Saturday, January 9, 2010

1/9/10

We received a fleetwide message several months ago, telling us that we need to notify the dispatchers if our route has to be altered on account of the rock slide in North Carolina. So the first message that I sent this morning said, "Please adjust mileage to account for I-40 closure in North Carolina." I advised them that I would be going to Florida by way of Chattanooga and Atlanta. Seems simple enough, right? After seeing that the official detour is 53 miles, I thought that I was doing a decent job by finding a shorter way around. The route down I-75 is around 822 miles and the original route with I-40 involved would have been 796 miles.

The final message that I sent this morning said, "If I'm not getting paid properly, so be it." For the record, we're talking about a difference of roughly $10. It's really not worth my time to argue the point any further and it's also not worth the company's time to screw me out of the extra miles. Unfortunately though, this is exactly what happened on both fronts. First I received a reply saying that the detour was already taken into account and no adjustment was necessary. Bullshit. Try again.

Next I was told that getting around the rock slide would only add six miles to my route. Bullshit. Try again.

Then I was told that I-75 to I-26 to I-95 was 802 miles. Yeah. Grab a map, find I-75 and find I-26, then take that one for a spin. I don't even know what to say.

At this point I asked for whatever magical route they thought I should take. I got a long detailed turn-by-turn list of directions... complete with an illegal stretch along US-25 into North Carolina from Tennessee. Bullshit. Try again.

Then I was told that I could go down I-75 and it would be 811 miles. Bullshit. I ran the route through a few programs. It's 822 miles if you go straight through Atlanta, which I'm not allowed to do. (I already was ignoring the extra miles on I-285 for the sake of simplicity.)

So what was I being told here, in essence? It appears that, instead of paying my extra 26 miles, they would rather fall back on the notion that they were only cheating me out of 15 miles and this was somehow legitimate. Does anyone else see how asinine this whole exercise was? If I take a shower at a T/A tomorrow instead of a Pilot (where I get free showers), they won't hesitate to reimburse me. But detour around a road closure and get paid for the correct mileage? No no, that's a federal case. Believe me, I piss away ten bucks every time I open the door of my truck. The money sure as hell wasn't going to make or break me. That's not the issue. It's the series of halfassed excuses that piss me off. If we hadn't been told to advise them of the routing issues in the first place, I probably wouldn't have thought twice about it. Now I'm agitated by the stupidity of the whole thing. Normally this would be something that my fleet manager would handle, but it's Saturday so there you go. The pay period will end tonight with my 2,132 miles for the week. By the time Monday comes around, the prospect of resurrecting the argument and trying to get a retroactive mileage adjustment won't sound like much fun at all. Whatevs.

I had to hang around the Con-way yard in Cincinnati until my ten hour break was over this afternoon, then it was time to head southward. My timing was perfect... for getting stuck in football traffic heading downtown, so that's always nice. Once I got into Kentucky I found that everything was moving smoothly and the weather wasn't bad. Unfortunately, I also found that I didn't feel much like driving. I decided to duck off in Mount Vernon and call it a day. I'm somewhere around 690 miles from Jacksonville at this point (or ~663 miles on the Missouri system), so a couple of steady days of work will get me there in plenty of time. Good enough. Time to watch some football.

Friday, January 8, 2010

1/8/10

Everybody loves a good appetizer, right? The queso flameado at El Zocalo in Detroit is my personal favorite, but there are plenty of things that we can munch on to get warmed up before the real meal arrives. I didn't have any tasty meals or anything today, but I did get something akin to an appetizer. As I sat in West Virginia waiting for the time to pass, a message came across the satellite. We've been getting a steady barrage of messages lately, telling us that our trucks are crashing all over the place and we need to be careful. Today though, as I prepared to drive across Ohio, the message was particularly inspiring - WEATHER RELATED ACCIDENT / DOT / JACKKNIFED IN OH. The standard 'please be careful' stuff followed, but that first part definitely had me warmed up and looking forward to my trip.

Given that our drivers are apparently driving off the road in bunches, I assume that our safety rating will be going down soon. This can impact our chances of getting a green light to bypass the scales in various states. Fewer green lights would mean a higher chance of getting inspected, so I decided to play it safe and deal with my missing mud flap before leaving the T/A in Valley Grove. Their shop wasn't really busy so it seemed like a logical thing to do. They got to work quickly on the mud flap and also changed my fuel filters and lubed my truck, at the request of our road service guys. Before too long it was time to drive.

