10/30/07

My alarm was set for 3:45am and, much to my surprise, nobody woke me up before it went off. I looked across the yard and saw both CFI trailers sitting out there, ready to roll, so I headed inside. Apparently I was right on time because the guy came in with the paperwork about five minutes later. Hooked up and inspected, I was ready to roll.

Fourteen miles. Fourteen golly-gee-whizzin' miles. Fourteen motherfucking miles! A Marten driver and a foodservice guy ran side by side for fourteen miles on I-65. Same speed up the hills, same speed down the hills. It finally ended when the foodservice guy reached his exit. The resulting parade of traffic was ridiculous. Heaven forbid one of those guys just backed off a little and fell in line. Oh no, "My 65mph is faster than your 65mph," right? Assholes.

Other than that, it was a pretty noneventful ride down to West Memphis. I got in two hours ahead of schedule, went on the board, and went to bed. About ten minutes after I woke up, I got the call to come in to dispatch. I had a few hours left on my 14, so I was hoping to get out quickly. Nope. Two loads from which to choose: One going overnight to Lancaster, Texas and one going overnight to Mesquite, Texas. Six of one - half dozen of the other. I took the one that was supposed to show up first - Mesquite. Plus it's a QVC-UPS load so I am pretty sure it will be a light one. Not long after that, I was told that 7pm was going to be 4am instead. Apparently the load is being relayed in Knoxville tonight, when it was supposed to be here. I guess I should have taken the Lancaster run, due in at midnight. Oh well. Neither one is exactly a barnburner.

On the way down I got a note saying I was paid one day of layover on the run to West Memphis. I looked over my times and can't figure out why I got layover pay. As nearly as I can tell, there are three possibilities there. One is that they just made a mistake in my favor. I ain't complaining. The second is that they changed the layover policy. Not likely, but I still ain't complaining. The third is that my fleet manager was just throwing me a bone for all of the weird schedules I've been getting for the last few days. Again not very likely, but again I ain't complaining.

With time to kill until tomorrow, I decided to go for a ride and see what West Memphis has to offer. No offense intended to the folks from Arkansas, but you know you're free to leave, right? What a boring town. I grabbed some cash from the company ATM and headed to the tattoo shop down the street. That surely would be one way to kill some time and handle the boredom. The guy there was a complete asshole, so I decided to head back to the terminal and watch a movie instead.

It's a comfortable 65 degrees with a nice breeze in West Memphis today, and trucks are idling as far as the eye can see. But my company is rumored to be turning the trucks down to 65mph in the near future in order to save fuel. Intelligence... you just can't buy it. Anyone think that maybe, if there was a nice bonus in it for them, these knuckleheads in West Memphis might shut off their trucks today? And maybe, when time was not an issue, they might drive a little slower to try and grab that nice bonus? And then, when time was an issue, they could still drive past the other thousand trucks on the road who were going 65mph? Nope, just grasp at straws CFI. When that doesn't work, you'll come up with another useless approach. Common sense is not so common I guess.

So here I sit. In a pattern I identified a long time ago, it seems that the more I sit, the more money I make. I don't really have a theory as to how or why, but I've had a lot of down time on this pay period and I'm at 6,122 miles. Another 435 or so will come on the run to Mesquite and then I'll have whatever comes in tomorrow afternoon on this check as well. My gross pay on the driver portal of the company website says $2361.42 right now (without the Mesquite run), but I also have quite a few northeast miles coming at a nickel a pop. Those don't show up on the website for some reason, but they'll be on my check.

So... bored. I need to come up with something to get for my brother's girlfriend and then my Christmas shopping will be done. Maybe I'll take another cruise around West Memphis. I don't know. It's pretty cool to get out and find things to do when I don't have a trailer. I can convince myself that any place is accessible with a bobtail, even if it does get a little tight. Probably though, I'll just lift weights for a while and then hang out here.