9/27/07

The practical route that my software suggested would have taken me past Chicago last night. I have developed a serious distaste for Chicago, so I angled down on I-69 to Indianapolis and then across. I think it cost me about 20 miles, but more time running at 65mph in Indiana, as opposed to 55mph in Illinois, probably took less time anyway.

I was struggling a little as I finished off the run into Pocahontas this morning, but a good dose of Dropkick Murphys provided a little energy boost and all was well enough. I dropped my trailer and took a look around the yard. Yeah, the outbound driver wasn't there. Typical. I was about a half hour early rolling in. By the time I dropped and inspected the truck and trailer, it was pretty close to my scheduled arrival time.

I fired off a message to CFI telling them the other truck was nowhere to be found. They quickly sent a message back saying he was there. Obviously I had overlooked the possibility that his truck might be invisible. Morons. In my complete state of exhaustion I wasn't in any mood to play that game. I parked in front of the trailer and went to bed.

About ten minutes later a bobtail pulled up in front of me. The guy had probably been having breakfast at the restaurant next door or something. Technically speaking, he wasn't late for the relay. Technically speaking, I didn't give a shit. The sooner I got rid of the paperwork, the sooner I could go to bed.

I slept for an hour or so until I got beeped with another load assignment. There was a relay inbound to Pocahontas that I would pull to Ohio for tomorrow morning. Not too bad I suppose. The scheduled relay time was 2pm, after my 14 hour clock was up, but I would have plenty of time to deliver it legally. The run was 373 miles so it wouldn't be difficult at all. Back to bed.

An hour later the guy showed up with the load. I was drifting in and out of sleep, but I heard someone set his brakes next to me. There would be no reason for anyone else to be parking that close to me, so I got up and looked to see if it was him. It was. Relay made, trailer inspected, load dispatched for 7:30am Friday, now it was time to sleep for real. And sleep I did.

I didn't set an alarm. As long as I was rolling by midnight, there would be no issues with time. I just wanted to let my body rest until it decided to give me the thumbs-up to proceed. I finally rolled out of bed around 2:30pm, feeling pretty good. Good, that is, until I did my running for the day. Before I took off, I was just a guy who had gotten a little out of shape. About a half mile into it, I officially gave myself a new designation - fat bastard. I forgot to grab my heart rate monitor when I was home, but I'm pretty sure 'beating out of my chest' is not the target range I was going for. I can tell that much with no technology at all. This is going to be a long couple of months but I have to whip my ass back into shape somehow. After my jog and walk (more walk than jog unfortunately) I got in the truck and hung out for a bit. My ten hour break was up at 5:45pm, so that's when I planned to roll.

I had a nice easy drive across to the Columbus suburbs. I wondered what in the hell was going on in Indiana, where a ton of big trucks seemed to be going really slowly. There were a shit-ton of cops with people pulled over along I-70, but going 10-15mph below the speed limit just seems stupid to me. I cruised by a few of them stationed in the median with my cruise set right at 65. No worries at all.

My directions didn't seem to make a lot of sense before I got to Marysville, but they were pretty clear once I got here. Clear right up to the point that it was dark and foggy and I drove right past the rinky-dink little sign for our customer. It's on a skinny little county road with nowhere to turn around, so that minor error cost me about twenty miles and a half hour. The directions said that overnight parking was available and they were correct, so here I lie. I should get a nice night of sleep with the truck off and the cool weather. I do love the fall.

Quite a few people at quite a few outfits have been bitching about miles this month. The various theories are making the rounds, but Occam's Razor works for me - the simplest explanation is probably the correct one. My guess is that people aren't shipping much right now. One tangential bit of confirmation for me seems to be the fact that I've only gotten one call from a trucking recruiter in the last two weeks. Usually it's three or four a week. I'm guessing they aren't hiring as aggressively because they don't have as much work. Just a guess.

I did get a message from a guy, representing "The largest company in the world" while I was sleeping today. Yeah, that would be G.E. I got online and looked up the number that he left me. Yeah, his division of G.E. would be Primerica. No thanks brother. My resume states very clearly that I have no interest in another financial job, nor in a different OTR job. The financial field is a thing of the past for me and I'm fine with the OTR job I have now. But who always calls? Financial firms and OTR companies. It might behoove these guys to read once in a while.