12/12/09

90 miles. That's all I needed. If I could get through 90 miles without any major issues, then the day would surely be an easy one. Once I got to the west side of D.C., there would be no reason to expect any traffic for the rest of my route on a Saturday. So did I make it? The dude in the minivan cutting across to the off ramp should be your main clue.

Ahh yes, good old I-95. There was a stalled bus in the center lane and it had traffic backed up for about five or six miles. C'est la vie.

The traffic wasn't too heavy once I got out into the mountains. My 44,000 pound payload was obviously not a lot of fun, but that just goes with the territory sometimes. I wanted to cover at least half the trip today, meaning that around 350 miles would do the trick. The 350 mile mark would have had me somewhere around Pittsburgh though, so I continued on to Ohio. The second service plaza has a Sbarro and I had been thinking that some pasta sounded good, so there you have it. 420 miles down and 280 left for tomorrow. Not bad.

The pay week wraps up with 3,283 miles plus around $54 in northeast pay. Not too shabby at all. There's a distinct chance that I'll get sent home with no miles on Monday, so next week won't be too profitable. For now though, a week over $1,300 ain't too bad.

12/11/09

The light at the end of the tunnel has been spotted. It will take a few more days of work to reach it, but I can see it by golly. And no, I'm not talking about Brian Kelly. He may be the next Frank Leahy for all I know, but I'll just let him prove it to me. You could say that I've grown rather skeptical over the years. No, the light at the end of this particular metaphorical tunnel is the light above the bar at Kelly's Pub (no relation). I can see it from here. Mmmm... Guinness.

I got my loaded trailer in Charlotte a half hour early, then saw from the paperwork that it had been ready for at least an hour. Bummer. I never did manage to sleep yesterday, so getting on the road an hour sooner would have been cool. The drive itself turned out to be surprisingly easy though. I-81 usually tends to be a tedious pain in the ass, but that's the flip side of working overnight - there's hardly any traffic. My 31,000 pound payload did have me dragging ass a little bit on some of the longer climbs. Nothing too bad though. I rolled into the Con-way yard in Greencastle just before 4am and made my drop.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that we've commandeered the vacant Yellow Freight terminal next door for use as a drop lot. This means that I had a place to park and go to bed. Beauty. I forgot to shut off my phone though, so the first call in the morning had me cursing the caller rather vehemently. After that I managed to sleep for a few hours and all was right with the world.

Upon waking at some point later in the morning, I checked my board status on the company's web portal. It said that I was #0, meaning that I was assigned to a load. I fired up the truck for a minute, forcing the Qualcomm to turn on, so that I could see what kind of messages were waiting. None. That's weird. It was around twenty minutes later that the message notifications started coming through. The news was pretty good though. I would be picking up a load in Pennsylvania and passing it off to another driver in Richmond, Virginia. Then I would be getting a load in Richmond and heading to Saginaw, Michigan. Sometimes there's southbound freight from Central Michigan and sometimes they just send me home empty, but either way I'll be drawing nearer to a few of those delicious bubbly pints before too long.

The only catch with the assignment was that the first load was scheduled to pick up at 3pm in Mountville, Pennsylvania. That, as nearly as I could guess, would be around a two hour drive from Greencastle. My 14 hour clock (going back to last night) wouldn't allow me enough time to make it there, since it ran out at 11:30am today. Thus, I would have to stay in Greencastle and complete a ten hour break. I went off duty at 4:30am, making the ten hour mark 2:30pm. So add two hours for the deadhead and you see the issue. 3pm couldn't happen. I could have used a split break and left for Mountville at 12:30pm, but then the next couple of dispatches would have been screwy. It doesn't seem to me that the dispatching software is equipped to account for split breaks very effectively. Long story short... I sent a message asking if I could pick up at 4:30pm. I received a reply in the affirmative. Good enough.

