A glorious fall Saturday in Northern Indiana. Three hours of driving this morning got me to the Corleone family's Howe estate. This closes the books on another pay week with 2,420 miles plus a little over $80 in northeast pay. Any time I can squeak over $1,000 I can't complain.
Now it's time to gear up for my lads to shock the nation. Those of you who have come to know my Swedish buddy Sjoe might be able to guess where he'll be this afternoon. Could any place in the world compare? I doubt it.
The boys will need to play some inspired football today. They'll be outmanned in the trenches. They'll be outmanned in the running game. They'll be outmanned on special teams. But it's a game of inches, as our man Tony D'Amato would say...
Today's lesson is as follows: Whining like a little baby, while not always recommended, might occasionally pay off in the end. I got a call from a dear, dear, dear, dear, dear, dear (was that sincere enough?) friend of mine in Ohio this morning. If I could make it to the western suburbs tonight, she would make me some dinner while I lie on her couch and act pathetic. Sweet. I don't even feel all that sick anymore, but I'll milk it for what it's worth. I was thinking about asking her to wear a French maid outfit while she cooks, you know, for the full effect, but I haven't been slapped by a woman in several years. Probably best to save the inappropriate comments for a time when I'm strong enough to defend myself.
Other than that, the rest of the day's news was pretty good as well. This morning's paycheck had $111 in detention pay from the Shawnee episode tacked onto the already solid mileage pay. Traffic out of New York and through Pennsylvania was nice and light. Even going through Cleveland, in the rain, during rush hour, things were moving quite smoothly this afternoon. About the only challenge now will be finding a room at one of the Corleone family's estates for tomorrow. Whenever Our Lady's glorious defenders of sweetness and light have a home game against those escaped mental patients from Los Angeles, the demand for lodging tends to outstrip the supply in Northern Indiana.
We'll cross that bridge tomorrow, I suppose. For now I think I'll try to get a load of laundry done before lil' Ms. Chef gets off work. Or maybe I should see if I can play on her sympathies and get her to do my laundry while I lie around and act pathetic... Yeah, probably not.
I'm about to go to bed at 9:30pm and I don't even have to get up early in the morning, so I guess you can put two and two together on that one. And here I am with no damn woman to make me some soup while I lie on the couch acting all pathetic and such. No justice, I tell you. Kind wishes from folks like Daryl are not unappreciated, mind you, but you know what I mean.
Once my ten hour break was over this morning, I headed in and grabbed an empty trailer and then sent my 'on duty' form via satellite. By the time I drove down the street to the local truck stop and found that there were no open parking spaces, I had received a new assignment. Well then, that certainly was handy timing, wasn't it? Since I had no place to park in Shrewsbury and my next pickup would be in Westfield, I decided to head to the turnpike and then stop at the first service plaza to figure out the rest of the details. I had forgotten just how ludicrous the parking arrangements at that service plaza tend to be, but today I got lucky and managed to snag an open spot along the back.
After writing down my pickup numbers and having some lunch and generally killing time for a bit, I got back on the road and finished the trip to Westfield. My pickup time was scheduled for 3pm but I was hoping to get an early start on the next run. When I checked in at the shipper (at noon), the lady pointed out that I was supposed to pick up at 3pm. She did, however, say that I would most likely get loaded before then. She took my cell phone number and said that she would give me a call when my turn came around. I was asleep five minutes later.
The new default ringtone on my cell phone is an mp3 of the Dropkick Murphys performing Victory, a song known in certain circles as the Notre Dame Victory March. Anyhow, it's a fun little jam on the bagpipes and so forth. That ringtone is, believe it or not, quite a bit more startling than the generic AT&T ringtone when it wakes you from an illness-induced slumber. I really don't recall how the conversation went, but I wound up in Door 9 with my trailer axles back and my wheels chocked. I must have been at least somewhat coherent, it would seem. I didn't realize until I had been at the dock long enough to clear my head that it was after 3pm. So much for getting loaded early.
After about an hour at the loading dock I was sent on my way with 26,000 pounds of some kind of metallic film stuff. I'm due in Neenah, Wisconsin on Sunday night. I guess it would be more accurate to say that, as far as I know, I'm due in Neenah, Wisconsin on Sunday night. Yeah, we're talking about that trip one more time. Just can't seem to get beyond it, can we? I'm going to the same consignee, so we'll see if I actually have an appointment this time. That would be pretty cool, I think.
