1/16/10

Sometimes it all just falls into place. I'm not a big enough NFL fan to get excited about games in which my Redskins won't be losing playing, but the playoffs are still fun in their own way. I was hopeful that I would find myself somewhere with a fast internet connection and a place to park by the time today's games began. And here I am.

After a quick hop over to the shipper this morning, I found that my pickup was a drop/hook and that my loaded trailer was waiting for me. Beauty. From Pittston I was headed to Gordonsville, Virginia. Nice and simple route, right? Head south and catch up with US-15, then ride it all the way to Gordonsville. Not so fast though. My Swedish buddy Sjoe once drove down US-15 from Maryland into Virginia. According to him, it was a good thing that he didn't pass any cops. Apparently the Virginians don't like vehicles longer than 65 feet or something. Sjoe says that he saw no legitimate reason for trucks not to take that route, but I decided to keep it legal today.

So I could either stay with freeways down past Baltimore and D.C. before angling across or I could take I-81 to I-66 and then make my way southward from there. Gee, I wonder which route sounded better. Boo! I-95. Boo! I caught US-17 southward from I-66 and then joined up with US-15 a few miles down the road. I'll have to take a circuitous route from here, rather than stay with US-15 the rest of the way, but it shouldn't be too bad.

In the lovely sounding town of Opal, I saw a big truck stop on the left. I was in the right lane though, and the truck stop looked pretty shitty, so I continued along. After a mile or so, I saw another truck stop on the left side of the road. This time the traffic was clear for me to move over, so I turned in and called it a day. In proving that all is right with the world, this second truck stop has a SubWay. I know. I know.

Assuming that I can get back to the southbound side of the road in the morning, I should have around 65 miles to go from here. In addition to their fetish regarding 65 foot long vehicles, the Virginians have a weird system of delineating their towns. My destination is a good 10-15 miles south of Gordonsville, right along I-64, but it's in Gordonsville by golly. Kinda like the Pilot truck stop in Greenville that's considered to be in Staunton or something like that. Whatever. I don't draw the maps. If it works for the locals, then it works for me. I'm just hopeful that, since I'll be taking off bright and early, I can catch a break in the traffic and get back onto southbound US-17/15/29 from here. That doesn't seem to be a sure thing at this point.

I don't suppose we'll be doing any cartwheels to celebrate the 1,894 miles this week, but at least the extra $60 or so in additional pay will help out some. I came into this winter expecting things to be similar to last year, so I can't pretend that I'm terribly disappointed. Believe the talking heads on TV if you want to. I have my own economic views and I'm not sold on any of what they say. Incidentally, for anyone interested in the topic, these guys have a few thoughts on what lies ahead for those of us who hold steering wheels for a living. Sounds pretty reasonable to me, so I guess you bankers out there need to hurry up and start running some of these deadbeats out of business.

1/15/10

The experience for a Con-way Truckload driver dealing with the folks at a Con-way Freight terminal varies widely from one trip to the next. I find that the vast majority of our corporate brethren are friendly, albeit frazzled, people whenever I visit their terminals. Then again, some of them totally suck. I haven't reached a definitive conclusion yet, but the assholiest bunch of them all would have to be those at either the Chicopee, Massachusetts location or the Newark, New Jersey location.

So, after leaving Ohio before dawn and cruising all the way across Pennsylvania and New Jersey without any major issues, I pulled into the Newark yard and expected the worst. Well I'll be damned. This time the guy behind the counter was a Russian dude and his manners were impeccable. He took my paperwork and assigned me to a door. Then, after I hooked to an empty trailer, he was right there waiting to sign me out and bid me a good weekend. I guess this moves Chicopee to the front of the line for now. I've been told that they call themselves "Massholes" up there, so I'm sure they're glad to be in the lead.

I had two driving hours available after making my drop so I didn't have any great expectations. Hopefully I could at least get an assignment for something picking up tomorrow, I thought. I pulled off to the side of the Con-way driveway and, after around 45 minutes, this is exactly what I got. My next load will pick up in Pittston, Pennsylvania and head toward Virginia for a Sunday morning delivery. We're nickel and diming it just like last January thus far, it seems. At least quite a few of this week's miles have come with northeast pay.

