Today's short run down I-75 and into Florida went a lot more like I expected than the last one did. No dead people, no carnage or destruction, and no major delays. I pulled up to the K Mart DC in Ocala and found that the place had a huge drop lot with no tight spots. My original plan summary indicated that I would be unloaded, but it was a quick and easy drop/hook instead.
Back up the highway a few miles, I ducked into the Pilot and watched some football. Nothing to talk about here. Moving along...
I came into today expecting a pretty shitty weekend of work. Freight leaving Florida for us can be hit or miss. When you factor in my Saturday afternoon delivery time, I didn't see a whole lot of bright possibilities. A few hours after I was empty, I got an assignment that was even worse than I expected. I'll be picking up Monday morning in the middle of Florida and heading up to New Jersey. Suffice it to say that we won't be expecting another 7,000 mile pay period this time around. I'll hang out in Ocala tonight until my ten hour break is up and then head south a couple hundred miles. There's a truck stop near the shipper so I'll be able to get a 34 hour restart down there before Monday morning. I'm heading home for a concert on the 14th (meaning I'll be highlighting for home some time next week), so this paycheck will use up quite a bit of the excess cash I earned on the last one. I guess that's the nature of the business.
So, for the remainder of the football season, I'm a free agent. I haven't received any recruiting offers yet, but if you know a team that could use me as a fan feel free to let me know. I will have the chance to opt back in or out as a Notre Dame fan following the Blue-Gold game next spring, but until that time this shit is just unwatchable.
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Friday, November 2, 2007
11/2/07
That one's for you, FMCSA.
In case you didnt catch it, I said
I tossed and turned all evening. I tossed and turned all night. By the time I was legal to drive, at midnight, I managed to fall asleep for a spell. I got up at 2:30am and hit the road, exhausted as hell. It's absolute bullshit and anyone with common sense can see that the "safety advocates" are making life more dangerous out here. I could have been here yesterday afternoon and slept quietly from late last night until it was time to bump the dock this morning. Instead I hardly slept at all. I'm not one who requires a ton of sleep, but four or five hours (when I'm actually tired) would be nice.
The drive in the wee hours of the morning didn't involve much traffic so I made it to the customer at 5:15am, an hour early for my appointment. Back to the bunk for a half hour. The security guard said I would be able to check in with the receiving office at 5:45. I had one of those whacked-out, really tired dreams. Some British chick handing out hundred dollar bills while complaining about taxes and then falling into a cow pen... weird.
So, this is probably going to come across as condescending or something like that. That's not really my point of view, but I just have to say - sitting in a room full of truck drivers for an hour and a half will lower your IQ. The customer didn't allow us to wait in the truck while being unloaded, so I got to hang out in the drivers' room. I tried to beat my record in cell phone Tetris, not so much because I felt like playing Tetris but more to distract myself from the profuse bullshit that I was hearing. These guys were experts on everything from tax law to the cover 2 defense, and none of it was even close to being accurate.
After I got released from the consignee, they told me that the little side street next to the facility was a good place to park. I pulled in and drifted in and out of sleep for an hour or so before I got my next assignment. I was going 30 miles south on I-75 to get a load for a short run to Ocala, Florida. The pickup appointment was set for 2pm, but I headed down early.
Here's where the DOT math comes into play. I could wait and show up at 2pm. Then, by the time I got loaded, I would be running out of time on my 14 hour clock. I was going to have 4.75 hours left on my 70, so I would prefer to use as much of them as possible. So, the move was to try and get loaded early. No dice. They told me to check back in at 2, so I went out and took a nap. Thus, once I was rested, the feds would be ready to tell me I had to shut down again. Yeah, I know. I'm starting to sound like a broken record.