After getting out of Massachusetts and a little over a hundred miles into New York, I decided to stop and call it a night. With only somewhere around 900-950 miles left to go and three driving shifts left to do it, there was no point in going any further tonight. An early dinner and an early trip to the sack sounded a little better. I'm not terribly sick and it doesn't affect the driving part of the deal one way or the other, but I do hope to enjoy some down time at one of the Corleone family's Midwestern estates on Saturday. If my Irish are destined to get their asses kicked again, at least I should be in fighting shape to cheer them on along the way. I'm thinking that one more night of NyQuil and some uninterrupted sleep might do the trick. Then I can bang out a long stretch tomorrow and leave an easy weekend for myself. At least that's the plan.
I don't know if there was an official competition to determine who was responsible for my quasi-illegal schedule from Ohio to Massachusetts. In the unofficial competition though, our guys won. Woo hoo! The Con-way Freight schedule had the load picking up at 4pm and delivering at 6am. A quick pen and pencil session will show that this is a 14 hour window and juuust within the law. Our Truckload gang decided to work in the 1pm pickup time for some reason.
I woke this morning and decided to see if the load might be ready early, hoping to avoid the whole legality question entirely. The load was ready shortly after 11am and I was hooked up and rolling by 11:30am. Beauty. So, in a sense, by giving me the screwy 1pm pickup time, the Truckload folks may have indirectly gotten me a chance to deliver tonight. Yeah, in a sense.
I was keeping an eye on my progress every hour and pretty consistently maintaining a 60mph average speed out of Ohio and through Pennsylvania. At 1:30pm I had only covered 115 miles but at every other bottom of the hour check I was right on the 60mph pace. It was looking like I would reach Shrewsbury just after 9pm and make my drop well before the terminal closed at 10pm. Cue road construction... now.
Outside Bristol, the two left lanes of I-84 were closed. No big deal, right? Everyone merges over and we continue on our way. Thirty minutes later, I had made it through the two miles of construction. Okay then, still shouldn't be too hard to reach Shrewsbury before 10pm. Just gotta get past Hartford and then the speed limit will be up to 65mph for the rest of the trip. Cue more road construction... now.
For the sake of a little variety, it was the two right lanes that were closed in Hartford. Same deal though. Nobody knows how to merge. More accurately, they most likely know how to merge but simply choose not to do so. People have to stay in the lanes that are closed until they reach the cones and then jam up the road for everyone. Peckerheads. That logjam was a little smaller than the first though, and there was still an outside chance that I could reach Shrewsbury before 10pm.
As I rolled up US-20 and started looking for my destination, I spotted an LTL terminal on the left but the area was pretty dark. I had no idea where I might turn around if I missed the terminal, so I decided to step on the brakes and hang a left. Estes. Not Con-way. Shit. Somehow I managed to do a complete 270ยบ spin in the confined space of the driveway and get myself back onto US-20 headed in the right direction. Sweet. Four or five more minutes wasted though as I got turned around and then waited for an opening in the traffic.
A little further up the road I saw the nice bright sign for the Con-way terminal and swung into their driveway... at 10:03pm... and found a locked gate. Shit. At least my driving for the night was done so that an eight hour break would get me to 6am (the scheduled delivery time). Then I could make the drop and take another two hours off to complete my split. I decided to try the dispatch office and see if anyone was still in there though, just in case. Yep. The guy from the office said that it would be no trouble to make the drop tonight. He came out and unlocked the gate, then showed me where to drop the trailer. Further to that, since the truck stop down the street is overloaded at this late hour, he said that I could park my truck outside the gate and spend the night, then come in and grab an empty trailer in the morning. Sounds like a plan, my man.
I sent in my 'dropped trailer' form and got the obligatory error message since I chose not to go on the board tonight. The error message says that we have to call Joplin when we don't get on the board but they're always short on manpower at night, so I just sent a satellite message instead of calling. The reply that I received said simply, "Joe thanks," so I guess that means there's no problem. Most people there call me Joseph, so I felt at least a little special this time around.
I'm a pretty skeptical dude for the most part and tonight is no different. I just swallowed a couple of NyQuil liquid gel capsule things in hopes that I'll wake without the sore throat, headache, and runny nose that I have at the moment. I'm skeptical because there must have been a reason to endure the awful taste of NyQuil for all those years growing up, right? You couldn't possibly get the same effect in a flavorless capsule. Here's hoping that my skepticism is unfounded. I'm feeling good and shitty right about now. Ten hours of rest and a couple of blue-green gel things... we'll see.
