5/11/10

Most people know that they should never call me at 7am.  My father is not one of those people.  So he called me this morning.  Fortunately I was already up and at 'em, since I had to make a delivery at 5:30am.  Dad was calling to make sure I was okay.  I had spoken with him and Mom over the weekend and he knew that I was heading through Oklahoma and Kansas.  Apparently there was a piece on the local news in Detroit this morning about tornadoes in Oklahoma and Kansas.  I'll be damned.  He even said that he saw a CFI trailer on its side in one of the pictures on his fancy cable television.  As for me, I had no idea.  There's something to be said for timing.  Good thing my buddy called and woke me yesterday when he did.

My delivery this morning turned out to be a drop/hook, which was a pleasant surprise.  Given that the place was pretty jammed with trailers and they told me to put my loaded trailer in a door, I assume that I couldn't have dropped it off last night.  The drop went quickly enough today and I got a few hours' sleep last night so I can't complain.  I even found a nice easy parking space at the Godforsaken Flying J down the street once I had my empty trailer.  #6 on the board.  Back to bed...

The next phone call to wake me came at 10am.  Most people know that 10am is the earliest acceptable time to call me.  My buddy the reverand is one of those people.  He, like my father, had seen the stories of tornadoes on the television and wanted to make sure I wasn't flipped over somewhere.  He, unlike my father, knows that I believe nothing good has ever happened in this world before 10am.  (I was born at 10:10am, incidentally.)  So he waited until the appropriate hour and then called to tell me basically the same thing that Dad had said earlier.  Nope.  No tornadoes for me.  I didn't even encounter much wind yesterday, to tell you the truth.  Just a light and steady rain.  #5 on the board.  Back to bed...

I was awake again by the time the next call came in.  My fleet manager called to let me know that my fleet is becoming a regional fleet and that I have the option to become a Midwest regional driver.  No thanks.  My job is boring enough as it is.  I'd prefer to keep running hither and yon for a while.  The writing seems to be on the wall that this company sees its future in regional freight, but for now they say they'll still have freight for long haul drivers.  I'll end up getting assigned to another fleet at some point.  Then hopefully my new fleet manager will be inclined to leave me alone like the current one does.  We'll see how it goes.

The late morning and early afternoon were spent watching the local mongrels go from truck to truck.  You could tell that they've hung around the truck stop for quite some time.  Neither was alarmed at all whenever a truck rolled past.  It was actually pretty interesting to see.  They seem to have a system in which the tan one finds a woman sitting in a truck, then sits and stares at her.  The black one circles around the lot, following whoever happens to walk by.  Inevitably (at least five times that I saw), the ladies in the trucks would either hand out scraps of food or set up a bowl with fresh water.  The tan dog would take his share and then the black one would get his (or hers, you know, I didn't look that closely).  Better than living in an animal shelter, I suppose, although they did both look a little skinny.

And we wait...  I got to #1 on the board around noon and received my assignment just before 3pm...

Come on man.  I finally got a break from the heavy loads.  This is a nice light one going from our yard in Kansas City to a warehouse in Cullman, Alabama.  That's all well and good.  But the load was picked up yesterday, delivers tomorrow afternoon, and sat on the yard all damned day today while my 14 hour clock dwindled.  I was only left with enough hours to get to Wright City, Missouri tonight.  Now I'll have to get up at the ass crack of dawn and drive 500 miles to make my delivery.  Assuming that I make it there on time, most of tomorrow's hours will have been burned in the process.  These guys can do better.  I've seen it happen from time to time.  For now though, we'll just let Captain Picard do the talking.

Early morning tomorrow, so yeah, goodnight... or something.