7/31/10

We're going to have to break with protocol for a moment this evening.  It has been my standard practice that once an image is posted on this blog, it is not to be reused in a future posting.  I have a plentiful supply of this stuff, so there's no need to recycle the pics.  Unfortunately though, there is one image that has appeared here in a prior post and must now appear one more time.

My three stops today were out in the northern suburbs.  After getting a call this morning (a call that I actually expected this time around) I was assigned to take a trailer to Rochester, Lake Orion, and Bloomfield.  The trip over to the first store wasn't bad.  The dairy guy there was a proactive sort, so things went quickly and easily.  I was more than content to let him pull the freight out of the trailer, given that the pallet jack at that store was one of the herky-jerky ancient models.  I'm getting better as the days go on, but I still don't like those damned things.  I had most of the empties staged and ready to put into my trailer by the time he got the last pallet of milk into the cooler.  Nice and efficient.

Then the next leg of the trip was short and sweet, over to I-75 and up to Lapeer Road, then straight on into Lake Orion.  Upon arrival at my second store, I found a Pepsi truck in the loading dock and a US Xpress truck waiting behind him.  I still harbor a bit of animosity toward US Xpress drivers in the wake of the Atlanta incident, but I kept that to myself.  The fella today only had a few pallets to drop and the Pepsi guy was done a few minutes after I arrived.  I got backed in within a half hour or so.  Good enough.

One last stop to go and we'll wrap up a quick and easy weekend shift... or... no.  I dropped down onto I-75 and then caught Square Lake Road over toward Telegraph Road.  My last store was a few miles to the south on Telegraph.  Review that graphic above for a moment, if you must.  Then compare.

See those pretty orange signs on the right?  There was a steady stream of them, along both sides of the road, for the entire stretch from I-75 to Telegraph.  They say that the right lane is closed.  See all those assholes in the right lane?  They weren't making life any easier for anyone.

Now, as we approach the end of the clusterfuck, the bastards are still trying to gain that last position.  Can't be behind a big truck when everyone is going 2mph now, can we?  Normally Square Lake dumps three lanes of traffic onto the three or four lanes of Telegraph, but Telegraph is presently down to one lane in this area.  The little cross street that you can see on the right is only one short block before Telegraph, so the construction people or engineers or whatever were forcing the traffic on Square Lake down to two lanes at this light - one lane to continue straight and one to turn right onto Telegraph.  (No left turns here.  It's a Michigan thing.)  I was just thankful that they had the right two lanes closed on Square Lake and not the left two.  I wouldn't have been able to turn from a one-lane road onto another one-lane road if I were against the curb.  Having room to swing a little wider was quite helpful.

I got into the first turnaround above Square Lake and then headed back southward.  The next 'Michigan left' would be at Long Lake Road.  That one was a doozy.  The turnaround lanes aren't always wide enough for a big truck in the first place, but I can usually get through the ones near major intersections without a problem.  In today's case, the outside half of the damned turnaround was gone.  It was obvious that I would be adding to the collection of tire tracks cutting across the grass and mud.  No skin off my nose there, but I only missed the big wooden pole on the corner by a few inches.  Shit damn.

The place had a mofo of a loading dock to top it all off but, quite frankly, I could post about loading docks every day if I really wanted to.  It amazes me that companies spend millions of dollars on these stores and it apparently never occurs to them that they may need trucks to deliver their shit.  They just get ready for the ribbon-cutting ceremony and some stock boy says, "Hey, where's them trucks gonna unload?"  The navigability of the stock rooms is another such topic - I could say it every day.  It would get old.

I got down Telegraph to I-96 without too much further difficulty, so that was good.  I even managed to scoot over to our little fuel stop and top off the tanks before the rain moved in.  I took one of the older trucks with a manual transmission today.  It didn't occur to me until I was headed back to the dairy that I had never bothered to figure out where the fuel gauge was.  I saw that I had air pressure and oil pressure this morning, then I left.  The fuel gauge was tucked in a weird spot a little lower on the dashboard.  It was pretty low by the time I stopped.  Good thing I only had to drive 97 miles today, eh?

