Somewhere in the midst of World War VII, I finally dozed off last night. I cut off the southern coastline from the Romans, so now it's just a matter of tightening the noose to finish them.
Anyhow, since I was planning to get to my destination late, I didn't set an alarm. I just let nature take its course. The thing about sleeping with the truck off though, is that the greenhouse effect acts like a natural alarm clock if you sleep much past sunrise. It gets pretty damn hot back there, pretty damn quickly. Thankfully though, it looks like summer is finally leaving us and it stayed cool enough for me to sleep soundly. When I woke up I went back to sleep for another hour, just for shits and giggles.
When I stopped in Hurricane Mills for a shower and a shave, I was debating (internally amongst myselves) whether or not I should take advantage of my fast internet connection and watch some football or just finish off the drive. As the debate raged on, the old-timer next to me motioned for me to roll down my window. He asked if I was headed north. Yes. He told me that the traffic was all backed up and I had better just wait it out. He had come from Nashville and said it was pretty bad for quite a ways up in that direction. Just then, in an odd coincidence, the side in favor of watching football won the debate.
Once I concluded that the Braves on the warpath, fighting for old DC weren't exactly going to put up much of a fight, I figured I might as well get moving. At that point I still had time to get to the customer before my 14 hours ran out. If I sat another hour or two I would have to take a ten hour break along the way and finish the run tomorrow morning. I looked over my atlas and bounced around a few corner-cutting routes, then decided just to stick with the interstate as originally planned.
Back out to I-40, sonofabitch! The old man wasn't bullshitting. It was at a dead standstill. I took a peek at the aforementioned atlas and saw a way to take the next exit and get back to that alternate route I had been contemplating. Secondary Road 50 was the official name of the road at the next exit. I was reminded more of the "Bob's Road" line from Twister. It was about eight or nine miles back to the northwest until I caught up with TN-13, which was my intended route. By the grace of God, there was no oncoming traffic along Bob's Road for that eight or nine miles. There would have been no way for a car to get past me unless we were on a straightaway, and even then it would have been awfully tight. Once I caught TN-13 and headed north, tonight's drive was actually a very relaxing one. No traffic to speak of and my light load made the hills a non-issue.
I rolled up on the customer a little while ago. Lots of room to park, just as I had hoped. And a locked gate preventing me from getting in, just as I had not hoped. Unfortunately, I had no Plan B. I may or may not have mentioned - I'm pretty lazy when it comes to trip planning. I pulled into the next driveway (which also had a locked gate) and went for a little walk. I was hoping that my favorite Italian company, the For Lease corporation, would have a nearby location. No such luck there, but... their Hungarian affiliate, Available, had a place right across the street. Beauty. There is some kind of trucking outfit in the back of this building, but I'm pretty sure I won't be bothering anyone if I spend the night up on this side.
With the log book all caught up, I'll have 5.75 hours with which to work tomorrow. Obviously I don't have high hopes for anything useful in that kind of window, but I'm optimistic that I can at least go somewhere and stage for a good run or two to finish out the month. Sitting at 5,595 for the pay period right now, I have my sights set on at least 6,500 by the time it's said and done. Once my ancillary pay for extra stops and northeast miles is factored in, this check should be a pretty good one.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Saturday, October 27, 2007
10/27/07
I'm pretty sure that this job would be completely awesome if I could do all of my driving on weekends and holidays. The traffic is light, the fuel stops are not crowded, and you can even find a parking spot in a rest area late at night. Add in XM Radio's wall-to-wall college football coverage and today was a pretty enjoyable one.
I took the 'divide and conquer' approach to this run, driving half today and leaving half for tomorrow. My dispatched mileage was 1097, but truckmiles.com says it will be 1177. 80 miles is a pretty wide variance. 99.9% of the time, CFI's miles and truckmiles.com's miles are within 2% of each other, either way. Sometimes I get paid a few extra and sometimes I get paid a few short. The very few times that I see a significant variance, Houston and Louisiana always seem to be involved.
