7/20/09

I don't know how long exactly it takes until you stop seeing things that catch you by surprise in this line of work. Maybe you never really reach that point. I'm not referring to traffic and weather and such, since there will always be a random element involved with them. I mean the basic, day-to-day aspects of the job. For example, I've been at this gig a little over three years now. I would have to estimate that at least half the customers' locations are places that I'm seeing for the first time. Sooner or later, one would suspect, the majority of the stops would be return visits. Then there are situations like this morning...

I had arrived at the location for my first delivery some time around midnight last night. I hung around and killed some time and then decided to try catching a few winks. My CTL comrade said that he had a 4:30am appointment, so I set my alarm for 4:30am. My own dispatch said 5am but it probably made sense to be up and ready whenever the receivers got to work. Before my alarm went off I awoke to a knock on my door. The gentleman who did the knocking told me to go ahead and break my seal, back into the dock, and come inside. I pulled forward a few feet so that I would be able to open my doors and then walked to the back of the trailer. So far, nothing out of the ordinary. I broke the seal and opened the trailer doors. What the hell? Where's the freight?

I imagine that the early hour contributed to my mild sense of paranoia, as did the somewhat weird start to that trip back in Maryland. There's no way I took the wrong trailer, right? I ran back to my cab and grabbed the bills. The number on the seal most definitely matched the bills. I pulled my flashlight out of my side box and shone the beam into the trailer. There were a few boxes on two pallets all the way up in the nose. For two stops? What the hell? Given that the seal had at least been intact when the guy woke me, I had some bit of CYA insurance against being blamed for whatever had gone wrong, I thought to myself. I walked over and looked into the trailer of my coworker who had made the same trip. Packed full of boxes all the way to the tail. Curious indeed.

We went inside and signed the customer's log to indicate our arrival times and such. I mentioned to the receiver guy that I had no idea what was going on with my trailer. The bills said that I had 8,348 pounds of freight and it looked to me like I had about 80 pounds of freight. "It's like that every Monday," he assured me. I asked if he knew anything about a second stop. He said that the full trailer would be completely unloaded in Durham and the partial trailer would be going on to Raleigh once he took whatever was his. Obviously this eased my mind a great deal, since I had the partial trailer and I had been assigned to a second drop in Raleigh. Perhaps there was nothing wrong after all. He walked into my trailer and took a look at the few boxes inside. "I'll see you later," he said as he motioned toward the door with his hand. So they sent me to make a first drop even though I had no freight for that first drop? "They always screw it up on Mondays," he replied. Alrighty then. Three years and counting... first time I've ever seen that one.

I closed and re-sealed the trailer, then hit the road for Raleigh. My appointment there was for 6:30am but I figured I might as well knock out the short trip before the traffic started to pick up. There were a few tight turns and skinny lanes and such, so this turned out to be a good call. I pulled into the consignee's lot at 5am and got backed into an open dock. It was a pretty tight lot so the backing took me a little while. One more reason that I was good to arrive early, I suppose. I sat around waiting for some sign of life, but never saw any indication that anybody was around. At 6:30am I decided to go for a walk and see what I might find, since that's when my company seemed to think that I would be getting unloaded. If I could get rid of my two pallets quickly enough, there might still be a chance to catch an assignment before my 14 hours ran out.

Nobody answered the doorbell and the sign on the door said that they opened at 8am. Beauty. I walked back out to my truck and started to type a message on my satellite unit. Just then a car pulled into the lot next to me and a guy walked into the door with the '8am' sign. I gave him a few minutes to get settled in and then tried the door again. It was unlocked, I walked in, he grabbed a pallet jack, I opened the trailer doors, he pulled his two pallets, and that was that.

Parked in a dirt lot adjacent to the customer in Raleigh, I took a nap for a while and then woke to find that my 14 hours had expired without a new assignment. Bummer. I went for a walk and found a gas station with a convenience store so that I could stave off starvation. With a mere 30-40 pounds of body fat at my disposal, I can't afford to mess around, you know. By the time I got back to my truck I had an assignment waiting. Oh goody. Looks like I'm stuck in this pain in the ass pattern for another day. I have to pick up in Greensboro at 2am and then make two drops in Raleigh tomorrow morning. 80 miles to go pick up the load and then another 80 miles to come back to Raleigh... not exactly a huge day of work. I will get my extra $35 for the second drop though. Whatever.

After this next run, I'm pre-planned on one picking up in Raleigh on Wednesday morning. That one will be going 800+ miles up to Illinois for a Thursday delivery, so maybe this week won't be a lost cause. It will have outpaced last week, with two and a half days to go, for what little that's worth.

After seeing this pic on the web this morning, I'm thinking it might be about time to find a wife and churn out a couple of mini-Godfathers. They apparently come in handy on weekends...