10/13/09

Ahh yes, fun times in Cleveland today. You know, I spent a month's worth of trip planning on my route to this afternoon's consignee. Aside from all that online mapping, I made sure to check my routes against my atlas. Nothing was restricted at least until I got into the residential neighborhood where I was supposed to deliver. So I followed I-90 into town. I took the exit for the Cleveland Memorial Shoreway (US-6/20). I proceeded westward. There were numerous signs advising that "thru trucks" were not allowed, but I was not going through. I was making a local delivery so I paid them no heed. Then there was a sign stating that "all trucks" must exit at 45th Street. Well, shit. There goes all of my meticulous route planning.

I had no idea where 45th Street would take me, but I knew that I needed to continue westward to reach my destination. There was a quick little jog to the south and then I wound up heading west on Detroit Avenue (Alt US-6). I remembered Detroit Avenue from last night's internet cut and paste session, so at least I had that going for me... which is nice. I drove along until I saw a stop light and then hung a right on 65th Street. Legal or not? We may never know. It was a tight little mutha though. I can tell you that much. More of that staring at motorists until they back their asses up and whatnot. Oh well, I got a job to do.


65th Street wasn't terribly bad. It was residential until I got closer to the railroad tracks, where some businesses are located, but it was plenty wide enough for my truck. From that point I was able to resume the directions that I wrote down last night. The run-down little warehouse from last night's post was in fact 7201 Father Caruso. There was a local truck in the dock. It had the name of that plastics company from 78th Street on the door. And so it comes full circle...

A sign on the door instructed me to call a phone number, after which a guy came over and pointed me to another warehouse around the corner on 73rd Street. My less than impressive display of backing skills got me into the docks after a little while (facing yet another skinny residential street). Then the aforementioned guy had me unloaded in fairly short order. I was #1 on the board once I sent in my empty call. That's always nice. Without anywhere in particular to go and not really enjoying the prospect of cruising the streets of Cleveland, I pulled out onto 73rd, backed up along the curb, and set the brakes. Screw it. If nothing else, at least I was pointed toward Detroit Avenue and hopefully an easy exit from that neighborhood whenever the next assignment came through. Oh, that assignment came through all right. After about an hour I got beeped with a run picking up tomorrow. Since the easiest way out of Cleveland for me would have been to go westward, of course the load would be picking up in Lordstown, back to the east.



I submit to you that there is no good way to get a tractor-trailer combination to the southeast of Cleveland when you start from that neighborhood up by the waterfront. What a debacle that turned out to be. I even did more of that map checking and such before I took off. Go down to Detroit Avenue and take a left... trees overhanging the corner, making the already sharp turn a blind one as well. Go over to US-42 and take a right... double parked cars forcing me onto the wrong side of the road here and there. Go down to Denison Avenue and take a left... okay, the blame falls squarely on me for this one. What a colossally stupid idea that was. I think I should start traveling with a big neon sign that says, "If you see me approaching the intersection, you might as well start backing up." Holy smokes, that one was tight. They just had to go and put those light poles on the corners, didn't they? God forbid those spoiled brats walk in the dark or something. The line of cars on Denison was cooperative, dutifully backing up and waiting for me to clear the turn. The one exception was the dude in the pickup truck at the front of the line. He decided to play the old 'back up two feet, wait a while, back up another foot, wait a while...' game.

From that point forward though, my routing worked out nicely. I dropped onto OH-176 to the south and then caught I-480 out of town. My brief stop at the service plaza on the turnpike left me a little confused. The (very underrated) shower facilities have those eco-friendly instant-on faucets on the sinks. So I had to hold one hand in front of the faucet to keep the water coming out in order to use my other hand to rinse the whiskers from my razor. What a pain in the ass. Then, for no apparent reason, the thing just completely stopped working. I don't know what that was all about. Luckily I had just about finished shaving by that point in time. Also luckily, the 8,000-psi power washer of a shower head was putting out plenty of hot water and didn't shut off while I was all lathered up. (For your own sake, don't try to picture that.)

Then I made the last fifteen mile hop over to the Con-way yard in Lordstown. I dropped my empty and started to write down directions for my next trip. I'll be leaving here tomorrow afternoon and going to Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. That part is all well and good but the schedule is another head scratcher. Pickup - 10/14 - 1300, deliver - 10/15 - 0600. Maybe math is optional for people with their eyes on a freight scheduling career or something. Think it over for a minute. The trip is 576 miles, including plenty of mountainous terrain and congested areas and such. Surely it won't take more than eleven hours though, so that's fine. But... the Con-way terminal in Shrewsbury closes at 10pm. What if it takes nine and a half hours to get there and I show up at 10:30pm? Nobody home, can't drop my trailer.

So... get there at 10:30pm and take a ten hour break in the driveway, then drop in the morning? Nope. Delivery is scheduled for 6am. 8:30am (end of the ten hour break) is too late. Get there and wait for them to show up, then take the ten hour break? Nope. 14 hour clock runs out at 3am. Nobody there at that hour. Given that I've picked up a load here once before and things weren't running very efficiently, I won't hold out much hope that they'll have me rolling early. If you'll pardon the expression, what the hell, man? I can see no way that this situation can be worked out legally, aside from interrupting my break to drop the trailer and then going back to bed for a while. Even an eight hour break using a split would take me past 6am, assuming I arrived after 10pm.

Whatever dude. Maybe these chuckleheads in Lordstown will be on the ball tomorrow and I can get out of here early enough to make the drop before 10pm. Nothing I can do about it right now, so I suppose there's no point trying to make any sense of it. Part of me suspects that the Con-way paperwork will say that I'm not due until 5pm or something anyway. These CTL people are good for that kind of nonsense every now and then. One thing's for sure either way - I'll be on the damn freeway all day. No more of this urban trucking stuff for at least a day or so.

This week's paycheck isn't exactly kicking ass so far, what with a whopping 62 miles for today. I do have some decent northeast pay already though, with more coming tomorrow. There's plenty of time to get the dollars and cents up where they belong before the week is through.