10/4/07

I was just about ready to give up the fight and go park in the lot when the Dart driver ahead of me pulled out of the dock. I angled my way back into the driveway and then got out to take a good look at the task ahead. Upon closer inspection, it was even tougher than I thought it would be. I knew from watching the previous guy that I would have some tricky maneuvering to do. What I couldn't see from the road was the row of shipping containers lining the right side of the back-in approach. There were no lights and it was wicked tight, so I had to get out and check my position at least half a dozen times along the way. Firmly squared away in the dock, I went to bed.

The bouncing of the forklift woke me up whenever the guys got started. I have no idea what time it was. My first thought was that I was in a hurricane or something, as the truck was moving side-to-side like it does in high winds. Then I came to my senses and realized what was going on. Surprisingly, I was able to fall back asleep and rest while they pulled the pallets off of my truck. There was a pretty long delay between pallets, so they must have been cruising the freight to a different part of the warehouse. Once they were done, a guy came out and knocked to wake me up.

Then, as I pulled away, I saw that there was a flatbed driver blocking my exit. I knocked on his door. No answer. I knocked on the side of his sleeper. No answer. I headed inside, used the restroom at the warehouse, and asked if anyone knew where the flatbed driver had gone. Nobody knew anything, so I headed back out. This time I gave his sleeper a thorough and steady pounding until I saw a light come on. Dickhead was giving me attitude for waking him up before the receiving hours started at 7am. Yeah well, don't block the driveway then. Prick. I drove down the street to the nearest truck stop and went back to bed.

A few hours of deep sleep later, I got my beep. Since I wanted to get to the west coast by the weekend, of course I'll be doing the exact opposite. I picked up in Birmingham and headed east, toward Delaware. My 70 hour clock was down to 2 hours by the time I got to Birmingham and got loaded, so I ran up I-59 until I was out of time. The drive today was a pretty ho-hum affair. There was pretty heavy traffic on the surface streets around Birmingham, made worse by truck drivers with no common sense, but nothing to write home about. I was talking with another CFI driver while I waited at the shipper and we both planned to spend the night in Georgia at the Pilot on I-59. Oops, I was looking at my hours wrong. I was down to 15 minutes by the time I got to the Petro in Gadsden, Alabama so I couldn't make it to Georgia. Sorry dude. Guess we'll continue that conversation another time.