5/24/10

Several years ago, I worked for a company called American Express Financial Advisors.  The main reason that I left AEFA (which had spun off to become Ameriprise Financial along the way) was that I got a much better revenue sharing arrangement from MetLife.  One of the other factors, however, was the moronic marketing shit that I had to do as an American Express employee.  Case in point - Costco.  The AMEX credit card operation had a table at various Costco locations at which it signed up new cardmembers.  They offered a gift card or something for each person who signed up and they had a reasonable amount of success in attracting new business.  So someone decided that the financial advisors would do the same thing.  On Saturday mornings, various advisors took turns standing at a stupid table and offering Costco gift cards to people who would show up at our office for an initial consultation. 

As a good 'team player,' I was expected to work at least one Costco shift per month.  I'm not the sort to beg for some broad's business while she pushes a shopping cart packed with 86 jumbo rolls of toilet paper.  Call me a snob if you must, but that's just the way it is.  So I would stand with my thumb up my ass for two hours on a Saturday morning, absolutely hating Costco and everybody who shopped there.  My alarm went off at 6am today and, after getting my shit together, I drove the last two miles to my consignee - Costco.  6am is not an agreeable hour for me.  One more reason to hate those bastards.

I was unloaded in short order and found myself on the board at #1.  As noted last night, my parking options were less than ideal.  Rather than drive ten or tweny miles in what may turn out to be the wrong direction, I decided to park out in front of the store.  It was still early in the morning and the store wasn't open yet, so I figured I would have at least a couple of hours before anyone kicked me out.  Letting me park for a while would be the least those guys could do, after all of the ruined mornings that they've caused me and whatnot.  I never did get kicked out, which was convenient since my next assignment took a few hours to come across the satellite.  Nice long run to El Paso though.  That ain't so shabby.

My next pickup was scheduled for 3pm in Richmond, meaning that I would have been headed in the right direction if I had chosen to drive down to Ruther Glen once I was empty.  So I jotted down the directions to my next shipper, then went ahead and made that drive to Ruther Glen.  After chilling out for a while and taking care of my personal affairs at the Flying J, I decided to head down to Richmond and see about getting loaded early.  Might as well get loaded and head out of town before rush hour if possible.  The worst they could say was "no," right?

So I got down to Richmond and saw that the shipper was another Godforsaken paper mill.  The number of 40,000+ pound loads that I've had this year is simply staggering.  Anyhow, I checked in with the security guard.  He sent me to the shipping office.  I gave my order number to the shipping guy and he shuffled some papers for a second.  Then he tinkered with his computer.  "Come over here. I want you to look at this," he said with a weird look on his face.  So I did as I was told and walked over to his computer.  In the 'sent' folder of his Lotus Notes, there was an e-mail from 8:05pm last night.  It had been sent to some gal in Joplin to inform my company that the load to El Paso, along with two others, had been canceled due to a mechanical breakdown at the paper mill.  And yet I received the assignment this morning.  Go figure.

Hey, at least I wouldn't have to haul 44,000 pounds of paper today.  Always look at the bright side, right?  I sent the FYI message to my fleet manager and then tried to find somewhere nearby to park and wait for whatever came next.  Having no luck on the industrial street where my non-shipper was located, I decided to head southward and put in at the Pilot in Colonial Heights.  Just as I reached the exit for the truck stop, I received a new asignment... picking up back to the north... at another fucking paper mill.  Awesome.

The people at the paper mill in West Point are some picky mofos, so I took a few minutes at the truck stop and gave my trailer a thorough sweeping before heading back out.  I got to the mill and checked in at 2:45pm, then got the unfortunate news that my order was being live loaded.  Sometimes I catch a drop/hook there and sometimes I don't.  Today I didn't.  Normally the live loading isn't a big deal, since a full trailer of paper is only six or seven rolls, but today there were seven trucks in line ahead of me and five more at the dock.  Good times, good times.  6am + 14 hours = 8pm... as the clock slowly ticks my day away.

I made it out of there by 6:45pm, so I guess we'll file this one under the category of things that could have been worse.  At least I had enough time to make it up to the truck stop in Doswell before my 14 ran out.  And the truck stop in Doswell has a SubWay... which is nice.

This dispatch is one of those ball-busting kinda deals, requiring me to get to the suburbs of Minneapolis by Thursday morning.  I'm sure as shit not going back up I-95 tomorrow, so we'll have to see how much time I burn by angling across Virginia and then catching up with I-70 in Maryland.  With a load this heavy and the terrain that I'll be covering, I don't think the US highways will be all that much slower than the interstates.  It's not like I'll be flying up and down the road in either case.  As long as I can get somewhere in Indiana by the time my hours run out tomorrow, everything should work out okay.  Tomorrow is still a day away though.  Plenty of time for something to go wrong.