10/27/07

I'm pretty sure that this job would be completely awesome if I could do all of my driving on weekends and holidays. The traffic is light, the fuel stops are not crowded, and you can even find a parking spot in a rest area late at night. Add in XM Radio's wall-to-wall college football coverage and today was a pretty enjoyable one.

I took the 'divide and conquer' approach to this run, driving half today and leaving half for tomorrow. My dispatched mileage was 1097, but truckmiles.com says it will be 1177. 80 miles is a pretty wide variance. 99.9% of the time, CFI's miles and truckmiles.com's miles are within 2% of each other, either way. Sometimes I get paid a few extra and sometimes I get paid a few short. The very few times that I see a significant variance, Houston and Louisiana always seem to be involved.

After one such instance, when I was coming up with about 100 miles off, I posed a question on the CFI Drivers' message board. I got a bunch of replies, none of which answered my actual question. In point of fact, to this day I have no idea what program CFI uses to calculate it's 'practical miles,' which is how we're paid. 'Practical' is just the fancy trucker way of saying 'quickest.' Some people think it's the shortest legal truck route, but they are mistaken. 'Truck shortest is actually a third category (in addition to 'practical' and 'HHG'). It's not a matter of someone looking at a map and saying, "That looks practical to me." It's a matter of entering a pair of ZIP codes and a computer program spitting out a mileage. Every truck program out there will tell you that the practical route out of Texas and into the midwest is to run across Louisiana and then up. For some reason, CFI's program has other ideas, but nobody seems to know what that program is. They're not paying the 'truck shortest' route, as that would only be 1066 miles, but they're not paying the commonly accepted practical route either. 80 miles is not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, especially in light of the fact that I am only around 2% out of route over the long run. I just wish someone could say, "We use Program X to figure your miles." Instead it's some kind of closely guarded secret.

Anyhow, my route will be somewhere in the neighborhood of the 1177. My deadhead was dispatched at 17 miles and it was actually only 9, so I got a few back on the front end. From there I made it to a rest area just short of Batesville, MS tonight. Google Earth seems to indicate that the customer should have room for me to park there tomorrow night, so I can leave whenever I wake up in the morning. Not having to be concerned with late-night parking is a huge advantage when deciding how to run a trip. Sometimes, epsecially in the northeast, I have to alter my plans to make sure I'm off the road before the parking spots fill up. This time around I'm pretty sure I won't have any issues.

So... I've always been a bit of a movie buff, but I don't really make any effort to see a lot of movies. I guess that makes for a bit of a contradiction, but it is what it is. As such, I finally got around to watching Dick Tracy today. Has Madonna ever looked better than she did in that movie? In the words of Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar - Shwing!!! You cn have the skanked-out, muscular, weird accent version that came later. I'll take good old Breathless Mahoney any time.

Now it's time for the war to end all wars. Civilization III is calling. The damn Romans keep trying to cross my borders in order to get at the Greeks. If I attack the Romans, the Egyptians will get in on the action and that will draw the Indians into the fight. This could be a long night.

10/26/07

So, I'm not going to Laredo. I called up CFI, got Herb Schmidt on the phone, and said, "You listen here Herbie! I'm not in the mood to sit in Laredo this weekend! You find a place for me to drop this load off and you get me something to keep me busy for a couple of days! Otherwise I'm driving this truck straight into the Mississippi! I mean business!" Then they got me another load to pick up.

Yeah, that story is pure bullshit. But it would have been cool, wouldn't it? In reality I was tooling across I-12 above New Orleans when I got a message asking if I would be in Houston with my load. I didn't understand the question, so I responded by asking for clarification. The planner replied, saying that they had a load in the Houston area picking up tomorrow. If I had the hours, they needed me to take that one and drop the Laredo run on our yard in Houston. So let me get this straight... Instead of driving the last 300 miles to Laredo tomorrow morning, fighting the local traffic, delivering to some Godforsaken drop lot at some Godforsaken broker, going on the board behind a hundred other trucks, and hoping like hell to get out of there before Monday, I'll pick one up 15 miles east of Houston and drive it 1,100 miles to the Cincinnati area by Monday? Um, yeah, sure. Sign me up. I pick up ten hours tomorrow and eleven Sunday, so that run will make perfect use of my time for the weekend. There's no game for Notre Dame to lose tomorrow, so I am perfectly content to drive all day. Beauty.

