-plan) to pick up a load of tires in Dekalb, Illinois and run it down to Lafayette, Indiana. My dispatch allowed just enough time to get there and not a minute more. The drop and hook at the Goodyear plant went smoothly and, while I was closing up the trailer and the guard was sealing it, they sent me another pre-plan. What has the world come to?

Okay, now for the back story. I've been pretty critical of the planners lately. I went as far as to blast away at them in a private forum on the CFI Drivers message board. I was frustrated and blowing off some steam, but one of the bosses at CFI decided to fire back at me. Being myself, I gave back a little more rhetorical business of my own. Fair enough, discourse is discourse. Through the back and forth with me, concurrent with a seperate issue that another driver on the forum was having, the folks in Joplin said their piece. I disagree with their approach, but it's their company so I don't lose any sleep over it. They certainly don't run things to please me, nor should they. My point all along was that they should do a better job of looking beyond the here and now, and set us up for more efficient use of our time. As good as my miles and earnings have been as I've started in this profession, things could be even better. So, the conspiracy theorist in me, after receiving my second pre-plan in one day and my fourth tight dispatch in a row, started to think someone was saying, "You wanna run, do you? Take that." To which I would reply, "Bring it on fellas." As long as I'm legal, I can go until the wheels fall off. In reality the timing of these runs is just an odd coincidence, but it still made me chuckle.

So anyway, the run to Lafayette was another just-in-time arrival. I grabbed an empty there and headed north to Kouts, Indiana to grab my next load. As I drove toward the shipper, I seemed to remember going there before but I couldn't picture the place. Once I got there, I remembered...[Cue the memory machine here] One of my first runs picked up at that shipper last summer. When I arrived, there was a CFI truck parked on the driveway with his lights off and his curtain drawn. I was two hours early, so I pulled in behind him and watched TV for a while. Fifteen minutes before my appointment, he was still apparently sleeping, so I went inside and was assigned to a dock. After I backed in, the other CFI driver came around the corner and parked next to me. I was catching up my log book when he knocked on my door. What followed was awesome...

Him: You shouldn't be cutting in front of people like that. That's a good way to get your ass kicked!
Me: I had a 10:00 appointment, so I had to check in.
Him: Yeah, well so did I!
Me: How the hell am I supposed to know when your appointment is? You were sleeping.
Him: You never heard of knocking and waking me up?
Me: Dude, I'm not waking you up to do your job. I kept my appointment.
Him: That's a good way to get your ass kicked!
Me: Hang on a second.
[Picture me getting out of my truck, thoroughly amused by the prospect of this old man kicking my ass. That would be a story to tell the grandkids.]
Me: Did you just say you're gonna kick my ass?
Him [walking back to his truck]: You shouldn't be cutting in front of people. I'm calling in on you buddy!
Me: Tell them I said hi.

I don't know if the written word does that scene justice, but it was really funny, I swear. A month into my career, I was about to get beat up by an old guy. This job was even more interesting that I thought it would be.

Tonight though, no drama. They loaded me very quickly and I got back on the road. I stopped in Plymouth, Indiana to scale my load and fill the tanks, and my 14 hours had run out, so here's home for the night.

Tomorrow I'll have a full day of driving to get to the consignee in eastern Pennsylvania. My dispatch says I have to be there by midnight and my instructions say I can't deliver early, so I'll make a call or two in the morning to get clarification. If the dispatch and the instructions are both correct, I won't be able to leave here until 10am at the earliest, on account of the 14 hour rule. Even then, I'll be hard pressed to find a place to shut down for the night once I'm empty. I'm hoping I can get rid of the load some time in the evening, but I guess I'll have to wait and see.