I woke up at the customer this morning and checked in. They unloaded me quickly, filled out the paperwork, and sent me off. I pulled off to the side of their lot to send in my empty call and wait for an assignment. By the time I stepped out, cleaned some crap out of the trailer, and closed it up, I had a message waiting for me. Pick up a relay in Hebron, Ohio and run it down to Virginia. Beauty. 66 miles for the deadhead and another 500 with the load. Oh, there's more you say? Why yes, there is. I was also pre-planned on a load picking up in Raleigh, North Carolina tomorrow morning. I'll be taking that one up to Canada.
It looks like my expectations will be soundly exceeded as I wrap up the month. The fact that I took almost half the pay period off and I'll still gross over $1,500 is pretty groovy. And my safety bonus was over $300 today, after taxes. That's another $50 over what I planned. I like stuff like that, since I'm basically a capitalist pig.
Random hypothesis: There is a direct correlation between the presence of a GPS unit on the dashboard of a car and the presence of a douchebag in the driver's seat of said car. Discuss.
Okay, back to today... I was running across 70, down 270 to DC, and then south on 95. When I got to the Maryland scales (my usual spot to wait out DC rush hour) I was about two hours ahead of schedule. Since I had time and there is usually plenty of room in there, I pulled my weights out and blasted my chest for a while. One day at a time is a pretty good motto for fat dudes that didn't mean to get fat. Well, today was day two and I'm hanging in there. Hanging in there...
The traffic on the beltway was slow and tedious, made worse by the fact that I was genuinely having a hard time steering. I hadn't lifted in a while and my arms got fatigued much more quickly than my chest. By the time I drove for a little while, they felt like Jello. I stopped in at the Pilot off exit 104 to grab some food and got stuck behind some idiots who (a) took 20 minutes to get the pump started and begin fueling, (b) didn't pull forward after they finished fueling, and (c) took another 13 minutes to pay and leave. Pissed me right off.
At the customer (an LTL company not named ConWay, oh the shame) I checked in and dropped my loaded trailer in a dock, then grabbed an empty. This piece of shit empty just might be older than I am. The frame is bent, so the doors are a little squirrelly and the tandem slides are a bitch. After fighting it for a few minutes, the only way I could get the pin to release was to use a trick I learned from one of my classmates during CFI orientation. I hooked a couple of short rubber straps to the pin and then hooked them to the edge of the trailer. With the tension on the straps, I rocked the truck a little bit and got the pin to shimmy loose so I could pull it. It's a glamorous life, I tell you. As shitty as the trailer is, I didn't find any real safety issues so it was onward ho.
I've been to the shipper in Raleigh before and they're really friendly people. They'd be even better if they would let us park there at night, but we can't go in until morning. This time around it made no difference as I burned up my 11th hour getting just across the NC state line tonight. I'll have to cover the rest tomorrow morning and then head north.
My Irish are on at noon, so maybe I'll get lucky and find a high speed internet server somewhere along the way. The game is on ESPN so my computer will be the best bet to catch the game. I have to cover a lot of ground to get to Michigan by Sunday morning, so a motel is not an option this time. Of course, the last few games have left me nauseated so maybe it's just as well if I don't see this one. Bullshit, who am I kidding? I'm a loyal fan till the end. Even when they play people like this and probably lose...
Please don't tell me any Purdue fans actually read this blog. I don't know if I could handle that.
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