10/24/09

Greetings and salutations from the Corleone family's Gulf Coast estate. About the only thing on the agenda for today was to cover at least 200 miles, leaving a reasonable day of driving for tomorrow and then a short one Monday to finish out the trip to Austin. The 200 mile mark came on the west side of Mobile, Alabama. I stopped in Theodore to top off my fuel tanks and then started watching the billboards. Not too far into Mississippi, I found what I was seeking. Super 8, Exit 50, Truck Parking. Beauty.

A quick peek at the web portal shows that this week will wrap up with a solid 2,842 miles. Or, in terms more familiar to some of us, I fell a few cheeseburgers short of $1,100 for the week. Not bad.

I haven't forgotten last year's experience, so even more than usual I'm looking forward to Our Lady's lads opening up a whole case of whoopass on Boston College today. No more 4th quarter comebacks. No more clever personnel groupings. Just eleven guys knocking the shit out of the people in front of them. A fake coach's pep talk didn't get it done last week, so we're going with a real one this time.

10/23/09

Ahh yes, nothing like a nice easy day to talk a driver back from the ledge. I guess I can hang on to my truck keys for at least another week or so.

When I woke this morning, I was ready to take on the day. The feds, on the other hand, required that I sit with my thumb up my ass for a few more hours. Soon enough though, I walked across the street and checked in with the shipper. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that my load was already ready already. The load assignment had not indicated a drop/hook. Cutting out the loading time helped to make up for some of the morning's mandatory rest that I didn't really need.

With a manly 45,000 pounds hooked up and ready to roll, I received my dispatch to deliver in Austin, Texas on Tuesday morning at 7am. The run is only 1,121 dispatched miles, so four full days seemed a little excessive, but no worries. I could take it easy this weekend and still have plenty of time to do my job. A Monday afternoon delivery would have been ideal, I thought to myself. Never been a fan of those early morning deliveries in big cities. And given my opinion of Austin, well, you know...

The stretch across the middle of Florida was beginning to get awfully tedious, what with all of the red lights and my heavy payload dragging me down. I got a phone call from work to lift my spirits though. It was a gentleman informing me that my new delivery appointment would be 2pm on Monday. He said that he tried to get an earlier one but this was the best that the consignee could do. Say no more, my friend. 2pm on Monday sounded perfect to me.

Once I caught up with I-75 the rest of the drive was smooth and easy. I was able to mix in a few short breaks along the way and even snagged an Italian BMT with double meat at the Pilot in Midway. By the time I got to Marianna the sun was going down and my attention span was lacking, so I pulled into the Pilot and called it a day.

I'm not really sure how the weekend will play out from here, but I certainly intend to spend tomorrow at one of the Corleone family's southeastern estates. I saw a hundred billboards for hotels with truck parking as I was driving today. I'm sure I'll be able to spot something decent before tomorrow afternoon. Despite the almost nuclear meltdown among the Notre Dame faithful following yesterday's scheduling announcement, we still have some unfinished business. The home losing streak to Michigan State has been handled. The USC situation will have to live on for another year, unfortunately. But tomorrow can bring an end to the losing streak to these bastards, and the world will be a better place for it.

10/22/09

I made sure to hit the weights and burn off a little aggression before turning on my computer tonight. I also spent a few minutes reminding myself that I seem to have a pretty enjoyable weekend in store. I really have made an effort... but I'm still running pretty hot. Just can't help it sometimes.

The day started innocently enough. My 11am relay wound up being a noon relay, but that ain't so bad I guess. Still plenty of time to make it to Tampa by 10pm. I'm not sure who or what caused the delay but the time stamps on the paperwork were interesting. Load ready - 2:20am. Scheduled pickup - 5:00am. Actual pickup - 5:50am. In any case I was off and running, down I-675 to I-75 and away we go.

Just before Exit 201 on I-75, everything came to a stop. I don't mean that traffic was moving slowly either. I mean set the brakes, make a sandwich, walk the dog, whatever. We ain't going anywhere. I turned on my CB and heard that a pickup truck had flipped over the guardrail and the cops had the freeway shut down. Sounds like a good time for lunch, I suppose. I edged my way off to the exit ramp and pulled into the Love's for some McNuggets. After a half hour the situation didn't appear to have improved. Time for a new approach then. A quick glance at my atlas showed that I could run GA-36 over to US-41 and then catch US-341 all the way down to I-75. That route turned out to be nice and mellow and it came with the added bonus of cutting the corner right past Macon. I seem to recall some construction delays on I-75 or I-475 the last time I went through the Macon area. No such delays with today's route. Beauty.

