2/3/10

Funny thing. Two nights ago at this hour, I was rolling through the frozen wilderness and wondering why in the hell people couldn't be a little more forward-looking. Tonight I'm kicked back relaxing in the temperate suburbs of Los Angeles and, much to my personal amusement, looking forward (on either my part or my employer's) hasn't accomplished a thing.

I was scheduled to deliver in City of Industry at 3:30pm and then head over to Carson for my next pickup. This called for a little bit of a balancing act in terms of hours. Wanting to preserve as much of my 14-hour clock as possible (meaning don't start too early), but also wanting to get in and out of City of Industry before I-10 turned into a parking lot (meaning don't start too late), I settled on a schedule that found me rolling into the consignee's lot at 2pm. My exit was under construction so the last couple of miles took fifteen minutes, but what are you gonna do?

Upon stepping into the receiving office, I was told, in the following order; (1) they closed at 2pm, (2) I didn't have an appointment, (3) I may have had an appointment but the corporate office never e-mailed the local office, (4) There were no open docks, (5) I likely wouldn't get unloaded until 5am, and (6) I needed to call my dispatcher and find out with whom the appointment had been made. Okay then.

I headed out to my truck and called Joplin to see what was what. The young lady on the phone told me that she would check with the customer service people and then send me a message. I was silly enough to think that she meant a satellite message. It turns out that she must have been referring to a telepathic message or something, since I have yet to see any news about the issue on my Qualcomm.

After sitting around for 40 minutes or so, I saw the lady from the receiving office walking toward my truck. I stepped out and informed her that I was still waiting for further information. She said that she had arranged for me to get unloaded today, but she needed the name of the lady in Joplin with whom I had spoken. "So I can bitch her out," the friendly lass said. I informed her that I had only spoken with an afternoon dispatcher whose name was of no consequence. Any "bitching out" would have to go through the normal channels. The receiving lady nodded and directed me to a dock.


As for the dock... dude.

As you look at this photo, you see piles of cardboard along the bottom edge. The entrance to the shipping and receiving area brought me around such that I was parked along the 'top' side of those piles of cardboard, facing to the left. There was an open dock where you see that row of trailers at the left edge of the photo. I could have accessed it without too much difficulty by swinging around to the far side of the piles of cardboard and then making a slightly blindsided move back to the dock. There also was an open dock where you see those two trailers in the upper right quadrant of the photo. That one would have been a little tougher than the one on the left, but still manageable. There wasn't enough room to spin around between the buildings (parked cars along the building on the right are obscured from this view), but I could have accessed it by making a blindside turn into the open space and then backing straight in to the dock.

No, I got the dock indicated by the yellow arrow. Don't feel bad if you couldn't tell that there was a dock in there. Neither could I when the lady pointed toward it. I had to walk over and take a closer look to see what I would be facing. The only way to access that one was to back to my blindside around the corner and into the opening between the buildings, then make a wicked blindside turn between the trailer and dumpster that you see pictured. That was hard. I mean really, really hard. You don't suppose that I was the object of someone's need for retribution, do you?

After the rather lengthy process of getting settled into the dock, complete with about fifty trips to the back of the trailer to take a look at my progress, I was unloaded in about five or ten minutes and sent on my way. I sure as hell got my taste of L.A. traffic this time around. I-605 to I-105 to I-710 to I-405... fun stuff. The 27 mile trip took damned near an hour.

I checked in with the security guard at the shipper and, in what should come as a surprise to nobody, my load wasn't yet ready. I made another call to Joplin to fill them in on the situation. As was the case last time around, I'll end up having to stay here and complete a ten hour break and then take off for El Paso. This is, of course, assuming that my load is ready at some point tonight. I may very well be here for ten hours before they even call me. Quite frankly though, I don't give a damn. Since these peckerheads have already prevented me from getting out of town today and I'm now into $12-an-hour territory, they might as well take their time. It's always the case that I prefer to sleep late in the morning. If sleeping late would also equate to an extra hundred bucks or two for my trouble, then I say what's the hurry?

Now that I've said this, I'll surely receive my wake-up call as soon as Alice Panikian and I have begun to resolve cross-border traffic issues.