7/3/08

Well that was a rather long and somewhat eventful day.

4am delivery... grocery warehouse... lumpers... blah. That generally sucks and I can't say that this morning was much of an exception. The last time I had to pay a lumper at the end of a pay period, they held over the Comcheck charge until the next pay period, when the reimbursement hit. If that happens again, I guess that would be nice. Sixty bucks is sixty bucks.

From the grocery warehouse, I headed north to Romeoville for my next pickup. I checked in and started chatting with another CTL driver who got there ahead of me. It was the usual small talk about where we had been and where we were headed. I was headed to Magnolia, Texas. The guy told me, "That's where I live," and rolled his eyes. I assumed that he meant that he was from the Houston area. Next he pulled out his driver's license and I had to chuckle - Magnolia, Texas. No shit.

So, seeing as the load delivers on Tuesday and I was going to be sitting in a truck stop for two or three days, I told him that he could call his fleet manager and see if he could get my load, if he wanted to do that. I didn't know where he was headed at that point, but why not give the guy a chance to visit with the family for a couple days on the holiday weekend? He told me that he had a 300-something mile run and that I probably didn't want that. Oh hell, why not? Maybe some day someone may do the same for me. He called his fleet manager, who told him that I would have to run it by my fleet manager before they could change our assignments. Since I would be the one essentially losing 700 miles of pay, she couldn't make the switch unilaterally. I called and gave my fleet manager the rundown. I don't know exactly how all of that load assigning works, but he took care of it and I wound up with a load dropping at our yard in Columbus, Ohio.

We spent the whole morning and the better part of the afternoon waiting to get loaded. At one point I hadn't felt my trailer shake for a while, so I headed inside. The lady told me that they had one more pallet to load. I hung around inside for a while and never heard anything. About a half hour later, I asked her again what was my status. She repeated the line about one more pallet. I told her that I was going out to my truck and that they could come and get me when I was ready to roll. Outside, there were about twenty hispanic lads playing soccer in the parking lot. Obviously it was lunch time at the warehouse. In what I'm sure is just a coincidence, as soon as their lunch/soccer break was over I got my last pallet.

I wasn't quite sure how the decision to give up a 1,055 mile run was going to play out. Generally speaking, it's probably not smart to give up miles on a holiday weekend. It just seemed like the right thing to do at the time though. Once I headed east, and my last fifteen miles on I-80 took over an hour, I was vehemently cursing the entire population of Magnolia, Texas. Then, as I say from time to time, things took a turn...

The traffic cleared up, I finally found some good music on the radio, and the planners in Joplin kept their batting average for this week at a cool 1.000 . I received a pre-plan for a load leaving Columbus tomorrow and going to Saint Albans, Vermont. That more than makes up the 700 miles that I gave up, plus adds some northeast pay to the mix. Better still, the delivery in Vermont is Sunday night, as opposed to Tuesday morning in Texas. That gets me another potential day of work on Monday. I also won't have to spend day after day idling my truck to stay cool over the weekend, since things have been rather pleasant in the evenings up north lately. So I guess the moral is that doing the right thing can work out for the best sometimes. See there, I'm a role model! Haha, funny, I know.

The drive across to Columbus was pretty good once I got clear of that mess in northern Indiana. The biggest challenge was the fact that I was getting tired, and fast. I thought about calling to see if I could just drop in Columbus tomorrow morning, but after a pit stop and a bite to eat I caught a second wind and finished off the run with no problem.

My Vermont run is supposed to be here tomorrow by 9pm. If it shows up early, I guess I'll head out for a few hours tomorrow. Hell, I might drive for a while even if it's here at 9pm. The way my sleep has been going lately, I may very well be wide awake for a while after that.

I just spent more time planning this route than I think I've spent on any ten routes combined. Getting to Saint Albans is sort of a pain in the ass. I punched the route into three different programs and each one talked about taking a ferry into Vermont. For starters, I don't intend to take a ferry. I'm sure that it's no big deal, but it sounds like just one more hassle that I can do without. Then there's the mileage. My paid 'practical' miles are something like 730. Truckmiles.com says 726 miles, but that involves about 200 different roads (plus the ferry). No thanks. Rand McNally (not truck specific) says 782 miles and the route looks reasonable, but it includes a jaunt into Canada. Not an option. PC Miler says 762, but again the ferry issue comes up. Once you start tweaking the route to stay on dry land and bridges, it starts either to get really convoluted or really lengthy.

After a while I came up with something workable. I'm pretty sure I found a route that should be fairly easy, and somewhere around 740 miles, but it will involve a little bit of skinny road driving through some rough terrain. Hopefully it's a light load. I had started to plot out a route that I took through the Adirondacks once before, but I'm not sure that my route in Vermont on that occasion was completely legal. In any event, the route I'll be taking this time shouldn't be too much longer than my paid miles.

I got to watch hear somebody's fireworks tonight after I dropped my trailer. I'm facing right toward the part of the sky that was lighting up, and I could hear some explosions, but there's a big ass warehouse where the horizon should be. Oh well, at least the Tigers are kicking some ass.