7/23/10

I'm not sure if I'm allowed to vote for Republicans, given my recent entry into the "brotherhood." I also don't live in Tennessee.  If I were allowed though, and if I lived there, I'm thinking that this guy might have been worth a look.


Planting vegetation on every vacant lot and selling it to cover expenses - now there's some 'outside the box' thinking for you.

The last 24 hours in my neck of the woods have been fairly interesting. I was having some queso flameado and a cold Dos Equis at El Zocalo after the game yesterday when my dispatcher called to give me the rundown for today's work - a three-stop run to the Toledo area followed by a four-stop run in the Detroit suburbs. Seven stops in one night? Baptism by fire. Dude.

I managed to stay up nice and late last night in anticipation of what looked to be an all-nighter tonight. Stay up late - sleep late - work late. That's the strategy. So I was still in bed around noon today when my phone rang.

I saw that it was work calling and I was tempted to let it go to voicemail, but I went ahead and picked it up instead. My terminal manager was calling to apologize for the fact that today was my first payday with the company and I had no paycheck. Some sort of paperwork snafu or something. He said that the payroll department had calculated my net pay and such, so they could issue me an EFS check for the after-tax amount. My earnings for last week were pretty solid, so I'm sure that my paycheck is more than a few hundred bucks. For this reason, I chose Plan B and just told them to tack my pay onto next week's check. I don't feel like going to a truck stop and paying a fee to cash a check, then waiting while they try to round up enough money. I have no idea if banks cash those things, but I really don't need to find out.  I'll just feel like a high roller when I get paid double next Friday.

My phone rang again after another 45 minutes or so. This time it was the dispatcher, calling to give me the so-called bad news. The board had been shuffled a little and I was only pulling one run today instead of the two that I had previously been given. No worries on my end, obviously. I really wasn't digging the thought of seven stops in one night, especially since my six stops last Friday took all of fourteen hours. My new assignment with its three stops sounded a hell of a lot better.

The schedule was also a little better. Instead of leaving the dairy at 5:30pm, my new load was set to pull at 4:45pm. I also got to spend some time beforehand doing shuttle work. There were four empty trailers at our terminal, where they had been in the shop for repairs. I hauled them over to the dairy, where they'll be loaded with milk and put back into the rotation. I get five dollars for each trailer that I shuttle around the corner. Twenty bucks is twenty bucks.

It turns out that the Detroit area got whalloped by some pretty rough weather tonight. There's something to be said for timing though, as I was on my way to Flint before the storm moved in. I could see dark skies behind me as I made my way up US-23, but I never did encounter any bad weather myself.  I did, however, encounter a bit of difficulty. The pallet jack at the Kroger on the southwestern side of Flint was one of the ancient models. It worked for the most part, but the throttle had a tendency to stick in the 'on' position. I was not aware of this in advance. So... first pallet of the night, backing out of my trailer on a pretty steep decline, pallet jack starts to run away out of control, I try to stop it... crash, bang, boom. Awesome start to the night, eh?

Only one milk jug lost its cap and spilled, so the mishap wasn't terribly tragic. It took a little time to get the pallet restacked, but I still got out of there within an hour of my arrival. All in all, good enough.  My second stop was in Owosso. I was there for an hour as well, but during that time I made the delivery and also got the milk for my final stop rotated to the back of my trailer. Again, good enough.

I hit the loading dock in Northville at 10:30pm, ready to unload my last few pallets of milk and call it a day. Not so fast, my friend.  Nobody in the entire store had a key to remove the padlock that keeps the dock doors from opening.  Nobody.  I got to sit around for a half hour while the dairy manager drove from his house to the store.  Once he opened the door for me, I got the milk unloaded in short order and went on my way.

Even with the mishap in Flint and the delay in Northville, I was able to wrap up my shift by midnight tonight.  Since I'm still rather tentative when it comes to the unloading (for good reason, apparently), I think that $20 per hour should be a pretty good baseline for a while here.  I'd like to get the hours down more and the money up more eventually, but I have to start somewhere.  I managed $19.27 per hour tonight.  Without burning that half hour sitting in Northville, I would have been over $20.00.  Slowly but surely, we see signs of improvement.  Slowly but surely.

Tomorrow evening will bring one run with three stops in the Lansing area.  Assuming that nothing else pops up I'm anticipating that it should take me about as long as tonight's run took.  I really shouldn't be assuming anything of the sort, but I think I need to start setting some targets so I can objectively measure whether or not I'm improving.

As for now, I'm gonna have a little taste of delicious life-prolonging medicine and then hit the sack.  Goodnight.