5/7/08

I forgot just how silent that little street in Hazleton is at night. Absent the usual ambient noise of a truck stop or rest area, I slept like a baby for a solid six hours last night. Beauty.

I headed up I-81 into New York, then wound my way through the hills and valleys, around the lakes and streams, and through the little hamlets all the way up to my destination. What is the word they use for that type of setting? Bucolic maybe? Anyhow, I had a pretty good time driving this morning with my super light trailer.

I did have to use my air horn twice along the way. The first time was pretty damn hilarious. A little fawn stepped out into the street about a hundred yards ahead of me. I started slowing down and hit the horn a couple of times to get its attention. It was a pretty skinny highway and my slowing from 55mph to zero on the downslope probably wasn't going to happen, so the little dude was going to have to move. The deer looked up at me and then tried to run. It seems that deer hoofs (or is it hooves?) are not designed for traction on asphalt. The damn thing fell flat on its face, then fell again as it tried to get going, then got just the front feet moving and dragged its ass end into the grass. It reminded me of a little beagle pup that I used to have, trying to run on the linoleum before she knew how to walk.

The second instance wasn't quite that funny, but it was still pretty cool. Something about the air horn turns us all into little kids. There was a lady, maybe 50-55 years old, standing in her front yard. I don't know what exactly she was doing. I guess, when you live up there, you just stand outside sometimes. I don't know. Anyway, as I approached, there was the universal signal. Arm up, elbow bent, tugging an imaginary cord. I gave it a couple of quick blasts and cruised by as she flashed a huge smile on her face and waved. Just something about the air horn. Of course, I often do tend to find myself on roads where you won't see a whole lot of big trucks. I guess that could be part of it.

So, on to the drop in Marcy. If you work for Schneider, I mean no offense, but you fuckers need to learn how to drop a trailer. The one open spot in my section was between two of those ugly orange things. They were both crooked. One was over the line on my left and the other was an inch from the line on my right. I may not be the fattest dude out here, but come on man. I passed up skinny about twenty years ago. Leave me a little room to drop my damn trailer.

They had nowhere to park near the WalMart DC where I made my drop. The looney bin across the street probably would have taken me, but they may not have let me leave. I asked the security guard if he knew of any places where I could hide out, but he suggested a truck stop twenty miles to the west. Nah, not in the mood to drive there and then probably get sent back east for my next load. I seemed to remember a Kohl's DC in Rome, off the next exit to the west, with a lot of room to park along the street. I didn't remember exactly where it was, but I figured I could wing it. I headed up toward the industrial park and actually managed to remember my way to the location. It's Family Dollar and not Kohl's, but you know... good enough. The parking situation worked out fine. #2 on the board, it was time to kick back and hope for some good news.

An hour later I got my beep. Anything good today? Not really. Just a 61 mile deadhead (yes, to the west) to set up for a run leaving tomorrow morning. I was getting a kick out of running the hills with only a little over 3,000 pounds coming up here, so of course I'm heading back to North Carolina with beer. This time the light trucks will be laughing at me, instead of the other way around.

I'll get a good 565 mile run in tomorrow, with quite a few of those being northeast miles. It looks like the last stretch into the customer's location may be a pain in the ass, but we'll see. Of course I'll have the usual parking issues and the rest of it. If I don't make good time early in the day, I guess I can stop in Virginia Beach for the night, but now I'm getting ahead of myself. However it goes, I'll be empty Friday morning, sitting at 1,812 miles, so a good weekend will be needed to make this a solid week.

I headed out onto the Thruway and parked at a rest area for the night. I'll make a short little hop in the morning to my pickup, drop/hook there, and head south. They enforce the idling laws in New York, but some rain just blew through and cooled things off a little. I guess that's pretty nice.

5/6/08

I left Statesville a little early, anticipating a slow ride down to Sanford during rush hour. Good deal. Traffic was uncommonly light around Greensboro and the drive was nice and easy. I pulled in the wrong driveway at the shipper, so I had to back into the employee parking area and wheel it out to the street in order to get situated properly. A couple of CTL drivers were hanging around the docks, and one of them kept an eye on my trailer for me, so that was pretty cool. The shippers took their sweet ass time getting me loaded (hand loaded, stacked to the ceiling), but I was early anyway, so that was no big deal.

