I'd like to start by thanking my engine brake for its many hours of hard work today. It was very helpful in my efforts to navigate the trip across Missouri. It seemed that there were an unusually high number of cars dragging ass in the right lane. Combined with the Speed Racers in the left lane, they made the drive seem a lot longer than it really was.
I was planning to park at the consignee tonight and I didn't want to arrive too early, so I left Kentucky around noon after hanging around and relaxing all morning. I also took the opportunity to stop along the way and have some scheduled preventive maintenance done. That killed another hour and a half or so. Then it was onward and westward to Kansas City. Off the highway, onto the customer's street. Son of a...
I found one of those damn locked gates. After walking about a mile back to the main road where I entered the industrial area, I really saw nothing useful in terms of parking. So, what to do, what to do? I could drag my trailer up to our Kansas City drop yard and then head back down here in the morning. The thought of this 45,000 pound load bouncing me through morning traffic up and down the hills sounds awfully unpleasant though.
Screw it. The consignee is located at the dead end of the street. I won't be in the way of any other businesses and somebody has to show up to open the gate sooner or later. Their website says that their shipping and receiving hours start at 7am. My appointment time is 7am. Good enough. I'm staying here and they can yell at me when they arrive if they have to.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
3/17/09
An Irishman walking through a field in Ireland sees a man drinking water from a pond with his hand. The Irishman shouts “Na ól an t-uisce, tá sé lán de chac bo!”
(Don't drink the water, it's full of cow dung!)
The man yells back “I’m English, speak English, I don’t understand you”.
The Irishman shouts back “Use both hands, you’ll get more in.”
Yeh, you know, just doing my part to be in the spirit and so forth. The translation is there if you feel like looking for it.
I believe that seven hours is the appropriate length of a driving day. That's what today involved for me and it seemed like a pretty good day. I got to Atlanta after the morning rush and then through Nashville before the afternoon rush. Dragging such a heavy load around still requires a bit of patience, as it's tough to manage the merging traffic and hills and all the rest of it, but I think I kept my cool pretty well.
I stopped in Paducah for the night, having covered a little over half the drive to Kansas City. Another seven hours or so tomorrow will keep me on my preferred pace.
Now for some bonus commentary:
Quite some time ago, there was a great deal of discussion surrounding the evil Bush administration's efforts to allow Mexican trucks on U.S. highways. Not surprisingly, most people in my line of work were (and continue to be) against the program, regardless of their economic philosophies. Setting aside the fact that we were simply fulfilling a legal obligation under the NAFTA treaty, I found that I was among a very small minority of drivers who didn't want the program to be scrapped. At the time, my biggest disagreement with the nature of the discussion was that the loudest objections were outright falsehoods and that the legitimate concerns would have failed to persuade anybody. I also had reason to believe that the future of our country, perhaps well after my time on earth has ended, would benefit from the program. For anyone who cares to read them, my thoughts at the time were consolidated here.
Congress continued doing whatever it could to grandstand on the issue and the president continued giving them the finger. The program went forward and the dubious claims about safety continued to be overstated. Why dig up an old message board discussion now? New sheriff in town. The recently passed federal spending bill to finish out the 2009 fiscal year included, among the numerous policy shifts that were not disclosed at the time, a provision to end the pilot program that had placed a whopping 100 Mexican trucks (out of the millions of total trucks) on our freeways. And now the completely predictable response from the Mexican government has followed.
Political favors for the Teamsters are part of the game. I get that. You win, you write the bill, blah blah blah. We can all debate our pet economic theories and pretend that we have data to back us up. Maybe condoms for drug addicts are really an emergency stimulus for the economy and maybe they're not. This blog will never be the place to resolve those differences of opinion. However, a large chunk of my individual income is derived from hauling freight to the border for export to Mexico. The impact of economic meddling for political gain has always been real. Now it's personal. My truck driving colleagues are free to believe as they wish about Mexican trucks, but reality has arrived upon us. While everyone feigns indignation over $165 million in contractually required bonuses for a failing insurance company, this regime has jeopardized $2.4 billion in trade in order to appease a failing labor union. (Here's a hint for the outraged populists out there: The taxes paid on $2.4 billion in business would far exceed $165 million.)
As the economy at large has gone into a tailspin, the value of exports carried into Mexico by truck was up 9.7% in December even as overall NAFTA traffic dropped dramatically. Now we're determined to undermine the one bright spot and cause a trade war over 100 trucks. I'm sure that the ubiquitous references to the Great Depression have begun to wear on many of us by now. Unless we stop repeating the same mistakes that we made in the 30's though, we may begin to see the reasons for such references up close and personal. The administration has indicated that it intends to seek a new way to resolve the matter. I, for one, hope that they do so quickly.
