All caught up? Good. As of this moment, let there be no mistake about it. I'm a degenerate heathen and I've been duly chastened. I've got plenty of time so I'll tell you the whole story of the day, but just know this in advance - I may end up with the last laugh. I usually do.
So the day started off in a normal way. I got out of bed, realized I was freezing my nuts off, and then spent a few minutes shivering while my truck tried to warm up. On the way down I-17, things went basically how our man J.T. told me last night that they would. There was some traffic once I got into the heart of Phoenix, but otherwise it wasn't bad. The only complete stoppage took place near the exit for Pinnacle Peak Road. The failure of people to merge properly was annoying enough, but the Pinnacle Peak Road sign pissed me off on a more fundamental level. This isn't even one of those xenophobic 'speak English' deals either. Both 'pinnacle' and 'peak' are English words and they both mean the same damned thing. Come up with a real name for your freaking peak, for crying out loud. Lazy bastards.
Down at the consignee, I checked in with a lady in the receiving office. She told me to back into Door 7 and that the forklift guys would get started at 9am. Beauty. I headed back out to my truck and started to back into Door 7. Then a guy came out and told me the bad news. The person in the receiving office who made my delivery appointment had erred. I was carrying polycarbonate pellets from a company called Dow. She apparently had been under the impression that I would be carrying aquarium gravel from a company called Dowell. In related news, I wish that I had been carrying aquarium gravel from Dowell. Door 7 was nice and easy.
I had to drive around to the other side of the building and blindside into a dock. That ain't fun. Toss in the fact that it had four of those damned concrete poles in front of it, right where I needed to swing my truck around, and it pretty much sucked balls. I'm no super trucker. I've never claimed to be one. Be that as it may, I'm good enough at my job that it should never take me a half hour to back into a loading dock. It took a half hour this morning. That's horseshit.
Whatever dude. I had a good weekend assignment waiting for me. I wasn't gonna let The Man get me down. I cruised over to Chandler and, if you don't mind me saying (or even if you do mind), I pulled off a badass backing job to hit another tough loading dock. I was at the shipper for a little while and then sent on my way.
Holy smokes! What is this I see? A 13,000 pound payload? Be still my beating heart. Yeah, it's pathetic when that sort of thing is so exciting, but this is the life that I choose to lead. Pathetic in more ways than you'll ever know. After dragging so many 40K+ loads around lately, I was positively ecstatic to see a nice light one. I just needed to top off my fuel tanks in Eloy and then enjoy the ride.
I got to the Pilot in Eloy and found all of the fuel lanes occupied. That happens. No big deal. Here's the thing though, and consider it another of my patented public service announcements. You wanna bring your RV into the truck stop - no worries. Maybe you don't actually need diesel fuel but the diesel lanes seem nice and easy to access - I'm cool with that. Actually, I do exactly the same thing when I need to take a piss. Just wanna walk the dogs and stretch your legs for a while - God love you. Here's the thing though. Some of us are trying to earn a living and many of us are paid by the mile. While sitting in line and waiting for a fuel lane, we earn exactly zero dollars an hour. So, when there's nobody in front of you, just pull up to the yellow line and let me get my fuel. Help a brother out. That's all I ask. (And no, none of the RVers were my buddy Tray's in-laws. I looked.)
I noticed as I was backing out from behind one RV and pulling into the space vacated by another RV that something about my brakes seemed a little off. They worked fine and all, but that last split second of motion wasn't quite right. Just as I went from 'barely moving' to 'completely stopped,' there was a little bit of a whine. Then the actual 'stopped' part just seemed wrong for some reason. Too abrupt or something. I can't really explain it, but I guess you would have to spend 90% of your life sitting in a machine in order to appreciate what I'm saying. I popped the hood while the fuel pumps were running and took a look.