After one such instance, when I was coming up with about 100 miles off, I posed a question on the CFI Drivers' message board. I got a bunch of replies, none of which answered my actual question. In point of fact, to this day I have no idea what program CFI uses to calculate it's 'practical miles,' which is how we're paid. 'Practical' is just the fancy trucker way of saying 'quickest.' Some people think it's the shortest legal truck route, but they are mistaken. 'Truck shortest is actually a third category (in addition to 'practical' and 'HHG'). It's not a matter of someone looking at a map and saying, "That looks practical to me." It's a matter of entering a pair of ZIP codes and a computer program spitting out a mileage. Every truck program out there will tell you that the practical route out of Texas and into the midwest is to run across Louisiana and then up. For some reason, CFI's program has other ideas, but nobody seems to know what that program is. They're not paying the 'truck shortest' route, as that would only be 1066 miles, but they're not paying the commonly accepted practical route either. 80 miles is not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, especially in light of the fact that I am only around 2% out of route over the long run. I just wish someone could say, "We use Program X to figure your miles." Instead it's some kind of closely guarded secret.
Anyhow, my route will be somewhere in the neighborhood of the 1177. My deadhead was dispatched at 17 miles and it was actually only 9, so I got a few back on the front end. From there I made it to a rest area just short of Batesville, MS tonight. Google Earth seems to indicate that the customer should have room for me to park there tomorrow night, so I can leave whenever I wake up in the morning. Not having to be concerned with late-night parking is a huge advantage when deciding how to run a trip. Sometimes, epsecially in the northeast, I have to alter my plans to make sure I'm off the road before the parking spots fill up. This time around I'm pretty sure I won't have any issues.
So... I've always been a bit of a movie buff, but I don't really make any effort to see a lot of movies. I guess that makes for a bit of a contradiction, but it is what it is. As such, I finally got around to watching Dick Tracy today. Has Madonna ever looked better than she did in that movie? In the words of Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar - Shwing!!! You cn have the skanked-out, muscular, weird accent version that came later. I'll take good old Breathless Mahoney any time.
I took the 'divide and conquer' approach to this run, driving half today and leaving half for tomorrow. My dispatched mileage was 1097, but truckmiles.com says it will be 1177. 80 miles is a pretty wide variance. 99.9% of the time, CFI's miles and truckmiles.com's miles are within 2% of each other, either way. Sometimes I get paid a few extra and sometimes I get paid a few short. The very few times that I see a significant variance, Houston and Louisiana always seem to be involved.
After one such instance, when I was coming up with about 100 miles off, I posed a question on the CFI Drivers' message board. I got a bunch of replies, none of which answered my actual question. In point of fact, to this day I have no idea what program CFI uses to calculate it's 'practical miles,' which is how we're paid. 'Practical' is just the fancy trucker way of saying 'quickest.' Some people think it's the shortest legal truck route, but they are mistaken. 'Truck shortest is actually a third category (in addition to 'practical' and 'HHG'). It's not a matter of someone looking at a map and saying, "That looks practical to me." It's a matter of entering a pair of ZIP codes and a computer program spitting out a mileage. Every truck program out there will tell you that the practical route out of Texas and into the midwest is to run across Louisiana and then up. For some reason, CFI's program has other ideas, but nobody seems to know what that program is. They're not paying the 'truck shortest' route, as that would only be 1066 miles, but they're not paying the commonly accepted practical route either. 80 miles is not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, especially in light of the fact that I am only around 2% out of route over the long run. I just wish someone could say, "We use Program X to figure your miles." Instead it's some kind of closely guarded secret.
Anyhow, my route will be somewhere in the neighborhood of the 1177. My deadhead was dispatched at 17 miles and it was actually only 9, so I got a few back on the front end. From there I made it to a rest area just short of Batesville, MS tonight. Google Earth seems to indicate that the customer should have room for me to park there tomorrow night, so I can leave whenever I wake up in the morning. Not having to be concerned with late-night parking is a huge advantage when deciding how to run a trip. Sometimes, epsecially in the northeast, I have to alter my plans to make sure I'm off the road before the parking spots fill up. This time around I'm pretty sure I won't have any issues.
So... I've always been a bit of a movie buff, but I don't really make any effort to see a lot of movies. I guess that makes for a bit of a contradiction, but it is what it is. As such, I finally got around to watching Dick Tracy today. Has Madonna ever looked better than she did in that movie? In the words of Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar - Shwing!!! You cn have the skanked-out, muscular, weird accent version that came later. I'll take good old Breathless Mahoney any time.
Now it's time for the war to end all wars. Civilization III is calling. The damn Romans keep trying to cross my borders in order to get at the Greeks. If I attack the Romans, the Egyptians will get in on the action and that will draw the Indians into the fight. This could be a long night.
