8/12/07

One of the lessons I learned early on in life was to manage expectations. In this business, I find that it's best to expect very little. That way, if things go well, I'm pleasantly surprised. If not, I was prepared anyway. Today I woke up expecting the worst.

Worst-case scenario for me today would have been to receive a dispatch to Joplin after spending the day yesterday sitting a couple hundred miles away. As such, I fully expected this to be the outcome. After all, I find that the 'planners' operate much more in a reactionary manner than in a forward-looking manner. A typical decision would be to see the computer screen indicating my truck highlighted for Joplin and to react by sending me to Joplin.

Alas, my lowly expectations were greatly exceeded. I was dispatched instead to pick up a load at our drop lot in Kansas City and take it to Wichita. Now, in a perfect world this information would have been conveyed to me yesterday, but we're starting from minimal expectations, remember? So instead of no miles other than my deadhead to Joplin I got almost 400, plus the deadhead that was sure to follow.

I was pleased to see that our new Kansas City drop lot is much more suited to big trucks than the old one was. We used to have to make a hairpin turn off of a busy street, then navigate a weirdly configured lot in very tight quarters. The new one is actually designed as a drop lot for big trucks and sits back in an industrial park. Very nice.

The time it took to drop and hook at the lot was certainly less than pleasant under the wicked hot conditions. My mirror said 111 degrees at the time, and that was about how it felt. The loaded trailer was over 40,000 pounds and I had a hell of a time getting the tandem release pin pulled. I was in and out of the truck at least half a dozen times and sweating my balls off by the time all was said and done. Why the driver who dropped that trailer had the wheels so far back, I have no idea.

Anyhow, loaded and rolling for Wichita, I received my "Next planned load info." Yeah, yeah, I know, deadhead to Joplin. Nope. Another nice surprise. I'll be heading up to McPherson, Kansas and grabbing a load to take to Joplin. It doesn't add a ton of miles, but every little bit helps. By the time I get to Joplin, my gross pay for the month will be at roughly $1,830 with the 14th and 15th still to come. I like to treat $2,000 per check as the minimum, so that should be pretty easy to exceed.

I pulled into the last service plaza on the Kansas Turnpike in time to catch the last few holes of the PGA Championship. Grabbed some grub, turned the TV on, set the channels to 'auto-program' and started looking. No PGA Championship. I got eight channels, which isn't bad, but none of them had golf. I think we're really fortunate to have someone like Tiger Woods to watch. Someone who transcends a sport in the way that he does only comes along once in a generation, so I enjoy watching the major championships unfold. But today it just wasn't meant to be. Oh well.

For anyone looking for a different type of movie, I would recommend Mail Order Wife. I'm not going to ruin the plot for anybody who may want to check it out, but I will say it was refreshingly different from a lot of the crap that's out there these days.

8/11/07

Well, sometimes you need a day off and sometimes you just get one. Today I just got one. I woke up and headed to Salina this morning. The coolest part of the ride was the little kids asking me to blow the air horn for them. I still get a kick out of that. I got to Bosselman's and topped off the fuel tanks, then pulled in and laid down. I was #11 when I went on the board, so I knew I had plenty of time for a nap. Little did I know I had time for a lot more.

Here's the puzzling thing to me. I was dispatched from Colorado to here, some 425 miles. They paid me and paid for the fuel, but why? I'm under the control of Kansas City dispatch from here, but they already had ten trucks in the area this morning. It would seem to me that, if you're going to spend a couple hundred bucks in fuel and wages to move a truck then there would be a reason behind it. I'm now #7 on the board, so obviously there wasn't much freight to move from this area today. Personally I'd rather get the 425 miles and spend a day here than stay at the gas station in Colorado for a day and get no miles, but it doesn't seem like smart business. This truck stop is a much better place to spend a day than the Joplin terminal as well, for that matter, so I guess I can't complain too much.

