1/15/10

The experience for a Con-way Truckload driver dealing with the folks at a Con-way Freight terminal varies widely from one trip to the next. I find that the vast majority of our corporate brethren are friendly, albeit frazzled, people whenever I visit their terminals. Then again, some of them totally suck. I haven't reached a definitive conclusion yet, but the assholiest bunch of them all would have to be those at either the Chicopee, Massachusetts location or the Newark, New Jersey location.

So, after leaving Ohio before dawn and cruising all the way across Pennsylvania and New Jersey without any major issues, I pulled into the Newark yard and expected the worst. Well I'll be damned. This time the guy behind the counter was a Russian dude and his manners were impeccable. He took my paperwork and assigned me to a door. Then, after I hooked to an empty trailer, he was right there waiting to sign me out and bid me a good weekend. I guess this moves Chicopee to the front of the line for now. I've been told that they call themselves "Massholes" up there, so I'm sure they're glad to be in the lead.

I had two driving hours available after making my drop so I didn't have any great expectations. Hopefully I could at least get an assignment for something picking up tomorrow, I thought. I pulled off to the side of the Con-way driveway and, after around 45 minutes, this is exactly what I got. My next load will pick up in Pittston, Pennsylvania and head toward Virginia for a Sunday morning delivery. We're nickel and diming it just like last January thus far, it seems. At least quite a few of this week's miles have come with northeast pay.

I really didn't feel like spending the night parked in the Con-way driveway but I wasn't entirely sure if there were any parking options that I could reach within my remaining two hours. My truck stop directory showed a T/A at Exit 4 on I-80. My rather limited experience with truck stops in New Jersey has taught me one thing - Stay away from truck stops in New Jersey. I decided to head out and give it a shot anyway. Exit 4 couldn't be more than an hour away from Newark, I thought, and it was still fairly early in the day. They should have at least a few open parking spaces.

I guess I didn't think that one through very carefully, did I? Yeah. Newark at 3:45pm on a Friday. That's a real treat. After I managed to fight my way out of the traffic, I got to the truck stop and found that it was damned near completely full. 'Damned near completely' isn't the same as 'completely' though, meaning that there were a few spots left. I only needed one. Beauty.

My pickup is scheduled for noon tomorrow and it looks like I'm a little more than an hour from Pittston, so thankfully no repeats of that 5am nonsense are in store for me. The trip down to Virginia is an easy 300 mile deal, so maybe I'll get a chance to watch some football. I would say that tomorrow holds bad news for New Orleans and Indianapolis, but it looks like the majority of our scientifically selected poll voters agree with me. Scary. It's worth noting though that I'm not quite as good at being wrong with respect to NFL games as I am with respect to college games. Close, but not quite.