So I had a few more hours to kill, then it was time to shove off for Mountville. I'm not sure if there's a specific cause or not, but for some reason big trucks are not allowed through Gettysburg on US-30. Since US-30 is the main thoroughfare through that part of Pennsylvania, this can make for some tricky routing. One option was to take I-81 up to Harrisburg and then angle back down toward Lancaster. Harrisburg, the last time I went through in the afternoon, was a damned parking lot. That route didn't sound very good. Another option was to take PA-16 to the east, drop down into Maryland, then catch US-15 up to US-30. Despite the fact that I had no idea what kinds of roads I would encounter, I chose to give this second route a try. I would have exactly two hours to cover ~80 miles. Couldn't be too tough, could it?

It turned out that my expectations were backward. I was a little concerned about how long the first part of the trip might take. It was on a winding two-lane road up into the mountains and through a few towns. That part of the drive turned out to be quick and easy. I was less concerned about the last part, along US-30 toward Lancaster. I rolled into York at 3:55pm. With a 4:30pm ETA, I had 35 minutes with which to cover the last 15 miles. No worries, right? I rolled out of York at 4:28pm. So I had 2 minutes with which to cover the last 12 miles. What a joke. There was traffic lined up on US-30 in both directions as far as the eye could see. At each red light, there would be one or two cars along the side streets. So it would be perfectly natural then that the lights were timed to give the side streets equal treatment with the main drag, right? I mean, why on earth would they let the miles and miles of traffic on US-30 have a couple of extra minutes to move through? One more in a long list of examples of bureaucratic idiocy, as far as I'm concerned.

I fired off a message as I sat at one of the red lights, advising the operations people that my 4:30pm ETA wasn't looking too good. As I pulled into the shipper's lot at 4:45pm I received a reply from my fleet manager. 5pm was my new ETA and that was the latest he could go. Good enough then. I was already there. I sent in my arrival call and everything was fine.

The drop/hook at the shipper was quick and painless, after which I headed southward with my nice and easy 13,000 pound payload. Traffic going back to York wasn't quite as bad as it had been on the eastbound trip, but it was pretty heavy. Then I got the pleasure of Baltimore, D.C., and Northern Virginia, all on a Friday evening. That's about as good as it gets if you're into the whole 'road rage' thing. Two or three lanes (depending on the location) moving at 45mph and the 'no trucks' left lane completely unoccupied. One more in a long list of examples of bureaucratic idiocy, as far as I'm concerned.

By the time I got out of the traffic, I still had not received any information regarding the outbound truck with which I would be making the relay. I sent a message asking for some information and then rolled onward to the T/A in Ashland. (The dispatch setup calls it Richmond for some reason, but I'm glad to accept the 15 free miles.) My loaded trailer had been left to me with a torn mud flap and I didn't want to stick another driver with it, so I proceeded straight to the shop. The guy at the counter said that it would be "a while" before they could put on a new one. I asked him to define "a while" and he informed me that it would be around two hours. You've got to be shitting me. So I bought a mud flap (on sale for $10.99) and installed it myself. It took five minutes. We all know that I have mad mechanical skills, what with my two adjustable wrenches and such, so I'm curious to know what the T/A shop would have billed the company if they had actually installed the mud flap for me.

I still had not received a reply to my request for information about the relay, so I headed into the truck stop to see a man about a dog... or something to that effect. Once my business was concluded, I walked back out to my truck and found that I had two satellite messages and a voice mail waiting for me. The other driver was at the T/A, looking for me, yada yada yada. Armed with the other driver's truck number, I pulled out of my parking space and started to drive off in search of him. Just then a dude walked in front of my truck, waving his arms. The other driver, clearly. He told me where he was parked, so I drove up and found a nearby spot. We made the swap, each of us taking a minute to complain about the fact that neither of us had been given any specifics about the relay. He had gotten the worst of the deal, as far as I can tell. The load going to North Carolina was his ticket home for the weekend and he had been waiting at the T/A since 5pm. After a few more choice words about nights and weekends and dispatchers and such, he was on his way.

