1/14/09

The CTL folks have this clever little thing that they do when we're going to receive a ConWay relay from another driver. Once the first driver is loaded, they send us a message with the inbound truck and trailer number so that we will know for whom to watch. Sensible enough, right? The cool part is that the first driver is usually loaded while the second driver is sound asleep. And thus began my day.

When I got the assignment yesterday, the schedule said that I would leave Atlanta by 9:30am today. When I got beeped in the wee hours of this morning, I was told that the relay would reach Atlanta by 10am. Therefore it should come as little surprise to anyone that the inbound driver rolled in at 10:30am. In fairness, our yard is all the way around to the south side of Atlanta. It may very well take an extra half hour to get there, compared with a delivery into the main part of town. Whatever the reasons may have been, my day began later than expected. I never got back to sleep after the early message woke me so I had a long morning of sitting around and waiting.

My drive down to Orlando was pretty decent. The weather was good and the traffic was lighter than the last time. I've been sent to the Orlando ConWay yard on two previous occasions. Both times, I've received a pre-planned load en route. Around 11am today, the satellite unit beeped at me. Pre-plans usually come with a second beep, asking for updated hours from me, so I waited a few seconds. No second beep followed. I pushed the button on my dash and the computer voice chick read the message to me. Some crap about permits for hauling alcohol in Indiana and such. Bummer.

Around 11:30am the thing beeped again. Okay, here comes the pre-plan. No second beep followed. Okay voice chick, read this one to me. Our W-2 info is now available on the ConWay website for us to print whenever we like. This is good to know when you have a pretty healthy wad of cash coming from the feds for last year's per diem deductions. Hopefully my few 1099's will be waiting for me the next time I get home. That way I can get everything filed nice and early this year. A little infusion of dough certainly wouldn't hurt right now.

The next beep came at noon. Surely this would be the pre-plan for which I was hoping. It wasn't, and I apologize again for calling you Shirley. This message said that our W-2's will be mailed out by January 31st if we haven't accessed them before then. Whatever.

5pm... satellite beep... no, not this time either. It was a message asking people to drive safely and shut down if the weather is too bad. Duh. It said that we've had a handful of accidents lately and most of them were in bad weather. On what may be a related note (if my flimsy theory is correct) or may just be a coincidence, I got another red light on my PrePass today in Georgia. In the warm weather months I almost never get a red. In the winter I get them on a somewhat regular basis. I have no idea how the intricacies of the system work but I do know that our safety rating is somehow related to how often we're supposed to be inspected. I still think that a bunch of our drivers crash their trucks every winter and earn us more red lights.

So I got to the ConWay terminal with no pre-plan and nowhere to park for the night. I checked in and made my drop/hook. I was lucky enough to be handing in my paperwork when the boss was sending home a bunch of guys due to a lack of freight. Yeah, festive environment in that place tonight. It seems that driving to work only to be told to go home isn't a real big plus for these guys. Nothing awkward about being in the middle of that exchange and trying to get a signature on my bills. Nothing awkward at all. A couple of our trucks were parked on the grassy area across the street so I went ahead and joined them. Screw it. Good enough.

How would we summarize the start to this week? 476 miles so far, vending machine food for dinner, #3 on the board, in a state that doesn't exactly produce a whole lot of freight, and the gay security guy wasn't even there to flirt with me this time around. The Irish did hire a new offensive line coach today though. Things are most definitely looking up.