(Don't drink the water, it's full of cow dung!)
The man yells back “I’m English, speak English, I don’t understand you”.
The Irishman shouts back “Use both hands, you’ll get more in.”
Yeh, you know, just doing my part to be in the spirit and so forth. The translation is there if you feel like looking for it.
I believe that seven hours is the appropriate length of a driving day. That's what today involved for me and it seemed like a pretty good day. I got to Atlanta after the morning rush and then through Nashville before the afternoon rush. Dragging such a heavy load around still requires a bit of patience, as it's tough to manage the merging traffic and hills and all the rest of it, but I think I kept my cool pretty well.
I stopped in Paducah for the night, having covered a little over half the drive to Kansas City. Another seven hours or so tomorrow will keep me on my preferred pace.
Now for some bonus commentary:
Quite some time ago, there was a great deal of discussion surrounding the evil Bush administration's efforts to allow Mexican trucks on U.S. highways. Not surprisingly, most people in my line of work were (and continue to be) against the program, regardless of their economic philosophies. Setting aside the fact that we were simply fulfilling a legal obligation under the NAFTA treaty, I found that I was among a very small minority of drivers who didn't want the program to be scrapped. At the time, my biggest disagreement with the nature of the discussion was that the loudest objections were outright falsehoods and that the legitimate concerns would have failed to persuade anybody. I also had reason to believe that the future of our country, perhaps well after my time on earth has ended, would benefit from the program. For anyone who cares to read them, my thoughts at the time were consolidated here.
Congress continued doing whatever it could to grandstand on the issue and the president continued giving them the finger. The program went forward and the dubious claims about safety continued to be overstated. Why dig up an old message board discussion now? New sheriff in town. The recently passed federal spending bill to finish out the 2009 fiscal year included, among the numerous policy shifts that were not disclosed at the time, a provision to end the pilot program that had placed a whopping 100 Mexican trucks (out of the millions of total trucks) on our freeways. And now the completely predictable response from the Mexican government has followed.
Political favors for the Teamsters are part of the game. I get that. You win, you write the bill, blah blah blah. We can all debate our pet economic theories and pretend that we have data to back us up. Maybe condoms for drug addicts are really an emergency stimulus for the economy and maybe they're not. This blog will never be the place to resolve those differences of opinion. However, a large chunk of my individual income is derived from hauling freight to the border for export to Mexico. The impact of economic meddling for political gain has always been real. Now it's personal. My truck driving colleagues are free to believe as they wish about Mexican trucks, but reality has arrived upon us. While everyone feigns indignation over $165 million in contractually required bonuses for a failing insurance company, this regime has jeopardized $2.4 billion in trade in order to appease a failing labor union. (Here's a hint for the outraged populists out there: The taxes paid on $2.4 billion in business would far exceed $165 million.)
As the economy at large has gone into a tailspin, the value of exports carried into Mexico by truck was up 9.7% in December even as overall NAFTA traffic dropped dramatically. Now we're determined to undermine the one bright spot and cause a trade war over 100 trucks. I'm sure that the ubiquitous references to the Great Depression have begun to wear on many of us by now. Unless we stop repeating the same mistakes that we made in the 30's though, we may begin to see the reasons for such references up close and personal. The administration has indicated that it intends to seek a new way to resolve the matter. I, for one, hope that they do so quickly.
Monday, March 16, 2009
3/16/09
A return to normalcy, perhaps? Well, I do have a trailer and it does have freight in it. This will continue to be the case through tomorrow and Wednesday, at the very least. That’s a start.
The wakeup call from the security chick came at 5:30am. That’s always nice. After hooking up to an empty, I got on the board at #8. Damn. Didn’t see that one coming. Better look for a place to rest. The quickest way to find a parking spot and go back to bed seemed to be heading to the T/A on I-10, west of Jacksonville, so that’s where I went. Unlike last night, when I tossed and turned restlessly for five hours, I fell right asleep this morning. Beauty.
It was only about an hour and a half later that I received my next assignment. In all likelihood, it was going to be beer out of Jacksonville or paper out of Palatka. It doesn’t seem that I pull anything else out of Florida anymore. I got out of bed and took a look. Paper from Palatka. Okay then, back out to the road.
