6/7/10

Welcome.  You know what that word means, right?  Obviously there are different usages and so forth, but the general concept is clear.  Welcome.  Come well.  We look forward to your well-being, etc.  I'm not sure everyone sees it the same way though.

The first time that I heard the word 'welcome' today, I had just arrived at my consignee in McDonough, Georgia.  My intention had been to get past Atlanta and then find somewhere to take a break before my 3:30pm appointment.  I didn't see anywhere to stop between Atlanta and McDonough though, so I just continued onward to my delivery point.  The young lady in the security booth gave me the bad news, informing me that I wouldn't be getting unloaded early.  I was, however, welcome to park in the staging area and then check in at 3:30pm.  Good lookin' out, my sister.

At some point during the afternoon, I received a satellite message.  I'm assuming that the person signing the message was my new fleet manager, as the message was sent in order to welcome me to my new fleet.  We've known that this one was coming for a month or so, since we learned that my old fleet was becoming regional.  So there's that word again - welcome.

At some point after I got my holiday fireworks order placed and before my trailer was empty, I received my next load assignment.  I was to pick up in Atlanta at 10:30pm and deliver in Albertville at 10am.  It's not often that one gets a chance to go from the site of the '96 Summer Olympics to the site of the '92 Winter Olympics.  Alas, I didn't get to drive my truck to France tonight.  It turns out that there's another Albertville... in Alabama... 146 miles from Atlanta.

That 10:30pm pickup was going to be a royal pain in the ass for me.  If I stayed at my consignee in McDonough long enough to complete an eight hour break, then I most likely would be late for my pickup appointment on the western edge of Atlanta.  (A ten hour break wasn't even an option.)  If I didn't complete a break before picking up the load, then my 14 hour clock would run out at midnight.  This would make it impossible to reach my consignee by 10am after taking a break overnight.

About the only solution that I could find was to head straight to the shipper.  If I could get loaded early, then I could head to Albertville and park for the night.  If I couldn't get loaded until 10:30pm, then I would just have to stay at the shipper until I had been parked for ten hours.  Then I could leave before sunrise and still make the delivery on time.  The shippers were happy to load my trailer shortly after I arrived, so score one for the good guys.

I dragged my 43,000 pounds of pickles out of Georgia and into Alabama, where I unfortunately was reminded that US-431 has a shit-ton of hills and red lights.  Tedious.  Upon arriving at my consignee and finding exactly one open parking spot, I was told that I couldn't stay there.  I could, however, go to their other drop yard on the other side of the highway.  Good enough for me.

So now we come back to our word of the day.  If I was bumped from my old fleet because I didn't want to be a regional driver, only for my first assignment on my new fleet to be a chickenshit regional run... with what began as a semi-questionable schedule... to pull a wicked heavy trailer... across a pain in the ass route... to a grocery warehouse... then I'm not sure I like this kind of welcome.  Call me a traditionalist.

On the positive side, it appears that the folks at Google have gotten their Blogger system back up and running.  I don't know exactly what sort of business arrangements they have with the various people who write these blogs, but mine is completely free.  I've never paid them a dime and I even managed to collect $100 for the first two and a half years' worth of ad clicks.  In this context, I was amused by the absolute indignance that I saw from people when I clicked on the support forum to see what was going on.  "This is ridiculous!"  "You people should be ashamed!"  "I'm switching to WordPress!"  You get the picture.  The modern world in a cyber-nutshell...