Condensed version - Worked 6.75 hours, much of which was spent stuck in traffic or waiting for a loading dock.  Earned the daily minimum of $138.08 and squeaked over $1,100 for the week.  Worst week thus far in terms of money, but that's plenty for me.  I enjoy the easy days.

By the time I dropped off my trailer at the dairy and my paperwork at the terminal, tomorrow's assignments were on the board.  I have two trips tomorrow - one down to Monroe and Toledo for two stops and then one out to the northwest for three stops.  My pull time is 4:15pm and I happen to be off on a Saturday night for a change, so... bye.

7/30/10

I think that the oddsmakers at the Fenian Godfather Handicapping Service might want to start updating their resumés.  "The risk would be that they end up pulling me in early again and I've only had a few hours of sleep, but I'm under the impression that the manpower is more lacking on the late shift this time around. I'll play the odds."  I'm such a sucker.  At least the dispatcher dude didn't call until 10:30am today.

I was expecting to pull my first trailer at 6pm today and then return to the dairy for a second load on the overnight shift.  Not so fast, my friends.  A special order came up and I was going to need to cover it.  Once I heard the details, I was quite content to get out of bed and get ready for work.  Three pallets to Ferndale and another three pallets to Sterling Heights.  The load was scheduled for 1:30pm and paid $84.58, plus my $15 incentive for taking a second run.  After I had made the two quick and easy stops, I would return to the dairy and pull my originally scheduled load.  Instead of running until 7am tomorrow, I would be wrapping up around midnight tonight.  Not bad.

The paperwork wasn't ready when I got to the dairy, so I had to hang around for twenty minutes or so.  As I watched the time ticking off the clock in my truck, it occurred to me that I would be crossing Detroit right in the middle of rush hour.  Bummer.  Still though, catching almost a hundred bucks for a few hours of work couldn't be too terrible.

My drive over to Ferndale was pretty straightforward.  The store is located at the corner of 8 Mile and Wyoming so there's plenty of traffic in the area, but I had been there once before.  On that first trip, I made the mistake of entering the store's parking lot from 8 Mile.  Bad move.  There was no room for me to spin around and face in the correct direction once I got into the lot, so I wound up having to back around the corner of the store and between parked cars in order to get pointed the right way.  Thank God it was late at night, giving me a sporting chance of navigating the parking lot without running over anyone.  No such drama today though.  I came in via the side driveway on Wyoming and circled behind the store.  Once I got around to the loading docks I was already pointed to the south, as I needed to be.  Beauty.

Getting from Ferndale to Sterling Heights on a Friday afternoon... if you don't know, I'm not gonna tell you.  Seriously.  The freeway was pretty much a parking lot from Royal Oak to Troy.  I got to my second and last stop eventually though.  The dairy guy basically did all of the work for me, although it really was only three pallets.  I grabbed three stacks of empty cases from outside so that I could shove them into the trailer after homeboy was finished.  He got all the milk out and I got all the empties in.  Fifteen minutes - sayonara.  Beauty.

As I headed back toward the dairy to retrieve my second load, I got a call from the dispatcher.  I've essentially concluded at this point that I should never answer the phone, but I answered it today.  The dispatcher was wondering how far I was from Livonia.  Around 10-20 miles was my best guess.  That was perfect, I was told.  There had been a change in plans.  Instead of pulling my three-stop load and spending seven or eight hours delivering milk, I would be taking a trailer from our other dairy and making a Grand Rapids turn.  Six bucks more in pay - good.  One fewer hour of work - good.  No dealing with insane loading docks or pallet jacks for the rest of the day - excellent!  I probably wouldn't mind phone calls from dispatchers if they always made my life easier like this one did.

