11/21/08

"Did you come out of Texas?" That seems like a simple question to answer. This morning, after the dude at the consignee knocked on my truck to wake me, I didn't know the answer. I had no idea where I had picked up that load. After a peek at the bills it all came back to me. Yeah, I didn't sleep so well last night.

Once I was unloaded at the first stop in Manassas, I headed for the D.C. Beltway and the usual morning slowdown. The pace was tedious but not nearly the worst I've seen in that area. I found my second consignee without too much trouble. The signs on the street said that trucks were to use the second entrance. So I used the second entrance. There was a flatbed parked inside the yard, somewhat blocking my entry but not completely. I swung in beside him and checked in with the receiving guys. More good times and hilarity ensued. I had to back down a skinny alley behind the building in order to get unloaded. This would require me first to back out onto the street, through the skinny driveway opening, blindside, during the AM rush hour. Groovy. At least the fella from the warehouse kept an eye on traffic for me as I was backing out.

Much to my surprise, I pulled off the blindside back onto the street without much trouble at all. Then I would either have to (a) blindside back into the yard from the street or (b) come back in the other entrance forward, swing out into the street, and have a straighter approach to the alley. In the interest of safety and sanity, I chose option B. I drove down the street and found a place to spin around, then set up facing the first entrance to the yard. The catch was that I would have to wait for the flatbed to leave. That took a while. Once I was in the alley they worked pretty quickly to unload me.

I received a message as I sat parked on the street, stating that this consignee only gets one hour of free time before detention pay applies. I was supposed to document my in and out times once I was empty. I really don't know what would be the right approach there. I arrived at 7:30am. Theoretically, they made the alley available to me at that time. It was my choice to wait for the flatbed to leave, theoretically. I suppose that I could have made the blindside back into the skinny driveway and down the alley. So were they supposed to be on the clock while I was sitting on the street? I don't know. I just wrote the time that I arrived, the time that I backed in, and the time that I was empty. I imagine the office folks will figure out what they have to figure out from there.

Another message that I received as I was waiting put a smile on my face. "Planned load summary." I was in a good and shitty spot with respect to parking. I would have to go 30 miles or so in any given direction to find a place to hang out once I was empty. The pre-plan told me that I would be picking up in Baltimore, so I knew which way to go. Nice.

The drive to the shipper in Baltimore was pretty easy. Once I came out of the tunnel my directions started to make sense. Up to that point I hadn't been too confident. The loaders worked quickly and I was once again on the road. West on I-70 to the Pennsylvania Turnpike and on to Ohio. This is a 44,000 pounder so that route is a severe test of patience. I kept my cool and tooled along in the slow lane for the most part. The other test, well, yeah. Your don encountered his first full-blown blizzard of the season tonight on the Ohio Turnpike. Damn. It's not so much the snow that sucks. It's the other drivers. Maneuvering around them to maintain any kind of reasonable pace can prove to be quite a challenge.

I managed to slug my way through a couple of really rough stretches and then things cleared up nicely for the last eighty miles or so. I rolled on to the Petro in Stony Ridge to call it a night. One last order of business had to be handled first though. As I waited on the street for the customer in Alexandria this morning, I was parked under a tree. It seems that a branch must have caught the wires powering the clearance lights on my trailer. Maybe it was something else, but that's my guess. Anyhow, there was a wire dangling down and my top front and top side clearance lights were unlit. It turned out to be a simple matter of reconnecting the wires, but I had no way to do so myself. I'm about 7'4" short of being trailer height.

This load will deliver in the suburbs of Des Moines on Monday morning. A nice 1,020 mile trip to round out the pay week at 2,518 miles. Then we add $36 or so in northeast pay. Plus $35 in stop pay. Plus $120 in layover. Plus the possibility of some detention. (They're still tough to nail down on when and how much of that will show up.) It gets me back to the ~$1,150 that I was getting before I went home at the beginning of the month. Not too shabby.

There's a 2:30pm football game tomorrow, so I'm probably not doing a lot of driving. I guess it depends on how early I get out of bed. Today was a long one though. I'll most likely cruise into Indiana somewhere and veg out for the rest of the day.