So, I got assigned to a dock at 1:45. As it turned out, the feds were not the problem this time around. I was loaded and ready to go... at 10pm. So I wound up having more than ten hours off at the shipper. Thus, I got a fresh clock and the 14 hour rule became a non-issue. The issues at that point were boredom and frustration. I got plenty of rest today, but I just didn't feel like driving much after all the hassles. So I'm about 90 miles down the road. I have to be in Ocala by 3pm tomorrow, so I'll take another ten hours here and then make the jog down to Florida in the morning.
I'm not going to mention their name, since they're a customer of my employer, but this one's for today's shipper -
Cheers.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
11/1/07
Well, I got as far as Birmingham before my 70 hour clock was kaput. I'll have to play the wait for midnight game, which has become all too familiar.
[Following is half of an imaginary dialogue, with me playing the role of the feds:] Wide awake and feeling good? Oh, you had better shut down until midnight. Get some rest. Oh, you're not tired? Yes you are. We're in Washington and we know better. What do you mean you'll be more tired after midnight? Go to sleep now. So what if you're not sleepy. Go to sleep anyway. You'll just have to deal with it. Good luck driver.
I swear they are freaking retarded. The stated objective is to prevent tired driving, but the rules have the opposite effect. They really should just limit driving to 600 miles in a calendar day and 3,500 miles in a calendar week. Get rid of the log books and the convoluted 'clocks' altogether. Manipulation would be a non-issue, as the only thing the DOT would have to check are the odometer readings. It wouldn't do any good to say you drove at 6am when you really drove at 10am, because it wouldn't matter. Just rest when you're tired. Your company wouldn't have to try to fit weird schedules into the regulations. You can go 600 miles a day. Simple. If you drove 400 today, you have 200 left to use by midnight. If they need you somewhere 300 miles away, that's too far. 3,500 miles a week can be a little taxing if done in 11 on/10 off stretches, but limiting daily driving to 600 miles would alleviate a lot of that. Just my thoughts. Those, and a couple bucks, might get you a cup of coffee.
Anyhow... pretty decent overnight drive today. Art Bell had people on his Halloween show telling their ghost stories. Pretty lame. Believe in ghosts if you want to. I guess I will too if I ever see one, but until then I'm a skeptic. Either way, I was hoping for some entertaining and/or spooky ones. Nope. A bunch of half-assed generic crap. People repeating something they heard from someone else and passing it off as their own. Weak.
Speaking of ghost stories, the "scientific consensus" (whatever the hell that means) won't rest until I'm terrified. Well grab a cup of java boys, 'cause it will be a long wait. There was a pretty lively conversation on WLW this afternoon. Nobody can seem to handle the facts unless they support the designated viewpoint. Record amounts of ice at the north pole? Nah, that couldn't be true. The icecaps are almost gone, right? Prove it and I'll believe it. Until then you're just telling ghost stories.
Anyhow, time to sleep. Time to try at least.
[Following is half of an imaginary dialogue, with me playing the role of the feds:] Wide awake and feeling good? Oh, you had better shut down until midnight. Get some rest. Oh, you're not tired? Yes you are. We're in Washington and we know better. What do you mean you'll be more tired after midnight? Go to sleep now. So what if you're not sleepy. Go to sleep anyway. You'll just have to deal with it. Good luck driver.
I swear they are freaking retarded. The stated objective is to prevent tired driving, but the rules have the opposite effect. They really should just limit driving to 600 miles in a calendar day and 3,500 miles in a calendar week. Get rid of the log books and the convoluted 'clocks' altogether. Manipulation would be a non-issue, as the only thing the DOT would have to check are the odometer readings. It wouldn't do any good to say you drove at 6am when you really drove at 10am, because it wouldn't matter. Just rest when you're tired. Your company wouldn't have to try to fit weird schedules into the regulations. You can go 600 miles a day. Simple. If you drove 400 today, you have 200 left to use by midnight. If they need you somewhere 300 miles away, that's too far. 3,500 miles a week can be a little taxing if done in 11 on/10 off stretches, but limiting daily driving to 600 miles would alleviate a lot of that. Just my thoughts. Those, and a couple bucks, might get you a cup of coffee.