Just across the Florida line I got some further good news as a pre-plan for the weekend came across the magic satellite. I decided to stop at the Pilot in Wildwood and top off the tanks before finishing the trip into Tampa. That's where the ole Godfather's blood got its first hint of a boil. Some slovenly asswipe in a Celadon truck left me sitting at the fuel island for a solid twenty minutes after I was finished pumping. I wasn't too worked up yet though. I still only had a little bit of driving to do, plus I knew which way to go before parking for the night. It would be good not to have any worries about wandering around Tampa and hoping for a space at the Citgo.

The drop at the Tampa yard, however, turned out to be an absolute bullshit fiasco. It's a little rinky-dink yard like quite a few of the other Con-way yards around the country. Most of the small yards don't have 53' trailers coming out their asses backwards though. An absolute debacle. After the (not insignificant) feat of negotiating the turn into the damn place, I wound up having to make a blindside back into an empty space with very little room to maneuver. It took 45 minutes. No, I'm not exaggerating. The highlight probably came halfway through the process when one of the linehaul guys started getting all pissy because I was blocking the road and he couldn't get to his second trailer. It's probably best not to get too detailed regarding certain verbal exchanges that arise from time to time. This is one of those times. Let's just say that he may have been introduced to a phrase that rhymes with, "Go pluck your shelf." Tonight was not the night to mess with me.

After getting my trailer into the slot and dropping it, I took a walk around the yard. I had received a message from someone in Equipment Control asking me to retrieve a particular empty trailer. That particular trailer was in the back corner of a two-deep and two-wide cluster of trailers along the fence line. No chance for me to take that one, so I sent a satellite message explaining that the trailer was inaccessible. Back over on the other side of the facility, I found two empty CFI trailers. Both were buried behind three sets of doubles that had been dropped on the lot. No chance of getting either of those. Okay then, what else? At the eastern end of the yard there were two trailers from the old Con-way Truckload. The first of these two had a big orange placard on it, stating that it was leased to Con-way and not for use by other carriers. It also had no trailer number as far as I could see. The second had no such orange placard. It did, however, have the red vinyl numerals indicating that it was a CFI (and then CTL) trailer. I hooked it up, checked it over, and sent in my 'dropped trailer' form.

After a minute or so I received the information for the pre-planned weekend load. I also received a text reply to my earlier message about the inaccessible trailer, stating that the sender of the message would pass on the information to the Equipment Control people. I started up the road, expecting my dispatch to come through at any minute. With the need to find a parking space and catch a ten hour break before my scheduled pickup, I had very little time to waste. After I got about five miles up the highway the satellite unit chirped at me. My dispatch then, right? No. It was a message stating that the trailer that I was pulling had been sold to Con-way and that I couldn't take it. In other words, someone should have removed the CFI numbers and placed one of those big orange placards on the front. But nobody did. Shit. And the computer system should have sent an error message following my 'dropped trailer' form, saying that I picked up a nonexistent CTL trailer. But it didn't. Shit.

So I hopped off at the next exit and turned back toward the Con-way yard for a second go-around. My first drop/hook had taken from 8:45pm to 9:45pm. The round trip from the yard to the highway and back to the yard carried us to 10pm. The second drop/hook took another half hour. Given that the only empties that I might possibly take were buried behind Con-way doubles (down to one set by this point), I had to flag down the yard driver and ask him to move the set out of the way. I also had to see what he wanted me to do with the empty that I was returning, since he had already filled the space from which I had pulled it. He showed me a pair of open spaces behind the set of doubles that he was going to move. I made a lap around the building to get out of his way and set myself up to back into one of the open spaces. One of my CTL colleagues had arrived in the interim and entered the wrong way, so my intent was to hang back while she dropped her trailer and then take whichever space she didn't use. As the yard driver pulled the set of doubles forward to clear the path, another CTL driver came barrel-assing into the yard (the wrong way) and took one of the empty spaces. The first one who had come in the wrong way took the other empty space. I was back to square one and about ready to blow my top at this point.

The yard driver moved a trailer to a dock, leaving me an opening along the two-deep and two-wide cluster that I mentioned earlier. I swung my Godforsaken empty in there, dropped it, and then drove around to the other side of the building. I was fully expecting to find that the two nonconformists had taken the last of the empties. They had not. The lady driver was hooked to a trailer but Speed Racer there had gone down and parked his bobtail at the far end of the yard, among some Con-way pups. Thus, I got an empty. I sent a message advising the Joplin gang of my new new trailer number, along with a (perhaps unnecessary) bit about the fact that I was not at all pleased with how my previous two hours had been spent.

