7/16/09

I think we've got a full-blown conspiracy on our hands in Michigan this week. It would seem to the casual observer that a tanker truck exploded yesterday on I-75 north of Detroit. Mmm hmm, I'm not fooled. Fourth paragraph down... "The intense heat of the explosion forced the overpass to collapse onto the freeway below as hundreds of people watched, stunned by what was happening." Yeah, exactly. If we've learned anything over the last decade, it's that fire can't melt steel... or something. The Zionists clearly hired Halliburton to take that bridge down. And the driver of the car that allegedly caused the accident was named Saied Haidarian-Shahri, eh? Convenient. Just a little too convenient, don't you think?

Any question about whether the planners at CTL could make use of my limited hours today was answered fairly early this morning. I got a short run that worked almost perfectly with the hours that I had available to me. First I had to deadhead down to Asheboro. That part was odd in that I got paid 38 miles for the deadhead. The trip was 36 miles, so nothing special there, but I had gone 26 miles out of the way yesterday to reach the T/A in Whitsett. I had to double back past High Point and then drop down to Asheboro on US-220. Later in the day I checked truckmiles.com and found that they list the 'truck practical' mileage from High Point to Asheboro as 23.2 miles. From Whitsett to Asheboro, it says 39.5. Obviously I have no complaint about getting paid for the actual miles that I drove today. I've just never seen that before. Usually my dispatch would only pay me from wherever I last delivered. Any out of route miles would be covered free of charge. Weird.

Once I was loaded, I headed back up to Greensboro and then continued on I-85 into Virginia. My hours held up until I reached the truck stop in Warfield and parked for the night. I'll have to cover another 60 miles or so in order to reach my consignee in Richmond by 7am, so it looks like at least one more early morning is in store for me. Then the weekend will hopefully give me a chance to get back to sleeping when I feel like it and driving when I feel like it.

I really have no desire to work another marathon weekend like I did last week, but this week's paycheck is going to be pretty lousy without some heavy work. This trip to Virginia gets my miles to 931. Given the depleted state of my log book following last week's big mileage, anything over 2,000 miles this week would be reasonable. If I haven't seen some indication that I'll get there by tomorrow afternoon, I suppose I'll go ahead and grab a week of vacation pay to boost my earnings. Either that or I'll start work on my new straight-to-DVD documentary - 7/15 Was an Inside Job. Probably I should stick with the truck driving.