7/6/08

Well, all good things must come to an end. It was a good run for a week, but today I finally delivered a load without having another one lined up ahead of time. I just took myself off the board so I can try to sleep for a while, so we'll have to see what comes up when I go back on duty in the morning.

The drive today was a pretty cool one. The roads that I took weren't bad at all and my load was a reasonable 14,000 pounds, so the hills weren't too bad either. The little tourist towns along the way were very crowded, so I had to stay on my toes, but driving this truck is the one thing that I actually do pretty well out here. It also helped that most of the traffic was moving west and south, heading home, while I was moving and east and north. The biggest logjams had more to do with pedestrians than anything else.

I got to the truck stop in Saint Alban's this afternoon and cooled my heels for a while before heading to the consignee. I had an 11pm appointment so I drove over there at 9:30pm to see what they would say. By 10:00pm, I was empty and back in my spot at the truck stop. Not bad.

The guy who picked up the load and relayed it to me had strapped in the last pallet to hold it steady in transit. He mentioned this as we made the exchange in Columbus, since I needed to give him a strap to replace the one in the trailer. When I opened the doors tonight I saw that the dude must be Hercules or something. He had ratcheted the strap way too tightly across the trailer, denting the cardboard shipping boxes on both sides of the pallet. I couldn't tell if the products inside the boxes were affected, but I expected the customer to say something to me about it. They said nothing, so I guess it was okay.

I was #1 on the board when I got empty tonight, so hopefully I will be right back there in the morning. I have no idea whether or not we have freight that originates this far to the north. The furthest I've ever been into New England was Houlton, Maine (furthest you can possibly go in New England). That time, after I got on the board, I was eventually sent to Pennsylvania in order to pick up my next load. Given the holiday weekend and production schedules and such, I don't have any great expectations for tomorrow. I should be able to get my vacation pay tacked onto my check though (just passed the two year mark), so it's all good.