After my drop/hook at the paper mill, I encountered mostly light traffic during today’s drive. Even though I think I can guess my axle weights within 500 pounds by looking at my suspension gauge, I stopped and used a CAT scale. This 45,100 pound load is definitely on the heavier end of the spectrum for me. I would have guessed that my drive axles and trailer axles were around 32,500 each. They were 32,480 up front and 32,200 in the back. Not bad.
I got through a couple of pretty strong soakers in Georgia before deciding to call it a day in Jackson. I’m starting to feel a little tired again and there’s no point in adding the frustration of Atlanta to the mix. Dodging all of the cars that panic whenever it rains was enough for one day. I have a Thursday morning delivery in Kansas City. Two decent days of driving from here will work just fine.
I heard audio clips on the radio from lots of people who are all flabbergasted about AIG employees getting bonus checks. I suspect that most people are more jealous than angry. I’m not jealous of those guys though. I’m jealous of Dan Patrick. Not only does he get paid to talk about sports for a living, he also gets to inform the rest of us poor suckers that the lovely Erin Andrews has a sister…
Dan, Dan, Dan. You little devil.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
3/15/09
Well, a strange Sunday would be a fitting conclusion to a strange weekend. My battery rundown thing beeped at me after the truck had only been off for a few hours this morning, so I guess we'll have to get it to a shop sooner or later. Thankfully the truck had enough juice to start this time but it did hesitate. I was in the mood to sleep a little longer. Of course I couldn't get back to sleep. Story of life.
I got another headscratcher of an assignment around an hour later. Bobtail to Jacksonville and pick up an empty. Whatever dude. I just do what I'm told and I get paid by the mile. I have no idea how this weekend's sequence of events came to pass and I really don't care. I went from sitting empty in Virginia to getting rid of my empty trailer in North Carolina to picking up an empty in Florida. Hmm, how about that.
The drive down to Jacksonville was a rather straightforward affair. The bumpy spots really toss the truck around when there's no trailer, but otherwise the traffic was reasonable and things went according to plan. I even saw the sun after a while. That was a nice change.
I pulled into the driveway of the customer from which I was supposed to take an empty. There was another CTL bobtail parked in the driveway, facing a locked gate. The guy in the other truck said that he had called Joplin and they told him that the place might not open until midnight. I was dispatched to arrive at 5:45pm. Yeah, go figure. Time to catch up on some of that sleep that eluded me this morning.
When I woke a couple of hours later, there were two more bobtails and one truck with a loaded trailer behind me. The first bobtail and the locked gate were still in front of me. Guess we're waiting for midnight then. I followed the advice of yesterday's two esteemed commenters this time and sent a message apprising the office people of my situation. I'm sure that none of us will be surprised to learn that I got no response.
Midnight has now come and gone. The status quo has been maintained. I'm going to bed. Somebody will have to show up sooner or later. When they do, they'll most likely want me out of their driveway. I'll anticipate a knock on the side of my cab, well before I'm ready to get up and start my day. Story of life.
I got another headscratcher of an assignment around an hour later. Bobtail to Jacksonville and pick up an empty. Whatever dude. I just do what I'm told and I get paid by the mile. I have no idea how this weekend's sequence of events came to pass and I really don't care. I went from sitting empty in Virginia to getting rid of my empty trailer in North Carolina to picking up an empty in Florida. Hmm, how about that.
The drive down to Jacksonville was a rather straightforward affair. The bumpy spots really toss the truck around when there's no trailer, but otherwise the traffic was reasonable and things went according to plan. I even saw the sun after a while. That was a nice change.
I pulled into the driveway of the customer from which I was supposed to take an empty. There was another CTL bobtail parked in the driveway, facing a locked gate. The guy in the other truck said that he had called Joplin and they told him that the place might not open until midnight. I was dispatched to arrive at 5:45pm. Yeah, go figure. Time to catch up on some of that sleep that eluded me this morning.
When I woke a couple of hours later, there were two more bobtails and one truck with a loaded trailer behind me. The first bobtail and the locked gate were still in front of me. Guess we're waiting for midnight then. I followed the advice of yesterday's two esteemed commenters this time and sent a message apprising the office people of my situation. I'm sure that none of us will be surprised to learn that I got no response.
Midnight has now come and gone. The status quo has been maintained. I'm going to bed. Somebody will have to show up sooner or later. When they do, they'll most likely want me out of their driveway. I'll anticipate a knock on the side of my cab, well before I'm ready to get up and start my day. Story of life.
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