Anyhow... pretty decent overnight drive today. Art Bell had people on his Halloween show telling their ghost stories. Pretty lame. Believe in ghosts if you want to. I guess I will too if I ever see one, but until then I'm a skeptic. Either way, I was hoping for some entertaining and/or spooky ones. Nope. A bunch of half-assed generic crap. People repeating something they heard from someone else and passing it off as their own. Weak.
Speaking of ghost stories, the "scientific consensus" (whatever the hell that means) won't rest until I'm terrified. Well grab a cup of java boys, 'cause it will be a long wait. There was a pretty lively conversation on WLW this afternoon. Nobody can seem to handle the facts unless they support the designated viewpoint. Record amounts of ice at the north pole? Nah, that couldn't be true. The icecaps are almost gone, right? Prove it and I'll believe it. Until then you're just telling ghost stories.
Anyhow, time to sleep. Time to try at least.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
10/31/07
Despite what various people in various places would have you believe, I don't very often work a full eleven hour driving day. The 70 hour rule, the 14 hour rule, customer schedules, rest stop locations, fuel stop locations, and traffic patterns usually conspire to keep the days much shorter. Today I drove eleven hours and it feels like it. I'm pretty tired.
I was sleeping soundly last night. I didn't set an alarm before I laid down. I trusted that the West Memphis dispatcher would beep me when the load arrived and that the beep would wake me. He did, and it did, just before 2am.
The paperwork said that the load was due in Mesquite by 3:18am Central. Two hours and change to go 435 miles? Somebody screwed up. I already knew it was late, but I didn't realize just how early it was due at UPS. I made pretty good time heading down there, only taking a quick potty break along the way. My directions were easy enough to follow, and I only caught a couple miles of the Dallas traffic on the way in. My assigned spot already had a trailer in it, of course. I made my drop, hooked to an empty, and called the Lancaster terminal. My instructions said specifically to call in when I was empty, so I expected them to deadhead me to the yard where I would sit for a while. Nope. I was immediately dispatched to Roanoke, outside Fort Worth, to pick up another load.
My empty trailer had a small hole in the floor, but apparently it wasn't small enough. The security guard at the shipper rejected it. So... I got a 20 mile dispatch from there to a trailer shop in Fort Worth, where I would drop the damaged trailer and then bobtail back to the shipper.
The trailer shop had an empty that had been repaired, so I hooked to it. I figured I might as well save the Lancaster local driver a trip since I was there. The shipper was scheduled to get an empty, so somebody would have to bring an empty over there sooner or later. As I cleaned out the garbage and checked over the trailer, another CFI guy pulled into the lot. I asked him if he needed an empty because I was hooked to the only one. I told him I didn't need it so he could have it if he needed one. He did, so I unhooked and pulled out from under it. As we wrapped up our brief conversation, he mentioned that he was going to the same shipper, but he needed to drop off a damaged trailer first. So technically, I guess either one of us could have pulled the good trailer over there. I don't know if it was a dick move to leave it for him, since it still needed to be swept, but I figured we might as well leave things in order for the people doing the paperwork shuffling. The guard was expecting me to bobtail in and the CFI people were expecting him to pick up an empty. I had already cleaned out most of the crap anyway. So I bobtailed back over to Roanoke.
I got my loaded trailer and headed to the yard in Lancaster to top off the tanks. I tried to be a good little employee and use terminal fuel, even if it took me a little out of the way. No biggie. After that I was able to make it an hour and a half out of the Dallas area before my hours ran out, so here I am for the night. I deliver in College Park, Georgia at 6am Friday. I pick up nine hours tomorrow, so I'll have to use them up as soon as my ten hour break is over here and then finish the run after another ten hour break. Back to the graveyard shift for me...