Ahh yes, fun times in Cleveland today. You know, I spent a month's worth of trip planning on my route to this afternoon's consignee. Aside from all that online mapping, I made sure to check my routes against my atlas. Nothing was restricted at least until I got into the residential neighborhood where I was supposed to deliver. So I followed I-90 into town. I took the exit for the Cleveland Memorial Shoreway (US-6/20). I proceeded westward. There were numerous signs advising that "thru trucks" were not allowed, but I was not going through. I was making a local delivery so I paid them no heed. Then there was a sign stating that "all trucks" must exit at 45th Street. Well, shit. There goes all of my meticulous route planning.
I had no idea where 45th Street would take me, but I knew that I needed to continue westward to reach my destination. There was a quick little jog to the south and then I wound up heading west on Detroit Avenue (Alt US-6). I remembered Detroit Avenue from last night's internet cut and paste session, so at least I had that going for me... which is nice. I drove along until I saw a stop light and then hung a right on 65th Street. Legal or not? We may never know. It was a tight little mutha though. I can tell you that much. More of that staring at motorists until they back their asses up and whatnot. Oh well, I got a job to do.
65th Street wasn't terribly bad. It was residential until I got closer to the railroad tracks, where some businesses are located, but it was plenty wide enough for my truck. From that point I was able to resume the directions that I wrote down last night. The run-down little warehouse from last night's post was in fact 7201 Father Caruso. There was a local truck in the dock. It had the name of that plastics company from 78th Street on the door. And so it comes full circle...
A sign on the door instructed me to call a phone number, after which a guy came over and pointed me to another warehouse around the corner on 73rd Street. My less than impressive display of backing skills got me into the docks after a little while (facing yet another skinny residential street). Then the aforementioned guy had me unloaded in fairly short order. I was #1 on the board once I sent in my empty call. That's always nice. Without anywhere in particular to go and not really enjoying the prospect of cruising the streets of Cleveland, I pulled out onto 73rd, backed up along the curb, and set the brakes. Screw it. If nothing else, at least I was pointed toward Detroit Avenue and hopefully an easy exit from that neighborhood whenever the next assignment came through. Oh, that assignment came through all right. After about an hour I got beeped with a run picking up tomorrow. Since the easiest way out of Cleveland for me would have been to go westward, of course the load would be picking up in Lordstown, back to the east.
I submit to you that there is no good way to get a tractor-trailer combination to the southeast of Cleveland when you start from that neighborhood up by the waterfront. What a debacle that turned out to be. I even did more of that map checking and such before I took off. Go down to Detroit Avenue and take a left... trees overhanging the corner, making the already sharp turn a blind one as well. Go over to US-42 and take a right... double parked cars forcing me onto the wrong side of the road here and there. Go down to Denison Avenue and take a left... okay, the blame falls squarely on me for this one. What a colossally stupid idea that was. I think I should start traveling with a big neon sign that says, "If you see me approaching the intersection, you might as well start backing up." Holy smokes, that one was tight. They just had to go and put those light poles on the corners, didn't they? God forbid those spoiled brats walk in the dark or something. The line of cars on Denison was cooperative, dutifully backing up and waiting for me to clear the turn. The one exception was the dude in the pickup truck at the front of the line. He decided to play the old 'back up two feet, wait a while, back up another foot, wait a while...' game.
From that point forward though, my routing worked out nicely. I dropped onto OH-176 to the south and then caught I-480 out of town. My brief stop at the service plaza on the turnpike left me a little confused. The (very underrated) shower facilities have those eco-friendly instant-on faucets on the sinks. So I had to hold one hand in front of the faucet to keep the water coming out in order to use my other hand to rinse the whiskers from my razor. What a pain in the ass. Then, for no apparent reason, the thing just completely stopped working. I don't know what that was all about. Luckily I had just about finished shaving by that point in time. Also luckily, the 8,000-psi power washer of a shower head was putting out plenty of hot water and didn't shut off while I was all lathered up. (For your own sake, don't try to picture that.)
Then I made the last fifteen mile hop over to the Con-way yard in Lordstown. I dropped my empty and started to write down directions for my next trip. I'll be leaving here tomorrow afternoon and going to Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. That part is all well and good but the schedule is another head scratcher. Pickup - 10/14 - 1300, deliver - 10/15 - 0600. Maybe math is optional for people with their eyes on a freight scheduling career or something. Think it over for a minute. The trip is 576 miles, including plenty of mountainous terrain and congested areas and such. Surely it won't take more than eleven hours though, so that's fine. But... the Con-way terminal in Shrewsbury closes at 10pm. What if it takes nine and a half hours to get there and I show up at 10:30pm? Nobody home, can't drop my trailer.