Friday, October 26, 2007
10/26/07
So, I'm not going to Laredo. I called up CFI, got Herb Schmidt on the phone, and said, "You listen here Herbie! I'm not in the mood to sit in Laredo this weekend! You find a place for me to drop this load off and you get me something to keep me busy for a couple of days! Otherwise I'm driving this truck straight into the Mississippi! I mean business!" Then they got me another load to pick up.
Yeah, that story is pure bullshit. But it would have been cool, wouldn't it? In reality I was tooling across I-12 above New Orleans when I got a message asking if I would be in Houston with my load. I didn't understand the question, so I responded by asking for clarification. The planner replied, saying that they had a load in the Houston area picking up tomorrow. If I had the hours, they needed me to take that one and drop the Laredo run on our yard in Houston. So let me get this straight... Instead of driving the last 300 miles to Laredo tomorrow morning, fighting the local traffic, delivering to some Godforsaken drop lot at some Godforsaken broker, going on the board behind a hundred other trucks, and hoping like hell to get out of there before Monday, I'll pick one up 15 miles east of Houston and drive it 1,100 miles to the Cincinnati area by Monday? Um, yeah, sure. Sign me up. I pick up ten hours tomorrow and eleven Sunday, so that run will make perfect use of my time for the weekend. There's no game for Notre Dame to lose tomorrow, so I am perfectly content to drive all day. Beauty.
Today was a long day of driving, but I got started at 2am so it was nice to wrap up in early afternoon. Really the only tie-ups were just inside the Texas line, where traffic was reduced to one lane in a couple of spots. Otherwise it was just good old long-haul truckin'. I received my information right before I got to the Houston yard, indicating that I am to relay the Laredo load to another driver by 11:59 tonight. He must be on his way from somewhere pretty far off because I stopped a couple of times and still got here before my 14 hours were up at 4pm. I was feeling a little tired, but I think I'll stay up at least until he gets here. The pickup tomorrow is scheduled for noon, which means 1pm for me, so I need to get off the drive overnight/sleep by day schedule today if possible. That way I can sleep late tomorrow morning and do okay driving into the late night.
Sooo... sitting on the drop yard. Big fun. I have nice fast internet access, but no sports to watch tonight. Last night there was a good baseball game and a good football game but my connection wouldn't even stay active for more than a few minutes, during which it was painfully slow. Story of my life man, story of my life.
Yeah, that story is pure bullshit. But it would have been cool, wouldn't it? In reality I was tooling across I-12 above New Orleans when I got a message asking if I would be in Houston with my load. I didn't understand the question, so I responded by asking for clarification. The planner replied, saying that they had a load in the Houston area picking up tomorrow. If I had the hours, they needed me to take that one and drop the Laredo run on our yard in Houston. So let me get this straight... Instead of driving the last 300 miles to Laredo tomorrow morning, fighting the local traffic, delivering to some Godforsaken drop lot at some Godforsaken broker, going on the board behind a hundred other trucks, and hoping like hell to get out of there before Monday, I'll pick one up 15 miles east of Houston and drive it 1,100 miles to the Cincinnati area by Monday? Um, yeah, sure. Sign me up. I pick up ten hours tomorrow and eleven Sunday, so that run will make perfect use of my time for the weekend. There's no game for Notre Dame to lose tomorrow, so I am perfectly content to drive all day. Beauty.
Today was a long day of driving, but I got started at 2am so it was nice to wrap up in early afternoon. Really the only tie-ups were just inside the Texas line, where traffic was reduced to one lane in a couple of spots. Otherwise it was just good old long-haul truckin'. I received my information right before I got to the Houston yard, indicating that I am to relay the Laredo load to another driver by 11:59 tonight. He must be on his way from somewhere pretty far off because I stopped a couple of times and still got here before my 14 hours were up at 4pm. I was feeling a little tired, but I think I'll stay up at least until he gets here. The pickup tomorrow is scheduled for noon, which means 1pm for me, so I need to get off the drive overnight/sleep by day schedule today if possible. That way I can sleep late tomorrow morning and do okay driving into the late night.
Sooo... sitting on the drop yard. Big fun. I have nice fast internet access, but no sports to watch tonight. Last night there was a good baseball game and a good football game but my connection wouldn't even stay active for more than a few minutes, during which it was painfully slow. Story of my life man, story of my life.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
10/25/07
When I started at CFI last summer, I came in with my CDL from a trucking school in Detroit. Since I was not an experienced driver and the CFI-sponsored CDL programs had not yet been created, I had to go through the "boot camp" at Crowder College for a week. The last part of the training at Crowder was an obstacle course. The course involved numerous challenges, but they were all varying methods of seeing how close you could get to something without hitting it. I sat at the wheel of the truck and navigated the course, all the while thinking "this is stupid. Why would I want to get as close as possible to anything?" Mornings like this one don't come around often, but when they do I am reminded of the answer to that question.
