8/5/10

A couple of days ago, I showed a video of Basil Marceaux.com to a friend of mine.  My friend observed at the time that it would be awesome to see Mr. Marceaux.com appear on Red State Update.  Awesome things do sometimes happen, my friends...




That'll leave a fella ready to pledge allegiance to the Republic on his day off. I can tell you that much. 

Unfortunately, however, sometimes a day off turns out to be another day of work.  These fucking guys and their sick calls are simply amazing to me.  Two more today.  So the dispatcher called me this morning to see if I could cover a run today and then take tomorrow off instead.  I checked my log book and saw that I had plenty of hours left before I would need another restart.  Since my only plans for today had involved going to a bar and watching the Tigers lose to those thugs from Chicago, I decided that working wouldn't be so terrible.  A Friday off might be nice, after all.

My run had three stops - two in Saginaw and one in Northville, on the way back to the dairy.  It paid $153.79, which wasn't terrible, but the 4pm pull time meant that I would spend an extra half hour stuck in rush hour traffic.  What are you gonna do?  Just part of the job.  The three milk deliveries went fairly easily for me, although I did end up taking one of the old trucks with a manual transmission.  This one had a somewhat functional air conditioner, so that was helpful, but it also had its own share of issues. 

To put it more succinctly - today's truck was a hunk of shit.  This isn't simply a matter of me being accustomed to the shiny new trucks that I usually drive either.  Until a month ago, I spent all of my time in a truck with a manual transmission and a little over 500,000 miles on it.  The one I drove today has 531,000 miles on it.  The difference was astounding.  I can't imagine that my old Kenworth would seem so dilapidated after another 800,000 miles on the road.  The typical stuff related to driving an old truck was all well and good.  The bumpy ride, the noisy engine, and the grubby interior were all to be expected.  What wasn't expected was that the damned transmission would pop out of gear whenever I went over a bump in the road.  I may not have mentioned this before but I live in Michigan.  Our bumpy roads are legendary.

Cruising down the highway comprised quite a bit of today's work, so that part wasn't bad.  The truck seemed to stay in gear fairly well whenever it was in 10th.  The other aspect of my shift, of course, would involve actually delivering milk.  The way the loads were set up was fairly favorable to me.  My first stop took seven pallets and only gave back three pallets of empties, creating a little extra working space within my trailer.  Then the second stop took nine pallets, leaving only four more for my final delivery.  It was easy enough for me to set those four pallets aside before loading up as many empties as possible.  (Sixteen empties, in this case.)  At the final stop in Northville, I just watched as the dairy guy took his four loaded pallets out of my trailer and replaced them with four empties.

For the second time in as many trips with one of these old trucks, the fuel gauge had escaped my attention in the early going.  I had enough to make my 211 mile round trip, but it was pretty close.  Calling in sick isn't the only hobby that my coworkers like to pursue.  A handful of them are also quite fond of leaving empty fuel tanks for the next guy.  Anything you can do to skip those last ten minutes of work, eh fellas?

The timing of a day off tomorrow should end up working out rather favorably for me.  I have some errands to run and so forth, including getting my car back from the body shop and dropping Mom's car off at her office.  She and my father have been at their place up north all week, so I've been using her car the whole time.  She has to work tomorrow though.  Dad isn't working, so he can give her a ride in the morning.  Then she'll have her car for the drive home and I'll have my car and everything can seem normal for at least a day or two.