So... get there at 10:30pm and take a ten hour break in the driveway, then drop in the morning? Nope. Delivery is scheduled for 6am. 8:30am (end of the ten hour break) is too late. Get there and wait for them to show up, then take the ten hour break? Nope. 14 hour clock runs out at 3am. Nobody there at that hour. Given that I've picked up a load here once before and things weren't running very efficiently, I won't hold out much hope that they'll have me rolling early. If you'll pardon the expression, what the hell, man? I can see no way that this situation can be worked out legally, aside from interrupting my break to drop the trailer and then going back to bed for a while. Even an eight hour break using a split would take me past 6am, assuming I arrived after 10pm.
Whatever dude. Maybe these chuckleheads in Lordstown will be on the ball tomorrow and I can get out of here early enough to make the drop before 10pm. Nothing I can do about it right now, so I suppose there's no point trying to make any sense of it. Part of me suspects that the Con-way paperwork will say that I'm not due until 5pm or something anyway. These CTL people are good for that kind of nonsense every now and then. One thing's for sure either way - I'll be on the damn freeway all day. No more of this urban trucking stuff for at least a day or so.
This week's paycheck isn't exactly kicking ass so far, what with a whopping 62 miles for today. I do have some decent northeast pay already though, with more coming tomorrow. There's plenty of time to get the dollars and cents up where they belong before the week is through.
We're gonna switch up the routine a little tonight. In honor of Columbus Day, I think it's high time we made use of some internet maps. Ole Christoffa might actually have made his way to India if he had these nifty services available to him. In any event, I'm in the mood for a change of pace.
So the day began with a quick trip over to the consignee in Wallingford. I knew from my directions that I would have to back into their gate from the road. No room to turn around inside the lot and so forth. When I arrived this morning, I saw that the aforementioned gate was on my blindside, natch. (Yeah, I'm still using MS Paint because I don't know how to use anything else. At least I color coded the curves though; Red is reverse on this one.)
After an hour and a half at the dock I was empty, so I headed back down to the rest area on I-91. See how it almost looks like you can barely squeeze a truck in there and then you'll have a hell of a time getting out? Yeah, that's because you can barely squeeze a truck in there and then you have a hell of a time getting out.
I was #1 on the board, so it should come as no surprise that I had my next assignment within an hour or so. I had to drive up to Watervliet, New York and grab a load headed for Cleveland. The trip up I-91 and then across the turnpikes was quick and simple. Then I took I-787 up to my exit and hung a left. The next step was a right turn. Without getting too specific, we'll say that the turn involved one or more of the following: Me cursing at motorists; motorists cursing at me; the light changing once or twice while people jockeyed to get out of my way; and the slight (but unconfirmed) possibility of a little curb-hopping action by my trailer. Hypothetically speaking, if the trailer had been forced to ride a little grass, it would have been a damn good thing that the utility poles weren't right on the corner. I'm just sayin'.
Okay then, on to the next step in the directions. Go down two streets and hang a left. I guess, even with the wonders of modern photography, you'll have to use your imagination for a second here. In addition to what you see in the next picture, try to include parked cars along each street and a shit-ton of traffic in all four directions. (Semi-amusing side note: The CTL driver who was a few minutes ahead of me actually didn't manage to make this left. There was a line of traffic blocking her turn, with a big truck at the end of the line. After blocking the intersection for a little while, she had to drive straight through and then wait for a cop to come and escort her along a different route.) As for me, I'm a little less polite, it would seem. I made those bastards get out of my way. A few backed up and a few others cut into that gas station on the corner, but make that freaking turn I did.
A few blocks down, I hung a right and checked in with the shipping people. They were aware of the order for which I had been sent. They were not aware, however, that I was being sent for it. The guy in charge of the operation seemed to have been under the impression that they would be delivering the freight themselves. (The shipper for this load is a logistics/warehousing outfit with its own fleet of trucks.) I had to wait a while as they sorted out the how and why of it all. Then they assigned me to a dock.
For reference, there were trucks with sleeper cabs in both of the docks that appear occupied in the following picture. I was given the honor of backing in between them, to the spot where you can see the front of a dropped trailer. I suppose that you can see the remnants of railroad tracks and other oddities from this photo, but the camera angle is still too high to do justice to the uneven terrain. It took some slow, careful maneuvering and a few stops to get out and look, but I got 'er in there without incident. Fair enough.
