11/12/08

That was a pretty productive first day back on the road, I suppose. I tossed and turned all night and then got rolling shortly after 5am this morning. A quick two-hour drive to Sandusky was just the thing to get me back into the swing of things without getting too tired.

I followed the directions from my Qualcomm and arrived at my consignee. The directions didn't match the address in the stop location info, but that's nothing new. After checking in with a guy inside the building, I was sent a few blocks away to a location that did match the address from my stop location info. That building was empty. There was a real estate sign out on the front lawn. There was police tape blocking the entrance to the office area, reading "Do Not Enter." Super.

After making a phone call to apprise my fleet manager of the situation, I returned to the first building. The same guy assured me that I had been at the right place and that the morning crew simply hadn't arrived yet. When I mentioned the appearance of the place, he said that they had recently purchased the building and that this would explain the signage. The guys in their office confirmed his version of things so I headed back over to the empty warehouse. Then a nice blindside back-in from a skinny side street was a fitting wrap-up for my first run in quite a while. Eventually two people did show up and get me unloaded. On a positive note, I learned that the word 'gaylord' actually means something. I always thought that 'gaylord' was just a name that children call each other. Turns out it's some kind of shipping container or something.

My deadhead to Akron was nice and easy. The guys at the shipper there worked very quickly and sent me on my way. Since I knew that my route was going through West Virginia and Virginia, I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. Nope. 44,000 pounds. Shit. This afternoon's drive was a mountainous pain in the ass, for lack of a better description. I got down I-77 to I-81 before my 14 hours ran out. Even with the limitation from that rule though, I managed to drive a total of ten hours and 550 miles today. That's pretty decent.

I can't recall whether or not I've gone from Tennessee to North Carolina on I-26 before. It doesn't sound familiar. My guess is that I have a long morning of dragging this bastard through some more mountains ahead of me.