Off to Sanford we go. Can you guess what happens when you spend two hours in Tampa getting screwed around? The truck stops and rest areas all fill up before you can get to them. Yeah, really. As far as I could tell, I had shots at the truck stops in Polk City and then two rest areas on I-4. Trying to play it as safe as possible, I tried Polk City first. Nope. Then the rest area right outside Polk City. Yeah, that's funny. I continued onward and got stuck in a traffic jam in Orlando. Two left lanes closed for construction, at the exact point where the far right lane is forced to exit. People from both directions trying to jam into the right-center lane. Fucking brilliant. Construction work being done, you ask? Oh, none. None whatsoever.

The rest area right before Sanford was overfilled just like the previous one had been. I had no choice at this point but to go straight to the customer and hope for the best. The directions were wrong. I would have expected nothing less tonight. After getting stuck in a bad spot and backing my way out to the main road, I managed to wander around the industrial part of town long enough to find the road for which I was looking. I'm not sure what the legal ins and outs may be, but there were a couple of trucks parked along the side of this road when I arrived. Now there is one more.

So I was thoroughly pissed when I got settled in, to say the least. My quick workout seemed to help though, as did the knowledge that I have a little over 1,100 miles to run for the weekend and I should have plenty of time to kick back and watch some football. Speaking of football, let's see what kind of news we have today... What? You've got to be shitting me. They scheduled Western Michigan for next year? Oh, that ain't gonna help the anger level. Then, in the middle of my post, the freaking Blogger site crapped out. I don't know when it's coming back on, but I'll just save this as a text file and you'll get it when you get it. Whatever man.

Anybody wanna fight? Come to Sanford, Florida and I'll give you a shot or two. Running a little hot tonight. A little hot.

10/21/09

Just a quick warning: If today is any indication, I may not be long for this trucking gig. A future on a NASCAR pit crew might be my next calling. Yeah, that's right, I used a couple of adjustable wrenches and a pocket knife this afternoon. I noticed a few days ago that I had a busted mud flap on my trailer. From that point forward though, either I was in no position to deal with it (Monday) or I simply forgot to deal with it (Sunday & yesterday). I was making a drop/hook today though, so I made sure to stop and buy a new mud flap instead of leaving the problem for the next driver. My highly skilled cutting of the bolt holes and precise turning of the wrenches were quite beautiful to behold.

Then I got down past Atlanta before the afternoon rush got heavy. That's always nice. After dropping off my loaded trailer, I was directed to another lot down the street where I would find an empty. There was no gate to this second lot so I just hooked to my empty trailer and then stayed there. After an hour and a half or so, I hadn't received an assignment. I was parked outside a JC Penney outlet store so I headed in to see what sorts of deals I might find. After grabbing a few items, I called the automated 800 number to check on my board status. Assigned to a load. Of course. So I cut my shopping excursion short and paid for my goods, then headed back outside.

BOO! NEW ASSIGNMENT! BOO!

The good: I'll have a decent day of work for tomorrow and I'm not going anywhere cold.

The bad: I got 12 miles for today.

The ugly: Tomorrow's load is a relay setting out from our Atlanta drop yard.

My 'reflects poorly' disclaimer is permanently up there at the top now, so I'm just gonna say it. This place is a fucking disgrace. A handful of large trucking companies use this yard and each of them should be ashamed. The location, along bullshit skinny roads with blind turns and steep hills, is entirely inappropriate for truck traffic. The yard itself, small and irregular, gets crowded and difficult to navigate far too easily. The nearest place to get something to eat or drink is over a mile away, along a road that doesn't lend itself to a leisurely walk. And, according to a message board conversation from a while back, there is an ant problem. I can neither confirm nor deny the presence of ants, but my summary judgment on this place is that it sucks balls.

I made the quick trip over to the yard and dropped my empty trailer a little while ago, so that was that for today. My relay is due here by 11am tomorrow, at which time I'll be heading for Tampa. We'll have to see how screwed I am vis a vis parking after my drop tomorrow night, but at least the 456 loaded miles will get me over 1,600 for the week with Friday and Saturday still to come. Nice solid run for the weekend and some time to unwind at a Corleone estate on Saturday? We can hope, my friends. We can hope.