I get calls from a lot of recruiters for various trucking jobs. Some work for big companies and some are independent headhunters. A pretty common theme seems to prevail: They have OTR jobs, in which I'm not interested since I already have a good one. They have regional (home weekend) jobs but can't come anywhere close to the money I make now. Plus 'home weekends' means getting on late Friday night or early Saturday morning and leaving Sunday night. I'd rather do what I do now and just take a week or two off whenever I feel like it. Or they occasionally have day cab jobs, again with far less money than I make now. A while back I got a call for a job that actually piqued my interest. It was a Monday through Friday day cab job, paying $1,150-1,250 weekly. That I could handle. I like to play baseball in the summer and, to be perfectly blunt, I don't get laid nearly often enough working OTR. Neither factor would convince me to work for less money, but if the money is pretty close it wouldn't be bad to have a day cab job. So anyway, that job required a face-to-face interview and I was a thousand miles away, so no dice. It really didn't concern me, but it would have been interesting nonetheless.
Today a different recruiter for the same company called and said he had the same account open up recently. Again, face-to-face interview, I'm in Texas, thanks anyway for calling. It did make me pretty skeptical though. Why does that job open up again after only a few months? Are they bullshitting about the pay, did they hire an idiot, or does the job just suck? If the job just sucks, I could probably handle that. I'm pretty low-maintenance so I don't imagine it would bother me too much. If the pay doesn't add up, I couldn't handle that. I already make a lot less than I did as a financial advisor, so I don't plan on taking any more pay cuts any time soon. Maybe I'll never know the whole story, but it aroused my curiosity.
The pay period closed with a pretty good bang, getting the deadhead miles and the run to Georgia dispatched before the end of the month. I won't deliver until the 2nd, but I get all of the pay today. So I finished up with 7,473 miles. That falls just short of the Fenian Godfather record, according to our archives on Long Island. The gross pay will most likely eclipse the previous high mark since I started with CFI. I logged quite a few northeast miles and received a decent amount of ancillary pay, so I'm thinking it will gross right around $3,000. Better than a kick in the balls, as they say. Or as I say. Either way, I'll take it.
I was sleeping soundly last night. I didn't set an alarm before I laid down. I trusted that the West Memphis dispatcher would beep me when the load arrived and that the beep would wake me. He did, and it did, just before 2am.
The paperwork said that the load was due in Mesquite by 3:18am Central. Two hours and change to go 435 miles? Somebody screwed up. I already knew it was late, but I didn't realize just how early it was due at UPS. I made pretty good time heading down there, only taking a quick potty break along the way. My directions were easy enough to follow, and I only caught a couple miles of the Dallas traffic on the way in. My assigned spot already had a trailer in it, of course. I made my drop, hooked to an empty, and called the Lancaster terminal. My instructions said specifically to call in when I was empty, so I expected them to deadhead me to the yard where I would sit for a while. Nope. I was immediately dispatched to Roanoke, outside Fort Worth, to pick up another load.
My empty trailer had a small hole in the floor, but apparently it wasn't small enough. The security guard at the shipper rejected it. So... I got a 20 mile dispatch from there to a trailer shop in Fort Worth, where I would drop the damaged trailer and then bobtail back to the shipper.
The trailer shop had an empty that had been repaired, so I hooked to it. I figured I might as well save the Lancaster local driver a trip since I was there. The shipper was scheduled to get an empty, so somebody would have to bring an empty over there sooner or later. As I cleaned out the garbage and checked over the trailer, another CFI guy pulled into the lot. I asked him if he needed an empty because I was hooked to the only one. I told him I didn't need it so he could have it if he needed one. He did, so I unhooked and pulled out from under it. As we wrapped up our brief conversation, he mentioned that he was going to the same shipper, but he needed to drop off a damaged trailer first. So technically, I guess either one of us could have pulled the good trailer over there. I don't know if it was a dick move to leave it for him, since it still needed to be swept, but I figured we might as well leave things in order for the people doing the paperwork shuffling. The guard was expecting me to bobtail in and the CFI people were expecting him to pick up an empty. I had already cleaned out most of the crap anyway. So I bobtailed back over to Roanoke.
