3/22/08

This morning was a foggy little bugger. There were some stretches where it was hard to see one truck length in front of me. Luckily there wasn't a whole lot of traffic that early on a Saturday so I made pretty good time. I stopped in Freer for some breakfast (aka donuts) and then finished off the run into Laredo.

Since I was dispatched to arrive in Laredo at 10:30am local time, you could probably guess that the broker receiving the load is closed on weekends. So I had to get up at 5am, why exactly? Dunno. The bright side was that a closed broker meant that I could drop the trailer at the terminal instead of delivering it. I got on the board and I was number... zero? No board? At Laredo on a Saturday? Nice.

The dispatcher had a load that needed to be picked up from a broker down the street from us, but had nobody to pick it up until I got there. Sure thing dude. I'm your Huckleberry. He gave me an empty number and sent me on my way. Once through the yard - nothing. Second trip around, a little slower - nada. Then I found a bunch of empties on the repair aisle. Yep, there was mine. I checked the tag to see what was wrong with it and I found that it just needed the plastic skirts removed from the bottom. Dumb ConWay legacy trailers. So I walked over to the mechanics and told them I was taking it with the skirts on it. Screw it. Someone can pull them off the next time around.

Over to the broker... "They're closed buddy," said the security guard. I called the Laredo dispatcher, who then asked to speak with the guard. A non-English conversation ensued, after which I was sent to the loading dock. Beauty. One pallet and thirty seconds later, I was on my way north.

Every time I have to go up I-35, I remember how much I hate I-35. Sitting behind a senior citizen or a church group blocking the right lanes as I watch the traffic fly by in the left lane (where trucks are not allowed) just makes my blood boil. Traffic wasn't even heavy today, but of course it had to come to a dead stop in Austin. I think a bunch of those degenerates from Leander must have gone down there for breakfast or something. Eventually things loosened up and I made it up to the Dallas area before my hours ran out.

This run is going up to the Chicago area, which makes it interesting in a variety of ways. One is that it will require every hour I have coming to me for both tomorrow and Monday in order to deliver by Monday morning. That will leave me sitting Monday with no hours and picking up four and a half hours Tuesday. Sounds like a restart is in order. Second is that apparently I have to cross Noah's flood tomorrow. Hopefully the waters are down enough to get through by the time I get into Missouri. Third is that Illinois just got pounded with snow. I'm actually pretty confident in their ability to clean things up before Monday morning. Since I'm only hauling 700 pounds, I hope there's not much slippery stuff.

Those are interesting, but here's the most interesting part to me:

You can interpret the $0 in additional pay as meaning $0 in layover pay, which will likely lead to another unpleasant discussion in the near future. That's not the point though. Check out the miles. I'm sure I've had a 4,000 mile week at some point in time, but I've never had one since we went to weekly pay. That looks pretty cool. We're not talking 3,999 here either, by the way. I'll be hamstrung in terms of hours once I deliver, but until that time I am to be addressed as "Super Trucker."

3/21/08

Holidays on the road are different, obviously, from holidays at home. It doesn't take a real Einstein to figure that one out. Once I got out here and realized what it's like though, I can't honestly say that I mind. At home, it's a shallow routine. Family, church, food, TV, whatever... Out here there's a lot more time for introspection and reflection on what the day really means. Is Good Friday an excuse for a fish fry or is it a chance to see how pathetic our own sacrifices really are in this lifetime? I don't know man.

So I crossed Louisiana and headed down into Texas this morning and afternoon. I took a few short breaks along the way, trying not to hit Houston right at rush hour. That actually worked out pretty well for me, in terms of avoiding delays. I think I had a broken truck the last time I made this drive, so obviously today was a lot better. I was planning to run out my full ten hours today, but after I stopped in Ganado for dinner I wasn't in the mood to drive anymore tonight.

I'll have around 225 miles from here tomorrow morning, then get on the board and hope to get out of Laredo before midnight in order to tack more miles onto this paycheck. I'm sitting a little over a thousand bucks for the week right now. Anything I get tomorrow will be gravy as far as I'm concerned.

Speaking of paychecks, the UPS money is now missing from check #8. I exchanged a couple of e-mails with my fleet manager, who is apparently handling it. I was reminded that the UPS pay is not subject to the two hour minimum (forgot about that), so I guess it will only be $17.50, but it's my $17.50 damnit. And my layover pay for the Kentucky to Texas run was a no-show. Apparently that's being entered today. I'm withholding judgment here, rather than make a bunch of generalizations, because I've honestly never had pay issues at this company before. Maybe it's just a case of a couple things being overlooked and the timing is merely a coincidence, but I'm not sure I like the trend that seems to be emerging. Do the work --> collect the pay. Isn't that the usual routine?

Anyway, time for bed now.

