I got up this morning and drove an hour and a half to the Petro in Fremont, Indiana. That's where I've parked for the day. My Swedish buddy Sjoe had his brother pick him up somewhere in Indiana and drive him to the Notre Dame game. Apparently he had tickets. (If you have to ask, don't bother. I'm not going to explain.)
So... Sjoe woke this morning before he was entirely ready. Sjoe left himself a long day of work for tomorrow when he could have gotten more work done today. Sjoe stood out in the freezing cold air all damn day to watch a disgraceful performance. Sjoe will continue to support his beloved Fighting Irish but, following this debacle, he will no longer defend Charlie Weis' ability to be anything resembling a decent gameday coach. Then Sjoe's brother drove Sjoe back to wherever he was staying for the night.
And that was that. As for me, I have to drive about nine hours or so tomorrow. I'm planning to try and find parking at the customer so I'll probably arrive a little later in the evening. You know what that means - no alarm clock. Good. Sjoe and I will probably wake up with headaches.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Friday, November 21, 2008
11/21/08
"Did you come out of Texas?" That seems like a simple question to answer. This morning, after the dude at the consignee knocked on my truck to wake me, I didn't know the answer. I had no idea where I had picked up that load. After a peek at the bills it all came back to me. Yeah, I didn't sleep so well last night.
Once I was unloaded at the first stop in Manassas, I headed for the D.C. Beltway and the usual morning slowdown. The pace was tedious but not nearly the worst I've seen in that area. I found my second consignee without too much trouble. The signs on the street said that trucks were to use the second entrance. So I used the second entrance. There was a flatbed parked inside the yard, somewhat blocking my entry but not completely. I swung in beside him and checked in with the receiving guys. More good times and hilarity ensued. I had to back down a skinny alley behind the building in order to get unloaded. This would require me first to back out onto the street, through the skinny driveway opening, blindside, during the AM rush hour. Groovy. At least the fella from the warehouse kept an eye on traffic for me as I was backing out.
Much to my surprise, I pulled off the blindside back onto the street without much trouble at all. Then I would either have to (a) blindside back into the yard from the street or (b) come back in the other entrance forward, swing out into the street, and have a straighter approach to the alley. In the interest of safety and sanity, I chose option B. I drove down the street and found a place to spin around, then set up facing the first entrance to the yard. The catch was that I would have to wait for the flatbed to leave. That took a while. Once I was in the alley they worked pretty quickly to unload me.
I received a message as I sat parked on the street, stating that this consignee only gets one hour of free time before detention pay applies. I was supposed to document my in and out times once I was empty. I really don't know what would be the right approach there. I arrived at 7:30am. Theoretically, they made the alley available to me at that time. It was my choice to wait for the flatbed to leave, theoretically. I suppose that I could have made the blindside back into the skinny driveway and down the alley. So were they supposed to be on the clock while I was sitting on the street? I don't know. I just wrote the time that I arrived, the time that I backed in, and the time that I was empty. I imagine the office folks will figure out what they have to figure out from there.
Another message that I received as I was waiting put a smile on my face. "Planned load summary." I was in a good and shitty spot with respect to parking. I would have to go 30 miles or so in any given direction to find a place to hang out once I was empty. The pre-plan told me that I would be picking up in Baltimore, so I knew which way to go. Nice.
The drive to the shipper in Baltimore was pretty easy. Once I came out of the tunnel my directions started to make sense. Up to that point I hadn't been too confident. The loaders worked quickly and I was once again on the road. West on I-70 to the Pennsylvania Turnpike and on to Ohio. This is a 44,000 pounder so that route is a severe test of patience. I kept my cool and tooled along in the slow lane for the most part. The other test, well, yeah. Your don encountered his first full-blown blizzard of the season tonight on the Ohio Turnpike. Damn. It's not so much the snow that sucks. It's the other drivers. Maneuvering around them to maintain any kind of reasonable pace can prove to be quite a challenge.