It took a couple more hours for my trailer to be loaded and for me to be sent on my way. So the last several scenarios that you see pictured here had to be repeated in the other direction. First I had to extricate myself from the loading dock without taking a door off my trailer. Then the tight left became a tight right and the tight right became a tight left and so on, until I got back to the freeway. Making those busy intersections more entertaining was the 41,000 pound albatross now around my neck, keeping me from moving in any direction very quickly. I think I'm due for a few light loads pretty soon here.
In summary, I guess you could say that this truck driving shit ain't always a piece of cake. Usually it's pretty easy, but not always. Days like today are bound to pop up every now and then. And these are the days when we say... come on now, you know the words... I'm a professional... or something. I was able to get to the service plaza before Rochester, on the Thruway, before my 14 hour clock ran out for the day. Looks like about four and a half hours or so left from here.
Unfortunately it looks like I may be doing some pro driving tomorrow too. My consignee is one of these Menlo customers for which Con-way doesn't yet have a complete customer profile. I'll be looking for 7201 Father Caruso Drive in Cleveland. The address is not on any map, as far as I can see, but the road itself (Father Caruso Drive) does show up on all of the mapping sites. You could reasonably deduce that the 7201 address would fall somewhere between 70th and 73rd then. So... this place maybe?
Honestly, I'm pretty skeptical about that possibility. I have 41,000 pounds of polystyrene pellets in my trailer. To me, that little shithole building doesn't look like it would have much use for 41,000 pounds of polystyrene pellets. The numerous satellite and photo images of the neighborhood show the section immediately to the west (to the right of the picture above) under varying stages of construction. Hopefully whatever is or was being built over there will be of some use to me. If not, I have a feeling that this other place on 78th Street may come into play somehow. It's not the consignee listed on my bills but it is a plastics company, and its warehouse complex looks a little more sizable. I'm sure it can't be all that hard to get from 73rd to 78th, if that's what ends up being necessary. Residential neighborhoods seem to be par for the course on this trip.
Oh, my poor, pitiful little Redskins. I'm pretty sure at this point that Coach Zorn wouldn't mind getting fired, going back to being a quarterbacks coach somewhere, and escaping from that train wreck of an organization.
Today's drive, much like yesterday's, had the appearance of a potential nightmare. Also like yesterday though, the delay was relatively minor, all things considered. I got rolling late in the morning and cruised through Jersey without any delays. I made it all the way to the EZPass lanes on the George Washington Bridge without having to wait for anyone. Even on a Sunday, that's pretty solid. Halfway across the bridge, things came to a stop.
If you're going to encounter a messy situation, I suppose that there is some value in showing up early in the process. An intermodal truck had flipped over on the ramp to the northbound Major Deegan not too long before I showed up and the freeway was shut down. A wrecker had to approach from the exit past the accident, drive the wrong way down the freeway, and then back down the ramp to retrieve the wrecked truck. Once the cops figured out what to do with the situation, the whole area was probably going to be a mess. Luckily for me though, they hadn't come up with a plan yet. As soon as the wrecker made his way onto the ramp, they let those of us who were waiting go on our merry way.
The Bronx was the Bronx. It was moving at the 15-20mph weekend speed as opposed to the 3-5mph weekday speed, so good enough. Once we got outside the Pelham Parkway it was smooth sailing on into Connecticut. Then I got the bright idea to stop at a service plaza for some lunch. Yeah, that went well. There were a bunch of tour buses carrying the UMass band. Apparently I showed up right when they had stopped for their lunch break. Beautiful. (Yay, Delaware! Hehe...) I was pretty damned hungry but I wasn't waiting in that line, so I got the pleasure of spending four bucks on a little bag of salt & peppered cashews. In related news, salt & peppered cashews are delicious. The hint of pepper flavor blunts the sweetness of the aftertaste without overpowering the flavor of the nuts themselves. Excellent.
I was almost inclined to stay at that damned Pilot in Milford for the day after stopping for a shower. Then I thought it over and decided that I should probably get the hell out of that area before Monday morning rolled around. Judging by the traffic jam that I encountered before the I-91 split this afternoon, I think I made a good call. With a 7:30am appointment tomorrow, I would have been in for some serious headaches if I had to drive out of there in the morning. There's a rest area on the southbound side of I-91 just below Exit 15. That's where I find myself this evening. My customer, however, is located off Exit 15. The process of flipping back southbound tonight and then flipping back northbound in the morning will add a few miles to the trip, but at least I'm pretty close to the consignee for the most part. Good enough for me.