I rolled into Livonia and dropped off my trailer full of empty cases a short time later.  As I rolled past the guard shack, my phone rang again.  Yep, it was work calling.  Dude, don't even tell me that I'm getting stuck back on a milk delivery run.  "Hey Joe, one more change in plans..."  Shit.  What now?  This call actually turned out to be another one that made my life easier.  Instead of taking a trailer from Livonia to Grand Rapids, then bringing another one back to Livonia, I would be bobtailing out to G.R. and then bringing a loaded trailer back with me.  Beauty.

My drop/hook (without the drop) went perfectly and I got back to Livonia by 11:15pm.  Inspection done by 11:30pm and we have ourselves a ten-hour day.  For another $250 in earnings, I think I can handle that sort of schedule.

Wait a minute.  The estimate for a small dent and some scratches on my car is $1,400?  Damn.  Maybe this trucking stuff is just completely the wrong line of work.  Maybe I need to start scamming insurance companies.

7/29/10

Pop quiz, hotshots - What would be the first thing to go through my mind at 11am today when I rolled out of bed and went to take a piss?  If you mentioned any form of relief that my phone had yet to ring, or something referencing the fact that I still was in bed at 11am, then you've passed the quiz.  For the rest of you - extra homework.  Go back and read the posts for the last week or so and write a 200-word paragraph by tomorrow.

I thought that my no-car-having status would get me out of a little family dinner at my parents' house tonight.  My aunt and uncle are in town from Florida.  My father invites them over for a fish fry once a year or so and ole Uncle Jim goes hog wild on the perch and walleye.  I would have been content to sit at home on my last day off before a long weekend of work, so I offered my lack of transportation as an excuse.  Mom called my bluff and offered to pick me up this afternoon, since she too had the day off.  Win some, lose some.

It wasn't too bad hanging around with the folks, I suppose.  My sister's kids are behaving better as the years go by, so it was good to get a chance to visit with them for a while.  My uncle sat outside drinking beers with my father instead of getting on my nerves, as he's been known to do during past visits.  This was helpful.  (My aunt has always been a more pleasant guest.)  I wound up hanging around and watching Boondock Saints with my brother before I took off.  Another of those flicks that you can see hundreds of times and still enjoy watching.  Shockingly enough, my little brother had never seen it.  Now he'll have to check out the sequel and he'll be back on track.

Then it was time to head on homeward.  The more curious among you may be inclined to wonder how this part of the night was handled, given that my car is in some shop on the other side of town.  When I tell you folks that I seem to lead a charmed life, I'm not kidding.  I can't find a reason for it, but things just somehow tend to fall into place for me.  My parents are heading out for their annual hillbilly family reunion this weekend.  My sister (an airline employee) has arranged for the travel.  The flight to Knoxville will be free for her and the kids.  My parents also fly free, as I understand it.  My brother gets a buddy pass and pays something like $100.  My sister's husband is dropping everyone off at the airport in the morning, since he has to stay home and not work all... rest of his life, or whatever.

The net result of the deal is that Mom's SUV, Dad's truck, and my little brother's car are all sitting in Lincoln Park this weekend with nobody driving them.  Pretty good weekend for a fella to be one car short, eh?  I can't explain it.  This stuff just happens.  Ergo I deserve to be duly chastened whenever I slip up and start whining about the little things that don't go my way from time to time.  I really do know better.  In any case, Mom handed me her spare keys before she went to bed, so I guess the SUV is my assigned transpo for the weekend.

The weekend dispatcher was working at Quickway tonight for some reason.  He called and gave me tomorrow's assignment (Brighton, Flint, and Livonia stores), then told me that I was almost certain to have a second run.  There still were several loads to be sorted out when he called.  My pull time is 6pm, so it would behoove me to stay up pretty late tonight.  If I do catch a second run, then I'll most likely be working well into Saturday morning.  This means that I should sleep late tomorrow.  There's only one way to make that happen, so I'm gonna try and burn the midnight oil for a while here.  The risk would be that they end up pulling me in early again and I've only had a few hours of sleep, but I'm under the impression that the manpower is more lacking on the late shift this time around.  I'll play the odds.