I managed to slug my way through a couple of really rough stretches and then things cleared up nicely for the last eighty miles or so. I rolled on to the Petro in Stony Ridge to call it a night. One last order of business had to be handled first though. As I waited on the street for the customer in Alexandria this morning, I was parked under a tree. It seems that a branch must have caught the wires powering the clearance lights on my trailer. Maybe it was something else, but that's my guess. Anyhow, there was a wire dangling down and my top front and top side clearance lights were unlit. It turned out to be a simple matter of reconnecting the wires, but I had no way to do so myself. I'm about 7'4" short of being trailer height.
This load will deliver in the suburbs of Des Moines on Monday morning. A nice 1,020 mile trip to round out the pay week at 2,518 miles. Then we add $36 or so in northeast pay. Plus $35 in stop pay. Plus $120 in layover. Plus the possibility of some detention. (They're still tough to nail down on when and how much of that will show up.) It gets me back to the ~$1,150 that I was getting before I went home at the beginning of the month. Not too shabby.
There's a 2:30pm football game tomorrow, so I'm probably not doing a lot of driving. I guess it depends on how early I get out of bed. Today was a long one though. I'll most likely cruise into Indiana somewhere and veg out for the rest of the day.
Once I was unloaded at the first stop in Manassas, I headed for the D.C. Beltway and the usual morning slowdown. The pace was tedious but not nearly the worst I've seen in that area. I found my second consignee without too much trouble. The signs on the street said that trucks were to use the second entrance. So I used the second entrance. There was a flatbed parked inside the yard, somewhat blocking my entry but not completely. I swung in beside him and checked in with the receiving guys. More good times and hilarity ensued. I had to back down a skinny alley behind the building in order to get unloaded. This would require me first to back out onto the street, through the skinny driveway opening, blindside, during the AM rush hour. Groovy. At least the fella from the warehouse kept an eye on traffic for me as I was backing out.
Much to my surprise, I pulled off the blindside back onto the street without much trouble at all. Then I would either have to (a) blindside back into the yard from the street or (b) come back in the other entrance forward, swing out into the street, and have a straighter approach to the alley. In the interest of safety and sanity, I chose option B. I drove down the street and found a place to spin around, then set up facing the first entrance to the yard. The catch was that I would have to wait for the flatbed to leave. That took a while. Once I was in the alley they worked pretty quickly to unload me.
I received a message as I sat parked on the street, stating that this consignee only gets one hour of free time before detention pay applies. I was supposed to document my in and out times once I was empty. I really don't know what would be the right approach there. I arrived at 7:30am. Theoretically, they made the alley available to me at that time. It was my choice to wait for the flatbed to leave, theoretically. I suppose that I could have made the blindside back into the skinny driveway and down the alley. So were they supposed to be on the clock while I was sitting on the street? I don't know. I just wrote the time that I arrived, the time that I backed in, and the time that I was empty. I imagine the office folks will figure out what they have to figure out from there.
Another message that I received as I was waiting put a smile on my face. "Planned load summary." I was in a good and shitty spot with respect to parking. I would have to go 30 miles or so in any given direction to find a place to hang out once I was empty. The pre-plan told me that I would be picking up in Baltimore, so I knew which way to go. Nice.
The drive to the shipper in Baltimore was pretty easy. Once I came out of the tunnel my directions started to make sense. Up to that point I hadn't been too confident. The loaders worked quickly and I was once again on the road. West on I-70 to the Pennsylvania Turnpike and on to Ohio. This is a 44,000 pounder so that route is a severe test of patience. I kept my cool and tooled along in the slow lane for the most part. The other test, well, yeah. Your don encountered his first full-blown blizzard of the season tonight on the Ohio Turnpike. Damn. It's not so much the snow that sucks. It's the other drivers. Maneuvering around them to maintain any kind of reasonable pace can prove to be quite a challenge.