Today was a long day of driving, but I got started at 2am so it was nice to wrap up in early afternoon. Really the only tie-ups were just inside the Texas line, where traffic was reduced to one lane in a couple of spots. Otherwise it was just good old long-haul truckin'. I received my information right before I got to the Houston yard, indicating that I am to relay the Laredo load to another driver by 11:59 tonight. He must be on his way from somewhere pretty far off because I stopped a couple of times and still got here before my 14 hours were up at 4pm. I was feeling a little tired, but I think I'll stay up at least until he gets here. The pickup tomorrow is scheduled for noon, which means 1pm for me, so I need to get off the drive overnight/sleep by day schedule today if possible. That way I can sleep late tomorrow morning and do okay driving into the late night.

Sooo... sitting on the drop yard. Big fun. I have nice fast internet access, but no sports to watch tonight. Last night there was a good baseball game and a good football game but my connection wouldn't even stay active for more than a few minutes, during which it was painfully slow. Story of my life man, story of my life.

10/25/07

When I started at CFI last summer, I came in with my CDL from a trucking school in Detroit. Since I was not an experienced driver and the CFI-sponsored CDL programs had not yet been created, I had to go through the "boot camp" at Crowder College for a week. The last part of the training at Crowder was an obstacle course. The course involved numerous challenges, but they were all varying methods of seeing how close you could get to something without hitting it. I sat at the wheel of the truck and navigated the course, all the while thinking "this is stupid. Why would I want to get as close as possible to anything?" Mornings like this one don't come around often, but when they do I am reminded of the answer to that question.

My customer this morning was a lumber yard up in the backwoods redneck country of western North Carolina. When I showed up, there were two loaded flatbeds blocking the entrance so I pulled in behind them. The gates opened at 6am and the flatbeds moved inside. As the first truck reached the bottom of the hill leading into the place, he stopped. The second truck was on the hill and I was about halfway through the gate. It was a one lane entrance, so there was nowhere else to go. The lift truck (I would say "forklift" but these things were monsters, complete with tank tracks and diesel engines) started unloading the flatbed while the other truck and I were forced to wait. It took maybe twenty minutes, after which the other truck pulled to the bottom of the hill and I assumed his prior position on the hill.

Instead of waiting another twenty minutes when I was supposed to be picking up a load, I got out and walked down to the guy who was doing the unloading. I asked him where I needed to go and he told me to hop on board his lift truck. Then we went for a little ride. "Go down this way, turn here, around this way, turn through here, up this side, turn here, then pull up that way and back her into that middle dock there." As I was riding along and making a mental note of the directions, I wondered if he was aware that I was actually pulling a trailer. Some of those turns looked pretty damn tight for the lift truck, much less a seventy foot long tractor-trailer combo. He drove me back to my truck and I managed to squeeze past the flatbed.

Those turns were quite a bit like that obstacle course at Crowder. I had to get within a few inches of whatever random obstacle (car, stack of wood, building, forklift, etc.) was on one side, so that I could get my trailer past whatever was on the other side. Then I backed into the dock and went inside. The boss man took down my order number, then took a look at my trailer in the dock. It was squarely seated against the pads, but around three inches or so to the left of center. Apparently they drive some pretty mean forklifts on the inside too, because he asked me to move it over a few inches. He said that the stacks of wood and the foklift are exactly as wide as the trailer, so they have to be perfectly centered with the dock door. I went out, inched it over a little, and backed it in again. This time the forklift driver was taking a long hard look. Apparently I moved it four inches or so to the right, rather than three. Muddy ground, no lights, sue me. He said he might be able to squeeze it in, but he would have to let me know. I said screw it and went out one more time. This time I centered it perfectly, down to the last nanometer.

Once they got me loaded I was rolling south. I have no idea what in the hell was going on in South Carolina today, but I've never seen anything like it. There are around 110 miles on I-85 from North Carolina to Georgia. During the first 20 miles, there were cops everywhere. Some had people pulled over while others were perched along the tree lines, waiting. After the fourth big group I actually started counting. From milepost 85 to the Georgia line, I counted 26 cops with people pulled over and another 8 waiting along the road. I've seen states step up enforcement on highways before, but this was insane. People would be driving along, doing the speed limit, then jam on the brakes every time they saw a police car even though they weren't speeding in the first place. After a while it got to be awfully obnoxious.

