7/31/08

Do you suppose that I could ever find a job hauling empty trailers around the country? That would be pretty cool. The drive down to Chattanooga with my empty trailer had me feeling all manly and stuff. Whenever the other trucks would hit a hill and slow down, I would blow right on by. I got to my customer around 6am, so my timing was good in terms of traffic. My shipper didn't open until 7am though. I pulled around the corner and grabbed a wi-fi signal from the house across the street while I waited.

Right at 7am, the security guard told me to pull into the facility, scale my empty, and go to the far end. They used some kind of a portable ramp thing to load my trailer, so that was something different. I backed up as close to it as I could get and then a guy chained it to my trailer. After I sat around for about an hour, they went hog wild and got me loaded in about five minutes. I'm hauling thirty rolls of paper on this trip. That's thirty big ass, heavy ass rolls of paper. There were three forklift guys going in a rotation and doing the loading. Pretty impressive.

Once they were done, I had to drive out the other end of the facility, around the block, and back in the entrance in order to scale out. Then I got to back out onto the street, since another truck had taken my place in front of the portable ramp thing. There was no room for two trucks to pass each other in that place. Then it was back up and into the mountains with another 45,000 pounds. Ahh, I love my job, I love my job, I love my job.

By the time I got into the mountains north of Knoxville, the drive was looking like a repeat of yesterday. About the only difference is that the slower traffic came from truck drivers instead of blue hairs. It looks like the Crete trucks are about as slow as the Schneider trucks now. Bummer. Anyway, there were a handful of us that were all running right around 65mph and all pretty heavy. So we sort of hung together in the slow lane and did our thing. A Crete guy came out of a rest area and decided that he would pass us going up a hill. Sensible enough, assuming that he was lighter. Why wait behind the rest of us, right? Well, he may have been a little lighter, but not much. He barely managed to pass me (the guy in the back) before we got to the top of the first hill and he cut me off. Then, on the way down, I had to ride the brakes because he was way slower than I was. I won't go into a full-blown play by play here, but the bottom line is that this particular Crete truck could only run about 62mph on flat ground. If you know that you are slower than everybody else, you don't cut off people who are going faster than you. Moron. Luckily for me, he pulled into the scales when the sign said 'closed' and I left him behind. There were other trucks waiting to scale, but the cops were probably closing up each time they got a few trucks to inspect. In any case, he turned in and I drove away. Moron.

In the rain and in the mountains, I was about ready just to park and say to hell with today. The Tigers were coming on at noon though, so I knew that I would have a diversion to keep me occupied if I could just hang in there a little longer. Yeah, they lost. I got to northern Kentucky today, so tomorrow will be a pretty easy drive home.

I suppose now I'll try to deal with my rampant case of racism. Until the good Senator was kind enough to tell me yesterday, I had no idea that my political views on the various issues were based on the appearance of the guys on the dollar bills. Then again, I am a "typical white person," so it probably stands to reason that I must be a racist. I guess you learn something every day. Hopefully someone can help me work through it. (And pssst: Increased economic growth in the second quarter. Am I a racist, or a seer? Hmmm.)