I really didn't feel like spending the night parked in the Con-way driveway but I wasn't entirely sure if there were any parking options that I could reach within my remaining two hours. My truck stop directory showed a T/A at Exit 4 on I-80. My rather limited experience with truck stops in New Jersey has taught me one thing - Stay away from truck stops in New Jersey. I decided to head out and give it a shot anyway. Exit 4 couldn't be more than an hour away from Newark, I thought, and it was still fairly early in the day. They should have at least a few open parking spaces.

I guess I didn't think that one through very carefully, did I? Yeah. Newark at 3:45pm on a Friday. That's a real treat. After I managed to fight my way out of the traffic, I got to the truck stop and found that it was damned near completely full. 'Damned near completely' isn't the same as 'completely' though, meaning that there were a few spots left. I only needed one. Beauty.

My pickup is scheduled for noon tomorrow and it looks like I'm a little more than an hour from Pittston, so thankfully no repeats of that 5am nonsense are in store for me. The trip down to Virginia is an easy 300 mile deal, so maybe I'll get a chance to watch some football. I would say that tomorrow holds bad news for New Orleans and Indianapolis, but it looks like the majority of our scientifically selected poll voters agree with me. Scary. It's worth noting though that I'm not quite as good at being wrong with respect to NFL games as I am with respect to college games. Close, but not quite.

1/14/10

My truck has been idling an awful lot lately. When it's at least 30° outside, I do okay with a sleeping bag. Any colder than that and I need some heat. Quite a bit of the country has been quite a lot colder than 30° at night this season. So, in that situation, I go to bed with the bunk heater running. Then, after a couple of hours, the battery rundown warning thing starts beeping and wakes me. So I start the truck, go back to bed, and forget about it. I used to be able to run the bunk heater all night without killing the batteries, but this is no longer the case. Net result - lots of idling over the past month or so.

Last night my temperature gauge said 31° and I wasn't cold once I climbed into my sleeping bag, so I thought we were all good. Might as well leave the truck off, or so the theory went. This wasn't one of those times when I was completely fooled by the weather, going to bed in my underwear when it's 60° and waking to find that it's 25°. No, this time I had pants and a sweater on, to go along with my very warm sleeping bag. It was all good, for a while. Yeah... it got freaking cold last night. 12° when I woke this morning. As soon as I reached over and flipped the switch to turn on the bunk heater, the battery rundown thing started beeping at me. Bastard. So I had to get out of bed and fire up the engine. Luckily I had time to go back to bed and wrap myself up in the sleeping bag until my truck got to its operating temperature and started kicking out some heat.

Once I finally decided to get rolling, the drive up to Lancaster was quick and easy. I found a locked gate at the consignee (I was 45 minutes early) but this would turn out to be the least of my issues with respect to making the delivery. After finding a spot along the road to pull over and wait for someone to arrive, I saw a pickup truck pull into the driveway around 7:30am. I gave the guy a few minutes to get settled in and then walked over. He asked if he could help me. I told him that I had a load of mulch. "For here ?!" Yes sir, that's what the bills say. "In that (pointing at my trailer) ?!" Yes sir.

It's very early in 2010 so I'm hesitant to name a frontrunner, but this guy will be tough to beat for pissed-off customer of the year. Good grief. There was no loading dock or ramp or anything, so the fella went off an a profanity-laced tirade about how there was "no fucking way" he could unload my trailer. Whatever dude. I do what I'm told and I was told to deliver the mulch. He called his company and got no useful information, so I tried calling my company. The customer service people hadn't gotten to work yet so I went to my truck and awaited further instructions.

After fifteen or twenty minutes the angry guy waved me into the driveway. I drove in and asked if the freight was in fact being delivered to his location. Yup. He had received a phone call from his boss. I was at the right place. (The F-bombs were flying by this point in time.) Homeboy had to drive a little tractor up to the back of my trailer, hook a chain to a given pallet, back the tractor up until he had dragged the pallet to the tailgate, unhook the chain, drive a forklift up to the trailer, and then unload the pallet. He was livid.

