4/2/09

42 extra miles for today, a pre-plan for tomorrow, and a tornado warning just for good measure. How about that.

I got an early start when I checked in an hour ahead of schedule and my load was ready to roll. Beauty. This allowed me to get out of Illinois ahead of the morning rush, although there really hasn't been much of a morning rush on my last few trips through the Chicago area. In any case, I was well out of town by the time the sun came up. Then I hit Indianapolis after the fine Hoosiers had all settled into their cubicles for another morning of working for the man. Skillful timing on my part, I'll go ahead and say.

As I approached Nashville on I-65, I got a call from one of the fleet managers in Joplin. He was in charge of the team to whom I would be passing off my loaded trailer. It turned out that the empty they were pulling had a bad wheel seal and needed repairs. They were taking it to the T/A shop in Franklin so I would need to head down and make the relay there instead of in Nashville. 20 extra miles and I didn't have to go to that Godforsaken Pilot in Nashville? You can imagine my disappointment. Plus it was nice that they didn't do what most of my coworkers do and stick me with the bad trailer.

After that phone call had concluded, I received a pre-plan for tomorrow. I'll stick with my playbook analogy for now and add that they called an audible at the line of scrimmage. My origin will indeed be the ConWay in Nashville but the destination won't be the T/A in Troutville this time around. Instead I'm heading down to Jacksonville. So I get 600 miles tomorrow instead of the 400-whatever that I get when I go to Virginia. And I got 22 miles coming back to Nashville today instead of the zero that I would have gotten for cruising down to the yard from the Pilot. Not bad.

The inbound truck with the damaged trailer got to the T/A in Franklin after I did, so I told the driver to go ahead and drop it off so he could get rolling with the load. I wasn't going to be able to leave until the empty trailer was fixed anyway, so there was no point in both of us sitting there. The guys in the shop worked fairly quickly, but I was down there just long enough for a nice little thunderstorm to roll in. I fought the slow traffic back into Nashville and then checked in with the ConWay dispatcher. And that's when the tornado sirens started going off. (Yeah, I think we'll hold off on that 'dropping the trailer' bit for a little while.) Time for a powwow in the break room.

I guess it was around a half hour or so before the dock workers got the all clear to leave the break room and get back to work. I waited a few more minutes and then headed out to drop my empty trailer. The wind had let up as quickly as it arrived, but the rain hasn't stopped yet. I got some decent sleep last night after having pulled an all-nighter coming out of Michigan. Tomorrow's schedule is another blue hair special and I'm not quite tired yet. Hopefully I can nod off for a while before too much longer.

My week will be standing somewhere just under 1,900 miles by the time I'm empty tomorrow. Per usual, the weekend will determine the 'thumbs up' or 'thumbs down' aspect of my paycheck. Tomorrow's check does have a ten dollar tax cut figured in though. Woo hoo!