I spent some time watching movies, some time downloading music, some more time watching movies, and some more time downloading music. The Dropkick Murphys put a new song on their MySpace page, so that was pretty cool. I'm looking forward to their new CD release in a few weeks. I thought I was getting hungry earlier, but after spending a couple of hours watching one portly driver after another walk by, I decided to go for a walk and take a shower instead. Man, I've gotten lazy and put on a few pounds lately, but some of these guys really need to be concerned for their health.

Miles so far are sitting just over 4,000 for the month, so a good week is in order. It will be tough to crack 6,500 on this check, but I'm still hoping for 6,000. I heard from another driver that the tractor shop in Joplin was backed up pretty badly last night, so I have my fingers crossed hoping that they get caught up before I get routed through there. I would seriously not like to spend a day in Joplin for a simple repair. My hunch is that a bunch of the people going to Joplin for the meeting today were having some fix-it work done, so they should be gone before I get there. I guess I'll find out soon enough.

8/10/07

Today seemed like a pretty eventful day, even though in hindsight I guess I didn't do all that much.

I started off covering the last hundred miles to get to my first stop in Denver. Halfway up there, my communication system beeped with a message from my fleet manager. He said that the shop needed me in Joplin to repair my MobileMax console, so he was highlighting me for Joplin. My MobileMax has been pretty sketchy since I got this truck last year. I've had it in the shop a couple of times and it does work better than it used to, but I still have to pull the fuse and reset it every now and then. So, I have to wonder, why now? Further to that, why would the shop initiate a repair visit when I've learned just to deal with it? I'm pretty cynical about things, so I assume that this is a bullshit excuse to get me back there and turn my truck down. Since they've lowered the company speed limit to 65mph but left the trucks able to run 70mph, I've been expecting the day to come when they neuter my truck a little further. I guess we'll see.

Being highlighted for Joplin isn't a big deal to me, per se. I get paid by the mile, so they can send me wherever they want to. In addition, it's been a while since my truck had a bath and one of my drive tires is going to be due for a swap out before too much longer, so getting through there will give me a chance to have those things done. My only concern right now is centered on the fact that a bunch of drivers have headed to Joplin for tomorrow's monthly drivers' meeting. The big topic of discussion is supposed to be the Conway merger and people are all anxious to hear more about it. If I get stuck there this weekend with fifty trucks ahead of me, I'll be fairly pissed to say the least.

When I got to the stop in Denver, I was oh so pleased to see that I had to back in from a busy street lined with parked cars on both sides. I found a better way in though, pulling into my customer and then angling into the lot across the street, leaving me a pretty basic back-up into the dock. No biggie.

After they got me empty there, I headed for my second stop in Englewood. The directions were pretty easy to follow, so I had that going for me. I had to proceed past the main entrance to the facility and use the east drive back toward the docks. The damned east drive was this weird serpentine thing up a hill with cars parked on both sides. Now, this entrance was specifically built to accomodate traffic to the docks. Why in the hell wouldn't they just make it a straight driveway? It wasn't terribly difficult to navigate, but I have no idea why anybody would design a truck entrance that way. After I checked in and waited for the previous truck to leave my assigned dock, I spun around and got set up. As I rolled back toward the dock from a pretty weird angle, I heard a loud bang. Fuck! What could I have hit? I set the brakes and hauled ass to the back of my trailer. I wasn't within ten feet of anything. Then I heard the same bang again. It was freaking thunder. There was a storm a few miles to the west and the thunder rolling across the warehouse had a weird sound to it. I looked like a jackass, but hey, I didn't hit anything.

Once I got empty there, I was faced with a pretty common dilemma. It's pretty common in urban areas at least. I could drive twenty miles back into Denver and go to a crowded truck stop or I could drive twenty miles to the south and hope that the little gas station in Castle Rock had a spot for me. I chose to go away from Denver even though I had a suspicion my next load would be in Denver. The dirt lot in Castle Rock only had one truck in it, so I grabbed a spot. After I took a few minutes to use the facilities and get some lunch, I got my next assignment. Deadhead to Salina, Kansas and go on the board? That's a weird one. We don't have a drop lot in Salina. They didn't direct me to any specific place in Salina. Just go to Salina. Whatever. I'll get there tomorrow and set up shop at the Flying J until they decide what to do with me.