3/20/08

Ahhhh... that's what I'm talking about. Nice easy morning on the two-lanes with plenty of time to stop at WalMart and exploit some workers, nice friendly shippers who worked promptly, a scale at the shipper so I didn't have to stop and weigh, nice light afternoon traffic on the interstates, beautiful weather all day and more in the forecast for tomorrow. Welcome to Spring.

These are the kinds of days to which you look forward out here. Everything went exactly as planned and I was able to kick back with the cruise control and the radio on as I learned what a "typical white person" is like. That guy seriously needs to go back to saying "change" forty times an hour, and quickly, if he really wants to be President. I really do try not to get political on here, but for crying out loud...

I'm hauling 42,000 pounds of steel scraps this time around. It's actually pretty weird. There's no container, no pallets, nothing like that. Just a pile of little four-inch shards of steel dumped on the floor of the trailer. They ran some kind of conveyor belt in there and just let it rip.

I got down to the southwest corner of Mississippi before my 70 hours ran out. I pick up ten hours tomorrow, so I won't be able to get to Laredo from here in one shot. I'll have to finish off the run on Saturday morning and hope there aren't a lot of people ahead of me on the board. I'm at 2,643 miles for the week right now, with around forty bucks in northeast pay on top of that, so it has been a good week even if I don't get anything on Saturday. I'm feeling pretty greedy though, so you know how it is.

3/19/08

If you ever have a hard time getting your ass in gear in the morning, I think I have the answer for you.

1) Set your alarm for 6:45am
2) Go to bed.
3) Wake up to piss and wonder why it's so light outside.
4) Look at the clock and see 8:15am.
5) Do some quick mental math (8:15am + nine hours = 5:15pm)
6) Check your appointment time (5pm)
7) Haul ass out of town.

Yep, that seems to do the trick. Of course, it's also a good way to get yourself behind the eight ball, but that's just details. I was making pretty good time and looking like I'd arrive around a half hour early... then it started raining. Rain isn't such a big deal, right? I agree, but apparently the rain means that people are free to block both lanes of the interstate at 35mph for thirty miles. So I had to be the aggressive pain in the ass driver as I made my way through, but I got out of the logjam and showed up about ten minutes before 5pm. Then the guy at the receiving location told me to go to shipping, which was a couple miles away. I got over there and checked in. Strike that. I got over there and tried to check in with the lady in the office. I could describe her for you, but what fun is that? Let's just say that she must have a son named Kyle.

And on my ex-wife's birthday too... that's pretty funny. Since I had the audacity to try to tell the lady that I was dropping off and not picking up, I got to sit and wait for a while as she pretended to be too busy to hear me. That seems to be some kind of ego trip that certain customers like to exercise. Then they loaded a local guy who showed up after I did, so I waited a little longer. When she came out to check the seal and tell me that I had a door assigned, I acted like I was on the phone and couldn't hear her. Fuck it... good for the gander and so forth. Once she looked good and annoyed, I rolled down my window. So they unloaded me and that was that. In the end, I wasn't actually there all that long.

I've ducked into a little truck stop just north of Dothan for the night. I have to pick up tomorrow a couple hundred miles to the north, in Anniston. As I looked at my intended route, I didn't see any places that I would be likely to find parking at night. I've been to the T/A in Montgomery and it pretty much sucks. All the other places listed in my directory have small lots or no lots at all. My instructions say that I am not to arrive at the shipper more than a half hour before my appointment, so I guess that means I can't park there overnight. So yeah, I'm just staying down here. I can only work a total of ten hours or so between the rest of today and all of tomorrow, so it really makes no difference when I drive up there.

3/18/08

Beauty day today. Well, it was kinda dreary, but the driving part went well. Usually going down I-81 through Virginia is a royal pain in the ass. Two lanes, tons of hills, and way too much traffic. Today it wasn't so bad though. It looks like Pennsylvania is getting soaked right now, so I got out ahead of that stuff. I think the best part of the drive was the little dance a Stevens driver was doing with me for about fifteen miles. Our trucks both go 65mph, and he was heavier than me, so he would take a run every time we went downhill. But he couldn't get next to me, so he would fall back in line going uphill. I would pull ahead a little ways and he would try it again a mile or two down the road. Then, when the dude finally made it around, he had to go into the scales and I got a bypass signal on my Prepass. Haha, so long sucker.

So I got down to Statesville, North Carolina tonight. That was a full eleven hour day, and I'll have somewhere around nine hours to go tomorrow. It's always nice to find an easy pull-through parking space at the end of a long shift, so I guess things are right with the world for now. This (Homer's) is one truck stop where I actually like to spend a few bucks. They dumped Citgo when old Chavez started his shit last year, so I have to respect that at least a little bit.

