2/15/10

Do you like sausage? Maybe a juicy bratwurst boiled in beer? Or a spicy Italian with some roasted red peppers? Mmm, good stuff... at the end. What goes into it, well, sometimes we'd just rather not think about that. That's kinda how today was.

An hour before my alarm was set to wake me, I received a satellite message. I dragged my frozen ass over to the Qualcomm and saw a note saying that my load was unassigned. I cursed the world for a minute and then went back to bed. Then, after my alarm went off, I got up and called to check my position on the board. Not on the board. What the hell? So I took another look to see if the message said what I thought it said. Yes, it did, but the unassigned load number was not the one to which I had been assigned. What the hell? I sent a message asking for clarification and never got a reply, so I had to call. After a few minutes on hold, I was able to confirm that I was still on the Temple-to-Waco run and the unassigned business was something else. My fleet manager also said that I had one lined up going from Waco to Oklahoma for today. Okay then.

I rolled down the street to the shipper and tried to check in. My pickup number was no good. I needed a ten digit number starting with '100' in order to get my load. Easy enough, we'll just make a call and see what's what. After fifteen minutes on hold, I sent a message explaining the situation. After another five minutes on hold, I made the mistake of thinking that maybe my call had been lost in the queue, so I hung up and dialed again. Two callers ahead of me now. That was a dumb move on my part. This time, after about ten minutes, I got through to my fleet manager and received the correct pickup number. I checked in with the shipping lady, weighed my empty trailer, and then pulled around the corner to drop it. As I circled back around toward the scale to get my bobtail weight, I received an answer to my earlier satellite message asking for the correct pickup number. Whatevs.

Armed with the right number and having done the necessary weighing, I was given the number of the loaded trailer that I was to retrieve. I hooked everything up and then circled around for my third trip to the scale. Then it was off to Waco.

My drop at the consignee in Waco was quick and easy. Then, knowing that I would be picking up at the same place, I simply needed to find an empty trailer to use when sending my empty call. Unless we're at a terminal or a border lot, the computer doesn't accept a 'dropped trailer' message without an empty trailer number. Alas, there were no empties. So I sent the form with trailer #00000 and received the standard error message. I sent a note saying that there were no empties and I needed to get on the board without one, assuming that I was picking up at the same place. This time it only took fifteen minutes to get a reply, so I guess we were seeing signs of improvement.

I got the information for my new assignment and then headed inside to see if it was ready early. I needed a load number ending in 428. They had 419, 420, 421, 424, 425, 426, 427, 429, 430, and 431. Yeah, story of life. My scheduled pickup time was 4pm but, since I was heading northward through the Fort Worth area, I was hoping to get out of there early. Leaving at 4pm would mean a lot of traffic and a tricky situation with regard to the 14 hour rule. 393 miles to Ponca City, Oklahoma would take almost seven hours on a good day and my clock would run out at 9:30pm. I figured that everything should be okay as long as I was rolling by 2pm. This was still several hours away, so I wasn't in bad shape just yet.

I started checking the posted bills every half hour or so and eventually found my paperwork waiting for me at 1pm. Not so bad. This should have provided me with an opportunity to get through Fort Worth before the traffic got too bad. The construction crews, however, had other ideas. Each time there was a lane closed, traffic came to a dead stop and then crept along for a couple of miles.

At the end of the day, despite all of the communication snags and unnecessary delays and other assorted hassles, I wound up with a decent outcome. It's only Monday night and we're already approaching half of last week's pay, so that's a good start. Traffic in Oklahoma wasn't too bad. The loading dock at my consignee was nice and accessible. I'm certainly within reach of Joplin, on the odd chance that they actually intend to get me there for new tires. I'm most likely out of the Texas loop and I still have my home time bullet in the chamber. And, to wind out the evening, there is a Taco Bell right across the street. Talk about something that you don't want to see being made.