My customer this morning was a lumber yard up in the backwoods redneck country of western North Carolina. When I showed up, there were two loaded flatbeds blocking the entrance so I pulled in behind them. The gates opened at 6am and the flatbeds moved inside. As the first truck reached the bottom of the hill leading into the place, he stopped. The second truck was on the hill and I was about halfway through the gate. It was a one lane entrance, so there was nowhere else to go. The lift truck (I would say "forklift" but these things were monsters, complete with tank tracks and diesel engines) started unloading the flatbed while the other truck and I were forced to wait. It took maybe twenty minutes, after which the other truck pulled to the bottom of the hill and I assumed his prior position on the hill.
Instead of waiting another twenty minutes when I was supposed to be picking up a load, I got out and walked down to the guy who was doing the unloading. I asked him where I needed to go and he told me to hop on board his lift truck. Then we went for a little ride. "Go down this way, turn here, around this way, turn through here, up this side, turn here, then pull up that way and back her into that middle dock there." As I was riding along and making a mental note of the directions, I wondered if he was aware that I was actually pulling a trailer. Some of those turns looked pretty damn tight for the lift truck, much less a seventy foot long tractor-trailer combo. He drove me back to my truck and I managed to squeeze past the flatbed.
Those turns were quite a bit like that obstacle course at Crowder. I had to get within a few inches of whatever random obstacle (car, stack of wood, building, forklift, etc.) was on one side, so that I could get my trailer past whatever was on the other side. Then I backed into the dock and went inside. The boss man took down my order number, then took a look at my trailer in the dock. It was squarely seated against the pads, but around three inches or so to the left of center. Apparently they drive some pretty mean forklifts on the inside too, because he asked me to move it over a few inches. He said that the stacks of wood and the foklift are exactly as wide as the trailer, so they have to be perfectly centered with the dock door. I went out, inched it over a little, and backed it in again. This time the forklift driver was taking a long hard look. Apparently I moved it four inches or so to the right, rather than three. Muddy ground, no lights, sue me. He said he might be able to squeeze it in, but he would have to let me know. I said screw it and went out one more time. This time I centered it perfectly, down to the last nanometer.
Once they got me loaded I was rolling south. I have no idea what in the hell was going on in South Carolina today, but I've never seen anything like it. There are around 110 miles on I-85 from North Carolina to Georgia. During the first 20 miles, there were cops everywhere. Some had people pulled over while others were perched along the tree lines, waiting. After the fourth big group I actually started counting. From milepost 85 to the Georgia line, I counted 26 cops with people pulled over and another 8 waiting along the road. I've seen states step up enforcement on highways before, but this was insane. People would be driving along, doing the speed limit, then jam on the brakes every time they saw a police car even though they weren't speeding in the first place. After a while it got to be awfully obnoxious.
There seemed to be something up in Georgia too, though not to the extent of South Carolina. I got a red light at the Prepass site going in and another one going out, plus I observed probably ten cops with people pulled over along the way. Weird.
The weather cleared up somewhere in South Carolina and stayed nice all the way into southern Alabama, where I find myself tonight. It's nice and cool, so most of the guys around me have their trucks off. I should get a quiet bit of sleep here pretty soon. My hours are going to be okay for the run to Laredo. After looking at the route, I'll be able to run a full eleven tomorow and get past Houston by the afternoon, then get going again after midnight to finish the run to Laredo. The practical route calls for a trip across to San Antonio and then straight down, but I would much rather run US-59 than I-35 so I'll be cutting the corner. I'll end up getting paid for 50 or 60 extra miles that way too, which is rarely a bad thing.
In the 'laughing my ass off' department today, we have news regarding this guy:
Many of us got a chuckle when the clip and the accompanying story made the rounds on the internet shortly after the incident took place. Apparently the police review board has determined that the cops acted within the state's guidelines for the use of force. Of course the kid's attorney disagrees, but that's not the funniest part. I'll have to paraphrase because I heard it on the radio, but the statement from the review board apparently said that the cops avoided using measures such as strikes to the head and kicking because those techniques would give the impression that the suspect was being beaten into submission. Ummm... yeah. Isn't that exactly what would be happening? So he was 'tased' into submission instead? I don't know. Maybe I'm just sick, but that whole story cracks me up.
