2/20/10

You know, it's funny. After a good night of sleep and a cool rainy morning that allowed me to get lots of rest, today was all set up for a good long drive. The traffic through Phoenix wasn't bad and, once I got past Tucson and out of the rain, everything was rolling along perfectly as planned. The only challenges were mundane things like deciding whether to get fuel in Anthony, Texas or to wait until I reached Van Horn. Then, as we say around here, things took a turn...

I was almost out of Arizona when I felt a little pop and a shimmy coming from the rear of my truck. How amusing that I would blow a drive tire while I was on my way to Laredo for new drive tires, I thought. I had no idea where I was at the time, but there was an exit ramp right in front of me so I took it. As I coasted around the curve, the shimmy got worse and worse, but the ramp wasn't wide enough to allow me to stop on the shoulder. So I kept coasting. As luck would have it, I coasted right around the corner and into a truck stop. Well that was certainly fortuitous.

I got out to check on my tires and immediately smelled something burning. All of my tires were fine though. Uh oh. The opening where my drive shaft enters something that I am told is called the "pumpkin" was glowing red like a coal furnace. That can't be good.

In light of recent discussions concerning the cognitive abilities of folks at various levels within my company, I must note that everything today has been handled with absolute efficiency. I got right through to the road service department, without any waiting on hold, and spoke with the gentleman who expanded my understanding of the word 'pumpkin.' After a brief chat, he confirmed that which I already suspected. "You need to call dispatch and have them set up a relay. That truck ain't going anywhere."

I called and got a weekend dispatcher on the phone. I gave him the rundown on the situation and he said that he would make a note of it. A short time later, an old man came driving over from the shop at the truck stop where I was parked. He took a quick look at the scene of the damage, nodded his head, and drove away. I'm not entirely sure what was said between him and our road service guys, but I can only assume that he was confirming that the needed repairs would be beyond his capacity. A few minutes after that, I got a call from one of the load planners. (We'll forgive her for sharing the name of an ex-girlfriend of mine. I'm sure she means no offense.) She took the relevant information concerning my location and set up a relay for someone else to come and take my loaded trailer, at which point I lost three hundred bucks by not going all the way to Laredo. Bummer.

I received a satellite message after another half hour or so, spelling out what would happen next. My truck would be towed to El Paso and I would be put in a motel. In the morning, my truck would go to the Kenworth dealer. Another driver was being sent to the truck stop where I had broken down in order to retrieve my load and pull it to Laredo. The lengthy tow was being ordered on account of my company's favorable relationship with the Kenworth dealer in El Paso, and they apologized for my inconvenience.

The whole affair was handled with an impressive level of professionalism and communication. Quite frankly, it surprised me a little bit. Recent events notwithstanding, I generally have had decent experiences with the road service folks. They haven't always been terribly efficient at communicating with the operations folks though. Having everything pulled together and arranged so quickly was nice to see. Being kept fully informed along the way was simply stunning.

Nothing to do at that point but wait for the relay truck and the tow truck. I was told that the tow truck would arrive in about four hours, so I had lots of time to kill. At 5pm Mountain time I received a message giving me the inbound relay truck's number and indicating that it would arrive at 4pm. Going back in time - now that would be really impressive. Obviously the time wasn't meant to be specific. The message was just to inform me that another truck had been assigned and that it was on the way. Okay, good. Back to the waiting.

At roughly the time that I was expecting the tow truck to arrive, a guy who had been on the board in Nogales all day showed up to take my loaded trailer. The tow truck showed up an hour later. Five hours, four hours... Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care?

So then I got to ride all the way across to El Paso with a tow truck driver who didn't speak much English. I don't speak much Spanish. Whole lot of staring out the window on that trip. We got to the towing company's yard in El Paso at around 2am local time. I thought that my day was done. I was wrong. The arrangement that had been made with the towing company stipulated that I was to get a ComChek number to pay for the tow. The guy in the road service department who took my call seemed to have a pretty good idea of what was going on, but apparently there are some hurdles to getting such a sizeable sum of money through the computer system. We got 'er done eventually.

So now my day was over, right? Well, not just yet. I still had to find somewhere to lay my head down. The earlier message detailing the steps that were being taken had mentioned that I should "stay somewhere decent." That certainly leaves some room for interpretation but I'm not one to waste the company's money intentionally. Since a motel room is just a place with a bed and a shower as far as I'm concerned, the right thing to do seemed to be to look for a cheap location. I had spotted a few signs on the way into town advertising rooms in the neighborhood of $40 a night, so that didn't sound too bad. The poor tow truck driver got stuck driving me from one place to the next, only to find that none of them had any vacancy. El Paso is a happening kinda town, it would seem. I finally found a place to stay at the Days Inn right down the street from the Kenworth dealer. $56 a night ain't quite as cheap as some of the other places, but given that I arrived at 3am on a Saturday night, I guess beggars can't be choosers. Finally, my day was finished.

Even with the loss of 800 miles, my week wraps up with 2,640. I also got $120 in layover pay for my weekend of sitting at that McDonald's in Texas, so overall I can't really complain. I'm not sure how long it will take to get my truck back, but it's out of my hands at this point so I won't sweat it.

I thought it would never get here, but bedtime has most certainly arrived.