The ramp from the truck stop exit onto I-70 was a slippery pain in the ass so I was braced for a really long day on the highway. Once I got out onto the big road though, everything was fine. There were some wet spots but the road for the most part was clean and clear. Beauty. I was able to cruise down past Columbus and onto I-71 without any issues at all. The rest area near Jeffersonville had some parking spaces open so I pulled in and kicked back for a while. I'm not allowed to arrive at my consignee before 1:30am and it's around 60 miles from here, so I'll take off again around 12:30am and get rid of this load.

The parking issue following my delivery has probably been resolved, so that's nice. I received a pre-planned assignment as I rolled across I-70 earlier today. My next pickup will be on Saturday morning in Cincinnati and will be headed to Jacksonville, Florida. Given that the load number is way smaller than the one I'm currently hauling (meaning it was booked quite a while ago) and the delivery time says 3am on Tuesday, my guess is that it will be a Con-way load. If so, I'll be able to cruise over to the yard, drop my empty trailer, and go to bed. The pickup time (10am) will be an issue vis a vis my 14 hour clock (expiring at 4:30am). As long as I'm there and I've checked in with the dispatcher though, I don't think it will bother the Con-way people if I stick around for a few extra hours until I've taken a ten hour break. It certainly wouldn't be the first time.

Regardless of who is the shipper and how I manage my schedule, I'll have to send a message tomorrow and see what they're going to do about my paid miles. The plan summary says that it's 796 miles from Cincinnati to Jacksonville. Our paid miles are based on some kind of Rand McNally routing program (I think), so I went to randmcnally.com and typed in the trip. Exactly 796 miles, as I suspected. That route would take me into North Carolina on I-40. I-40 is still closed as far as I know, so we'll see what kind of paid routing and mileage I end up with.

Now, as long as no more snow storms come blowing through Southern Ohio tonight, I think I'm in pretty good shape. I guess it's time for a little nap before I get rolling again. And it might also be time to stock up on more bottled water. Eww.

Thursday, January 7, 2010

1/7/10

It's probably a sad commentary on a driver's life when mud flaps, dented barrels, and snow are the things that qualify as high drama. Just once, I would like to be the dude driving that semi truck into the intersection and forcing the bank robber to make a quick evasive maneuver down a narrow alley or something. You've all seen it in the movies a hundred times, right? Come on. Just once.

Not today though. The mud flap issue came up right at the beginning of the day. On the left side of my trailer, the bracket that holds the mud flap is bent downward. This causes the mud flap to run pretty close to the ground. Why would I care, right? As long as it's there to flap the mud or whatever, it's fine with me. Ahh yes, but this morning's consignee had these wooden planks set up to lift the trailer as it is backed into the dock, bringing the trailer and the dock to the same level. As my trailer rolled up onto the wood, the aforementioned mud flap got caught between my left tire and the planks. Bye bye mud flap. Shit.

As the trailer was unloaded, the forklift guy was taking a lot of time checking each of the metal barrels full of some kind of resin. Apparently the shipper in Michigan has a tendency to send barrels on which the sides have begun to cave in. The resin stuff is quite heavy and, once the structural integrity of the barrel has been compromised, issues can arise. One pallet after another, he stopped and checked each barrel. Mine were all good... until the last. One barrel on the 19th pallet had the exact hourglass shape to which the guy was referring. No big deal on my end though. He took a picture while it was still in the trailer, wrote a note on the bills, and asked me to put my initials next to the note. Sure thing, dude. There was no leaking product and the shipper is aware of the issue, so as far as I know there are no problems concerning me or my employer.

By the time my trailer was empty and I got back out to my truck, I had a new assignment waiting for me. I had to make a quick hop over to the manly sounding town of Warminster, Pennsylvania and pick up a load headed for Cincinnati. The drive over was easy and the shipper worked quickly. To add to the good news, I only got 11,000 pounds of cargo this time around. That's a nice break from the heavy ones that I've been dragging around lately.

It's my understanding that there is a television show called It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I've never seen the show, but I can assure you that it is most definitely not always sunny in Philadelphia. Today would be a bad day for me to make my case though. It was 40° and, yes, quite sunny. As I rolled westward along the turnpike, things were looking good for quite a while. Dry roads, temperatures in the mid 30's, light traffic. This held true for the whole stretch on the east side of the mountains. On the west side, not so much. The temperature plunged rapidly and the snow started falling, gradually at first. The further I drove, the worse it got. I'm no meteorologist but I'm guessing that I was running head-on into a winter storm. You know, with the whole west-to-east weather thing and so forth. The roads weren't too terrible across the rest of Pennsylvania and into West Virginia. There was some accumulation but it was manageable. The motorists, on the other hand... So I ducked into the truck stop in Valley Grove, West Virginia and called it a night.

