5/6/08

I left Statesville a little early, anticipating a slow ride down to Sanford during rush hour. Good deal. Traffic was uncommonly light around Greensboro and the drive was nice and easy. I pulled in the wrong driveway at the shipper, so I had to back into the employee parking area and wheel it out to the street in order to get situated properly. A couple of CTL drivers were hanging around the docks, and one of them kept an eye on my trailer for me, so that was pretty cool. The shippers took their sweet ass time getting me loaded (hand loaded, stacked to the ceiling), but I was early anyway, so that was no big deal.

Then it was onward and northward. As I looked at the clock, I knew that I would be lucky enough to hit Richmond, D.C., and Baltimore all during the afternoon drive hours. Lucky me. Richmond was all good. D.C. was brutal. I guess the bright spot is that rush hour was over in Baltimore by the time I got out of D.C.

I wanted to get as far as possible today, so I wouldn't use too many of tomorrow's hours before I made my drop. I would like to have a shot at a decent load once I'm empty. That traffic put a pretty good strain on my time, but I was able to get as far as Hazleton tonight. The only catch there was that the truck stops would be chock full of trucks by the time I was ready to park. My ace in the hole is the undeveloped part of the Humboldt Industrial Park around the corner from one of our major customers. There's a street along the back where nobody ever drives, so I can hide out here for the night. It's not an ideal solution, but it'll do in a pinch. I guess occasionally having a little experience out here does pay off.

I'll have a couple hundred miles from here tomorrow morning and then hope for something good. Today's 737 mile dispatch came along with 621 extra nickels for the northeast, so that's a decent boost. I'll be sitting at 1,126 miles, so a good finish to the week will have me doing fine. It looks like I'll be doing some hill cruising tomorrow. This 3,000 pound load will come in quite handy.