4/15/10

Yeah I'm plenty angry at the federal government today, but it has nothing to do with taxes.  To be perfectly honest, I don't have a huge beef with my current tax burden.  I get thousands of dollars in deductions for money that I don't actually spend, so my effective tax rate is fairly reasonable.  On matters of taxation, it's the economic cost of an over-reaching government and the inevitable day of reckoning that concern me.  But no, that's not the issue this evening.  This evening we're back to bitching about the good old FMCSA.

First though, let's bitch about my employers for a minute.  This seems to be a theme for the last week or two.  So, I got rolling from Alorton, Illinois at 4:45am this morning.  I arrived at my consignee just before 7am and found that there were only three trucks ahead of me and none of them were CTL trucks.  Okay then, not too bad.  I walked into the receiving office and learned that the consignee opens at 8am.  Dispatched to arrive an hour before the customer opened, on both the pickup end and the delivery end.  Hey, there's something to be said for consistency.  (You'll see shortly how getting started that extra hour early, once again, made a huge difference in how badly I got screwed by the 14 hour rule.)

As I sat waiting for the place to open, I received my next assignment.  I would be heading down into Missouri this evening and getting a load headed to La Grange, Georgia.  This would work well with respect to my pending home time request, but not so well with respect to my federal government's idea of common sense.  I was unloaded quickly after the consignee opened, then sent on my way at 8:30am.

My pickup was set for 6pm in Bloomington, Missouri.  (You'll of course recall the 4:45am part of this conversation, meaning that 6:45pm is shutdown time.)  I had to drive 120 miles along a mixture of highways and through various towns to reach the shipper, meaning that there wasn't time for an eight hour break before arriving.  I also had instructions saying that the shipper doesn't allow us to park on location, meaning that I shouldn't arrive too early.  I stopped for a nap in Charleston, Missouri and then finished the drive over to the shipper.  I arrived at 2pm in hopes that they wouldn't kick me out and I might get loaded a little early, leaving me at least enough time to drive to a truck stop or rest area tonight.  They had enough room for me to stick around, so that part was good.  No such luck on the getting loaded early part.

I got my paperwork right at 6:45pm.  Out of hours and out of luck.  The nearest truck stops would be around a half hour away, back over along I-55.  Gee, if only I had started my day an hour later.  I sweet-talked the security guard into letting me hide out among the empty trailers until I could get myself legal again.  She said that they're not supposed to let us do so, but that she would make an exception as long as I took off within a few hours.  I told her that I could roll out of here at 10pm and thanked her very sincerely.

At this point I raise a practical question.  Given that I took a nap this afternoon and I'm a half hour from a tuck stop, which makes more sense - Driving that half hour to the truck stop, calling it a night, and taking a full break; or staying at the shipper to complete an eight hour break and then getting stuck in the split shift from Hell?  (That's a rhetorical question.)  Since the 14 hour clock continued ticking until I started my bunk time at the shipper, I can work for 4.75 hours once I get rolling again.  Then I have to take a two-hour break, assuming that I can find somewhere to park in the middle of the night.  Then I'll be able to work whatever portion of the 11/14 deal I don't use between now and the two-hour break, but the two-hour break will count against the 14.  Then, once I've made my delivery, I'll be running up against the other side of the split again.  Fucking stupid.  I'm telling you - just limit us to 600 miles a day, 3,500 miles a week, and just get rid of all this clock management bullshit.  We can earn a comfortable living at that pace and it would prevent people from going completely overboard with the tired driving.  This clock shit makes no sense.

At this point in time, I honestly have no idea how this trip will play out.  My lamentations about the 45,000 pound payload out of Arizona were rewarded with a 46,000 pound payload out of Missouri, so that part should be fun.  I can't decide whether I would prefer to deal with Nashville, Chattanooga, and Atlanta or if I would rather deal with state and U.S. highways and the varying conditions that they present.  I have a half hour to figure it out, I guess.

The money end of the equation should be starting to take shape at least.  Today's 673 miles will kick the week over $800 with Saturday still to come.  I don't have any high hopes for tomorrow evening, in light of the logbook/split situation, but we'll just have to see what kind of freight comes out of the Southeast.  As long as I can make enough on the way back home to buy beer and food for next Saturday's tailgater, we'll be well on our way to forgetting the obnoxious nature of my job over the past couple of weeks.