When I checked the route from Castle Rock to Salina, the prescribed approach was to head back up around Denver to I-70 and roll east. Here's where the little devil on my shoulder starts talking to me sometimes. As a general rule, you never take one of these trucks down a road unless you know it's okay to go there. I, however, get in the mood to fly by the seat of my pants every now and then. As I looked up at the mountains, I couldn't resist. I headed up some county road and went on an adventure. How often will I get a chance to go exploring around there with no weight in the wagon? I'm pretty sure I wound up going about twenty five miles out of my way, but it was pretty fun. I ran up and down some canyons. I saw some beautiful estates up there. I actually saw a bison ranch too. Holy shit those things are huge! I'm a city boy, so I always pictured a bison as being just a weird-looking cow. Some of them were about twice as big as the biggest cow I've ever seen. Pretty cool.

I caught up with I-70 over in the eastern part of Colorado and rolled into Kansas. Even without my little detour, I didn't have enough hours to make it to Salina tonight, so I've pulled into a rest area here with about 150 miles left for tomorrow morning. I'm not in a terrible hurry to get there and have them tell me to come to Joplin, which is probably what they'll end up doing.

8/9/07

I was in one of those deep states of sleep this morning. You know the kind where you wake up thinking you were in the middle of something really important, but you just can't remember what it was. Sound sleep is a rarity for me, so I enjoy a good restful slumber whenever it comes my way. Then, about a half hour before my alarm was set to go off, the communications system beeped me back to reality.

The relay that I was supposed to haul to Calexico was running behind, so they pulled me off of that load and put me on one that was already on the yard. Nice. I got to avoid going to California, exchange 600 miles for 700 miles, and get rolling earlier than expected. I can't complain there.

Heading up through New Mexico today, there was apparently a practical joke being played on truck drivers. There was very little traffic and there were very few construction zones. Every time there was a construction zone though, the speed limit was 45mph, the zone was 50 yards long, and it was at the bottom of a ravine. So instead of being able to coast down a big hill and get a run at the next one, I found myself starting at 45-50mph and struggling up the next climb each time.

This was one of the windier (is that a word?) days I've experienced in quite a while. This load is 15,000 kilograms, so not light by any means, and it seriously felt like I was leaning sideways for much of the trip. Most trips through the southwest, or even on the central plains for that matter, will have gusty winds in certain places, but this one had solid strong winds pretty much from start to finish.

Aside from a nap this afternoon, it was a long day of good running. I did manage to sleep pretty soundly for a couple of hours this afternoon. You know the kind where you wake up thinking you were in the middle of something really important, but you just can't remember what it was. When I woke up, I got out to throw some oil in the beast. I swear that the southwest is like some form of punishment for our country. It's freaking unbearable out there. I'm usually singing a different tune in January, but for now I'm glad to be heading back north. I hopped back into the air conditioning post-haste.

I'll have two drops tomorrow afternoon in the Denver suburbs, then hope like hell to get something nice for the weekend. I'm not too excited about the possibility of picking up at that Pepsi plant again, that's for sure.

On two different shows today, I found myself unable to come to a conclusion about a topic that's in the news. This was pretty rare for me. My opinions may very well be wrong half the time, but I can always form an opinion. There's this rapper fella by the name of D'Mite. Actually he says he's a poet and not a rapper, but whatever. The topic of discussion was his song being played on BET. I found it to be funny if nothing else, but the gist of the debate is whether or not a song, laced with profanity but preaching a positive message, is good or bad. A few samples:

"Read a book, read a book, read a motherfuckin' book..."
"Your body needs water, so drink that shit..."
"Raise your kids, raise your kids, raise your Goddamn kids..."

I don't know man. It's hard to justify that kind of language being a positive influence for teenagers. At the same time though, if they're going to hear the language telling them to get bitches and hoes and guns and drugs, maybe this is one step forward. I imagine that it would bother me a little more if I had kids, but I don't, so I just chuckle. I still have to give him credit for finding a way to make me waffle on an issue.