There seemed to be something up in Georgia too, though not to the extent of South Carolina. I got a red light at the Prepass site going in and another one going out, plus I observed probably ten cops with people pulled over along the way. Weird.

The weather cleared up somewhere in South Carolina and stayed nice all the way into southern Alabama, where I find myself tonight. It's nice and cool, so most of the guys around me have their trucks off. I should get a quiet bit of sleep here pretty soon. My hours are going to be okay for the run to Laredo. After looking at the route, I'll be able to run a full eleven tomorow and get past Houston by the afternoon, then get going again after midnight to finish the run to Laredo. The practical route calls for a trip across to San Antonio and then straight down, but I would much rather run US-59 than I-35 so I'll be cutting the corner. I'll end up getting paid for 50 or 60 extra miles that way too, which is rarely a bad thing.

In the 'laughing my ass off' department today, we have news regarding this guy:

Many of us got a chuckle when the clip and the accompanying story made the rounds on the internet shortly after the incident took place. Apparently the police review board has determined that the cops acted within the state's guidelines for the use of force. Of course the kid's attorney disagrees, but that's not the funniest part. I'll have to paraphrase because I heard it on the radio, but the statement from the review board apparently said that the cops avoided using measures such as strikes to the head and kicking because those techniques would give the impression that the suspect was being beaten into submission. Ummm... yeah. Isn't that exactly what would be happening? So he was 'tased' into submission instead? I don't know. Maybe I'm just sick, but that whole story cracks me up.

10/24/07

I'm not even sure how to describe today. I guess bizarre would be pretty accurate.

First things first... rain, and lots of it. I believe that the proper phrase is "much needed rain" here on the east coast. Surprisingly enough, it didn't snarl the traffic too badly. I got around DC with the only backup being on the south side in the construction zone by the drawbridge. The rest of the trip down to Greensboro was pretty decent. There were several accidents along the way, but they were on the opposite side so the only slowdowns I encountered were due to gawkers.

I stopped in at the T/A in Ashland to get my trailer light replaced. Then, the folks at CFI did what they don't do well. They started thinking. I did what I was taught to do and sent the 'going to shop' message to advise them that I was getting the work done. Almost immediately, I got a message saying I was unassigned from the load picking up in Raleigh today. I sent a message explaining that I would only be in the shop for a half hour and my timetable wouldn't be affected, as far as getting that load up to Illinois by tomorrow. My fleet manager responded that I was taken off the load because I couldn't pick up on time, and that he would find me something else.

Think this through with me for a minute; My plan summary for the Raleigh load said it picked up at 10:30am and delivered tomorrow at 11:30am. I was dispatched to be in Greensboro at 1:17pm, but the earliest I could have legally arrived would have been around 11:30am. Then, when you add the drop/hook (more on that later) and the drive over to Raleigh, we're talking 1pm at the earliest anyway. I was never going to make the 10:30am pickup whether or not I stopped. The only customer in Raleigh, that I know of, is a drop/hook customer so it doesn't matter when we arrive. I assumed that was why I was given the load in the first place, knowing I wouldn't be there at 10:30. So, if I just stopped for breakfast nobody would have said a thing. But, I send in the shop message and I lose the load.

At that point I lost my motivation to hustle the thing down to Greensboro quickly and stopped for a long lunch instead. I took enough time to convince myself that the world was out to get me and all that nonsense, then got back on the road.

I got to the KMart DC in Greensboro and saw several CFI bobtails parked in the area. That's not a good sign. They told me where to drop the loaded trailer. Of course that spot was occupied. It's pretty rare that the assigned spot is actually available. Then I headed over to the traffic office, where I was told they would show me which empty to take. Yeah, no. No empties today. I asked how long until they would have one and the lady informed me that they were working to free up enough empties for today's outgoing freight, then they needed to round up enough for tomorrow's outgoing freight, then they might have an empty available at some point tomorrow. Great.