My delivery in Cincinnati is scheduled for 2am on Saturday and I can't arrive early. This will present it's own set of annoying circumstances once I'm empty, but for now it means that I have all kinds of time to kill. I never did get a new mud flap today so that will be on tomorrow's agenda. Otherwise all I had to do was find a place to watch the football game tonight. Once the weather compelled me to stop here, I assumed that I wouldn't have much luck in that regard. You know, West Virginia and mountains and all. My internet speed here is surprisingly swift though, so I guess we're in luck.

I have around 240 miles to cover between here and Cincinnati. My instructions specify that I absolutely cannot arrive more than a half hour early. And the weather tomorrow is probably going to be pretty similar to the weather today. That is to say - I have no idea how long it will take to get across Ohio. So we'll just see how the timing works out. If I hang around here until 2pm, then my 14 hour clock will carry me to 4am. With a 2am appointment, this should at least take care of getting the freight to Cincinnati and getting unloaded. I can head out in the afternoon and then, once I get a feel for how the traffic is moving, take a break in Ohio before finishing the trip. Then, after I'm empty, I'll be in the unenviable position of trying to find somewhere to park in a major city in the middle of the night. Hopefully someone at the consignee will have a bright idea for me.

The unusual timing of this run will leave my weekly mileage in limbo until we see what else might come along. I can finish a ten hour break in Cincinnati by early Saturday afternoon, so there's still a chance that the week won't be a total debacle. I seem to recall a few customers that ship freight from Ohio to Laredo on the weekend. Something like that would do the trick. I also seem to recall sitting with my thumb up my ass and waiting for work during a good portion of last winter. I guess we won't get too far ahead of ourselves though. As our friend Doris Day might say - Que sera, sera.

We do have some good news for Presidente Calderón this evening. I'm thinking something along the lines of Texas 17, Alabama 13 sounds about right. I'm still not sure what 'Roll Tide' really means, but I'd definitely rather roll with Elisha.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

1/6/10

Do you remember Santa's Secret Shop from elementary school? I got to buy something from them once. I must have been about six or seven years old at the time. My mother gave me five dollars, apparently with the understanding that I would get a Christmas present for my little sister. Something got lost in translation though and I bought myself a little Spirograph kit instead. Mom wasn't too happy with me, but what are you gonna do? I was a kid.

Before last month's trip up to Boyne Falls, my sister gave my little niece some money to buy Christmas gifts from Santa's Secret Shop. She follows directions better than I did as a kid, it turns out. Everyone enjoyed a good chuckle when my brothers and I unwrapped our gifts and saw that she bought the exact same thing for each of us - a little ice scraper with a Santa sleeve over the handle. Most of you are aware that we live in Michigan, so we all have ice scrapers in our cars, but it was a nice gift anyway. Most six-year-olds wouldn't have been quite as practical. I tossed my scraper in my duffel bag and forgot about it.

When I got ready to leave the service plaza today, I looked over and saw that my mirror was covered with snow. I grabbed a paper towel and wiped away the snow, only to find that there was a solid sheet of ice underneath. Well hell, what are we gonna do about this? I glanced around the cab of my truck in search of something useful and then remembered the gift-opening scene in front of the fireplace at our rental house. I checked my duffel bag and, sure enough, thanks Maddy...


I sent that picture to my sister, so I'm sure my niece is feeling pretty clever right about now.

The snow never turned out to be the hassle that I thought it would today. Through the rest of Ohio and the first half of Pennsylvania it was snowing, but the roads had been thoroughly salted and everything was going fine. Those turnpikes are, generally speaking, some of the best maintained roads anywhere during the winter. As I got further to the east the snow even stopped and the temperature crept up into the 30's for a while. Not bad at all.

After a fuel stop and a couple of breaks, I decided that it was late enough to head into the Philly suburbs and set up shop for the night. There seems to be more activity around here than I recall from last time, but I'm parked in the same out-of-the-way spot and I don't appear to be bothering anyone. Beauty.

