4/10/08

If you share my appreciation for irony and you have a decent sense of deductive reasoning, I probably don't even have to tell you what is in my trailer right now. Yep, 45,000 pounds of it.

Up at the crack of dawn, it was a pretty nice ride across the turnpikes to start my day. I passed off the loaded trailer and then discovered that the other fella left me a dirty empty. I asked him if it was clean and he said that he had taken it from another driver, so he didn't know. Nope. Not clean. I had received my next load info (Columbus to Traverse City) before I left South Bend, so I had a pretty good idea that I would need a squeaky clean trailer.

Once the relay was made and I swept out the empty, I was dispatched to Columbus. My pickup time was set for 10pm and the plan summary had me delivering at 8am. This led to some concerns. The deadhead was 169 miles and the loaded trip is 432 miles. I had time to make both trips, plus take a ten hour break. All good there. The problem was that I couldn't take a ten hour break this afternoon and still make the pickup before 10pm. So, to pick up at 10pm, I would be outside today's 14 hour window and wouldn't have time to complete a ten hour break in time to finish the trip and deliver tomorrow morning. As such, I headed straight to Columbus in hopes that my loaded trailer would be ready. That way I could get part of the trip done within today's hours and then the break would fit.

At the brewery, I had to do the old 'first visit with a new truck' routine, just like in Fort Collins. This time the construction was all done though, so I was in and out in a decent amount of time. My last visit to that place was a pain in the ass. Today, the trailer was already loaded, there was no line at the scales, I got the tandems perfectly balanced on my first try, etc.

I sent in my loaded call and got dispatched to be in Traverse City by 10am, not 8am. That will help. The bills say that the customer receives between 8am and 4pm, so I sent a message trying to get a noon arrival. A couple extra hours would be nice. I received a reply saying that 10am was the latest we can deliver. So I guess the bills are falsely imprinted or something. I don't know. The long and short of it is that I was able to get into Michigan before today's hours ran out. I'll knock out a ten hour break and then finish off in the wee hours of tomorrow morning. The 10am appointment should work okay.

The last time I had this run, it was snowy and icy and miserable. Tonight/tomorrow morning may be rainy, but it couldn't possibly be as bad as that one.