Speaking of odds - and I'm just asking here - what are the odds that your resident Whitey would be given a pass for this one?  Per usual, I think I know what The One™ was trying to say here.  I'm not going to start some sort of fake moral crusade or anything.  His point was simply poorly expressed.  I just ask for a little consistency.  The rest of us don't have teleprompters at the ready, so maybe we should be forgiven once in a while if the words don't come out quite right.  That's fair enough, isn't it?  Haven't we seen enough people crying in front of a television camera and apologizing for racist statements that they never actually made?  I say yes.  We've seen enough.

I'm enjoying a few beers to round out the night here and I started to get a little hungry.  I didn't really want to cook anything.  A little snack just seemed like it would be nice.  So... I just found a bag of peppered beef nuggets that I bought last week and then forgot about.  They were on top of the fridge, behind my buddy's box of cereal.  When I tell you folks that I seem to lead a charmed life, I'm not kidding. I can't find a reason for it, but things just somehow tend to fall into place for me.

7/28/10

Another day, another phone call while I was still in bed.  I'm seeing a disturbing pattern here.  I was pretty excited about the fact that I don't have to hear the chirping of the satellite unit anymore, now that I'm not a real trucker.  This early phone call shit is not exactly a suitable replacement.

Today's call was of the work variety.  Long story short - $250 instead of $150 today and no store deliveries, but I had to start at 9am instead of 12:45pm.  The yin and the yang, I suppose.  My run was a drop/hook turn going from the dairy in Livonia to another dairy in Indianapolis.  Five hours down there, drop the trailer full of cottage cheese, grab a trailer full of empty cases, and five hours back home.  Not a bad way to make a few dollars.  I got stuck with a truck that had sketchy air conditioning, so the heat and humidity made things a little unpleasant, but I'm a big boy.  I can handle a little sweat every now and then.

The logistics of having your car dinged up can be a little tricky, it turns out.  In order to expedite the process, I chose to use the local body shop that was recommended by my insurer.  This way the claim will be paid directly and they can just cut me out of the entire process.  The downside is that this particular body shop has no loaner cars.  And I have a job.  See the problem here?  So the friend who was borrowing my car when it got whacked yesterday wound up having to drop me off at work this morning.  Then he took my car to the shop and dropped it off this afternoon.  Then another friend gave me a ride home when I got back from Indy.  I have tomorrow off and the damage isn't too severe, so we'll hope that I can have my car back by Friday morning and life can go back to normal.  We'll hope.

Speaking of hope... very little left in terms of this baseball season, it would appear.  Such a shame.

7/27/10

Another day, another phone call while I was still in bed.  This time the good news was that my car was hit while parked at a restaurant in Livonia.  My buddy had gone up there to do some political work or something.  A guy came in and asked if anyone was driving a silver Mazda 6.  Yep.  We have a winner.  After a brief chat with the insurance people, I had an appointment for an estimate at a body shop in Taylor tomorrow.  No big deal in the grand scheme of things, I suppose, but it's just one more hassle.

Then it was time to head over to another friend's house and do some tailgating.  There was no sporting event or anything to attend.  It was just a beautiful day, so beer and sausage seemed like the perfect complement.

I have a three-stop load going to Flint, Burton, and Frankenmuth for tomorrow.  It pulls at 12:45pm, so maybe I'll actually sleep through a morning for a change.  We'll see.

7/26/10

As I suspected might be the case, it seems to be taking me a while to adapt to being in Michigan on a permanent basis.  For instance, yesterday's work took me past a handful of golf courses.  My reaction was the same as always - I thought to myself that I should get out and play a round or two the next time I got home.  It wasn't until this morning that I realized that I didn't have to wait a feeks if I didn't want to.  Golf courses are not merely something to see from the window of my truck.

