4/12/10

Nonsensical dispatches, when combined with the 14 hour rule, can do a number on a driver's schedule.  In related news, I'm a driver trying to keep a schedule.  We've already covered the fact that my whole day yesterday was wasted in Buckeye, after which I received a dispatch to pick up in Miami at 7am today.  Since I wouldn't have time for a ten hour break if I drove to the shipper last night, I had to wait and drive across to Miami this morning.  Getting that assignment a couple of hours sooner sure would have come in handy, but hey, I'm sure the shipper just called us on a Sunday night (when they weren't even open) and requested a truck... or something.

So cue the start of my 14 hour clock this morning at 3:45am MST.  The trek into the mountains went a little more quickly than anticipated and I reached the shipper at 5:45am MST.  After checking in with the security guard, I was informed that they opened at 8am and loaded trucks until 3pm - first come, first served.  More information that my benevolent employers apparently didn't care to share with me.  I got settled into the loading dock shortly after 8am and I was released with my load just before 11am.  It took all of ten minutes for the guy to load my truck, so those extra hours of sitting around and waiting for him to get started weren't very helpful to the cause.

As I suspected, there is nothing light about this load.  With a cool 45,000 pounds in the wagon, it was bound to be a long afternoon of dragging my ass up and down the mountains.  According to my web log here, I was hauling 29,000 pounds when I made my first trip through the Salt River Canyon  a couple of years ago.  Today's 16,000 additional pounds were certainly enough to take the fun out of the ride.  The drive into the canyon consisted of me trying to maintaining a safe speed and navigate the hairpin corners without burning up my brakes a I dodged the locals who just had to speed past me in a 35mph zone.  The drive out of the canyon consisted of me repeatedly getting fooled into thinking that I might be able to shift into sixth gear for a few minutes.  Every time I thought I was going to get some flat ground for a few seconds, the next ascent would begin.  Tedious.

Since I was working more than taking in the scenery this time around, I held up my phone and pressed the camera button a few times whenever I got onto a straightaway.  Maybe I could enjoy the view after I was parked for the night, I thought.  The photos were mostly garbage, since I couldn't really look to see where the camera was pointed, but a couple turned out okay.

The steepness of the remaining stretch taking me out of Arizona and into New Mexico didn't exactly help he cause.  It seemed like, every time I got into high gear for thirty seconds, I would have to start downshifting again.  It's not like stepping on the clutch and moving the shifter are strenuous activities or anything.  Just a test of patience when you're trying to cover some ground with the hours available to you under the law.

Which brings us back to the topic of nonsensical dispatches.  I'm due in some podunk town in southern Illinois by 7am on Thursday.  I was able to reach the little truck stop in Lemitar, New Mexico just before my 14 hours ran out today, leaving me somewhere around 1200 miles from here to my destination.  Stating the obvious here, but I'll need to cover around 600 miles a day for the next two days.  If any of the aforementioned dispatching shenanigans had been avoided (allowing me either to drive to Miami last night or to start later this morning), then today's time under the 14 hour rule would have carried me further and allowed for a more reasonable pace.  Further to that, there is no reason for me to get to the consignee by 7am.  The receiving hours are 7am to 2:30pm and I have no appointment.  Our asinine dispatch system just puts me in at the earliest time on the scheduled day, at which point I'll sit in line behind ten other trucks that were told to arrive at the same time.

So yeah, it's all perfectly legal and it's all perfectly stupid.  I know they think drivers are all idiots and we would show up late if they told us when we were actually required to deliver, but it would be just as easy to lie and say I have to arrive by 11am as it is to lie and say I have to arrive by 7am.  This still would leave 3.5 hours of 'screw up' time and I would have the option of parking somewhere convenient on Wednesday and then finishing off the drive on Thursday, without having to get up at the crack of dawn and deal with all the motorists rushing to work.  Peckerheads.

At least I'll have some decent miles to start this week with a few days' worth of (potential) work still to come.  Since I'd like to grab another run or two before heading home, and it's most profitable to be pretty far away before I start working my way back toward Detroit, nobody should be surprised when my next assignment takes me from Illinois to Michigan or something along those lines.  It certainly wouldn't shock me.

Update (10:48pm):  For anyone who has been getting the blank rss feeds lately, I've put in a workaround and it seems that the issue has been corrected.  On my end, I am now getting the actual content from the feed.  If there's still an issue, I would apreciate it if someone could let me know so I can keep working to fix the problem.