12/29/08

Dude. I think everyone listened to me when I said that I like it when they stay home. Crazy. For those of you in Chicagoland, I made it from South Holland to Hodgkins in 28 minutes this morning. I left the service plaza at 7:30am and rolled into the consignee at 7:58am. For anyone not familiar with the area, that's 25 miles across I-294 past Chicago and up onto I-55, through construction zones, at or above the speed limit. That was creepy. I've never seen those roads so empty at any hour, let alone during the morning commute on a Monday.

I can still be bitter though. Oh yes, I can be bitter. My consignee was a grocery warehouse. Those places tend to suck. Yep. No exception today. It took forever to get checked in (as the chick at the desk ignored me) and then I was at the dock for quite a while. The extortionists lumpers charged $200 for the unloading. Sometimes I think I'm in the wrong racket. Since it's only Monday, I'll hopefully be able to get my reimbursement through the bureacracy before the pay period ends. I'm not really in the mood to loan anyone $200 right now.

I got a plan summary for my next load while I was sitting at the dock. This didn't help in my quest to become more bitter. Sitting around all day and thinking about how I was getting screwed would have been more effective. I would really rather be making money though, so I guess I should just be myself and enjoy it. I'll leave the angst to others who find it more natural... for now. There's always tomorrow.

Once I was empty I had to head north to Harvard, Illinois and grab a load bound for Louisville, Kentucky. I was scheduled to pick up at 5pm so I stopped for lunch and took my time, arriving at 1:30pm. My hope was that I could get loaded early and make my way south before my 14 hour clock ran out today. The fella doing the loading took my phone number and said that he would call when I had a dock, but pointed out that I had a 5pm appointment. Bummer. Man, life sucks! (See, I can still do it.)

I fell soundly asleep for a while. When I awoke I took a look at the clock. 5pm had long since come and gone. I checked my phone. Surely I must have missed a call. No, I hadn't missed any calls, and I apologize for calling you Shirley. At 6:30pm I got my phone call. "Aylo. Can you backin' in door nomber four pliz?" Si, Senor. Hey, I got to make a blindside back into an indoor dock in the dark! Sweet! I pulled that off without a whole lot of trouble and they had me loaded before much longer. Good enough.

This timeline didn't leave me with a whole lot of attractive options. I could stay at the shipper until I had been there for ten hours. This would get me to the consignee pretty early, but would burn up most of tomorrow's 11 and 14 hour clocks by the time I was empty. I could head out and use what was left on today's 14. This would leave more hours available once I was empty, but would get me to Louisville tomorrow afternoon. By then there would be a good chance that I wouldn't get a load tomorrow.

The dispatch took about ten minutes to come across the satellite and then the decision was made for me. The appointment time is 1pm tomorrow. If they were doing the usual 'earliest possible' thing, it would have been slightly earlier and it would have been a time like 12:34pm. The fact that it took ten minutes to come through and it's on the exact hour tells me that they had to make an appointment once I was loaded.

I had time to get down into Indiana before today's hours were gone. From here I'll have to cover a couple hundred miles in the morning. Empty in the afternoon. Holiday on Thursday. 70 hour rule catching up with me fast. I won't set my expectations too high for this week.