I got my loaded trailer and headed to the yard in Lancaster to top off the tanks. I tried to be a good little employee and use terminal fuel, even if it took me a little out of the way. No biggie. After that I was able to make it an hour and a half out of the Dallas area before my hours ran out, so here I am for the night. I deliver in College Park, Georgia at 6am Friday. I pick up nine hours tomorrow, so I'll have to use them up as soon as my ten hour break is over here and then finish the run after another ten hour break. Back to the graveyard shift for me...
I get calls from a lot of recruiters for various trucking jobs. Some work for big companies and some are independent headhunters. A pretty common theme seems to prevail: They have OTR jobs, in which I'm not interested since I already have a good one. They have regional (home weekend) jobs but can't come anywhere close to the money I make now. Plus 'home weekends' means getting on late Friday night or early Saturday morning and leaving Sunday night. I'd rather do what I do now and just take a week or two off whenever I feel like it. Or they occasionally have day cab jobs, again with far less money than I make now. A while back I got a call for a job that actually piqued my interest. It was a Monday through Friday day cab job, paying $1,150-1,250 weekly. That I could handle. I like to play baseball in the summer and, to be perfectly blunt, I don't get laid nearly often enough working OTR. Neither factor would convince me to work for less money, but if the money is pretty close it wouldn't be bad to have a day cab job. So anyway, that job required a face-to-face interview and I was a thousand miles away, so no dice. It really didn't concern me, but it would have been interesting nonetheless.
Today a different recruiter for the same company called and said he had the same account open up recently. Again, face-to-face interview, I'm in Texas, thanks anyway for calling. It did make me pretty skeptical though. Why does that job open up again after only a few months? Are they bullshitting about the pay, did they hire an idiot, or does the job just suck? If the job just sucks, I could probably handle that. I'm pretty low-maintenance so I don't imagine it would bother me too much. If the pay doesn't add up, I couldn't handle that. I already make a lot less than I did as a financial advisor, so I don't plan on taking any more pay cuts any time soon. Maybe I'll never know the whole story, but it aroused my curiosity.
The pay period closed with a pretty good bang, getting the deadhead miles and the run to Georgia dispatched before the end of the month. I won't deliver until the 2nd, but I get all of the pay today. So I finished up with 7,473 miles. That falls just short of the Fenian Godfather record, according to our archives on Long Island. The gross pay will most likely eclipse the previous high mark since I started with CFI. I logged quite a few northeast miles and received a decent amount of ancillary pay, so I'm thinking it will gross right around $3,000. Better than a kick in the balls, as they say. Or as I say. Either way, I'll take it.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
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.
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.
Monday, October 29, 2007
10/29/07
When I had the top bunk of my truck folded down for use as a shelf, I would occasionally wake up with the feeling that I was in a coffin. Today I think that's what my truck would have felt, if trucks could feel that sort of thing. I thought that I was far enough away from the active business in the warehouse, but apparently I was right where the employees park. I guess it was polite of them not to wake me up, but instead they just parked all around and pretty much surrounded me. I managed to get out, but it looked something like this:
Across the street at my customer, I checked in a couple hours early and they told me to go ahead and back in to the dock. There was some real soupy mud along the side of the yard. Not wanting to take the chance of getting stuck, I tried to avoid the mud completely. In order to do so I had to cut a pretty weird angle around a trailer and toward my dock. Thus, I looked like I had no idea what I was doing. Eventually I got it squared away and the guys went to work.
No sooner did I pull into the truck stop down the street than I got a load assignment. (Yeah, there was a truck stop 1/4 mile away, so I could have had a place to park las night. I told you, I am lousy at trip planning.) Anywho, I was dispatched to the ConWay in Louisville to pick up a load leaving tomorrow at 5am. 134 miles for today is a little worse than I had hoped for. I knew my hours were running low, but I was optimistic that I would get at least a couple hundred miles in today. The run will be relayed in West Memphis, so I'm not sure what to expect for tomorrow. There have been times when I've checked in there and gotten a load right away and there have been times when I was on the board for a day. I think that the fact that I'll be arriving fairly early on a weekday should work in my favor.
