2/15/08

Well, this blog is generally for the purpose of summarizing a day out here, so this one might be a novella. Here goes...

I hung out in Mossville for a little while after last night's drop. Before I went to bed, I sent in my hours of availability, only I used the hours that would be available in the morning. I figured it was the middle of the night so I would get a few hours' sleep before anything came up. CTL called my bluff. I was assigned almost immediately to deadhead to Gary, Indiana (Paris of the Midwest) and pick up a relay to Stony Ridge, Ohio. No rest for the wicked, I suppose. Glad I got that nap in Rolla. The logbook was going to require some engineering, but I needed some miles and they were getting me miles, so I wasn't about to complain.

I headed across Illinois and into Indiana. I showed up around 5am CST, ahead of my 7am scheduled arrival. The inbound truck was already there and, much to my surprise, there were parking spaces available nearby. So we made the swap. The driver from whom I took the relay was visibly annoyed by something. I observed that it was odd to deadhead someone over 150 miles in the middle of the night to pull a relay 211 miles and pass it off, so I guessed they must have been short on power in the area. She said that her original plan summary had her due in Stony Ridge at 17:30 EST. They sent her a message asking when she would be there, so she replied 17:00. And then they made her relay the load, since it was due in Pennsylvania by 21:00 tonight. She was pissed about losing the last part of the run, but honestly, why say it would take you another twelve hours to go 200 miles? I'm thinking that one is her fault, even if the plan summary was wrong.

So I boned across Indiana on the way to Stony Ridge. My dispatch said I was due in at 12:00, but I got the load early enough to allow for a quick catnap. That was a much needed break. I rolled into the Petro at 11:40 and saw nary a CTL truck in the lot. I made a call to see what was what and I was told that the outbound truck was still at his previous consignee. So I took a nap while my logbook recovered from last night's miscalculation. A few hours later I woke up, legal again, and the other truck still was nowhere to be found. He finally rolled in a little before 17:00 and his story actually trumped the other one.

This guy said that he was empty yesterday at 12:30, "not far from here." He apparently never got dispatched to come to Stony Ridge, so he never came to Stony Ridge. Then he got a call this afternoon, after the load was already terribly behind schedule, asking him why he was still at the consignee. Must be a new guy. The fleet managers have 70-80 trucks to manage, so sometimes they'll miss a dispatch. That does happen. When it happens to me, my approach is just to start toward whatever city the plan gave me and then send a message saying, "Dispatch me." If they change their mind and unassign me, they can just pay me the miles to wherever I had to turn around, and no damage is done. Especially for a ConWay relay, when we're supposed to be at the relay point early enough for a ten hour break before the swap, the idea is to get there and be ready. Again, the dispatcher may have erred, but I have to put this one on the driver. Why in the hell would he wait a whole day for a dispatch when he already had his assignment? Dunno man, not my problem. I'm just a peon. That load will be wicked late, but I did what I was supposed to do. That's enough for me.

Before I got to Stony Ridge this morning, I received a pre-plan for a load picking up 40 miles to the west and heading to New Jersey for Monday morning. It's not a huge weekend run, but combined with this morning's work it gets me to 2,260 miles for the week plus around twenty bucks in northeast pay. Considering I was in Laredo until Wednesday afternoon, I'm pretty happy with CTL's efforts. I got hosed pretty bad last week, so I was hoping they would be able to make it up to me. They did a pretty good job, as far as I'm concerned. I also got my layover pay for the time in Laredo added to this week's check. Sixty bucks a day won't make anyone rich, but it will take a little of the sting out of the shitty paycheck I got this morning.

So then it was off to Napoleon, Ohio. I got checked in down there and dropped my empty. The loaded trailer was sitting on a sheet of ice, so I had a hell of a time getting under it. It was so heavy that it kept squirting my truck forward like a bar of soap that you squeeze too tightly. Then I got smart, or so I thought. I got out and cranked the trailer up a little bit to make it more even with my fifth wheel. That way, I thought, it wouldn't be so hard for my truck to back under it. This load is a heavy bitch, so I was huffing and puffing from cranking it up. Then I inched back, ever so daintily. I felt the fifth wheel hit the trailer, so things were looking good. Then, as I watched in the mirror, the trailer started getting pretty damn close to my truck. Shit. Jumped the fifth wheel. So then I got to crank that damn thing way up. I may or may not have mentioned that I'm not in the greatest shape these days. Yeah, that was a workout. I got it up high enough to go back over the fifth wheel, pulled forward, lowered it back down, and finally got locked in. Phew!

I headed back to the Petro where I spent the afternoon. I have tomorrow and Sunday to cover a little over 600 miles, so I figured I'd call it a night here and hop the turnpike tomorrow. I thought I'd be able catch up tonight with a girl I know from Toledo. Alas, her number is no longer in service. Guess she graduated from UT at some point in the last two years. Bummer. With my delusions of a fun night tossed in the garbage, I decided I might as well get my fuel filters changed. I got the message from the shop yesterday and I'm already at a Petro, so now is as good a time as any. It looks like I'm next in line, so this marathon day may be done shortly.