3/25/08

I think yesterday was just what the doctor ordered. I woke up at some point in the afternoon and just lounged around all day, watching movies and eating fast food. I can't get on the board with no hours, so I sent in one hour and just "borrowed" it from today, in hopes of getting some kind of assignment before this morning. Worst case scenario would be that they sent me somewhere an hour away and I had to figure out how to fit the hour into my log book. Best case would be that I got set up for some work this morning. This time around, I got the best case scenario.

I had to shoot over to Dekalb this morning and pick up a load of tires headed for Lafayette, Indiana. That run utilized exactly the number of hours that I had available, so it was pretty good planning on someone's part. Then I was in the same situation as yesterday - no hours but I didn't want to wait for tomorrow to get on the board. So I sent in one hour of availability and reported tomorrow's hours as being one less. This time they actually did give me a one hour drive for today. So I had to figure out how to squeeze it in to the log, but I think it's all good.

I made a quick and easy drop/hook in Dekalb and then, after the three hour drive, another quick and easy drop/hook in Lafayette. Within a few minutes I got my next assignment. I was to go down to Plainfield and stage for a ConWay load leaving tomorrow morning, so I actually had to use the hour that I reported as being available to me.

I got about fifteen miles down the road before the "quick and easy" label had to be removed. My fleet manager called to inform me that the empty that I had taken was in fact a trade-in, now belonging to Wabash. So I had to double back to Lafayette and return it. I spoke with the boss man there and he gave me a list of empties that should be okay to take. My fleet manager also sent me a list via Qualcomm. The two lists didn't have a single trailer in common. My fleet manager's list consisted entirely of loaded trailers, so that was out. The list from the guy at Wabash actually matched up with what I found on the lot. So I picked out an empty, hooked to it, and called CTL. I wanted to double-check and make sure that the new empty was in the computer system before I left and had to turn around again. Nope. I was told that it wasn't supposed to be used. So they called Wabash and got some other boss man on the phone. Apparently this guy is the big Kahuna of trailer trade-ins over there. I unhooked from the empty and awaited further instructions. Twenty minutes later they sent me a message saying that the only trailer that I could pull was... the one they had just told me not to pull. Peckerheads. Hook it back up... again.

So then I actually did drive down to Plainfield and set up for tomorrow morning. As for the log book... well, I came up with something so that will have to do. Tomorrow's run is something like 300 miles from here down to Nashville. I'll be there early in the afternoon and I'll finally start picking up some decent hours tomorrow, so I would expect that I'll get something else to move me out of Nashville pretty quickly.

On a more positive note, I got a message saying that my missing layover pay was paid today. That's always a plus. It doesn't presently show up on my pay screen, so I'm hoping this means that it will be on last week's check when I get paid this Friday. Otherwise I guess it would just go on this week's check, although that would usually show up on my pay screen. Getting it on this week's pay wouldn't be the worst thing in the world since I'm off to a slow start on account of the 70 hour situation. I guess we'll see on Friday.