The bosses told me to take a given truck today, as the mechanics had said that it would be the most suitable one to use. I checked it over and found that it needed wiper fluid, so I grabbed a bottle from the shop and poured it in. Then I found that the air bags on the rear axle weren't quite as bouncy as they should be. The DVIR from whoever drove the truck yesterday also indicated a problem with the air bags, so I wasn't quite sure why I had been told to take this truck. I came to the conclusion that the mechanics must have worked on it and they wanted me to test it out or something. There were no issues on my half-mile drive to the dairy, as far as I could tell.
I got over to the dairy and set up shop in the corner, next to the construction vehicles. Nobody was exactly sure when the new silo would arrive, but some time between 9am and 10am was the target. In the following picture, you'll see the two silos that were present before today, along with the crane that was waiting to install the third silo.
10am came and went without any sign of the oversized load, so I continued to hang around and wait. It was interesting to see the steps that the crane people were taking in preparation. A flatbed showed up with several giant metal weights. The crane operator then lifted the weights from the flatbed and placed them on the frame of his own machine. I had been aware that the nature of leverage and so forth would require cranes to use a lot of counter weight. What I hadn't known was that the giant weights slid together like pieces of an enormous jigsaw puzzle. One guy stood on the frame of the crane and guided the pieces into place as the crane operator lowered them ever so gently.
11am came and went. I sat and waited. At 11:30am it was go time. I saw the oversized load coming from the Merriman side of the industrial park.
There is an abandoned store at the end of the street, so the spotter guys on the walkie talkies got the trucker dude turned around down there and had him come back from the correct direction (from the right in the picture above, instead of the left). I had already checked in with the dairy people and the construction people, but I walked out and told one of the spotters that I had been sent over to help out wherever I was needed. He relayed the info to the fella doing the driving, but apparently the guy thought he was good to go without any help.
I haven't been a Teamster long enough to get those Jimmy Hoffa no-show jobs, but I guess I can get some no-work pay every now and again. The good old super trucker got 'er in there without my help. He did manage to put a big trench through some of the landscaping along the way, but it seemed that the dairy folks expected this much to happen. From what I could gather, the damage had been worse on previous occasions.
Long story short - I hung around for three hours this morning and got paid for doing nothing. It was interesting to watch, at least.
My milk load was ready by the time the silo was inside the gates and my presence was no longer needed, so I hooked it up and drove away. No issues in the early going, aside from the fact that I forgot about my truck's tendency to pop out of gear whenever it hits a bump. I had only driven the truck in question that one time before. It's still a hunk of shit.
I made the swing around onto I-96 westbound and started accelerating. Once I got up to 60mph it was time to ease of the throttle a bit. That's when I heard the most awful rattling noise coming from beneath my feet. Flashbacks ensued. Once I stepped back into the throttle though, the noise went away. It started again the next time I took my foot off the gas, so I flipped on the Jake brake to see what that would do. The noise stopped again.
I'm clearly no mechanic, but I decided to play the role of one as I went down the freeway. My best guess (or perhaps best hope) was that the suspension issues were screwing with the angle of the driveshaft. As long as the driveshaft was under tension, either from acceleration, from pulling to maintain speed, or from the Jake brake holding it back, there were no noises. Whenever the engine was allowed to freewheeel, I heard the noise. With a load of milk in tow, most of my driving tends to involve either pulling or slowing down. Therefore I decided to leave the Jake brake engaged and go ahead with the trip. I was able to minimize the instances of the rattling noise for the most part.
There was one stop added to the original two for my run. The Kroger in Hamburg was getting 36 cases of chocolate milk from the unfilled portion of a previous order. I hit that one first on my way out west. Ten minutes to get someone to unlock the door, two minutes to open the truck and unload the one pallet. Then it was time to continue out to Jackson. Today's first scheduled drop was at the store on Michigan Avenue. That one has an ancient 'lift truck,' as I believe they're properly called, but its loading dock is fairly level and there's ample space in the stock room. So I took some extra time to rotate all of the milk for the last stop to the rear of my trailer. The loading dock at that last stop can be a mofo and the stock room is tiny, so I wanted to make things as easy on myself as possible.
As with any of those places with tricky loading docks, the biggest rule of thumb is not to stop a pallet on the dock plate. You do that and you'll tip it, as we have come to know. Now that I think of it, there was some spilled milk the last time I hit this store in Jackson as well. Not my fault that time though. Anyhow, I got to the store thinking that the same dairy guy would be there. He's a quirky one, to say the least. Rather than have a debate about the efficiency of one approach over another, I was inclined to just let him pull the milk out of the trailer while I pushed from the back to prevent any tipping. This was my last delivery before a day off, so I wasn't in a huge hurry anyway. Avoiding a spill sounded pretty good to me.
Alas, ole Randy had the day off today. Today's fella in the dairy cooler said that he would pull the milk down the hallway after I got it out of the trailer. That's the standard procedure but, to be perfectly honest, I thought for just a second that I would have preferred the other guy. At least then I wouldn't have to jump this ramp of a loading dock on my own, trying not to dump any pallets along the way. I suppose we're all hypocrites in our own way. I didn't like dealing with the guy who wanted to pull the milk out of the trailer. Then, faced with the prospect of doing the work myself... Anyhow, I got today's nine pallets out without any issues. The pallet jack didn't freeze up on me and the milk didn't tip over. All's well that ends well.
As I pulled into the dairy, I noticed that the skyline had changed.
After dropping off my trailer at the dairy and my truck in the repair lane at the terminal, a combination of factors came together. I was getting an earlier start to my day off than I usually get, which was nice. But I was wicked tired, which was not nice. A nap sounded absolutely wonderful to me. Since I had no desire to get to the gym at 6pm along with the masses, and since I had heard reports on the radio of accidents up and down I-275, I decided to head home for a while and then hit the gym later.
Now here I am and it's later. This sucks. I really don't mind driving out there for a workout. The problem is that I just slept for three and a half hours. Now I'll be lucky to get any rest before tomorrow afternoon. And thus the vicious cycle begins again...
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