Marching right along... or something. I've managed to bounce around and catch up with quite a few people. A few others have managed to blow me off, which is probably just as well since I didn't manage the logistics of this trip home very effectively. Only so many hours in a day and so forth.
I happened to be at a local drinking establishment (big surprise) while the hockey game was on. Roberto Luongo... in Vancouver... for a second time this week? Boo! Roberto Luongo. Boo!
(Correction: The game was in Detroit, not Vancouver. Still sucks though.)
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
3/2/10
I think I screwed up a little bit this time around. I'm not a very likable dude but, in small doses and on an infrequent basis, people seem to find me tolerable. As I was working my way through the month of February, waking each day to find one more hassle around the corner, I had several conversations with friends back home. "Pretty soon," was the consistent message in terms of when I would be back in town. Then one thing leads to another, problems arise, delays are encountered, and I end up telling a few more people that I'll be home in the near future.
Once I finally got my chance to set my home time in motion, I had to decide how many days to request. For reasons that amount to nothing more than a gut instinct, I expect that we're going off an economic cliff at the end of this summer. I don't have data points to argue or any of that. I don't know anything that you don't know. Just playing a hunch. Anyhow, since nobody likes being caught off guard in an economic crisis (see 2008), I'm inclined to bank some extra cash and hunker down a little bit. In that light, and in light of all of the unintended down time that I've had lately, I didn't really feel like burning a whole week at home. So I settled on five days. In retrospect, that's probably not enough time.
I got into town last night and gave my paperwork to the local dispatcher. The impending time crunch had occurred to me on the way home, but I assumed that I would just take my five days and deal with it. He said to me, "You have 23 days available. When are you coming back?" No mention of the five day thing. Beauty. So I told him that I would be back on Monday morning. One extra day to spend socializing and whatnot. Then I had a few cold ones at the pub last night, whacked down a bunch more at home after hours, and slept through half of today. The rest of the day was spent running around and handling tedious business (deposit some checks at the bank, mail my state tax return, transfer files to a new computer, etc.). One day down, five to go. I'm not sure how the rest of the week is going to play out, but I suspect that I'll be on the move quite a bit. I probably should have gone for a week off when I had the chance.
Time for a side note: My new cell phone is a Blackberry, so I spent a few minutes browsing the applications that are available. For $2.99, I saw one called Call Blocker Professional. I thumbed over three bucks from my PayPal account, downloaded the application, and then blocked my buddy Brian's phone number. He tried to call me and, before the phone even rang, the app took his call and hung up on him. That... was... awesome! Quite possibly the best three bucks that I've ever spent.
Godfather - 1, Nuisance phone calls - 0. I win, mofos.
Once I finally got my chance to set my home time in motion, I had to decide how many days to request. For reasons that amount to nothing more than a gut instinct, I expect that we're going off an economic cliff at the end of this summer. I don't have data points to argue or any of that. I don't know anything that you don't know. Just playing a hunch. Anyhow, since nobody likes being caught off guard in an economic crisis (see 2008), I'm inclined to bank some extra cash and hunker down a little bit. In that light, and in light of all of the unintended down time that I've had lately, I didn't really feel like burning a whole week at home. So I settled on five days. In retrospect, that's probably not enough time.
I got into town last night and gave my paperwork to the local dispatcher. The impending time crunch had occurred to me on the way home, but I assumed that I would just take my five days and deal with it. He said to me, "You have 23 days available. When are you coming back?" No mention of the five day thing. Beauty. So I told him that I would be back on Monday morning. One extra day to spend socializing and whatnot. Then I had a few cold ones at the pub last night, whacked down a bunch more at home after hours, and slept through half of today. The rest of the day was spent running around and handling tedious business (deposit some checks at the bank, mail my state tax return, transfer files to a new computer, etc.). One day down, five to go. I'm not sure how the rest of the week is going to play out, but I suspect that I'll be on the move quite a bit. I probably should have gone for a week off when I had the chance.
Time for a side note: My new cell phone is a Blackberry, so I spent a few minutes browsing the applications that are available. For $2.99, I saw one called Call Blocker Professional. I thumbed over three bucks from my PayPal account, downloaded the application, and then blocked my buddy Brian's phone number. He tried to call me and, before the phone even rang, the app took his call and hung up on him. That... was... awesome! Quite possibly the best three bucks that I've ever spent.
Godfather - 1, Nuisance phone calls - 0. I win, mofos.
Monday, March 1, 2010
3/1/10
I'm gonna go ahead and post this one early tonight. Assuming that some people get to work pretty soon here, there's a distinct possibility that my vision will be too blurry for typing in a little while. 2am is closing time in the good old Wolverine State and I'm hoping to get my money's worth before then.
It just wouldn't be a trip back home without some inefficiency and shoddy planning, would it? After a quick drive up to Coldwater this morning, I found that the receiving folks at my consignee were all out of sorts. Go to this door, no, go to that door... you know the drill. I finally got a door assignment and dropped my trailer, then proceeded to the bobtail parking area to wait. The lady in the office said that she would call my cell phone when my trailer was empty and my paperwork was ready. During the time when I sat watching other trucks come and go, hour after hour, I received an assignment for a load that would take me home. That's nice, right? Yeah, nice, as long as I could get out of that consignee's parking lot within a reasonable time.