So did I play golf today?  No, no I didn't.  On the other side of the coin, I also was reminded today that things tend to 'pop up' when you're not rolling down some remote freeway without anybody else around to bug you.  I got a call from work this morning, asking if I would like to make some money on my scheduled day off.  Nope.  Thanks for asking though.  Back to bed.  Another call came later in the morning.  The dispatcher put on his best Monty Hall persona and made me a pretty compelling offer.  I pull a "dispo" load today (more on that in a minute) in exchange for a day off tomorrow.  The dairy had put us in a bind today, apparently, and we were short on manpower.  Fair enough then.  So much for my day off and so much for the golf course.

I had no idea what a dispo load was.  I'm still not even sure what "dispo" means.  Here's the skinny on the run though.  The dairy, for one reason or another, had been short on chocolate milk in recent days.  As such, a given store may have ordered fifty cases and only received twenty.  If that store's next milk delivery was a couple of days away, then there would exist the possibility of the store running out of chocolate milk.  This is not something that the folks at the dairy would like to see happen, for obvious reasons.  Kroger is a pretty damned important customer.

So we get these dispo loads.  Nothing in the trailer but gallons of chocolate milk.  Each store along the route (I had eight today) gets a certain number of cases and that's that.  There's no other product mixed in.  There are no empty cases to retrieve.  After shuttling a few trailers from the terminal to the dairy and earning my extra fifteen bucks this afternoon, I grabbed my paperwork and found my loaded trailer.

The entire load consisted of four pallets of milk.  I had two stops in Dearborn, one in Richmond, three in Macomb, one in Sterling Heights, and one in Livonia.  That's a pretty good way to learn some store locations, since I had only been to one of the Dearborn stores befores.  The other seven locations were new to me.  Only the Richmond store got a full pallet (54 cases). Each other store got between 9 and 34 cases. I just had to pull the cases of milk off my trailer and let the stock room people stack them. Then I had to try and make sure that the remaining milk in the trailer was secured and the load was balanced.


This run was also a good way to make $200 in a relatively short period of time.  I started my pre-trip inspection at 7pm and finished my post-trip at 2am.  The run paid $197.35, to be more accurate, but it's safe to say that it beat my initial $20/hr target range.  I spent more time trying to get someone to open the door at each stop than I did unloading milk.  There was a produce truck in the dock at one of the Macomb locations when I arrived, so that cost me a half hour of waiting.  Then there was a lot of construction on the way from Sterling Heights back down to the store on 8 Mile in Livonia, burning a few more extra minutes.  In theory the run could have taken even less time, but I think it went about as well as could be expected overall.  I hit the more congested areas late at night after the traffic had eased up and so forth.

Today's conclusion has to be that I really like my job a lot better when it involves anything other than what it usually involves.  I like it well enough when I'm making regular milk deliveries and such, but it's pretty awesome when I'm delivering empty cases to Tennessee or making a drop/hook in Grand Rapids or running all over Southeast Michigan to unload a few pallets of chocolate milk here and there.

I'm taking the day off for realsies tomorrow, so that's pretty nice.  The swap wound up being a positive for me overall, since I made $212.35 once we add in my three shuttle runs to the dairy.  My typical Tuesday work load would be somewhere around $150 and would take the same 7-8 hours to complete.  Now, if only I could figure out why the air conditioning in my apartment isn't working...

7/25/10

♫ I've seen a rich man beg
I've seen a good man sin
I've seen a tough man cry

I've seen a loser win
And a sad man grin
I heard an honest man lie

I've seen the good side of bad
And the down side of up
And everything between

I licked the silver spoon
Drank from the golden cup
Smoked the finest green

I stroked the baddest dimes at least a couple of times
Before I broke their heart

You know where it ends
Yo, it usually depends on where you start... ♫

I have no idea where or when this little journey that has become the topic of these blog posts will end.  Probably the blog posts will have run their course before the journey itself is over, if I had to guess.  Either way though, I think tonight brought a reminder of one of the places where it started.

