6/20/08

Mama said there'll be days like this, there'll be days like this my mama said...

I got up nice and early so I could call in and get squared away with an empty trailer. I was promptly unassigned from the North Carolina run and sent to a trailer shop to get an empty. I guess, if you can read the post below this one, you probably know that I wasn't terribly shocked.

So I headed over into Pennsylvania and checked in with the guys at the trailer shop. "I don't have any good CFI trailers." Well sir, what exactly does that mean for me? "There's one here and it has a hole in the floor." Super.

I called Joplin again and explained the situation. Then they sent me across town to a KMart DC to grab an empty there. On my first pass through the lot, I didn't see the trailer that I was told to get. Second time around, I spotted it. It's one of the old 'ConWay Now' trailers with the ugly teal logos. I hooked up and got back in the truck. The trailer was jammed tightly between two others, so I was going to have to pull it out before I could check it over. Away we go... or not. The damn wheels didn't turn. I had no way to get under it and see what was going on, so I dragged it out into the lot. A pair of nice skidmarks formed an arc behind me. The first step in that situation, as I understand it, is to make sure everything is hooked up right. Yep, all good. The second step, as I understand it, is to see if the drums are frozen to the shoes and try to knock them loose. Tried that. No go.

I got under the trailer and I could hear air hissing out from somewhere, but I couldn't tell where. Even still, the truck was running and pumping in enough air that the spring brakes should have released. As all this was going on, I was assigned to a load picking up in Burlington, New Jersey and going to Taylor, Michigan. I called the road service guys and the fella on the phone tried to talk me through a couple of possible fixes. One thought was to back off the slack adjusters so that the wheels would turn, then pull it to a shop to find the issue. However, he said that if there was an air problem, that would be no good. The brakes would just tighten back down. I'm not anything close to a mechanic, but those guys know what they're talking about so I didn't want to get stuck on the road with my brakes locked up. So they called a repair shop. (Incidentally, it was the same shop that I had just left.)

I spoke with my fleet manager, who told me that the load had to pick up in Burlington by 4:30pm. It was 11am at the time and Burlington was around 200 miles away. If we're talking about crossing Jersey, then 200 miles equals at least four hours. 11am + 4 hours = 3pm. So I had an hour and a half to get moving. The CSRs were calling the customer to see if the pick up could be any later, and I was hoping that the repair guys would come quickly, so we stood pat with the load assignment and played it by ear.

A couple of hours later, I still hadn't seen the repair guys, so I was unassigned from my second load today. They showed up not long after that and crawled under to take a look. The main guy said that, at first, they thought I had a blown air chamber. I hadn't found a blown air chamber, but again I'm not a mechanic. After they checked it over though, they said the air should have been fine. The hissing that I had heard earlier was just excess bleeding out of the air bags. What happened next was slightly embarrasing but rather amusing. The little hispanic helper guy took a hammer and a crow bar and went hog wild on the brake drums. And my truck was freed from bondage. Apparently they had just frozen up and I hadn't hit them hard enough. I guess that's a lousy reason to call a shop. In my defense though, I don't think I would ever unload on my company's equipment like that. I mean, he was pounding the shit out of that crowbar.

So, ready to roll, I got back on the board one more time. I asked the security guard if he knew where I could park and get a bite to eat. I swear he said "Wal Mart," but I guess not. He said go down there and turn there and so forth, so I did. I saw a little convenience store with a truck parked out in the back, but I was looking for Wal Mart. Nope. To add to the fun, the road was closed just past the convenience store. I had seen the signs, but I had also been told (I thought) that there was a Wal Mart. I fully expected to turn into a nice big parking lot and then go back the way that I came. I had to back up about a quarter mile until I found a wide spot where I could pull a U-turn. Thankfully, everybody else knew that the road was closed so nobody drove up behind me.

I pulled off to the side of the road on a wide gravel area and waited for whatever came next. I was awfully hungry but I'm definitely not in any danger of starvation at this stage of my life. It was maybe ten or fifteen minutes until I got my assignment. I had to go 130 miles west and get a load headed to... Taylor, Michigan. These guys ain't screwing around with the old home time request this time, are they? My load doesn't pick up until tomorrow afternoon, but that's fine. I'll obviously be home before my medical card expires on the 26th, which was the most important part.

I was rolling westward on US-30 this afternoon when the combination of hunger and traffic got the best of me. I stopped off at a little truck stop east of Lancaster and parked it for the night. I can't imagine that it's much more than twenty or thirty miles from here to the shipper. Then it's about 500 miles to home. I think I've been to this shipper before, as the directions sound somewhat familiar. If so, I'm headed for a little skinny road driving with a wicked heavy load tomorrow afternoon, at least for a little while. Then it will be a long evening of lugging it up and down the hills on the turnpikes.

The people who live next to the truck stop apparently don't secure their wi-fi connection, so I have nice quick access for the night. Alas, nobody is streaming the ballgame. Bummer.