Then it was onward and northward. As I looked at the clock, I knew that I would be lucky enough to hit Richmond, D.C., and Baltimore all during the afternoon drive hours. Lucky me. Richmond was all good. D.C. was brutal. I guess the bright spot is that rush hour was over in Baltimore by the time I got out of D.C.

I wanted to get as far as possible today, so I wouldn't use too many of tomorrow's hours before I made my drop. I would like to have a shot at a decent load once I'm empty. That traffic put a pretty good strain on my time, but I was able to get as far as Hazleton tonight. The only catch there was that the truck stops would be chock full of trucks by the time I was ready to park. My ace in the hole is the undeveloped part of the Humboldt Industrial Park around the corner from one of our major customers. There's a street along the back where nobody ever drives, so I can hide out here for the night. It's not an ideal solution, but it'll do in a pinch. I guess occasionally having a little experience out here does pay off.

I'll have a couple hundred miles from here tomorrow morning and then hope for something good. Today's 737 mile dispatch came along with 621 extra nickels for the northeast, so that's a decent boost. I'll be sitting at 1,126 miles, so a good finish to the week will have me doing fine. It looks like I'll be doing some hill cruising tomorrow. This 3,000 pound load will come in quite handy.

5/5/08

Well, another light day, so I guess that's about enough of that. I'm set up pretty decent for tomorrow though, so things should be looking up. I headed down the street and delivered to a bonded warehouse bright and early this morning. The freight comes out of Mexico, drives to Georgia, gets taken off my trailer and put into a drayage container, heads over to the port, and leaves the country. For my part, it was a pretty easy deal. The dock area was a little tight and on the blindside, but no big deal.

Before they got me unloaded, I received my next planned load info. I had to head down the road a few miles and pick up a load headed to the north side of Statesville, North Carolina. Nine deadhead miles and three hundred loaded miles, so yeah, another light day. That was a nice and smooth run, followed by an easy drop/hook on the back end. I drove back down to the west side of Statesville to park and grab a bite to eat.

After an hour or so of down time, I got beeped a few minutes ago with the details for my next load. I'll be picking up in Sanford, North Carolina tomorrow morning and heading up to New York. That's 140 miles on the deadhead and another 700-something loaded. By the time I got the assignment, it was getting to be that time of day where parking starts to dry up. I don't know of any reliable spots between here and Sanford, so I'll just stay here tonight and head over early in the morning. The load is a drop/hook, so I should be able to run a long shift tomorrow and dump it on Wednesday.

Ready for a "gut instinct" predicition? (It's about economics and not sports, so I'm probably right.) No recession. Just a little slowdown, accentuated by a bunch of overblown hype, and further accentuated by our own Chicken Little tendencies.

I could bore you with a bunch of theory about the foreseeable halt to interest rate cuts, signifying a strengthening dollar in the coming months, coupled with slightly supressed demand for oil, coupled with a cautious and prudent return of significant capital to the traditional non-commodity markets, generating increased liquidity and reduced overbidding on the oil market, coupled with a very minor alleviation of inflation at the personal level on account of those much-maligned rebate checks, and assisted by pessimistic forward-looking equity valuations, but that wouldn't be a "gut instinct." Instead I'll say that the local and LTL outfits have started ringing my phone again.

They must see some growth on the horizon, and I'll trust a businessman over a politician any day of the week. If they're looking toward growth, and we haven't yet seen a contraction (first quarter GDP grew slightly), I don't see much chance that there will be six months of negative growth in the near future. So there. No recession.

5/4/08

That was a pretty sweet ride today. I had some interstates, some two lanes, some four lanes, a few towns, some 65mph zones, some 55mph zones, lots of nice scenery, and almost no traffic. This load is only 9,000 pounds so the hills were no trouble. I started up I-85 out of Montgomery, then took US-80 across into Georgia. From there I stayed on GA-96 through the middle of the state until I caught up with I-16 on into Savannah. I lived in Georgia briefly when I was a kid, but I didn't get down south too much at the time. The peach groves and plantations are pretty cool down there.

Any time I start driving at 9:45am and finish driving at 3:45pm, you can probably imagine how well that suits my work ethic. Afternoon baseball on the radio was a nice bonus as well. My customer is a couple miles down the road, so I won't have far to go in the morning. So that's that. I know I'm technically a truck driver so I should come up with something to bitch about, but there's just nothing there. Life is pretty damn good at the moment. Tomorrow may change that, but we'll just have to see. I'll be situated pretty well with my available hours, so hopefully I can kick off a good week in terms of miles.