I received a message from one of the planners while I was talking to that lady. The planner said they saw that I missed out on the Raleigh load so they gave me the next thing they had available in the area - a load picking up in Granite Falls tomorrow morning and going to Laredo. Well I'll be damned. My fleet manager actually went to the planners and got something for me like he said he would. Good lookin' out, my brother. I guess it sucks for the other people who sat waiting for an assignment before I showed up. However, since I never complain and ask for favors, I'm not going to feel guilty about it. Of course the catch was that I didn't have an empty and wouldn't have one any time soon, so I had to call and see what they wanted me to do. It turned out that we had an empty sitting at a trailer shop right along my route to Granite Falls so I stopped by and picked up that one.

My miles as of this moment are a little over 3,400 for the pay period and the 1,407 to Laredo will hit tomorrow. I'll get to Laredo on Saturday, which sucks pretty badly, but hopefully I can get out before the weekend is up and rack up a few more good days before the end of the month. I haven't been to Laredo in quite some time (and that's how I like it), but weekends down there usually involve some sitting. The fact that I couldn't catch that reset in Michigan last week is also going to bite me in the ass over the next day or two. I'll come up with something, but it's going to be tight making the planned time to Laredo. Leave it to the feds... the fact that I worked for two hours one day, over a week ago, means I'm too tired to work a full day tomorrow. If I had taken that day off, rather than working the whopping two hours, I'd be well rested and able to run my ass off. Idiots.

10/23/07

I even saw the lights of the Goodyear blimp, and it read "Big Joe's a pimp."...

That's right boys and girls, two kick-ass days in a row. If this keeps up I might actually have to say I have a good job.

I got beeped shortly after waking up, then got unassigned thirty seconds later. Then about twenty minutes after that the real assignment came in. I got to deadhead 184 miles to a little town I refer to as Paris on the Hudson - Jersey City. In all honesty, Jersey City is a pretty shitty place to drive a big truck. I'm a little crazy though. I get a kick out of New Jersey. It's kind of like a truck driving video game, only you lose your job if you hit anything.

The directions to the customer were confusing and ambiguous, which is par for the course in Jersey. You drive along, heading east, and you need to go south. So there should be a ramp on the right, right? Nah, turn left, go across and make another left, then a u-turn back in the direction you were originally going, then a big sweeping ramp to the right and a quick left. It's pretty cool.

There is more than one way to skin a cat, or so they say. When the cat-skinning is the drive from the New York Thruway to Jersey City, there are about a hundred ways. I don't know which one is the best, or even which ones are completely legal, but I made it in 191 miles without getting arrested so I guess I did okay. The docks at the customer were pretty damn tight. I was hoping to draw the one on the far right, as that would give me the easiest angle... and that's the one I got. Beauty. Was I loaded quickly? You bet. Heavy or light? Oh, 6,000 pounds should make for a pretty nice run through the hills.

No traffic rolling in to Jersey City, no traffic rolling out of Jersey City. Hell, even the toll booths in Delaware were moving through pretty smoothly. That never happens. Must be my day I guess. By the time I got through Baltimore without hitting any traffic, I assumed my luck was about to run out so I pulled into a rest area and called it a day. I don't imagine the nighttime traffic around DC would have been too bad, but finding a place to park in northern Virginia may have been a challenge tonight, so I decided not to push my luck. I was enjoying the ride so much that I drove right past the Petro where I planned to get my trailer light fixed, so it was probably just as well that I got off the road before it got completely dark. It's the clearance light on the front left corner at the top of the trailer. Most likely that's not the kind of thing that would get me pulled over, but why take the chance?

That would have been a good enough day for me, but on the way down I also got a pre-plan to pick up another load in North Carolina tomorrow and run it up to Illinois. That will basically use all of my available hours for the next two days, so it's nice to see some thinking ahead coming from the folks in Joplin for a change.

I did encounter one minor annoyance along the way, but it's really more amusing than aggravating. I pulled into the Pilot in Perryville for some fuel and food. There was one spot open at the fuel island... behind a JB Hunt truck. Maybe someone can help me here. Why in the hell does it take twice as long for those guys to leave the fuel island, compared with the drivers from any other company? I used to think that it was just a few isolated incidents, but I swear now that the damn JB drivers hang out for twenty minutes every time they get done fueling. Maybe they're looking for Senator Craig in the men's room. I don't know.

Anyhow, I think I'll watch a movie now and then get cracking bright and early tomorrow. It looks like I'll hit the beltway at the start of the morning rush, so here's hoping the good luck streak continues.