10/20/09

In one of the more uncanny coincidences to arise in recent memory here at Tales from the Road, we were given the opportunity for an immediate compare-and-contrast with respect to yesterday's 'not all miles are created equally' hypothesis. As I wrapped up my evening a little while ago, I took a look at today's trip odometer and jotted down the miles in my logbook. 495 exactly, for the second day in a row.

After the unloading process (and corresponding nap) took more than two hours this morning, my split break was complete and I was in good shape for today in terms of available hours. I was #1 on the board but it still took a few hours for my next assignment to come along. When it did though, it was a pretty decent one - a quick deadhead over to the Columbus suburbs and then a delivery tomorrow in the Atlanta suburbs.

The first few miles leaving De Graff were on two-lane roads, but next I caught up with US-33 and had an easy ride all the way to the I-270 loop. Then the shipper in Groveport, right off I-270, had me loaded quickly and on my way. The loaded portion of the trip is entirely on the interstates and the timing turned out to be nearly perfect. The afternoon rush had largely died down by the time I got to Cincinnati, then I was able to cruise through Lexington and Knoxville tonight before my hours ran out. In point of fact, the parking situation was one more aspect of fortunate timing on this trip. The truck stop in Niota, Tennessee is far more crowded than I expected it to be. I got a spot all the way in the back, as did the four or five trucks who came in after I did. Since that time, every truck that has come in has been forced to spin around and go back out. I'm sure that a few of them probably have parked on the driveway and made life difficult for everyone else, but generally speaking this place has no vacancy. Fifteen minutes later and I would have been screwed.

With only ~185 miles left for the back end of this trip to Forest Park, Georgia, I should be in decent shape to get past Atlanta before the afternoon gets too ridiculous. Then I'm set to make a drop/hook and hopefully catch another assignment fairly quickly. Parking and traffic and other assorted nonsense make the Atlanta area one of those places that I prefer not to hang around any longer than necessary.

Back to the hypothesis now; Today's 495 miles took 8 hours of driving, as opposed to yesterday's 10.25 hours. So one of two outlooks can be embraced. Either yesterday I had two hours disappear into the ether or today I got a two hour discount on my work. In either scenario, I stand by my statement that not all miles are created equally. They do (for the most part) all count toward my paychecks though. Thus far, the week stands at 1,146 miles (but none of the extra pay that had become fairly common lately). With half of Wednesday, all of Thursday, and then the entire weekend remaining, we should be looking at another solid week.

10/19/09

Webster's dictionary will tell you that a mile is a unit of linear measurement equal to 5,280 feet. I will submit to you that not all miles are created equally. Each of the 495 that went on my odometer today had to count for a minimum of 10,000 feet.

As I sat and typed last night's post, I watched one of my CTL colleagues pull into the truck stop and park. He had delivered at the same consignee as I had last night, arriving in their lot as I was leaving. After typing that post I took myself off the board and went to sleep. I already had been parked for a couple of hours, so I needed around eight more hours off in order to complete a ten hour break. I slept for about six hours, then woke and watched my aforementioned colleague leave the truck stop before my break was over. I'm nobody's babysitter and I really don't give a damn one way or the other, but it seemed rather unlikely to me that he could have completed any kind of legal break in the time that he had spent parked a few spaces down from me. He sure as hell hadn't been at the truck stop for ten (or even eight) hours. I don't know. Maybe he had time on his 14 from last night or something. Just struck me as curious.

After completing my break, I sent in my 'on duty' form and then received an assignment within a half hour. I had to go back up to Neenah and grab a load heading to Ohio. If not for the fact that the forklift people's lunch break came in the middle of their loading of my trailer, I would have been rolling very quickly. As it was, I was in and out within an hour and a half. Not so bad.

I got past Milwaukee before traffic started to get really heavy but I was heading right into the usual afternoon shitstorm in Chicago. Since my last few trips through town have been less than impressive, I decided to try going around on I-294 this time. I don't know man. It may have saved a minute or two. It may have added a minute or two. It's hard to say. The traffic was jammed up solidly all the way down past I-290. Once I got out of the construction though, everything was moving freely. Sometimes I think they should just sink that whole region into Lake Michigan and be done with it.