My customer this morning was a lumber yard up in the backwoods redneck country of western North Carolina. When I showed up, there were two loaded flatbeds blocking the entrance so I pulled in behind them. The gates opened at 6am and the flatbeds moved inside. As the first truck reached the bottom of the hill leading into the place, he stopped. The second truck was on the hill and I was about halfway through the gate. It was a one lane entrance, so there was nowhere else to go. The lift truck (I would say "forklift" but these things were monsters, complete with tank tracks and diesel engines) started unloading the flatbed while the other truck and I were forced to wait. It took maybe twenty minutes, after which the other truck pulled to the bottom of the hill and I assumed his prior position on the hill.
Instead of waiting another twenty minutes when I was supposed to be picking up a load, I got out and walked down to the guy who was doing the unloading. I asked him where I needed to go and he told me to hop on board his lift truck. Then we went for a little ride. "Go down this way, turn here, around this way, turn through here, up this side, turn here, then pull up that way and back her into that middle dock there." As I was riding along and making a mental note of the directions, I wondered if he was aware that I was actually pulling a trailer. Some of those turns looked pretty damn tight for the lift truck, much less a seventy foot long tractor-trailer combo. He drove me back to my truck and I managed to squeeze past the flatbed.
Those turns were quite a bit like that obstacle course at Crowder. I had to get within a few inches of whatever random obstacle (car, stack of wood, building, forklift, etc.) was on one side, so that I could get my trailer past whatever was on the other side. Then I backed into the dock and went inside. The boss man took down my order number, then took a look at my trailer in the dock. It was squarely seated against the pads, but around three inches or so to the left of center. Apparently they drive some pretty mean forklifts on the inside too, because he asked me to move it over a few inches. He said that the stacks of wood and the foklift are exactly as wide as the trailer, so they have to be perfectly centered with the dock door. I went out, inched it over a little, and backed it in again. This time the forklift driver was taking a long hard look. Apparently I moved it four inches or so to the right, rather than three. Muddy ground, no lights, sue me. He said he might be able to squeeze it in, but he would have to let me know. I said screw it and went out one more time. This time I centered it perfectly, down to the last nanometer.
Once they got me loaded I was rolling south. I have no idea what in the hell was going on in South Carolina today, but I've never seen anything like it. There are around 110 miles on I-85 from North Carolina to Georgia. During the first 20 miles, there were cops everywhere. Some had people pulled over while others were perched along the tree lines, waiting. After the fourth big group I actually started counting. From milepost 85 to the Georgia line, I counted 26 cops with people pulled over and another 8 waiting along the road. I've seen states step up enforcement on highways before, but this was insane. People would be driving along, doing the speed limit, then jam on the brakes every time they saw a police car even though they weren't speeding in the first place. After a while it got to be awfully obnoxious.
There seemed to be something up in Georgia too, though not to the extent of South Carolina. I got a red light at the Prepass site going in and another one going out, plus I observed probably ten cops with people pulled over along the way. Weird.
The weather cleared up somewhere in South Carolina and stayed nice all the way into southern Alabama, where I find myself tonight. It's nice and cool, so most of the guys around me have their trucks off. I should get a quiet bit of sleep here pretty soon. My hours are going to be okay for the run to Laredo. After looking at the route, I'll be able to run a full eleven tomorow and get past Houston by the afternoon, then get going again after midnight to finish the run to Laredo. The practical route calls for a trip across to San Antonio and then straight down, but I would much rather run US-59 than I-35 so I'll be cutting the corner. I'll end up getting paid for 50 or 60 extra miles that way too, which is rarely a bad thing.
In the 'laughing my ass off' department today, we have news regarding this guy:
Many of us got a chuckle when the clip and the accompanying story made the rounds on the internet shortly after the incident took place. Apparently the police review board has determined that the cops acted within the state's guidelines for the use of force. Of course the kid's attorney disagrees, but that's not the funniest part. I'll have to paraphrase because I heard it on the radio, but the statement from the review board apparently said that the cops avoided using measures such as strikes to the head and kicking because those techniques would give the impression that the suspect was being beaten into submission. Ummm... yeah. Isn't that exactly what would be happening? So he was 'tased' into submission instead? I don't know. Maybe I'm just sick, but that whole story cracks me up.
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