I managed to slug my way through a couple of really rough stretches and then things cleared up nicely for the last eighty miles or so. I rolled on to the Petro in Stony Ridge to call it a night. One last order of business had to be handled first though. As I waited on the street for the customer in Alexandria this morning, I was parked under a tree. It seems that a branch must have caught the wires powering the clearance lights on my trailer. Maybe it was something else, but that's my guess. Anyhow, there was a wire dangling down and my top front and top side clearance lights were unlit. It turned out to be a simple matter of reconnecting the wires, but I had no way to do so myself. I'm about 7'4" short of being trailer height.
This load will deliver in the suburbs of Des Moines on Monday morning. A nice 1,020 mile trip to round out the pay week at 2,518 miles. Then we add $36 or so in northeast pay. Plus $35 in stop pay. Plus $120 in layover. Plus the possibility of some detention. (They're still tough to nail down on when and how much of that will show up.) It gets me back to the ~$1,150 that I was getting before I went home at the beginning of the month. Not too shabby.
There's a 2:30pm football game tomorrow, so I'm probably not doing a lot of driving. I guess it depends on how early I get out of bed. Today was a long one though. I'll most likely cruise into Indiana somewhere and veg out for the rest of the day.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
11/20/08
I knew that I wanted to sleep late today so I stayed up nice and late last night. I did a little sprucing up of this here web log and organized some files on my computer and just generally kept myself occupied. Eventually I fell asleep. So you can guess what happened this morning, right? Satellite message. "Attention! You have a new important message!" That satellite voice chick really pisses me off sometimes. So I rolled out of bed and took a look. It was a notification that my layover from the weekend had been paid. Okay, I won't get too mad about that one. It's all about the Benjamins baby. If it had been another one of those recruiting updates... well... actually I wouldn't have done anything, but I would have thought about it!
I putzed around in Dublin for a while and then headed north. Stopping for fuel at the Pilot in Greenville was a debacle as always, but I had all the time in the world. No worries. Then a stop for dinner and a nap in Toms Brook. Then on to Manassas. That driving for an hour or two at a time is pretty nice. I still haven't found a way to do that every day and earn a comfortable living though. Oh well, guess I'll just keep slugging it out until I come across the magical solution. I got to the consignee a little while ago. I'm glad I checked out Google Earth on this one, as there were no addresses visible from the street. I had a pretty good idea of the type of buildings for which I was looking. Definitely helpful.
I think I kinda screwed myself with that nap earlier. This drop is supposed to go off at 5:30am and now I'm wide awake. Hopefully I can nod off for a few hours before it's time to start tomorrow.
Here's a little fun exercise for you to kill a few minutes. I never really thought that voting by optical scanner was such a difficult thing to do. The fine folks in Minnesota appear determined to prove me wrong. For what it's worth, I disagreed with the majority opinion on that website in five of fifteen examples. I guess I'm just a pain in the ass.
I putzed around in Dublin for a while and then headed north. Stopping for fuel at the Pilot in Greenville was a debacle as always, but I had all the time in the world. No worries. Then a stop for dinner and a nap in Toms Brook. Then on to Manassas. That driving for an hour or two at a time is pretty nice. I still haven't found a way to do that every day and earn a comfortable living though. Oh well, guess I'll just keep slugging it out until I come across the magical solution. I got to the consignee a little while ago. I'm glad I checked out Google Earth on this one, as there were no addresses visible from the street. I had a pretty good idea of the type of buildings for which I was looking. Definitely helpful.
I think I kinda screwed myself with that nap earlier. This drop is supposed to go off at 5:30am and now I'm wide awake. Hopefully I can nod off for a few hours before it's time to start tomorrow.
Here's a little fun exercise for you to kill a few minutes. I never really thought that voting by optical scanner was such a difficult thing to do. The fine folks in Minnesota appear determined to prove me wrong. For what it's worth, I disagreed with the majority opinion on that website in five of fifteen examples. I guess I'm just a pain in the ass.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
11/19/08
Ahh, no alarm clock today, no alarm clock tomorrow. I love it. I never heard back from the chick in Virginia last night, so I didn't bother getting out of bed early today. I slept late and got rolling around 11am. The timing worked out almost perfectly in terms of hitting Nashville after the morning rush and Knoxville before the afternoon rush.