I sent a satellite message informing anyone who might be interested that I would be getting unloaded after all. I received a reply from my fleet manager acknowledging my message and then kicked back to wait for the unloading. After I had sent the satellite message saying that I was getting unloaded, my fleet manager caught wind of my earlier phone call saying that I wasn't getting unloaded. The time-shifting of the information left him a little confused, for obvious reasons. After another exchange of messages we were all squared away and all I could do was wait. And wait. And wait.

A little after 11:30am, the disgruntled chap pulled off the final pallet. I walked over with my copy of the bill of lading so I could get a signature and get the hell out of there. I was forced to ignore another vulgar diatribe in the process. That guy needs a shrink or something, man. I've got a temper of my own and I'm no stranger to some creative language, so I'm not gonna judge anyone, but for Christ's sake. He was acting as a representative of a company in the conduct of a business transaction. That was extremely excessive.

I had to decide where to go once I was empty. The place where I delivered had no room for me in the first place, so I certainly couldn't hang out there. The choice came down to either going back southward to the rest area on US-33 or going northward to the truck stop in Hebron. The distance would be roughly the same in either direction and I had no idea which way I would be going for my next assignment. I decided on Hebron since it's at least along the freeway. We also have various customers in the Columbus area, so it seemed like my best bet. Anything picking up to the east would be good. Anything to the west would mean that I had gone a little out of the way.

After settling in at the Pilot, sweeping out my trailer, and enjoying an Italian BMT with double meat, the waiting began. I was #1 on the board when I left Lancaster so I was optimistic about getting something quickly. It only took about an hour or so. I guess that part ain't so bad, but the assignment itself leaves something to be desired. Deadhead to Columbus for a Con-way load leaving tomorrow morning, headed to Newark, New Jersey. So yeah, I had gone out of the way, but the real kicker is the 5am departure from Columbus. Boo! 5am. Boo! Oh yeah, and Newark pretty much sucks too. It's a solid run though - 524 miles. Since my paychecks aren't exactly setting any records at the moment, I'll just appreciate the work wherever I can get it. I've caught some good weekend runs out of that part of the country in the past, so we'll see how it all shakes out.

For what it's worth - I tried one of those old-school Pepsis with the real sugar today. I'm unimpressed.

1/13/10

I often hear truck drivers refer to how hard they work. Usually this would be in the context of saying that they deserve higher wages and so forth. Quite frankly, I think they're full of crap. 99% of the time we don't work hard at all. We drive down the road and stay awake, occasionally buying fuel or opening the doors of a trailer. That's about the long and short of it, at least in my experience. Perhaps some people really do believe that we're working hard out here, but I've done side jobs (construction) with my father a few times. That's hard work. I've run a restaurant that was serving $4,000 worth of burgers in an hour. That's hard work. What we do out here is just boring. So it's interesting to me when certain days (like today) leave me feeling like I actually worked my ass off.

I haven't figured out the mechanism yet, but pulling a heavy trailer through the mountains feels more physically demanding to me, even though the truck is the one doing the work. Sure there's more shifting and braking and all of that, but come on. Moving my arm or my leg a few inches would hardly be considered strenuous. I'm inclined to think that it must be psychological. Maybe it's just the cumulative effect of spending several hours paying more attention to every detail than is normally required. The timing of gear changes, the speed approaching curves, the spacial relationship to other vehicles - all of it requires more precision when the trailer is heavy and the terrain is rough. That's my best guess anyway. I'm pretty sure that, in the purely physical sense, I could move my gear shifter and press my pedals all day long without getting tired.

Anyhow, yeah, it was a long day of dragging ass through the mountains. Going through West Virginia in particular is less than fun when the payload is so heavy. The traffic was fairly light though, so good enough. I woke late enough to hit Charlotte after the morning rush but early enough to get clear of Charleston before it got too congested in the afternoon. There aren't a whole lot of parking options along US-33 in Ohio. I remembered taking a break at a little rest area outside Logan once in the past, so that's where I was hoping to find an open space tonight. I got in before 6pm and there were still a couple of spaces available, so that's that.

I have an 8am delivery appointment in Lancaster, roughly fifteen miles from here, so it looks like my recent stretch of sleeping late every morning will have to come to an end. Boo! 8am appointment! Boo!