3/3/08

Pre-dawn drives eastbound on I-94 used to be the aftermath of a fun night in Ann Arbor. Those nights would occasionally involve a questionable young lady, but they always involved plenty of alcohol. Today's bleary-eyed version of that drive was far less fun. I rolled into Taylor at 4am and dropped off my loaded trailer. When I checked in with the dispatcher to get on the board, I asked if I should hang around or if it would be worth my while to go home for a few hours. She said that there was plenty of freight to assign, but no trailers. I guess business must be okay around there. So I headed over to Denny's for the traditional 5am Lumberjack Slam and then went to bed for a while.

My load assignment came through around 11am, so I hung around long enough to get an 8 hour break (extending my 14 hour clock) and then headed up to Walled Lake for my pickup. Another freaking obstacle course of a customer. I swear to God, I have had an insane number of those lately. The place was a FIFO shipper, so I was sent to the end of the line. And I waited... for quite a while. Three and a half hours later, they had a door for me.

There were three doors being used. One door allowed some room to the left, but would leave the driver contending with a truck on his right. Another door allowed some room on the right, but would leave the driver contending with a truck on his left. The door in the middle would force the driver to get around a truck on his left, with no wiggle room on the right, and navigate around a fire hydrant right where he would typically set up. Guess which door I got. I really enjoyed watching the guy in fron of me taking ten minutes to get out of the spot, forward. That left me with no doubt that I would have a blast backing into the same spot. So, I got to lug my ass in and out of the truck about ten times, but at least I didn't hit anything. How do you say it again? Oh yeah, I love my job.

It took those guys an hour and a half to load my trailer, then I was on my way. I sent in my request for detention pay, so we'll see what kind of excuse comes up for that one not being on my paycheck. Supposedly it's an automatic $12 an hour after three hours now, but it seems to me that the ConWay version of this company isn't as prompt in paying things as the CFI version was.

I drove down to Warren, Ohio for my drop/hook. It was a pretty rainy and dreary drive, but otherwise pretty easy. I was almost expecting a pre-plan to come through on the way down here. Quite often, when I get a short run out of the Taylor area, they stack something longer behind it. Not today though. I'm sure you can imagine how much I enjoyed working with an actual drop yard, designed for trucks with trailers. On the ironic side, I couldn't back in worth a shit tonight, even with all the extra room. It almost didn't look right to my eyes, in the context of the crazy backing that I've had to do lately.

The truck stop in Warren looked pretty full when I passed on the way to the customer. I didn't know of anywhere else nearby, so I gave it a shot anyway. There were a few open spots when I got here. I got a nice easy pull-through spot and kicked back for a while. I'm #1 on the board so I'm sure I'll be rolling early in the morning. For the day, it was a big 250 miles. In reality though, this wasn't a bad result. My hours will be an issue within the next few days, so this load at least got me out of Taylor and set up for something good tomorrow. I will be able to work either one long day followed by two really short days, or three moderately short days in a row.