I rolled up past Wytheville and decided to stop in Dublin for the night. That's a good 460 miles for today and I can't imagine I'm much more than four hours from Manassas at this point. I took a look at Google Earth. I'm pretty confident that I can set up shop at the consignee tomorrow night. If not, I'll have to scout for another location at the industrial park in which they are located. This means that arriving late will be better than arriving early. This means that I'm sleeping late again tomorrow. Nice.
I rolled up past Wytheville and decided to stop in Dublin for the night. That's a good 460 miles for today and I can't imagine I'm much more than four hours from Manassas at this point. I took a look at Google Earth. I'm pretty confident that I can set up shop at the consignee tomorrow night. If not, I'll have to scout for another location at the industrial park in which they are located. This means that arriving late will be better than arriving early. This means that I'm sleeping late again tomorrow. Nice.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
11/18/08
As was the case yesterday, the tone for today was set early. This time it was a good tone. I awoke at some point this morning and thought to myself, "Please let me sleep for one more hour." When I checked the clock, I had an hour until my alarm was set to go off. Beauty.
The twenty-five miles to the shipper were nice and easy. My directions were easy to follow and the shipper was easy to access. The paperwork was ready for me and my trailer was set to go. I backed my empty into a space in one motion and centered it perfectly. Since I'll be heading into some hilly terrain, I checked the weight on the bills. 10,000 pounds. Groovy. And we were off and running.
I got back to the Dallas area after the morning rush had died down, so the traffic wasn't backed up at all. Out through East Texas I just set the cruise control and enjoyed the ride. Arkansas was a breeze. There was traffic backed up in the Memphis area... westbound. My side was rolling right along. It was just that kind of day.
I got all the way to Hurricane Mills tonight, setting me up for an easy schedule the rest of the way. If a friend of mine in Virginia is available tomorrow, I'll most likely knock out nine hours of driving and join her for dinner. If not, I may drive a little less tomorrow and split the trip up more. I make my first drop in Manassas at 5:30am Friday so I'm planning to get up there on Thursday night. It's almost doable in one long shift from here so I can stop whenever I feel like it tomorrow afternoon.
After the drop in Manassas, I'll be heading toward the Beltway during rush hour. That should be pretty fun. My second drop is in Alexandria. The northeast pay will total close to twenty bucks for this load and the extra stop pays another thirty-five. Still no word on how much layover and detention pay are coming, but I'll be empty on Friday morning with lots of hours available for the weekend. It's starting to come together...
The twenty-five miles to the shipper were nice and easy. My directions were easy to follow and the shipper was easy to access. The paperwork was ready for me and my trailer was set to go. I backed my empty into a space in one motion and centered it perfectly. Since I'll be heading into some hilly terrain, I checked the weight on the bills. 10,000 pounds. Groovy. And we were off and running.
I got back to the Dallas area after the morning rush had died down, so the traffic wasn't backed up at all. Out through East Texas I just set the cruise control and enjoyed the ride. Arkansas was a breeze. There was traffic backed up in the Memphis area... westbound. My side was rolling right along. It was just that kind of day.
I got all the way to Hurricane Mills tonight, setting me up for an easy schedule the rest of the way. If a friend of mine in Virginia is available tomorrow, I'll most likely knock out nine hours of driving and join her for dinner. If not, I may drive a little less tomorrow and split the trip up more. I make my first drop in Manassas at 5:30am Friday so I'm planning to get up there on Thursday night. It's almost doable in one long shift from here so I can stop whenever I feel like it tomorrow afternoon.
After the drop in Manassas, I'll be heading toward the Beltway during rush hour. That should be pretty fun. My second drop is in Alexandria. The northeast pay will total close to twenty bucks for this load and the extra stop pays another thirty-five. Still no word on how much layover and detention pay are coming, but I'll be empty on Friday morning with lots of hours available for the weekend. It's starting to come together...
Monday, November 17, 2008
11/17/08
Let's play Jeopardy.
A: Watch movies all day and stare at the other trucks.
Q: What do you do when you sat all weekend and then got fifty miles for today?
