2/27/08

At some point in time this morning, as I cursed the FMCSA for their idiotic rules, I was feeling incredibly tired. I made a call to CTL and asked if there was a delivery window for my load, so that I could take a nap. The nice young lady gave me an extra few hours so I got some sleep. Upon waking, I started to drive out of the rest area at which I had slept. I had a very light load, so I started in gear 3. Then shifted to gear 4. Then, for gear 5... nope. As the gears ground against the shifter, it sure as hell didn't sound like I had missed the gear. It sounded like the gears were spinning a thousand miles an hour. So I pulled over on the side of the ramp. Once I got stopped, I started fooling around with the shifter and the clutch, trying to figure out what was up. Yep. The little shifter switch thing wasn't flipping me to the high range. Usually I can hear a click if I flip it while I'm in neutral. This morning, it was doing nothing. So, as I was trying to shift into 5th gear, the truck was trying to go into 1st gear. Hence the rapid spinning and grinding. It was ten degrees outside, so I assumed that it was frozen. (That damn bunk heater... guess I should have idled the truck while I slept this time.) After I ran the truck and shifted in and out of gear for a few minutes, everything started working fine again. Beauty.

I got to the customer in Midland and, of course, my directions had taken me to the wrong place. I was at Gate 17 of the main plant and I needed to be at an entirely different facility. The girl gave me a map that bore little resemblance to reality and directions that were even worse. So, after cruising through farmland for a while, I managed to find my way to the right building. Another day, another crazy dock. This one might actually have been useful at some point in history, but today the area in front of the dock looked like a storage lot. Power equipment, barrels, pallets, just basically shit everywhere. So I had to pull off some more insane maneuvering. In keeping with a common theme of late, I got it done without incident.

They pulled the one piece of equipment off of my truck and sent me on my way. I had seen a little truck stop along US-10 closer to Bay City, so I headed in that direction. At #4 on the board and running low on hours, I didn't expect much today. Just as I got off the highway, my next assignment came through. I was to go to the first building that I visited this morning (Gate 17) and pick up a loaded trailer headed for New Jersey. Yep, backtracking about fifteen miles for free, gotta love it. I'll get another eighteen bucks in northeast pay, another 718 miles, and another decent couple days of work. Not too shabby.

With two and a half hours left on my 70, and finding myself two and a half hours from home, I guess you can figure out where I headed from there. I'll have about a ten hour drive from here, ahead of my Friday 8am appointment. I'll most likely just drive to the customer tomorrow night and see what kind of parking I can find. I checked out Google Earth and it looks like I'm headed to a pretty big place, so I think I'll be okay.

This run will get me up to 1,621 miles for the week, with Friday and Saturday still to come. I'm not exactly off to a riproaring start this week, but they're using every single hour I have available, so I guess that's all I can ask for. I pick up some pretty good hours for a few days starting tomorrow, so I'll be ready for a busy weekend if the freight is available. Even a fairly light Friday-Monday run should give me a decent week, so I'm not feeling too bad about where I stand right now.