With my directions in hand, I was ready to head for Louisville. In order to get a ten hour break in before 5am, I needed to arrive by 7pm tonight. That meant that I essentially had eight hours to cover 134 miles. When it comes to having that much time on my hands, I usually find a way to look for trouble. Today though, I was a good little Godfather. I headed straight to Louisville and worked on my Christmas shopping for a while. I don't know how some of you old farts got by before Al Gore invented the internet. I rarely have to set foot in a store anymore, other than when I need groceries.
About the only eventful thing to happen on the way here was a knockdown-dragout battle I had with a fly that managed to get into my truck. While I was on the freeway, he managed to take advantage of my eyes being on the road. He struck me on the ear once and on the neck another time. He didn't hit hard, but the judges were scoring in his favor. When I got stopped on the ramp from I-264 to I-65, backed up in traffic, the little bastard met his demise in brutal fashion. I managed to stun him with a wild swing of the right hand and then saw him laying on the passenger seat. The only thing missing was the dude from Mortal Kombat saying, "Finish him." Finish him I did. Let that be a leson to anyone who tries to sneak into my truck. You will pay the ultimate price. Mark my words.
So, I guess I should try to get some sleep now. 5am with these peckerheads usually means that someone knocks on my door around 3am. Cheers.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
10/28/07
Somewhere in the midst of World War VII, I finally dozed off last night. I cut off the southern coastline from the Romans, so now it's just a matter of tightening the noose to finish them.
Anyhow, since I was planning to get to my destination late, I didn't set an alarm. I just let nature take its course. The thing about sleeping with the truck off though, is that the greenhouse effect acts like a natural alarm clock if you sleep much past sunrise. It gets pretty damn hot back there, pretty damn quickly. Thankfully though, it looks like summer is finally leaving us and it stayed cool enough for me to sleep soundly. When I woke up I went back to sleep for another hour, just for shits and giggles.
When I stopped in Hurricane Mills for a shower and a shave, I was debating (internally amongst myselves) whether or not I should take advantage of my fast internet connection and watch some football or just finish off the drive. As the debate raged on, the old-timer next to me motioned for me to roll down my window. He asked if I was headed north. Yes. He told me that the traffic was all backed up and I had better just wait it out. He had come from Nashville and said it was pretty bad for quite a ways up in that direction. Just then, in an odd coincidence, the side in favor of watching football won the debate.
Once I concluded that the Braves on the warpath, fighting for old DC weren't exactly going to put up much of a fight, I figured I might as well get moving. At that point I still had time to get to the customer before my 14 hours ran out. If I sat another hour or two I would have to take a ten hour break along the way and finish the run tomorrow morning. I looked over my atlas and bounced around a few corner-cutting routes, then decided just to stick with the interstate as originally planned.
Back out to I-40, sonofabitch! The old man wasn't bullshitting. It was at a dead standstill. I took a peek at the aforementioned atlas and saw a way to take the next exit and get back to that alternate route I had been contemplating. Secondary Road 50 was the official name of the road at the next exit. I was reminded more of the "Bob's Road" line from Twister. It was about eight or nine miles back to the northwest until I caught up with TN-13, which was my intended route. By the grace of God, there was no oncoming traffic along Bob's Road for that eight or nine miles. There would have been no way for a car to get past me unless we were on a straightaway, and even then it would have been awfully tight. Once I caught TN-13 and headed north, tonight's drive was actually a very relaxing one. No traffic to speak of and my light load made the hills a non-issue.
