12/26/08

Well, if we try to piece together a few words to describe today, we can leave the word "efficient" out of the conversation. It was about 140 miles from the rest area where I spent the night to my consignee. That took three and a half hours. More accurately, 130 miles took two hours and change. The last ten miles took the rest. Clusterfuck.

Things weren't running a whole lot more smoothly once I got to the ConWay yard in Orlando. On account of the holidays, none (or almost none) of their equipment was on the road. It was all parked at the yard. I got the old "drop here, no, there" and "take that empty, no, that one" routine. I am pretty sure that the little Cuban security guard was flirting with me though. Not really my type but it's at least a little flattering. He seemed like a nice guy.

Then I was headed north from Orlando to Palatka. First I had to retrace the same ten miles that sucked ass on the way to the yard. They weren't any better leaving the yard. Worse probably. Once I got to the freeway it shook out okay for a while. Then back onto US-17 for the last several miles. I can tell you this much - rumors of me getting old have been greatly exaggerated. Spend a day in blue hair country and you'll tend to agree. These people aren't in a hurry to do shit! That took a while.

My pickup was a drop/hook scheduled for 11pm. 11pm would be after my 14 hour window had closed for today, so I was hoping to find a loaded trailer when I got to the shipper. I found no such thing. They inspected my empty and told me where to drop it. Then I had to sit and wait. The inspector dude told me to check back around 8pm, as the load might be ready by then. It wasn't.

A few minutes ago, the chick at the desk told me that it would probably be around 11pm before my load is ready. I'm not really inclined to spend the night at this place, so I think I'll take a nap now. Once I've been here for eight hours, I can go into a split and get up the road a little ways with the hours that I have left from today. Then, depending on how I feel, I can take two hours off to pick up more driving time or just take ten hours off and get out of the split. I have to deliver in the Chicago suburbs on Monday morning. The trip is something along the lines of 1,100 miles from here. If I get 200 miles gone by tonight, I can do 450 and 450 over the weekend. That should work out just fine.

A quick review of the calendar indicates that today's paycheck will be my last of the year. My paystub shows that I just managed to squeak over $54,000 for 2008. This amounts to about a $6,500 increase from '07. Most of the increase would probably be due to pay raises that kicked in at various stages. We got a penny per mile as part of the ConWay merger deal at the start of 2008. Then I got another penny around May or something like that, as a result of reaching 250,000 miles of service. My safety bonus probably went up a quarter cent too this year, since I somehow haven't managed to hit anything.

I suspect that I was probably home a little less than last year as well, but we'll dig into the miles and all of that once I get my last dispatch of the year in a few days. I don't know how much I was home or what my miles were, but my (considerable) gut tells me that I was home slightly less and yet drove slightly fewer miles. Oh well, we'll get to the details in due time. I'm gonna try to get some rest now.