5/12/10

Given that yesterday's driving was cut short by my late assignment and the 14 hour rule, forcing me to use most of my hours on the way to Alabama this morning, what were the odds that I could have used an extra hour at the end of the day today?  Give yourself a gold star if you said that the odds were pretty damned good.  Yeah, trucking.

It was raining like a mutha by the time my ten hour break was up and I got rolling this morning.  At such an early hour though, I was able to get past St. Louis without any major delays and then the rest of the route was pretty rustic.  The rain stopped by the time I reached Tennessee and the sun was shining for the rest of the day.  I followed mainly the same route that I did on my last trip through Alabama, with two minor exceptions.  First was that I didn't miss the truck bypass in Jackson this time around.  Second was that I angled down on AL-157 from US-72 instead of taking the more northerly route again, since today's delivery was down along I-65.  All in all, not a bad ride.  With only 10,000 pounds in the wagon, I'd actually have to say it was nice and easy.

I checked in at the consignee and dropped my loaded trailer, then rolled over to grab an empty.  The security guard had written down the numbers of two trailers that were available to me.  My company had sent me the number of the trailer that had been at the location for the longest time, suggesting that I take it.  The general concept here is that the trailers should be cycled in and out so that they all stay in the flow of freight and none of them get neglected.  Fair enough.  The trailer that the company suggested happened to be one of those that the security guard wrote down, so all was well.  I backed under it, connected the air and electric lines, and started to check it over. 

Everything on the outside looked good.  Then I opened the doors.  Not cool.  It was full of garbage, for one thing, but I could handle that.  Some of those warehouse guys are real dicks about leaving our trailers in a filthy state.  The real problem was that the floor of the trailer had a 10" hole in it.  That's not an embellishment and there's nothing to interpret.  A 10" section of one of the boards was completely missing.  Look inside the trailer and you see the ground.  How much do I love calling Joplin?  Let me count the ways...

First step - find out what the road service guys have to say.  If the trailer could be fixed on site, then they just needed to send someone out and I could take the other trailer.  If it needed to be taken to a trailer shop, then either I or someone else would have to drag it out of there.  Dial the number, wait on hold...  The road service guy told me that the preferred approach would be to pull it down to a shop near Birmingham.  He asked if I was going to be headed in that direction.  Umm, dunno yet.  Okay, so we need to talk to my fleet manager and see what he has to say.

Second step - find out what the dispatchers have to say.  Transferred to my fleet manager's extension, wait on hold...  one caller ahead of me... wait on hold... wait on hold.  After twenty minutes, I chose to press '1' and be connected to the next available fleet manager.  The guy who took my call seemed to have his shit together, which was nice.  I gave him the rundown on the situation and he asked if I would rather go to the shop or get on the board.  That's an obvious one (sitting at 673 miles for the week on Wednesday afternoon), but I do occasionally try to do things the right way.  I obviously wasn't the first person to find a hole in that trailer, but if they had no work for me today then I might as well be the last.  He decided to defer to the load planners.  That way neither he nor I would be on the hook for either (a) leaving a shitty trailer behind or (b) leaving the company without enough available trucks in Alabama.

Third step - find out what the load planners have to say.  I waited on hold while they had a brief conversation.  "He said take a different empty," came the explanation.  Alrighty then.

Fourth step - bring the road service guys up to speed on the situation.  Transferred back over, wait on hold...  I got a different guy in the road service department this time around.  He said that the guy with whom I spoke the first time was busy with another call, so I had to give this second guy a summary of the situation.  I had been told to take an empty, meaning that there was something that I needed to haul, so it wasn't my place to argue.  I just wanted the shop guys to be aware of the situation so the trailer didn't sit there getting ignored for all eternity.  He said that he would note the conversation on his computer and he asked me to send the 'going to shop' form with the trailer number and the location.  Sure thing dude.

After I rolled down the street to the local truck stop, I got a message saying to call the shop regarding the form that I had just sent.  This message was sent by a third road service dude.  Something about the right hand knowing what the left hand is doing comes to mind at this point.  I was on hold for fifteen minutes and the call of nature was not going to be denied, so I gave up on the call.  Screw it.  If they do any kind of documentation up there, then they can figure out what was the deal.  I talked to three different people and sent the satellite message as directed.  Good enough.

Shortly after I got back out to my truck, I received a new assignment.  Math time.  When I sent in my empty call, I stated that I had 2.25 hours available.  I actually had 2.5, but our dispatch system rounds the numbers off and I didn't want to deal with any shenanigans.  If the computer thinks I have 3 hours and I only have 2.5, well, you can see what I'm saying here.  So as far as they knew I had 2.25 hours left to drive today.  This should mean that the computer shows 2 hours for me.  My next pickup was in Demopolis - 161 miles away.  So what is that, an 80mph dispatch?  Even with the 2.5 that I actually had, it was a 64mph dispatch.  That's pushing it.  But given that they were short on trucks down here and I was short on miles this week, I was determined to make it work if at all possible.  I had to employ the good old 4:08pm = 4:15pm routine on the front end and the 6:51pm = 6:45pm routine on the back end but I pulled it off.  Legal and everything.

My pickup appointment was actually for midnight, but midnight would be well after today's 14 hour clock had expired.  I wound up getting loaded after only a few hours at the shipper though.  My 14 hours had indeed been used up by then, so the best I could do was drive down the street to the local truck stop and call it a night.  Good enough for me.  This was a long day.

This run will take me up to Massachusetts for a Monday morning delivery.  It's yet another 44,000 pounder, so the hilly route will be tedious to say the least.  Aside from that though, it's not a bad deal.  Almost $40 in northeast pay, no alarm clock until Monday morning, and I'll get to hit that Bronx/Connecticut crap on the weekend when the traffic should be at least a little lighter than normal.  Decent enough outcome, all told.  As long as we can crack 2,100 miles on a slow week and mix in a few busy ones, I won't have to resort to Plan B.