5/16/08

What a miserable day...

Starting at the beautiful hour of 3am, I kicked the tires and headed north. Rain, rain, and more rain was the order of the day. I heard on Coast to Coast that the earthquake in China and the cyclone in Burma were not actually natural disasters. They were intentional acts by the Illuminati designed to wipe out millions of people who are not part of the chosen race. The rest of us will be targets in the near future. Great. That's just what I need.

Slowly but surely, I got to York and turned down the street toward my consignee's location. Yeah, wrong street. In fact, it wasn't a street at all. Rather it was a driveway for a neighboring business. I saw some loading docks, so I went back and tried to turn around. Nope. No room. I could see my customer's docks approximately sixty feet away, but there was no way to get through. So I backed out away from the loading docks and got out to assess the situation. I could maybe... no. Or how about... nope.

The only way out was to back onto the street from which I came. That was a busy road with constant traffic in both directions. After a few minutes of inching back toward the road, I saw an opening. A pickup truck coming from the south flashed his headlights to indicate that he was letting me out, and there was nobody approaching from the north. So I started angling the trailer back. A truck approached from the north, but stopped to allow plenty of room for me to get out.

On the first try, I swung a little too wide and didn't get the trailer turned quickly enough. I flipped on my CB and, risking damage to the (uncalibrated) transmitter, asked the other truck driver to hold back the traffic for another minute while I pulled up and adjusted my line. He did, and I got it out okay on the second try. By that time, the line of traffic was pretty long in both directions. I was dubbed "JB," "Swift," "Schneider," and the rest of the usual suspects by the people waiting to get through. Yeah, I guess I had that coming. Some of the CB Rambos were real pricks, bitching about the delay, but that's life sometimes. Nothing hit, no harm done.

Around the corner, I checked in and got unloaded pretty quickly. I guess I was a little flustered at the time, as I sent in 'stop 1' on my arrival call, when I was actually at stop 2. I got a quick reply from my fleet manager and then sent the correct stop number before my 7am appointment had passed. Again, no harm no foul.

By the time I headed up to the nearest truck stop, or what I thought would be a truck stop, I had received my next assignment. The truck stop was closed and blocked off, but there was room in front of a repair shop for me to park and check my directions. I was headed north and east to Breinigsville to pick up a load headed for Chesapeake. So, lots more rain and lots more slow traffic notwithstanding, onward I drove. The instructions said that we can't arrive early (pick up time was 2pm), so I stopped at a place on I-78 for a few hours and kicked back.

When I fired up the truck to head to the shipper, it was running like shit, so I guess I'll have to keep an eye on that tomorrow. It got a little better as I drove along, but it's probably due for new filters pretty soon here. Along the way, I was reminded of one reason that I don't drive a flatbed. The main reason is that I'm a lazy bastard, but that big ass steel beam that went through some dude's sleeper berth on I-78 was another one. Hopefully nobody was back there.

At the shipper, I was checked in and then told to wait for a door assignment. There were a bunch of trucks in the waiting area, so I pulled off to the side and watched my 14 hour clock dwindle. I got a door at 4:30pm, two and a half hours after my appointment. In keeping with today's theme, they got me loaded and on my way just as I had been there for three hours. Three hours meant no detention pay. Three hours also meant that my 14 hours were up, so I'll have to get rolling before the sun comes up again and do the full 328 miles (or thereabouts) tomorrow. That means I'll be in 14 hour purgatory by tomorrow afternoon, when I'm hoping to jam in another decent run to close out my pay week.

And it's still raining. And there was nowhere near the shipper to park, so I had to roll along on the crooked side of the law until I found a spot. And I have to do that damn US-13 through Maryland for the second time in a week or two.

What a miserable day.