Four hours later... I got my call and went in to retrieve my paperwork. Surprisingly, they didn't bullshit about the arrival and departure times. Usually those peckerheads will stamp the paperwork as being available to me a half hour before they actually tell me it's ready, in order to dodge some of the detention pay. Not this time though. They kept it all on the level.
Now for the planning/communication/nuisance part of the deal. The load going to Canada (by way of Taylor) was one picking up in Fort Wayne, Indiana at 9pm tonight. 9pm would be well over 14 hours after I started work this morning (at 4:30am). And I got out of the consignee's lot in Coldwater at 11am, with Fort Wayne still 65 miles away. So there was no way for me to take a ten hour break and still make my appointed pickup time. If this particular sequence of events sounds familiar to you, then either you're really astute or you pay way too much attention to these daily ramblings. It sounded quite familiar to me though. There's a reason for this. It comes as no surprise that tonight's shipper, sending the load to Canada, is the same one from the infamous Wisconsin debacle.
As before, I got the pre-plan after my hours had been updated to reflect the work that I did in the morning. I got the same 'driver instructions' saying that the freight is time sensitive and must be delivered on time. I got the same 14-hour and 10-hour issues once the previous consignee had me at an unloading dock for several hours. The only saving grace this time around was that I could get by with an eight hour break in the bunk, allowing me to hang onto enough hours to make the short drive from Fort Wayne to Taylor. Had this run been a little longer, say, from Wisconsin to Michigan, then the split break option would have done me no good and we would have had another argument on our hands.
As it stood today, I was going to be inconvenienced a little but the hours would work out. I drove down to the shipper and checked in at noon, letting them know that I was picking up a load later in the evening. The guy in the shipping office told me to drop my trailer on the yard and come back after 8pm. Since my assignment said that the shipment was a drop/hook and I was due at 9pm, this worked fine for me. I dropped my trailer and went down the street to a truck stop to spend my eight hours in the bunk.
At 8:30pm, with six hours at my disposal, I rolled back over to the shipper and checked in again.
"Go ahead and back into Door 19."
"I was here earlier and the guy told me to drop my empty on the yard."
"No, it's a live load."
"I guess I'll go pick up my trailer and bring it over then."
No big deal, obviously, but it's just one more minor nuisance at the end of a day full of minor nuisances. All's well that ends well though. My dock light just turned green and I'm heading home. Save me a spot at the bar, boys.
It just wouldn't be a trip back home without some inefficiency and shoddy planning, would it? After a quick drive up to Coldwater this morning, I found that the receiving folks at my consignee were all out of sorts. Go to this door, no, go to that door... you know the drill. I finally got a door assignment and dropped my trailer, then proceeded to the bobtail parking area to wait. The lady in the office said that she would call my cell phone when my trailer was empty and my paperwork was ready. During the time when I sat watching other trucks come and go, hour after hour, I received an assignment for a load that would take me home. That's nice, right? Yeah, nice, as long as I could get out of that consignee's parking lot within a reasonable time.
Four hours later... I got my call and went in to retrieve my paperwork. Surprisingly, they didn't bullshit about the arrival and departure times. Usually those peckerheads will stamp the paperwork as being available to me a half hour before they actually tell me it's ready, in order to dodge some of the detention pay. Not this time though. They kept it all on the level.
Now for the planning/communication/nuisance part of the deal. The load going to Canada (by way of Taylor) was one picking up in Fort Wayne, Indiana at 9pm tonight. 9pm would be well over 14 hours after I started work this morning (at 4:30am). And I got out of the consignee's lot in Coldwater at 11am, with Fort Wayne still 65 miles away. So there was no way for me to take a ten hour break and still make my appointed pickup time. If this particular sequence of events sounds familiar to you, then either you're really astute or you pay way too much attention to these daily ramblings. It sounded quite familiar to me though. There's a reason for this. It comes as no surprise that tonight's shipper, sending the load to Canada, is the same one from the infamous Wisconsin debacle.
As before, I got the pre-plan after my hours had been updated to reflect the work that I did in the morning. I got the same 'driver instructions' saying that the freight is time sensitive and must be delivered on time. I got the same 14-hour and 10-hour issues once the previous consignee had me at an unloading dock for several hours. The only saving grace this time around was that I could get by with an eight hour break in the bunk, allowing me to hang onto enough hours to make the short drive from Fort Wayne to Taylor. Had this run been a little longer, say, from Wisconsin to Michigan, then the split break option would have done me no good and we would have had another argument on our hands.
As it stood today, I was going to be inconvenienced a little but the hours would work out. I drove down to the shipper and checked in at noon, letting them know that I was picking up a load later in the evening. The guy in the shipping office told me to drop my trailer on the yard and come back after 8pm. Since my assignment said that the shipment was a drop/hook and I was due at 9pm, this worked fine for me. I dropped my trailer and went down the street to a truck stop to spend my eight hours in the bunk.