Yeah, just the way the cookie crumbles sometimes. I should have known how the day would go when I got a burger from the vending machine in Lancaster and about gagged when I bit into it. Mustard? On a fucking vending machine cheeseburger? That's bullshit.
I made the twenty mile trek to the consignee this morning and they had me unloaded in short order. In the absence of a place to park in Dallas, I headed toward I-35E to start back toward Lancaster. As I got to the freeway I received my next assignment. I have to pick up tomorrow morning in Cleburne and head for Virginia.
I stopped on the ramp for a minute to see where Cleburne was. It is southwest of Dallas so I was going the right way. I pulled into the Love's on US-67 a short while later and that was that for today. Big time. Another day will be tacked on to my layover pay from the slow dispatch over the weekend though. If that goes on my check -and- the detention pay from North Carolina goes on my check -and- I get a decent weekend run -and- the northeast miles add up a little bit, I should do pretty well overall.
I now sit here and ponder more of life's little mysteries. For instance, how does it make sense to loan the automakers another $25 billion when they're (combined) worth less than half that? And why can't they just borrow some money from the oil companies if we're not going to let the oil companies spend the money on drilling? I don't know man. Congressional math, I suppose. It's no wonder we have $53 trillion in unfunded liabilities as a country. Maybe I'll knock some chick up and go to college and buy an electric car and get a low-paying job so I can get my check before the well runs dry. That sounds like a plan.
A: Watch movies all day and stare at the other trucks.
Q: What do you do when you sat all weekend and then got fifty miles for today?
Yeah, just the way the cookie crumbles sometimes. I should have known how the day would go when I got a burger from the vending machine in Lancaster and about gagged when I bit into it. Mustard? On a fucking vending machine cheeseburger? That's bullshit.
I made the twenty mile trek to the consignee this morning and they had me unloaded in short order. In the absence of a place to park in Dallas, I headed toward I-35E to start back toward Lancaster. As I got to the freeway I received my next assignment. I have to pick up tomorrow morning in Cleburne and head for Virginia.
I stopped on the ramp for a minute to see where Cleburne was. It is southwest of Dallas so I was going the right way. I pulled into the Love's on US-67 a short while later and that was that for today. Big time. Another day will be tacked on to my layover pay from the slow dispatch over the weekend though. If that goes on my check -and- the detention pay from North Carolina goes on my check -and- I get a decent weekend run -and- the northeast miles add up a little bit, I should do pretty well overall.
I now sit here and ponder more of life's little mysteries. For instance, how does it make sense to loan the automakers another $25 billion when they're (combined) worth less than half that? And why can't they just borrow some money from the oil companies if we're not going to let the oil companies spend the money on drilling? I don't know man. Congressional math, I suppose. It's no wonder we have $53 trillion in unfunded liabilities as a country. Maybe I'll knock some chick up and go to college and buy an electric car and get a low-paying job so I can get my check before the well runs dry. That sounds like a plan.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
11/16/08
Yeah, I'm bored as hell. No women stopped by to see me last night, so I have to assume that my plea fell on deaf ears. I did drop my trailer this morning and head down to the Nieman Marcus of the trucking industry - WalMart - for a while. That was a real thrill.
Then I came back to the yard and did some reading. I learned that the "scientific consensus" was full of shit again. Hey, when a theory doesn't hold water, just stick with the narrative and make up the facts as you go. I can't blame 'em. There's a lot of money in that paranoia business.
The 'Skins game will be on in a little while. At least I'll have something interesting to keep me occupied for a few hours. I have to deliver in Dallas by 8am tomorrow. I should be able to get a little sleep after the game.
Then I came back to the yard and did some reading. I learned that the "scientific consensus" was full of shit again. Hey, when a theory doesn't hold water, just stick with the narrative and make up the facts as you go. I can't blame 'em. There's a lot of money in that paranoia business.
The 'Skins game will be on in a little while. At least I'll have something interesting to keep me occupied for a few hours. I have to deliver in Dallas by 8am tomorrow. I should be able to get a little sleep after the game.
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