12/7/07

I had been running days for a while lately, so I started to forget just how much easier it is to run overnight. The only catch is that the first day after flipping the schedule can leave me a little tired. It wasn't bad, but I think by tomorrow I'll be on track for a few more days on the graveyard shift.

I tooled up to the brewery in Jacksonville to check in and drop my empty. Nope. Live load. My instructions said that it was a draft load, so I suspected it might be a live load, but the stop summary said drop/hook. No such luck. This was one of the customers who do their communicating by CB, so I threw them off a little. I find it hard to believe that I'm the only one out here without a CB, but whatever. I checked in with a guy at the dock and got a door. An hour or so later it was time to roll north.

Same old song and dance in Georgia - construction and cops. The overnight traffic was nice and light though, so I didn't really get slowed down. When I arrived at the beer distributor there were several trucks ahead of me. The difference between getting loaded last night and just picking up a pre-loaded trailer became a big one at that point. I probably could have beaten a few of them there if I were rolling before midnight. I sat, and sat, and sat, and sat. I arrived before 7am and I was empty at 12:45pm. Will I get paid for sitting there? I won't hold my breath.

Then it was a short jog over to the next shipper, but I made it a little longer by going the wrong way at first. This time I did have a drop/hook, so I was in and out quickly. Of course, by the time I moved down the road a bit, I got 14-houred. Oh well. I was a little tired and a lot hungry anyway, so that was as good a time as any to take ten hours off. By tonight I should be acclimated to the overnight routine. We'll see.

One drawback to sleeping by day and driving by night is the damn greenhouse effect. No, don't you Al Gore fans get started. I'm talking about the greenhouse effect in my truck. It's in the mid-60's today, but this thing heats up like a son of a bitch in the sun. So I'll be idling while I sleep. Of course, I don't have a pet so apparently my company doesn't care about my fuel mileage. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

My usual one week summary will be a little misleading in terms of miles, since I just got 2,000 dispatched today. I'm sitting at 3,865 miles right now, but I won't drop this load in Arizona until the morning of the 11th. So, assuming I sleep the rest of the 11th, it will be around 350 a day for the first part of the month. As long as I get some decent miles from the 11th to the 15th, it won't be a bad pay period.