5/8/09

The folks at the Fenian Godfather Institute are always on a quest to obtain as much knowledge as possible about the world around them. Today brought us an unmistakable lesson. Me on a powered pallet jack = comedy gold. We're talking 24 karat.

I was dispatched to deliver in Bessemer, Alabama at 2pm Central today. My instructions said quite specifically that early arrivals are absolutely unacceptable at this customer, so I slept through the morning's thunderstorms in Tennessee before heading southward. I pulled into the lot at 1pm and the security guard told me that they were closed. He assumed that I was arriving for an appointment tomorrow morning. No, I was told 2pm today, I informed him. He made a phone call and then directed me to a door where I could check in with the receiving department.

The bitch lady in the receiving office yelled at me for missing my appointment this morning. As you may have deduced from the preceding paragraph, I knew nothing about a missed appointment. I thought I was an hour early. She then informed me that the load was either to be unloaded by the driver or a lumper was to be hired. I checked with the lumper boss to see if he had any ComChecks. If not, I would have to unload the trailer myself. I used my last ComCheck a few days ago. He told me that the lumpers had all gone home for the day anyway, so the ComCheck issue was irrelevant. I would have to pull the pallets off myself. Fine with me. We'll just grab a pallet jack and get to work...

They only had the powered jacks. Most places won't let drivers use the power equipment without OSHA certification and whatnot. They generally keep one or two manual jacks around for the drivers who don't wish to pay a lumper. This place gave me my choice of equipment and told me to have at it. One thing I learned pretty quickly is that you may think you're driving the pallet jack. If you don't know what you're doing though, the pallet jack drives you. It was pretty damn funny. I would get the pallet off the truck okay and then I was all over the place trying to drive it to the spot where I intended to set it down. Then, if I was off by a foot or two, I would end up being off by ten feet before I got the damn thing headed back in the right direction. It took me around an hour to get my trailer emptied out and the pallets lined up on the floor. Thirty-five bucks is thirty-five bucks though. I'll gladly take it as compensation for providing those guys with an hour's amusement.

I was empty for a half hour or so before receiving my next assignment. I had to drive about seven miles to the other side of town and set up for a ConWay load leaving tomorrow morning. I'm heading back up to Virginia with a load that has to drop by Monday morning. The directions say that I can drop 24/7 though, so I'll most likely get rid of it early on Sunday and set myself up for a good start to next week. This run will pay 684 miles, with the last handful getting the extra northeast pay tacked on. And, as an added bonus, there's none of that 4am nonsense on the weekends. I have to pick it up by 10am locally (or 11am civilized time). Good deal.

Now I have the rest of the night to marvel at the awesomeness of a photograph that costs $328,835 and one scapegoat's job... just beautiful.