I rolled up on the customer a little while ago. Lots of room to park, just as I had hoped. And a locked gate preventing me from getting in, just as I had not hoped. Unfortunately, I had no Plan B. I may or may not have mentioned - I'm pretty lazy when it comes to trip planning. I pulled into the next driveway (which also had a locked gate) and went for a little walk. I was hoping that my favorite Italian company, the For Lease corporation, would have a nearby location. No such luck there, but... their Hungarian affiliate, Available, had a place right across the street. Beauty. There is some kind of trucking outfit in the back of this building, but I'm pretty sure I won't be bothering anyone if I spend the night up on this side.
With the log book all caught up, I'll have 5.75 hours with which to work tomorrow. Obviously I don't have high hopes for anything useful in that kind of window, but I'm optimistic that I can at least go somewhere and stage for a good run or two to finish out the month. Sitting at 5,595 for the pay period right now, I have my sights set on at least 6,500 by the time it's said and done. Once my ancillary pay for extra stops and northeast miles is factored in, this check should be a pretty good one.
Anyhow, since I was planning to get to my destination late, I didn't set an alarm. I just let nature take its course. The thing about sleeping with the truck off though, is that the greenhouse effect acts like a natural alarm clock if you sleep much past sunrise. It gets pretty damn hot back there, pretty damn quickly. Thankfully though, it looks like summer is finally leaving us and it stayed cool enough for me to sleep soundly. When I woke up I went back to sleep for another hour, just for shits and giggles.
When I stopped in Hurricane Mills for a shower and a shave, I was debating (internally amongst myselves) whether or not I should take advantage of my fast internet connection and watch some football or just finish off the drive. As the debate raged on, the old-timer next to me motioned for me to roll down my window. He asked if I was headed north. Yes. He told me that the traffic was all backed up and I had better just wait it out. He had come from Nashville and said it was pretty bad for quite a ways up in that direction. Just then, in an odd coincidence, the side in favor of watching football won the debate.
Once I concluded that the Braves on the warpath, fighting for old DC weren't exactly going to put up much of a fight, I figured I might as well get moving. At that point I still had time to get to the customer before my 14 hours ran out. If I sat another hour or two I would have to take a ten hour break along the way and finish the run tomorrow morning. I looked over my atlas and bounced around a few corner-cutting routes, then decided just to stick with the interstate as originally planned.
Back out to I-40, sonofabitch! The old man wasn't bullshitting. It was at a dead standstill. I took a peek at the aforementioned atlas and saw a way to take the next exit and get back to that alternate route I had been contemplating. Secondary Road 50 was the official name of the road at the next exit. I was reminded more of the "Bob's Road" line from Twister. It was about eight or nine miles back to the northwest until I caught up with TN-13, which was my intended route. By the grace of God, there was no oncoming traffic along Bob's Road for that eight or nine miles. There would have been no way for a car to get past me unless we were on a straightaway, and even then it would have been awfully tight. Once I caught TN-13 and headed north, tonight's drive was actually a very relaxing one. No traffic to speak of and my light load made the hills a non-issue.
I rolled up on the customer a little while ago. Lots of room to park, just as I had hoped. And a locked gate preventing me from getting in, just as I had not hoped. Unfortunately, I had no Plan B. I may or may not have mentioned - I'm pretty lazy when it comes to trip planning. I pulled into the next driveway (which also had a locked gate) and went for a little walk. I was hoping that my favorite Italian company, the For Lease corporation, would have a nearby location. No such luck there, but... their Hungarian affiliate, Available, had a place right across the street. Beauty. There is some kind of trucking outfit in the back of this building, but I'm pretty sure I won't be bothering anyone if I spend the night up on this side.
With the log book all caught up, I'll have 5.75 hours with which to work tomorrow. Obviously I don't have high hopes for anything useful in that kind of window, but I'm optimistic that I can at least go somewhere and stage for a good run or two to finish out the month. Sitting at 5,595 for the pay period right now, I have my sights set on at least 6,500 by the time it's said and done. Once my ancillary pay for extra stops and northeast miles is factored in, this check should be a pretty good one.
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