Tomorrow's run shouldn't be bad as long as Atlanta doesn't slow me down too much. My appointment is for 4pm CDT. The next pickup is something like 11am the next day, so it looks like my schedule should be pretty normal for a few days here.

3/17/08

I would like to start by welcoming Irishmen of every nationality on this St. Patrick's Day.

So, I got up to Manchester ten minutes ahead of my 5am appointment and was relieved to find the gate open. I pulled into the ConWay yard, but nobody was there to assign me a dock. That finally happened at 5:30am. Who would have guessed? See that picture up in the corner of the page? That's me being surprised.

After I got empty, I headed back south to the rest area where I spent last night. It was about fifteen miles away, but I didn't know of anything closer. My intent was to leave Manchester by retracing the route I had taken on my way into town. Yeah, that didn't work out. The ConWay yard is on a one-way street. Once I turned north out of the yard, it was the old "that street looks okay" routine. It turned into a bit of an adventure, but I found my way back to the rest area without hitting anything.

A few hours later I got an assignment to head a little further south and pick up a load in Massachusetts. It worked out that my route to the shipper would have taken me right past the rest area, so that was nice. I checked in and then sat around waiting for almost five hours to get loaded and get my paperwork. So I could only manage to knock out a couple hundred miles this evening before my 14 hour clock ran out.

As a result of the delay at the shipper, I'll have two long ass days ahead of me starting early tomorrow morning. I'm scheduled to deliver in Dothan, Alabama on Wednesday afternoon. On a more positive note though, I'm set to grab another run out of Alabama on Thursday morning and head for Laredo. That will put me in Laredo on a weekend, which can be hit and miss, but my miles will be somewhere between 2,500 and 2,600 for the week by the time I get there.

I stopped in Sturbridge, Massachusetts this afternoon to top off the fuel tanks. Apparently in that state it's now illegal for the pump handles to lock in the 'on' position. I had to fill up one tank, then walk around to the other side and fill up the other one. So let me make sure I understand this. The liberals in Massachusetts have enacted a law that interferes with the ability to do a job and, as a result, caused a logjam with respect to interstate commerce? See that picture up in the corner of the page? That's me being surprised.

3/16/08

Waking up in western New York and seeing snow falling... where have I heard this story before? It didn't turn out anything like last weekend's drive though. Some snow, some rain, some snain (I get to make up words in my own blog sometimes), but nothing to really slow me down. I headed east across I-90 and ran the speed limit all day.

After a nice hearty lunch at Sbarro I got across Massachusetts and up into New Hampshire. I passed a few places along the way, where I knew there would be parking. I had my eyes on a rest area that my atlas shows on US-3 just outside Nashua. In the back of my mind, I was thinking I might be better off stopping short. If the rest area were full, I would have no other options between Nashua and Manchester. The smart thing was probably to hedge my bets and stop sooner, allowing for the possibility of finding a full lot. I don't generally do the smart thing though, so I rolled the dice and headed up to New Hampshire anyway. The rest area is down along some little side street. It has parking for five trucks... and there were four trucks here before me. Beauty.

When I started at CFI, they made a big deal of saying that many of the people in Joplin used to be drivers so they know what it's like out here. Runs like this one lead me to call bullshit on that topic. I was dispatched to deliver at 5am tomorrow. The ConWay paperwork says that the load is due at 5am Tuesday. Obviously I had plenty of time to cover 925 miles this weekend, so there is no reason to wait and deliver on Tuesday. I have no issue with them scheduling me for tomorrow, but here's the rub. No parking, right? We're ConWay employees now, but not really. So the ConWay terminal is closed for the weekend, set to open at 5am Monday. Say I show up at 4:30am and nobody is there. I'm on some bullshit little street with a big old truck and nowhere to go. (They showed up after 5am in Providence the last time I had a Monday drop at a ConWay.) Say I show up at 5:30am and somebody is there. I'm late, according to my dispatch. So I have the fun task of driving into a major city before the sun comes up and trying to arrive at exactly 5am. Hopefully traffic flows exactly the way I foresee it with my all-knowing mind.

Why not just schedule me into Manchester at 10am or something like that? Then I don't have to wake up at 4am, I know the yard will be open, and I'll still be a day ahead of ConWay's schedule. To someone who "knows what it's like," this shit is just common sense. Whatever man.

I got tired of the news talk after a while today, so I checked out XM's Irish music on channel 76. They're playing it all weekend and through St. Patrick's Day. As long as you can wade through the overabundance of cheesy singalong nonsense, they mix in some pretty good music. I even heard a handful of the old fenian ballads, which surprised me a little given today's PC climate. If you have XM, it's a decent change of pace worth checking out. Anyhow, it's time to wind down for a little while, since I don't make the rules and I do have to get up at 4am. Cheers.