As for me, I was going nowhere. When I received the assignment this morning, I thought that I would be swapping my loaded trailer for an empty, then picking up a load bound for Michigan. It turns out that the other driver and I were actually swapping two loaded trailers. I had picked up his ticket to North Carolina and he had picked up my ticket to Michigan. Good deal. I didn't have to go and get another load tonight after all. My patience for driving had long since reached its breaking point so I decided to stay at the T/A and call it a night.

I'm due in Saginaw by 6:30am on Monday and the trip is somewhere around 700 miles, so I'll probably use the 'divide and conquer' approach, covering roughly 350 miles a day over the weekend. This trailer is a lot heavier than the one that I gave away, so the drive up through Maryland and Pennsylvania will likely get to be annoying after a while. I can handle six or seven hours a day though, especially since I will be going sans alarm until Monday morning.

12/10/09

My erratic sleep patterns have been well documented. On most nights, I toss and turn until the wee hours of the morning and then get a few hours of sound sleep before it's time to get up and start working again. I enjoy a nice nap in the afternoon when I can, but rarely do I get the recommended eight hours (or whatever it is) during a single stretch. That's just not how I'm wired. So last night, after several late nights followed by early mornings, I was feeling a little run down and I knew that I had another early morning in store. A dose of Tylenol PM from the truck stop took care of my headache and knocked me out for a solid ten hours of sleep before this morning's alarm went off.

I got up and rolling by 6:45am. This is clearly earlier than my preferred start time of 10am, but I was well-rested and relieved to see that I still had good weather in which to drive. So I was all set up for a good day. I rolled into Winston-Salem, sent in my home time request, made my drop/hook, and got on the board. I was basically SOL in terms of finding somewhere to park and await my next assignment, so I decided to head up to I-40 and see what I could find. As I approached the entrance to US-52 that would take me back up to I-40, I received a new assignment. I hurried and did some quick stenographer-style typing to confirm the assignment before the traffic light turned green, then had to change course. I wouldn't be going up to I-40 after all. I would be going southward to Charlotte. Fortunately, there was no traffic on my left. I cut across to the southbound freeway entrance and that was that.

Now for the shitty part. My load leaving Charlotte is a 10pm deal going overnight to Pennsylvania. After covering the sleep situation in that first paragraph, you can probably guess how thrilled I am right now. Normally the schedule wouldn't have been much of an issue at all, since I'm often awake until 4am or 5am anyway. I slept so much last night though that I have no idea how today will go. I'll try to take a nap in the afternoon but I won't hold my breath in anticipation of getting any sleep. Bummer.

The schedule left me with plenty of time for ten hours off (with two extra hours to spare, even) so there's nothing technically wrong with it. And it is heading in the general direction of home, which is the idea whenever I request home time. It's just one of those things that probably ain't gonna be a whole lot of fun. Curse of the working class, I suppose.

On the good side it looks like I'm still dodging the bad weather, at least for one more day. And this assignment gets my miles for the week up to 2,248 with Friday and Saturday still to come. And, if enough people decide to turn them down, I may end up with the Notre Dame head coaching job. You know, maybe... or something.

12/9/09

You can find absolutely anything on the internet if you really feel like looking for it. In thinking about how today went, a specific movie scene came to mind. I typed a few words into the search box on YouTube, and voila..



My working day lasted just over eleven hours. The first half hour seemed like forty-five minutes. Then the next hour seemed like two days. Then the next few hours only seemed like an hour. Then the next few hours seemed like two weeks. Then the next couple of hours seemed like two and a half hours. Or something to that effect. You get the picture.

It wasn't raining any longer when I woke this morning, but I did drive into some very steady snowfall and extremely high (by Indiana standards) winds on my way toward Indianapolis. Once I got out between Indy and Cincinnati, the snow cleared up and the temperature started to rise. Thus, the drive got easier for a while. I caught KY-9 out of the suburbs in Northern Kentucky and ran that down to I-64. It was pretty hilly and my payload is over 42,000 pounds, but overall that stretch was a pretty easy cruise through Appalachia. Then came West Virginia. We've already covered the weight of the payload, so I have nothing further to say about West Virginia.