Several years ago, I was working as the general manager of the Red Robin restaurant on Monroe Street in Toledo.  The job had been considered a step up for me, after eight years of managing pizza shops.  The money was good.  The benefits were good.  The working conditions were good.  I was miserable.  There should be a public service announcement for you ladies out there who think you want a "career-driven" or "goal-oriented" or "successful" man.  (Just a sampling of buzz words that I've heard from various people over the years.)  If those are code words for money, then just say so and cut to the chase.  If they're actually traits that you think you find appealing, then take it from me - you're wrong.  Those traits are all-consuming.  If one is driven to success, then nothing will get in the way of that success.  At least that was my experience.  Nothing got in my way.  I made a lot of money, advanced past a lot of more experienced people, set performance records, won awards and all that shit.  Not coincidentally, my personal life went to Hell at the same time.

Each morning I would take the restaurant's cash from the previous night and deposit it at our local bank.  One of the assistant managers was usually available to make the deposit, but I desperately needed to get out of that place whenever I could.  I would drive over to the bank, make the deposit, and then stare at the steering wheel of my car, trying to summon the motivation to go back to the restaurant.  Some days were worse than others but very few of them involved happy thoughts.  Our bank, as it turns out, was located inside the Kroger store at the corner of Monroe and Secor.

And so it comes full circle.  After making my two stops in Saginaw this afternoon and then returning to the dairy, I headed southward with my second trailer full of milk.  The first stop was in Monroe, Michigan.  The second stop was in Toledo, Ohio.  Yep, that same Kroger with the bank inside.  I live about 49 miles from the corner of Monroe and Secor.  In terms of real life, however, those 49 miles might as well be 49 light years.

So many memories, both good and bad, and seemingly so far removed from my present life.  Yet, after deciding that I couldn't babysit 150 employees any longer, I left the restaurant business for good and got my financial licenses.  Then, when it became clear to me that my 100 financial clients may as well have been another 100 employees for me to babysit, what ended up happening next?  Screw it all.  Time to run away from society for a while.  CDL school in Detroit, training for a new job in Missouri, lots of alone time on the highways and byways, and eventually this blog.  I think we could say that the voyage may very well have started at that Kroger store on some fateful morning.  On at least one of those mornings, I must have thought to myself that there had to be a better way to earn a dollar.  I probably was correct.

The Toledo delivery tonight only involved a few pallets, so I was in and out of there rather quickly.  Then I had to head across Monroe Street to the Sylvania store for my last stop.  Right past the good old Red Robin.  Ahh, the memories.  The guy working in the dairy department at that final stop was likely the most efficient that I've encountered thus far.  He would take a pallet of milk and then return with a pallet of empty cases.  Then, once I got the milk unloaded and found myself a little ahead of his pace, he enlisted the help of another guy to bring pallets of empties into the loading dock area.  Seven pallets delivered and eight pallets of empties removed - 20 minutes.  That ain't half bad.

I didn't quite beat the arbitrary midnight deadline that I was hoping to make tonight.  I really should have though.  At a few of the stores I wound up standing outside for 10-15 minutes and waiting for someone to unlock the door.  Then, on the way back up US-23 en route to the terminal tonight, I stopped at the Pilot in Blissfield and topped off my fuel tanks.  I had half a tank so I could have gotten by without fueling, but I was hungry, so I figured I might as well make a stop.  By the time I took an extra few minutes to clean out the truck and whatnot, I was there for around twenty minutes.  All in all though, a pretty good day on the road.  My two trips paid somewhere around $260 and I knocked them out in just over twelve hours.

Looking forward to a day off tomorrow.