12/24/08

After slugging my way through the snow last night to get to my shipper, I received a phone call. My mother had turned on the TV and seen the tales of woe and carnage from the area freeways. I told her not to worry and that things weren't that bad. Yeah, so I was lying. What are you gonna do? She said that she would pray for me to make it safely and to get somewhere warm. Aww, how sweet. My mother is probably the least religious person that I know.

Once I was loaded I got the smorgasbord of bad freeway conditions. There was deep snow. There was plowed and packed snow. There was the always fun "wintry mix." There were spots where the salt was working and the roads were just wet. There were patches of ice along the edge lines in some areas. Once I got into Ohio, it seemed that wet roads would be the only issue. The temperature was steadily rising and things were rolling along just fine. Then I saw people with their flashers on in the right lane, going wicked slow. Then a big truck parked in the median, lucky not to have tipped over. Ahh, fuck me! Yep. Black ice. Sixty miles of it. That'll ruin your morning in a hurry.

After spending a little over two hours covering fifty miles, I decided that the best thing to do would be to park for a while and let the temperature get high enough for the salt to work a little better. My only issue would be the infamous 'expected time of arrival.' I was told as I sat on my couch yesterday that the load had to deliver between 8am and 10am today. I was dispatched for 8am, which is standard procedure for this company. I didn't want to risk missing the 8am dispatched time, so I shot a message to CTL informing them of the bad roads and asking if I could get an ETA of 9:30am. I never got an answer.

As it turned out, I got out of the ice ten miles later so I just kept rolling along. I got to the consignee at 6:30am and hopped in the bunk for a nap. Five minutes later a dude knocked on my door. I was directed to the dock and they got to work unloading me immediately. The guy said that they were looking to get done as quickly as possible today on account of it being Christmas Eve. I guess they were pretty glad nobody in Joplin ever answered my message, weren't they?

Not long after I was empty, I received my next assignment. I would have to head across past Indianapolis and make a drop/hook at the ConWay yard in Plainfield. By the time that was all said and done, I needed to take a ten hour break as my 14 hours had run out. Where to on this fine occasion? Orlando, by golly. Maybe Mom should have started praying for me a long time ago. I might not have been such a degenerate.

This dispatch had me arriving in Orlando at 2:30am on Friday. Bullshit. That ain't happening. I would have to run two more overnighters and then show up in the middle of the night with no place to park. The paperwork says that the load is due at 9pm. I know that the dispatching software defaults to use all available hours and get me there as soon as legally possible, but I had to nip this one in the bud. After having my message ignored this morning, I went ahead and called Joplin this afternoon. I asked the fella to change the time to noon. He said no problem and that was that.

Following my break, I shot down to Kentucky and then parked it for the night. We'll pick up the trip from here in the morning. I wanted to get off the road by 8pm for obvious reasons...