My eleven hours were running low by the time I got down to the part of Virginia where I-81 and I-77 run together. The safe bet would have been to stop at one of the Flying J's and call it a night. I decided to press on a little further though. I remembered staying at a little truck stop in Austinville, just to the south on I-77, once upon a time. (That reference to I-77 in West Virginia made me chuckle, considering that I had already typed today's reference before doing my Google search for 'Austinville.') It was early enough in the evening tonight that I was confident in the potential to find a parking space. I wasn't disappointed. Nobody here but lil' old me, at least thus far.

I'll have to cover around 75 miles or so in the morning, so yet another early wake-up call appears to be in store. Sometimes I think I should get a job plowing roads in Iowa or something. It seemed to me that those guys don't start working until noon. Anyhow, it's off to bed for me. In the immortal words of Bishop Sheen - Bye now!

12/8/09

A foolish man once wrote - "Here's hoping for no unpleasant surprises as far as road conditions go. The temperature got steadily warmer as I proceeded eastward today, so plowing and salting should be plenty effective, assuming they actually do that in this neck of the woods." Yeah, that was pretty silly of me, wasn't it?

When I woke this morning, I found that the roads were in far worse shape than I anticipated. Along US-218 I would encounter a random plow here and there, but it was a pretty shitty ride. I found my comfort zone at around 45-50mph and held 'er steady on down the highway. I am one who firmly believes that braking is by far the most dangerous part of that kind of trip, so I found myself feeling compelled to pass a few cars along the way. With a heavy load in tow I consider it neither safe nor desirable to be riding the brakes down hills and around curves. The cars in question, of course, would tend to wander over into my lane as I went by, as they were trying to avoid the deeper snow along the edges of the road. This can make for some white-knuckle driving, to say the least. All in a day's work.

I found that IA-2 was in decent shape for the most part once I got to it, at least on the eastbound side. Glad I wasn't westbound. That side looked pretty dicey. Once I caught up with US-61, it was only a few miles further until I reached my consignee. Their lot wasn't yet plowed when I arrived, so I got the pleasure of trying (unsuccessfully) to slide my trailer axles back. Then I got the pleasure of trying (successfully) to keep the trailer straight as I slid back into the dock. The forklift guy had me empty very quickly and I was ready to head back out. By the time I came around to the front of the facility, the snow removal guys had done their thing. I pulled into the customer's staging area and parked to await whatever came next.

My mother called while I was sitting there, to see if I was safe. Apparently she saw the weather reports on television and got worried, as mothers tend to do. I told her that I had scooted out ahead of the bad stuff in Nebraska and held my own in Iowa up to that point. I only needed to catch a break for a few more days and then I would be headed toward home. It's those bullshit roads out west that are cause for worry, so the best prescription would be a trip back to the east and preferably to the south. Then, even if I hit some bad stuff on the way home, I would be in the part of the country where they actually make an effort to make the highways safe for travel. Illinois and Indiana do a pretty decent job. Michigan is good everywhere except Wayne County (where all of our tax revenue is wasted on Detroit). Ohio can be hit and miss, but we've had a mild season so far. They should have plenty of salt on hand.

After an hour and a half or so, I still had not received a new assignment. There are two tricks that are guaranteed to bring a dispatch. One is to hop in the bunk and try to take a nap. That'll get you a beep in a hurry. I slept pretty soundly for a few hours last night though, meaning that I wasn't tired this morning, so I decided to try the other option. I drove down the street to a little gas station with truck parking (not listed in my directory but recommended by the security guard). Usually, as soon as I leave the safety and comfort of a parking spot, the next assignment will come through. This time, however, they waited until I was inside the store buying some food and beverages. I had a message waiting when I got back out to my truck. Good deal.