10/22/07

Just wakin up in the mornin' gotta thank God... I don't know but today seemed kinda odd...

That's right Ice Cube fans. Today was a good day. (I didn't even have to use my AK.)

I woke up at the dock around 8:30am, vaguely recalling some kind of movement while I slept. As soon as I put some pants on (For your own good, don't picture that.) and hopped in the front seat, a guy came out to tell me I was loaded and ready to roll. The last load I pulled out of that place was over 40,000 pounds, so I was pleasantly surprised to see 15,000 pounds on the bill. Beauty.

The chickenheads in Joplin gave me yet another fairly tight dispatch for no particular reason. I was set to arrive in Amsterdam, New York at 7:51pm. Any time you see a time ending in a :51 or anything like that, somebody just pulled a drive time out of his ass and sent it through. Given the timing of my departure from Archbold, I got through Cleveland in the late part of the morning, then Buffalo before the afternoon rush. Traffic was nice and light on both counts. This meant that I was able to get some dinner and catch a half-hour power nap, while still delivering a little ahead of schedule. I guess the dispatch wasn't as tight as I expected it to be.

That drive across Upstate New York on the Thruway is one of the better drives I get to make, although someone needs to get Al Gore on the horn. The trees are still looking pretty green and we're almost through October. They need some carbon offsets up here - pronto.

After my drop/hook, The security guard pointed me to a little side street where I could park for the night. I backed down and got as far off the road as possible, but I'm still not in the best of spots. As a result, I left my parking lights on and I'll have to keep the truck running to support them. There is a T/A ten miles west of here, but I assume that it was at or near capacity by the time I got my empty. In theory I could be subject to an anti-idling ticket and a parking ticket, but the security guard was very convincing when he said that this spot would be fine.

I'm not sure which way I'll be headed tomorrow, but I do have enough hours for a day or two of good running before the crappy days start falling from my 70. I'll also have to stop and get one of the marker lights on this trailer fixed, since another driver was kind enough to leave it burned out for me. Dick.

Anyhow, I think I'll hit the sack now. My eyelids are starting to get pretty heavy. Cheers.

10/21/07

Well, weekends are hit and miss with this company. Most lately have been a hit, but this one was a miss. I rolled into Maumee this morning around 8am and dropped my loaded trailer at the UPS facility. My mother had mentioned that she would drive down and meet me for lunch if I was staying in Toledo for the day. I assumed I would be hanging around for a while waiting for a dispatch, but I got one immediately after sending my empty call.

I was sent back to the Sauder furniture place in Archbold to pick up a load tomorrow morning. I weighed the options, but didn't really feel like driving back east to Stony Ridge. That would have been my best bet for meeting Mom for lunch, but it would have been fifteen miles in the wrong direction and then fifteen miles to get back where I started. I went west toward the customer instead and pulled into the little truck stop off the tollway at my exit. I called Mom and let her know that I wouldn't be in Toledo today, to which she offered to drive here and pick me up so I could spend the day at home. It was very thoughtful of her, but I told her it really wouldn't make any sense. A three hour roundtrip to get me this morning and then a three hour roundtrip to bring me back tomorrow morning, just so I could sit on my couch and watch football instead of laying in the bunk and watching football? Nah, there's no reason for that. I told her I'll be home in a few weeks and I'll catch up with her then.

I'll hang out here and watch Game 7 tonight (still pulling for the Tribe even though it makes me feel a little dirty), since I have a nice fast internet connection. Once the game is over, I'll have time to drive the last few miles to the customer and still get a ten hour break there before my appointment tomorrow morning. That's the 'miss' part of a hit and miss CFI weekend - 39 miles for today and a whole lot of down time. The week has been decent, all things considered. With the day wasted in Michigan and the day wasted here, I'm at 1,992 miles and we're six days in. Tomorrow's run to New York is 600 miles plus some more northeast pay so I'll be just under 2,600 miles and well over $100 in extra pay for the first week of the pay period. Good enough for me.

If anyone runs into my fiance...

... could you have her get in touch with me? I know things are busy in Tinseltown, but I would like to let her know about our wedding plans in case she has been seeing someone else. We wouldn't want the tabloids to start any crazy stories.