At 8:30pm, with six hours at my disposal, I rolled back over to the shipper and checked in again.
"Go ahead and back into Door 19."
"I was here earlier and the guy told me to drop my empty on the yard."
"No, it's a live load."
"I guess I'll go pick up my trailer and bring it over then."
No big deal, obviously, but it's just one more minor nuisance at the end of a day full of minor nuisances. All's well that ends well though. My dock light just turned green and I'm heading home. Save me a spot at the bar, boys.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
2/28/10
I cut my teeth in the restaurant business at Pizza Hut. I started as a delivery driver, then picked up some occasional hours as a shift manager. When my general manager decided to move on to another career, I leapfrogged a handful of more experienced people and took over as the new general manager. Fortune took me from there to progressively bigger venues during that career, but I have never, at any point in my life, seen a pizza delivery take more than two hours... until last night. My horizons have been expanded. Here's to you - Pizza Hut in Joplin.
Since I hadn't managed to sleep much before I got hungry, and then I sat waiting all night for my dinner to arrive, I chose to hit the road as soon as my legally mandated break was over. With my delivery in Michigan scheduled for 7am on Monday, I was hoping to cover at least half the trip before I needed to go to bed and get some rest. As it turned out, I managed to pull off an almost full day of driving with a nice nap in Illinois along the way. There wasn't much traffic and the weather was good, so the drive was nice and easy. My morning nap was long enough to bring the 14 hour rule into play, so I couldn't get eleven hours of driving in, but ten hours is still pretty solid.
As luck would have it, I got off the road in time to catch the gold medal hockey game. Also as luck would have it, I wound up in an area with lousy internet access and no pubs or restaurants with televisions around. Setting aside the terribly slow data speed here, my Sprint internet card won't even hold a consistent connection. I found the radio broadcast on AM 720 (WGN out of Chicago) but the static was unbearable. After some tinkering, I got hooked to the internet through my cell phone and found an internet stream of that same radio broadcast. Not an ideal setup by any means, but it worked well enough. Since my AT&T data connection, much like the Sprint connection, wasn't fast enough to support a video stream, this was the best that I could do.
Sounds like it would have been a fun game to watch. Congrats, hosers.
From Warren, Indiana, where I'm spending the night, I'll have to cover around a hundred miles in the morning. I'm due at the consignee (the world's favorite symbol of capitalist greed) by 7am. I'll get in trouble if I'm too early, but sometimes there is a line of trucks waiting to get checked in. So I can't roll in right at 7am either. My best bet will be to leave here around 4:30am and see how the traffic is moving through Fort Wayne. There's a rest area in Michigan where I can take a little break if I'm going to get to Coldwater before 6:30am. If there are any delays or traffic issues, I'll have enough of a buffer that I still should be able to get through the check-in by 6:45am or so.
4:30am, eh? Alarm Clock -1, Godfather - 0. I lose, mofos.
Since I hadn't managed to sleep much before I got hungry, and then I sat waiting all night for my dinner to arrive, I chose to hit the road as soon as my legally mandated break was over. With my delivery in Michigan scheduled for 7am on Monday, I was hoping to cover at least half the trip before I needed to go to bed and get some rest. As it turned out, I managed to pull off an almost full day of driving with a nice nap in Illinois along the way. There wasn't much traffic and the weather was good, so the drive was nice and easy. My morning nap was long enough to bring the 14 hour rule into play, so I couldn't get eleven hours of driving in, but ten hours is still pretty solid.
As luck would have it, I got off the road in time to catch the gold medal hockey game. Also as luck would have it, I wound up in an area with lousy internet access and no pubs or restaurants with televisions around. Setting aside the terribly slow data speed here, my Sprint internet card won't even hold a consistent connection. I found the radio broadcast on AM 720 (WGN out of Chicago) but the static was unbearable. After some tinkering, I got hooked to the internet through my cell phone and found an internet stream of that same radio broadcast. Not an ideal setup by any means, but it worked well enough. Since my AT&T data connection, much like the Sprint connection, wasn't fast enough to support a video stream, this was the best that I could do.
Sounds like it would have been a fun game to watch. Congrats, hosers.
From Warren, Indiana, where I'm spending the night, I'll have to cover around a hundred miles in the morning. I'm due at the consignee (the world's favorite symbol of capitalist greed) by 7am. I'll get in trouble if I'm too early, but sometimes there is a line of trucks waiting to get checked in. So I can't roll in right at 7am either. My best bet will be to leave here around 4:30am and see how the traffic is moving through Fort Wayne. There's a rest area in Michigan where I can take a little break if I'm going to get to Coldwater before 6:30am. If there are any delays or traffic issues, I'll have enough of a buffer that I still should be able to get through the check-in by 6:45am or so.
4:30am, eh? Alarm Clock -1, Godfather - 0. I lose, mofos.
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