There were a series of extremely tiny grooves or cracks (I couldn't tell which) on the surface of the brake rotors. They weren't running in circles like you would see from normal brake wear though. They were across the grain. "Probably nothing," I thought to myself. "Lots of time on this load though, might as well get it checked out," I also thought. I had my gloves on and I have asbestos fingers from my restaurant days, so I stuck my hand in and felt for the brake pads. No problem there. Plenty of thickness. Just whatever was going on with the rotors. I called our road service department and gave them the rundown. I'm no mechanic so I was looking for a little bit of guidance. Kenworth dealer in Tucson, open until 8pm, stop in and get it checked out. Beauty.
It was 2:45pm locally when I got to the Kenworth dealer. They were open until 8pm. Have you ever had a brake job done? I have. It takes a half hour, assuming they need to machine the rotors. If you grind the rotors to shit and need them replaced (as my ex-wife was occasionally known to do), it takes even less time. Just take the old parts off and put new ones on. Hell, with air brakes I'm not even sure they need to bleed the brake lines. So anyhow... there weren't a lot of trucks ahead of mine. My truck was pulled into a service bay before too long. Things were looking A-OK. 8pm out here is 11pm in the real world. Even if I lost the rest of today, I could get back on schedule with an early start tomorrow.
I hung out in the lounge for a while and knocked two episodes of Cash Cab out of the ballpark. I even knew that Yalta was the site of the post-WWII conference that reorganized Europe. I have literally no idea how I knew that. I got it though, unlike the real contestants. Then the service guy came in and told me that I would be staying in a hotel tonight. Fair enough. I'll just grab my truck tomorrow and do some hard driving, right? Nope. I need new brake rotors and apparently the Kenworth parts department doesn't keep brake rotors in stock. What the fuck? Seriously. I can understand if there's a major issue like the one I encountered the last time I traveled this route. That's a different story. But brake rotors? Come on. Long story short - parts will be ordered on Monday and I'll get my truck back on Tuesday. And that's how you lose $369 when you're a truck driver.
That kinda sucks, right? Well, maybe a little. If you think that's the worst part of my day though, you're sadly mistaken. As a working class fella from the Midwest, with Irish Catholic roots, my affection for the University of Notre Dame may have been pre-ordained. I don't know. I do know that I've loved my Fighting Irish as long as I can remember. I still get goosebumps when I hear that douchebag from NBC say, "Here come the Irish." Sometimes they disappoint me and sometimes they make me proud. I enjoy the uncertainty of it all and I get a kick out of the universal hatred that comes from loyalists of every other college. What I don't appreciate is a kick in the balls from Notre Dame itself. Oh... dear... Lord...
The moment when this abomination hit my e-mail inbox was easily the worst part of my day. What the...?
Screw it. So I caught a ride from one of the mechanics to the local trucker motel. He told me that the place had a good Mexican restaurant and a bar. Awesome. Further to that, today is Friday. On Fridays, I learned, they have a mariachi band and on Saturdays they have other live music. Awesome. I never really heard a lot of mariachi music until I took over the Red Robin restaurant in Toledo. My cooks would always play the stuff (loudly) in the back of the house where they prepped the food for the kitchen. Had I not taken that job, I never would have known that I really like mariachi music. And these poor suckers are three hours behind me. Hehehe. I told you that I may end up with the last laugh. As long as I don't spend too much of the money that I won't be earning this weekend, I think I might be right.
Maybe one of these places has the parts in stock.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.thecityoftucson.com/truck-repair/index.html
It's out of my hands at this point. They probably only use parts from a specific distributor.
ReplyDeleteThe dealership guy said that Con-way told him to order the parts for overnight delivery, but they waited too long to tell him this. By the time they got back to him, it was too late for him to get the parts ordered for Saturday. I won't get into blame games and whether or not he's telling the truth, but that's how he explained the situation to me. It's all water under the bridge now in any case.
I'm glad you check to see if it was my in-laws....if it was you could have always blown Millie a kiss! They aren't pulling out of Arizona until the end of May/early June...so look out for them then!
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