6/9/10

My upcoming vacation will be spent close to home for the most part.  My family and I will celebrate the holiday at their place up north, but that's only a few hours away.  So my summer break is all set.  If I'm ever looking for a cheap winter destination though, I may have stumbled across a new strategy.  I think I'll go into Mexico, mail my wallet to a friend, and then sneak back into the States.  As long as I can get myself caught at the border with no documentation, it sounds like I might be able to spend a few days relaxing until someone sends my ID to the feds and gets me released.  Fresh carrot sticks, bingo, art classes, and continental breakfast, all at taxpayer expense?  That's better than anything I usually get at the local Days Inn.  Carrot sticks are really underrated as a quick snack, especially if I can snag a little bit of Lawry's seasoned salt to go wih them.  I might have to fine tune this plan a little (passport etc.), but it sounds promising.

Obviously the assessment of my new fleet yesterday was tongue-in-cheek, given the short time frame involved.  That being said, the courtship hasn't gotten any better over the last 24 hours.  When I was informed that I would be getting reassigned, I told you folks the following - "Then hopefully my new fleet manager will be inclined to leave me alone like the current one does. We'll see how it goes."  Early signs seem to indicate that the new fleet manager may be something of a micromanager.  If so, then this would be easily the worst development in my four years with this company.  Let's hope not.

After I went to bed and finally managed to fall asleep yesterday, following my bullshit load assignment, my satellite unit chirped and woke me.  It was a message from my fleet manager telling me to call for my instructions regarding the Con-way load that I was picking up.  I have no interest in getting anyone in trouble, so we'll just say on the record that I've always made that phone call, but you can read between the lines and sort it out from there.  My old fleet manager knew that I have never been late on a Con-way load and that was good enough for both of us.  No matter how many hundreds of times we pick up and deliver a Con-way load, we're supposed to make that stupid phone call.  Then we wait on hold for ten minutes so that someone can tell us to take a break at the shipper before our pickup and all of that shit.  You can review yesterday's chain of events and decide for yourself who needs a refresher course on the rules of the game.  (Hint: Not me.)

So I got up and made the call.  One caller ahead of me - wait on hold.  And wait.  And wait.  I finally wound up connected to some other gal who took two seconds and asked, "You know the instructions, right?"  Yep.  And that was that.  Fucking stupid.  And you know what follows here - no more sleep for me last night.  Bastards.

Once my eight hour break was over, I rolled back down the street to the Con-way terminal.  The folks there were all packed up and ready to go home.  I was the only thing holding them back.  Apparently my load had been ready and waiting for a while, but there was nothing I could do about it.  Even though I had never managed to get back to sleep, so I may as well have been driving, the rules say eight hours.  More stupidity.

The drive across to Virginia was rather uneventful.  I was hanging tough until around 3:30am when I started to feel a little tired.  I decided to stop off at the Pilot in White Pine, Tennessee and top off the fuel tanks.  Getting out of the truck for a few minutes seemed to help.  Then it was time to head into some rain.  When your eyelids are feeling heavy, the monotonous movement of windshield wipers is less than ideal.  Luckily the rain stopped before too long and the sun started to rise, so I got a little bit of a second wind as I finished off the trip.

My relay partner was ready and waiting when I rolled in two hours ahead of schedule.  (Probably would have been late if I hadn't made that phone call last night.)  After a quick and easy relay I found myself at #1 on the board, so I stayed awake for a while to see what might happen.  Once I had my empty trailer, I could have driven legally for another .75 hours.  My extended 14 hour clock was good for another two hours.  When I didn't get an assignment during those two hours, the situation shifted.  Those two hours off duty had completed my split break and gotten me back the driving hours from yesterday afternoon.  So we were up to 2.5 driving hours available.  My 14 hour clock had to include the two-hour break, so it too was down to 2.5 hours.  The long and short of it is that I would be able to work any time between 10am and 12:30pm, after which I would have to take another eight hour break.

Having absolutely zero confidence that the load planners would work effectively with this schedule, in addition to feeling absolutely exhausted, I decided to take myself off the board and go to sleep.  My best bet was just to take a full ten-hour break and get out of the split, then start over again.  As my head hit the pillow, I got a message from my fleet manager, asking when my break would be over.  "6pm, dude.  Leave me the fuck alone, please," I thought to myself.  So I sent a reply stating that I would have fresh hours at 1800 and then went back to bed.

11am - A friend of mine calls.  I hit 'ignore' on my phone and go back to bed.

12pm - A satellite message whining about the company-wide MPG being lower in May than in the two best months.

Two minutes later, just as I got settled back into bed - A message saying that those two best months had been March and April.  (This is the kind of shit that just makes me want to throw the Qualcomm out the window.)

Another couple of phone calls and text messages were sprinkled throughout the afternoon.  I probably should have shut my phone off, but I was drifting in and out of sleep as it was.  A couple of times I got up and read some headlines, then got tired and went back to bed for a while.  I did manage to get a little bit of rest over the course of the day though, so good enough.  I put myself back on duty just before 6pm.

By the time my new assignment came through an hour later, I was honestly hoping that I could just take the rest of today off.  I was in no mood to pull another all-nighter and the thought of giving up my parking space in order to go somewhere else tonight was rather unappealing.  I caught a break in this respect, as my next load picks up tomorrow at 11:15am, 65 miles from here.  Good.  Now I can relax and try to get back into a normal routine.

I'll be taking a load from Martinsville, Virginia up to Warren, Ohio.  It's not a paper load so there's at least a chance that I can get by without dragging 44,000 pounds of freight up through the mountains.  A guy can always hope.  Speaking of hope, I can't wait for my personal visit from President Kickass.  I think I could use a little pep talk these days.