Getting to the little town of De Graff, Ohio proved to be quite a tedious process in its own right. The Indiana portion of the drive, while a little slow in spots, wasn't too bad. I dropped out of South Bend on US-31, then took the US-20 loop over to US-33 and down to Fort Wayne. Into Ohio on US-30, no worries. Just the 55mph speed limit and watching the other trucks pass me with regularity. Then I got to the good stuff. OH-309 into Lima was a little slow, mainly due to slow cars and the fact that there was no room for me to pass them. From Lima to De Graff, I would have to estimate that it was around 30-40 miles and took well over an hour. This is after the Chicago nonsense and the 45-55mph speed zones for most of Indiana and Ohio. I was paid for 461 miles today. I left the shipper in Neenah with 9 miles on my trip odometer, having driven those 9 miles from the truck stop in Oshkosh to make my pickup. My odometer said 495 miles at the end of the day. Those 486 loaded miles took ten hours. Thus, not all miles are created equally.

I'm in a gravel area at the end of some hick street for the night. There are two warehouses here, with neither of them displaying an address nor the name of a business. In following my directions to get here, I was sent past a sign saying that no trucks were allowed on the residential street leading to the warehouses. Overall, a pretty half-assed arrangment, if you ask me. Despite all of this, I'm just thankful that there was a place here for me to park and go to bed. I had no 'Plan B.' I am due to deliver at 9am and there were no truck stops anywhere near here that I could see. Furthermore, the trip down here took so damn long that I wouldn't have been able to take a ten hour break and then deliver on time, even if there had been a truck stop on the way. Now, since I'm already here, I can just use a split. Eight hours in the bunk will get me enough time to check in and back into the loading dock. Then I'll need to take two more hours off in order to get back the time that I used today, but I can probably knock most of that out by taking a nap while they unload my trailer. I don't know. Whatever. I'll figure out the details in the morning. This was a long day. I'm tired.

10/18/09

During the obligatory 'how have you been' phone call from my parents today, I learned a very important lesson. While being fat and lazy is probably not the most advisable lifestyle, being a marathon runner will kill you. I guess we'd better aim for some kind of happy medium or something. Three people in one day? I've never even heard of that sort of thing. Damn.

Speaking of being fat and lazy, you should have seen the breakfast that I got in Sturgis this morning. That was a doozy. I had to check out of my hotel by 11am but I didn't want to start driving my truck that early, on account of the 14 hour rule. With a late night delivery it was entirely possible that I might need to drive to a truck stop after 1am. So my buddy and I drove up the road a few miles and landed at a place called Savory Restaurant. On the heels of last night's undisclosed activities, a nice big breakfast seemed to be just what the doctor ordered. I decided on something called the Mega Feast. Whoa Nellie, that description was far more accurate than I expected.

Feeling nice and lethargic after managing to finish almost the entire meal, I went back to my truck and took a nap in the hotel's parking lot. Screw it. Only 325 miles to drive today. I finally got rolling this afternoon and found that Chicago was once again a parking lot on a Sunday, and for no apparent reason. After slowly plodding through there, the only remaining obstacles were a few more construction zones and a Swift driver at the Pilot in Racine. I stopped to top off the tanks and grab a gallon of oil, but wound up getting stuck behind this guy in the line at the fuel desk. Hmm, how shall we put this? Let's just say that, if I had any cash on me at the time, I would gladly have bought this character a stick of deodorant. Absolutely revolting.

Despite all of the slowdowns and the frustration, I still was way ahead of schedule for tonight's 10pm Central delivery appointment. A three-hour break in Oshkosh did the trick though, after which I finished the last leg of the drive to Neenah. I was half expecting the run into the 'no appointment' issue when I arrived, but instead I found another problem. Nobody home. There was a J.B. Hunt driver parked at the dock when I showed up. After trying to check in and finding a locked door, I wound up chatting with him for a minute. His dispatcher had told him that the consignee opened at 10pm, so we stood and waited for 10pm to arrive. The top of the hour came and went. Nobody home. Ain't that a bitch. I sent a satellite message to make the people in charge aware of the situation, then sat and waited some more. Around 10:30pm somebody showed up. I checked in, backed into a door, and had an empty trailer within twenty minutes. Not so bad then. No mention of any appointment issues either.

I was fortunate enough to find a parking spot at the truck stop on the north end of Oshkosh, only five miles from where I made my delivery. #1 on the board at the moment, but I'm about to send in my 'off duty' form and try to get some sleep. Jumping forward ten hours then, I'll probably miss out on the first round of early load assignments tomorrow, but hopefully the week can get off to a decent start. Yesterday turned out to be an expensive one and that dirty band of Jesuits from Boston are coming to town next weekend. You never know where my services (or those of the mischievous Swede) might be needed.