What was it that I said earlier about being glad that I wasn't heading westward on IA-2? Yeah. The next pickup was a drop/hook in Corydon, Iowa. Back to the west we go. 112 miles, all along IA-2, with an empty trailer. It turns out that the bad westbound part of the road that I saw on my way to Fort Madison was actually the good part. Holy smokes. The last fifty miles or so found me dirt-tracking my way up and down hills on completely snow packed roads. All in a day's work.

At the shipper, things didn't get a whole lot easier. I got lucky enough when my trailer axles broke free on the first try, so that was nice. Getting into the dock turned out to be quite another story. The surface was so slippery that I had to get a steady rolling start in order to maintain enough momentum to get the trailer back to the dock. That rolling start, however, didn't provide me with any opportunity to make the usual small corrections needed to steer the trailer. Any loss of inertia left me completely unable to move backward, forcing me to pull forward and try again. Then, on the first few times that I actually got backed in without the trailer sliding sideways, I would bounce off the bumpers on the dock and slide forward before I could get my damned brakes to grab. Eventually I got it in there. The ass end of the trailer was about an inch and a half from the bumpers but that will have to do.

I expected to have some trouble getting out from under the empty trailer, but that part went pretty smoothly. The trouble this time around would be getting the axles on the loaded trailer to slide forward. I gave up on trying to do so in the area where the trailer had been sitting. It was seriously like a hockey rink out there. I pulled around to the other side of the building where the surface under the snow appeared to be a little more sound. It took some cruising back and forth and jamming on the trailer brakes, but eventually I got the axles to slide. Of course I overshot the mark by a couple of feet, leaving the axles too far forward. So I had to try a few more times to get them to come loose and slide back. All's well that ends well though. I got them locked in and headed back out once more.

There is plenty of good news to wrap up this little saga though. My trip is taking me to Winston-Salem, North Carolina. (That's east and south from Iowa, for those of you keeping score at home. A tip of the cap to the load planner people for that little blessing.) As I pulled back onto IA-2 in anticipation of several more hours of frustration, I found that the snow plows had gone through during my 45 minute drop/hook fiasco. The road surface still wasn't ideal but it wasn't too bad now that I had some weight on the tires. Further to the east, the air actually warmed up and it started to rain. For the remainder of today's drive I had clean wet roads with which to contend, but no slippery stuff. Nice.

I cruised into Illinois on US-34 and then caught up with I-74. After a fuel stop in Bloomington, I had just enough time to reach the truck stop in Le Roy before my 14 hour clock ran out. 473 miles on the odometer in ten hours of driving might not sound terribly efficient, but I was surprised that I was able to get that far. Given the way things looked earlier in the day I expected much worse. Hopefully tomorrow morning's drive will get me below the snow before it gets too nasty around here. I will be putting in a long day and then finishing off the trip early Thursday morning. Rain and mountains and a heavy load will provide plenty of intrigue of their own.

I'm already over 1,700 miles for the week so I think I'll go ahead and request home time once I get down to Winston-Salem. I had intended to make the request on Friday but I don't want to take the chance of a long trans-weekend assignment coming through and screwing up my plans. Whatever miles I get between Friday and Saturday should push this week at least into the $900-1,000 range. If I can get a few miles for next week along the way back home, so much the better. If not, there's a stool at Kelly's Pub with my name on it. I think next week's check should be the one with my safety bonus on it, if memory serves correctly, so it won't kill me to take the whole week off if that's how it works out. Things seem to be falling into place... for now.

12/7/09

With all due respect to Horace Greely, the last thing that I wanted to do today was to "go west." The temperature readout on my dashboard said that it was 5º outside and a pretty fair amount of snow had fallen overnight. The Rockies are nice in the summer and all, but not so much at this time of year.

As I sat waiting for my 7am appointment to roll around, I received my next planned load information. Eastbound and down. Good deal. The pickup time was listed as yesterday at 6:30am so I guessed that there was something unusual about the assignment. Once my trailer was empty I received the rest of the information. It was a relay leaving the Bosselman's truck stop in Grand Island and going to Fort Madison, Iowa. The relay time that I was given was 2pm, so I headed over to the truck stop and put my feet up for a while.