Since I had this exact run in September and it was followed the next day by some regional northeast nonsense, here's hoping for a change of pace to welcome in 2010. I can only assume that there is more crappy weather coming tomorrow, so something toward Miami for the weekend might not be so bad. A guy can always dream.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

1/5/10

So we're five days into the new year. This morning, as I tore out the first four pages from my log book and prepared to send them off to Joplin, I saw that I had written '2009' on three of the four. Maybe that habit will be broken by the time February rolls around. We'll see.

On the driving end of things, all was smooth and simple. My loaded trailer was ready and waiting when I got to Kalamazoo and there wasn't much traffic at any point along my route. I cruised down onto the Ohio Turnpike and stopped off at the service plaza below Cleveland for the night. It was starting to snow, I was only around 450 miles from my consignee, and I was hungry. Perfect trifecta.

I also planned to sit and watch the Orange Bowl but I wound up inside the service plaza working on some things. In the process of tweaking a couple of my old investing spreadsheets, I noticed a couple of others in my 'documents' folder. I had a pretty exhaustive Excel spreadsheet that I kept for my first several months on the road in 2006, detailing anything and everything that seemed like it might be relevant. Since this blog was established to answer the old question - "What's it like out there?" - I intended to migrate it into Google Docs at some point and include it here. Alas, that original spreadsheet turned out to be too detailed and it really was just a general annoyance to me. I often forgot to enter the data and eventually concluded that it wasn't all that relevant anyway.

Starting with my first dispatch of 2010, I've decided to give it another go. The version that I put together tonight is much simpler and more direct, so even if I forget to keep current, I can back fill it with information from my log book and pay stubs. This new sheet still has the stuff that some people often wonder about - pay, miles, home time, and such. There's a permanent link in the column along the right side of this page, so we'll see if I can manage to stick with it. The running averages will obviously take some time to stabilize and the 52 week stuff will take, well, all year, but there you have it.

The other link in that section will take you to a spreadsheet that is more for my own personal use, but still might interest people who move around the country a lot. Whenever I (a) remember and (b) feel like doing it, I visit a test page and gauge the speed of my Sprint Mobile Broadband connection. Mainly I'm trying to get a good collection of data regarding where to stop when a fast connection would be useful to me. My card is about two years old so I don't have any idea about the newer 4G networks. Since my Swedish buddy Sjoe is a bit of a bandwidth hog and he has somehow slipped through the cracks in the TOS thus far, I have no intention to buy a new card or otherwise alter my account in any way. So 3G is as good as it's gonna get for me in the foreseeable future.

Now, as long as nobody bangs on the door at 4am, we're looking at another morning of sleeping as late as I like. I've been to this consignee before so I know that I can park there tomorrow night. My appointment is for 10am on Thursday so I can get there any time before midnight tomorrow and fit in a full ten hour break. Seven or eight hours of driving from here to there and, well, you can do the math. No alarm clock tomorrow.

We occasionally hear discussions of how the post-WWII power structure has left Japan without the need (or in fact ability) to maintain a strong military presence. With western assurances of security, the hypothesis goes, they were freed to pursue more productive economic development. I guess that all makes sense, but I have yet to hear an explanation for why they produce 78% of the world's really weird shit. Goofy cartoons, insane game shows, etc. Add one more to the list...



I have no idea what the words say, but dude. How long until the feds start requiring OTR drivers to have one of those things to reduce idling in the winter?

Monday, January 4, 2010

1/4/10

A day with no alarm clock... ahh yes, this will be great, right? Wrong. I don't know what time I finally went to bed last night, but it was definitely late. As I was lying there trying to fall asleep, someone started banging on my door. I looked at my clock and saw 5am. This means that it was 4am in Illinois. There is no reason for anyone to be banging on my door at 4am. I ignored the noise and tried again to fall asleep. After a couple of minutes, the banging resumed. This time it was even louder. What the fuck, man? Without stepping into the front part of the truck, since we've already established that there's no reason for anyone to be banging on my door at 4am, I tried to peek around the corner and see if I could tell what was going on. Nothing visible in either mirror. Nothing visible in front of the truck. Screw 'em. I tried going to sleep for a third time.

If you've done any regular reading of this here blog, then you probably know how this part of the story ends. I was wide awake. Son of a... I took a peek at my log book and saw that I had already been parked for ten hours. I could head down the road for a while and then take an eight hour sleeper berth break later in the morning. After the break I could finish the trip to Kentwood and take a two hour break to complete my split, all within the time that was available to me. So I headed out.

