12/13/08

After more than 24 hours at the good old Circle K, I was getting a little impatient. I cleaned out my trailer and headed over to the shipper a little early. The place involved quite a bit of red tape. Various forms to fill out, an inspection of my truck, yada yada yada. Once I got back to the warehouse I was told by the yard dog to drop my empty in a given spot. Sweet. I hadn't known that this was a drop/hook. Maybe showing up early was a good idea. But... the loaded trailer wasn't loaded just yet. I had to back in front of it and wait for a couple of hours. Oh well.

I got a message today saying that my layover for the 48 hours of down time in Laredo over Thanksgiving had been paid. Maybe someone in Joplin is a mind reader. When I saw that my paycheck posted yesterday without my sixty bucks, I wasn't a happy camper. A stern phone call was going to be in store for someone on Monday morning. But they preempted me and paid the sixty bucks today. Fair enough. One less call to make.

I got rolling after the trailer was loaded and released to me, taking advantage of the light traffic and getting all the way to Jackson, Tennessee before deciding to call it a night. The truck stops are surprisingly crowded for a Saturday night. Both the one in Arkansas where I stopped to fax some paperwork and this one where I've parked for the night were jammed up. Of course the one difficult parking spot that nobody wants to tackle tends to be open, regardless of the time of night. That's the one I got tonight.

Once I got settled in I stepped out and did my little post-trip inspection. Son of a! The bracket holding my left rear drive wheel's air chamber in place... has snapped. I've never seen that before. I can't even figure out how the damn thing could crack in the manner that it did. Just a clean fissure right above the bolt. But it did. After a call to our road service department, I learned that I'm right down the street from a Kenworth dealer and that they are open for service on Sundays. Guess I'll head over in the morning and see what's what. I'm about eleven hours from my destination right now. If something had to go wrong, I suppose that the timing worked out as well as possible for me. Even if most or all of tomorrow is burned at the dealership, I can knock out the run on Monday without any real trouble. The consignee has overnight parking so I can get there as late as I want to.

The best way to remove the sting of an 1,825 mile week is to back it up with a 3,225 mile week. That's what the fine folks at CTL managed to do for me this time around. Then we tack on the $60 in layover pay and the $47 in northeast pay and I have no complaints.

Reality TV right in front of me tonight! Sweet! As I was winding up that last paragraph, a Central Refrigerated dude just swung out of a parking spot and totally fucked up the side of a Swiftie with his tail swing. Mirror, headlight, fender, he did a number on that one. Hopefully there's a Volvo dealer with Sunday hours nearby too.