7/28/08

And everything is cool in the mind of a gangsta, 'cause gangsta ass niggas think deep.
Up 365 and yo 24/7, cause real gangsta ass niggas don't sleep...


Yeah, so I took a few naps yesterday. And I just woke up from a nice rest today. Let's not ruin the narrative. For a while there, it felt like I hadn't slept in... well... a while there. Damn it feels good to be a gangsta.

I got a call last night, some time after 10pm, asking if I would have the hours to cover a load. It would be a hundred something miles to Hazleton, Pennsylvania and then two hundred forty miles up to the suburbs of Albany for a first drop at 5am. Given the miles involved, it looked like it would be tight but manageable. They assigned the load to me and then I saw that it would be a little tougher than previously thought. The route to Hazleton would take me up PA-309, a skinny two lane road snaking through the mountains. Oh yeah, and it was foggy as hell too.

I rolled into the shipper around 1am and made a rapid-fire drop/hook. All signed out and ready to roll at 1:15am, it was back to the road time. According to the security fella at the shipper, one of our guys brought a load into Hazleton on Saturday night, with the expectation that he would be taking the load to New York with him when he left. Apparently (again, according to the security fella) he didn't have a drop number for the load that he brought to Hazleton so they wouldn't let him drop it. Next appointment --> Monday. So the dude had to sit on his inbound load all weekend and I got a call at the absolute last possible second. The paperwork says that the trailer was ready at 1pm on July 18th. Saturday (when the problem allegedly was discovered) was not yesterday, let alone late last night, so chew on that one for a second. A little more lead time could have helped. Driver's fault? Customer's fault? CTL's fault? Who cares, really? I just had to haul balls to New York. That's all I know.

When the guy from CTL called me to see if I could cover the load, he said that he would try to stack something behind it for me. That way I wouldn't get stuck sitting in Albany after my second drop with low hours available and nothing planned. Good lookin' out my brother. My next planned load came through somewhere along the way as I was driving. I'm headed from Clinton, Massachusetts to North Carolina for a Wednesday morning drop. The cruise across and into New York in the middle of the night went pretty well. That thick fog was pretty persistent, so I had to stay on my toes. Traffic was light though, so I managed to roll into the customer's lot at 5:10am. That's pretty good time, the way I see it.

When I sent in my arrival call at the first drop, I got the usual response - directions to the second drop. Then, a few seconds later, my satellite unit beeped with another message. I can assure you that the last thing I needed to see was anything asking me why I got to the customer ten minutes late. Guess what I saw. Haha, fooled you. It was a note thanking me for doing such a good job on short notice, from whoever had been monitoring my progress throughout the night. Well ain't I just special?

I was sent down to Albany for my second drop a couple of hours later and then I was empty a few hours after that. I had time to get to Clinton within my 14 hour window, but I didn't have time to take a ten hour break and then go to Clinton. ( My appointment was for 7pm.) So I headed straight here. Either I could take a ten hour break at the shipper or they could load me quickly and I could roll down the highway until I found a place to take a break. When I checked in, the guy said that he had some bad news and that it would be several hours. Say no more, fair chap. One man's bad news is another man's lullaby. I was asleep within mere seconds. They just woke me up and gave me a door a few minutes ago. By the time I'm loaded and ready to roll, I'll only have to hang out for an hour or so until my ten hours have elapsed.

Then it's another overnighter for old Joey. I'm not even going to try to get cutesy with the schedule on this one. I'll take off as soon as possible, trying to knock out as many pain in the ass choke points on my route before the sun comes up. The funny thing is that, in trying to take care of me with a pre-plan, they managed to find a trip that is almost completely along I-95 (and the part on I-85 ain't much fun either). I get to tackle Connecticut, The Bronx, the Jersey Turnpike, the Delaware Memorial Bridge, the Delaware Turnpike, Baltimore, D.C., Richmond, and Greensboro, along with various mountainous and hilly terrain along the way. As much driving as I can do overnight, combined with as much sleeping as I can do during the day... that's the plan.

So, for a gangsta like myself, you know that it's all about the Benjamins or something like that. How are we looking? Well, it's considerably better than it was 24 hours ago. That's for sure. I'll be empty on Wednesday morning, with hours available, and I'll be somewhere over 1,300 miles. The vast majority of those are northeast miles (with the extra nickel). Plus I have my $35 for the extra stop this morning. Halfway through a pay week, that's pretty decent. I'll put in my request for home time once I get down to North Carolina, so I should grab a few more bucks on the way back north. The only downside thus far, with respect to pay, is that I'll probably have to hire a lumper at the consignee. Then I'll have to hope that my reimbursement gets processed before my paycheck for the week gets processed. Otherwise it will be one of those informal $60 loans to my employer.