It was looking like a fortuitous situation for a little while. Being able to cruise out of the Chicago area before people start heading to work is always a good thing. Then I-94 turned to the north. Well hell, it looks like ole Lake Michigan hasn't frozen yet, eh? When those winter storms move over the water, the western part of the state gets pummeled pretty thoroughly. The effect seems to lessen after the lake is frozen, but we're not there yet. The air temperature started to rise steadily and the roads started to get snowy. There were some stretches that had been well salted and were only wet. There were other stretches where the snow was coming down like a mutha and it was all I could do to follow the tire ruts in front of me. The first part of I-196 was particularly bad, so I resolved to take my break at the next rest area. That way, after I woke and started driving again, hopefully the plow trucks would have been out and made some improvements. The joke was on me though, as that rest area was closed. So I got to slug along to the big truck stop in Holland and take my break there.

It was 8am by the time I pulled into the truck stop. To quote Carlito Brigante - "Tired baby, tired." I was out like a light as soon as my head hit the pillow. I woke around noon and saw that I had a satellite message waiting. Somehow I had managed to sleep through the beep. I took a look, assuming that it would be one of those "stay safe" notices or something. It was a message from my fleet manager, saying that he knew my miles were down over the last week and he would work on getting me another load. I'm not sure exactly what that was about, but fine with me. I had 2,531 miles last week, with an intervening holiday, so I had no complaints.

I was tempted to head back up the road for a while at that point and see if I could deliver early. I had a 6pm appointment though. If the consignee made me wait and then took too long to unload my trailer, I would likely run into issues with my 14 hour clock. I had started driving at 5:30am, meaning that 7:30pm would be the end of the line. So I decided to stay put until my full 8 hour break was complete. This way the 14 hour rule would be taken out of play, regardless of the consignee's actions. Time to play around on the interwebs for a while.

At 4pm I headed back out to the highway and found that the road situation had been handled. Everything was clean and dry. Beauty. The customers had me unloaded quickly and I was once again on my way. The nearest truck stop was on the south side of Grand Rapids so I headed over there. I was surprised to find the place so crowded in the early evening but I managed to find a spot. Good enough.

I was #9 on the board, meaning I didn't expect much to happen tonight. After about a half hour my next assignment came through. I'll be picking up in Kalamazoo tomorrow afternoon and heading for Eastern Pennsylvania for a delivery on Thursday morning. Not a huge start to the week by any means, but the schedule is pretty favorable for me. No early morning nonsense and so forth. Maybe I'll catch a nice run for the weekend to bail out the week or something.

Kalamazoo isn't far from here and I'm already headed in the right general direction, so I think I'm going to stay put for the night. I have my parking space and that's enough for me. I used to know a pretty cool chick from this area but apparently I don't have her phone number anymore. Bummer. And no football tonight? [EDIT: Yeah, I see now that the Fiesta Bowl is tonight.] Not even a Red Wings game? Damn. Guess I might as well walk over and see what this Piccione's Pizzeria place is all about.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

1/3/10

When it comes to adopting another team in situations where I have no natural rooting interest, my record is uncanny. I lose every time. Sorry Sparties.

Another day with no alarm clock could only be a good day as far as I'm concerned. When I did wake though, I took a look outside and saw a bunch of snow. So I went back to bed. Screw that. I got up again an hour or so later and found that the snow really didn't amount to more than a light dusting. It had blanketed the truck stop's parking lot but the roads were fine. Off we go...

I thought I had heard that the truck speed in Illinois was increasing at the start of the year. The signs still say 55mph though, so the old double nickel it was for me. I had plenty of time on this trip so there was no need to speed along and find out the hard way that the limit hadn't been raised yet.

I intended to drive at least 350 miles today, leaving myself less than 250 miles tomorrow. As it turned out, the traffic was flowing smoothly and the weather was good so I just kept driving. I decided to take a shot at the service plaza in South Holland, Illinois. Usually these things are pretty crowded but there was plenty of open parking tonight. Beauty. It looks like I have around three hours of driving from here to my consignee in Kentwood, Michigan. In related news, it looks like I have at least one more day without an alarm clock before I'll have to get back to reality.

I don't have a strong affinity for either team tonight, but I do have an affinity for the city of New York. So... sorry Jets fans, I'm gonna have to be on your side this time around.
There have been Visits to this here blog dohickie.