Around noon, the inbound truck pulled up next to me and we made the swap. It turns out that this assignment was the result of the other driver's misfortune and none of my own. He got the pleasure of picking it up at the molybdenum mine in Henderson, Colorado. Then he drove to Grand Island and found a mechanical problem with his truck. I'm not entirely sure why the relay was scheduled for 2pm today, on account of the fact that he had been in Grand Island since Friday, but I was glad that he spotted me early. This allowed for a more workable schedule on my end.

The forklift guy at this morning's consignee mentioned that a big snowstorm was coming up from Kansas into Nebraska today, so I hauled ass out of town and tried to stay ahead of it. I was glad to find that I-80 was clean and dry all the way across. My first look at the atlas had me thinking that I would come out of Lincoln on NE-2 and stay in IA-2 through Iowa. My truck stop directory didn't show any parking options along that route though, so I wound up on the interstate all the way to Des Moines. Then I dropped down on IA-163 to IA-92. The truck stop at the corner of IA-92 and US-218 had plenty of parking when I arrived. Beauty.

I'll have between 60 and 70 miles to cover in the morning ahead of an 8:30am delivery appointment. The snowfall here tonight has been light so far. Here's hoping for no unpleasant surprises as far as road conditions go. The temperature got steadily warmer as I proceeded eastward today, so plowing and salting should be plenty effective, assuming they actually do that in this neck of the woods.

This run was 479 dispatched miles, so the week is off to a decent start thus far. I'm due to request home time on Friday. Four more days to try and avoid the Rockies. We'll see...

12/6/09

I'm not in Central Texas and I'm still not a regional driver, but the same pattern with the same customer seems to be repeating. As I was slumbering away this morning, tucked into my cozy sleeping bag, my satellite unit chirped and woke me with a new assignment. I would be heading back to the place in Waverly where I delivered yesterday (48 miles), then making a drop/hook to pick up a load headed for Grand Island (109 miles). Given that our pay periods run from 12am Sunday to 11:59pm Saturday, most weekends are spent finishing off the prior week's work. In that context, 157 miles for Sunday isn't a bad start to the week. Most weeks start on Monday or Tuesday with zero miles. As long as I don't get trapped in this regional business for a few days I should be fine.

The timeline that I was given, much like those of the short Texas regional runs, left me sort of in-between. The plan summary said that I was to pick up at 1am and deliver at 7am. If I picked up at 1am, then tomorrow's 14 hour clock would expire at 3pm (or sooner, given that I still had to drive to the shipper). Obviously this would be undesirable. My dispatch included the number of my loaded trailer though, so I was pretty sure that I would be able to pick it up early. I decided to hang around and see if my 'Skins could put an end to the Saints' undefeated season and then head over. At some point in the afternoon, the wind kicked up and a pretty steady snowfall began so I changed my mind. I decided that it would be best to knock out some miles this afternoon before the roads got too bad.

The cold temperatures, heavy winds, and steady traffic were enough to keep I-80 clear of any accumulation for the most part. There were a few tree-lined spots where the snow was building up along the edges of the road but nothing to really slow me down. At the shipper I found that my loaded trailer was in fact ready for me, so I made my drop/hook and continued on down the highway. I planned on spending the night at the Bosselman's in Grand Island and then heading over to the consignee in the morning.

By the time I got to the truck stop I found that the surface roads were already quite a bit worse than the freeway. So, after topping off the fuel tanks and grabbing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I decided that it would be best to go to the consignee tonight. I have no idea how much snow is going to fall overnight, but I would rather not wait and see. Plus it was easier to get into the shopping center area on a Sunday night than it would be on a Monday morning when people are driving to work. All told, things worked out pretty well.

For my Redskins on the other hand, things apparently didn't work out so well. In a perfectly predictable outcome, their kicker missed a 23 yard field goal that would have put the game away and the Saints came back to win in overtime. Probably best that I didn't hang around to watch that garbage after all. One giant year of frustration for me as a football fan, one might say. There's always next year though... or something.