10/14/09

I don't know if there was an official competition to determine who was responsible for my quasi-illegal schedule from Ohio to Massachusetts. In the unofficial competition though, our guys won. Woo hoo! The Con-way Freight schedule had the load picking up at 4pm and delivering at 6am. A quick pen and pencil session will show that this is a 14 hour window and juuust within the law. Our Truckload gang decided to work in the 1pm pickup time for some reason.

I woke this morning and decided to see if the load might be ready early, hoping to avoid the whole legality question entirely. The load was ready shortly after 11am and I was hooked up and rolling by 11:30am. Beauty. So, in a sense, by giving me the screwy 1pm pickup time, the Truckload folks may have indirectly gotten me a chance to deliver tonight. Yeah, in a sense.

I was keeping an eye on my progress every hour and pretty consistently maintaining a 60mph average speed out of Ohio and through Pennsylvania. At 1:30pm I had only covered 115 miles but at every other bottom of the hour check I was right on the 60mph pace. It was looking like I would reach Shrewsbury just after 9pm and make my drop well before the terminal closed at 10pm. Cue road construction... now.

Outside Bristol, the two left lanes of I-84 were closed. No big deal, right? Everyone merges over and we continue on our way. Thirty minutes later, I had made it through the two miles of construction. Okay then, still shouldn't be too hard to reach Shrewsbury before 10pm. Just gotta get past Hartford and then the speed limit will be up to 65mph for the rest of the trip. Cue more road construction... now.

For the sake of a little variety, it was the two right lanes that were closed in Hartford. Same deal though. Nobody knows how to merge. More accurately, they most likely know how to merge but simply choose not to do so. People have to stay in the lanes that are closed until they reach the cones and then jam up the road for everyone. Peckerheads. That logjam was a little smaller than the first though, and there was still an outside chance that I could reach Shrewsbury before 10pm.

As I rolled up US-20 and started looking for my destination, I spotted an LTL terminal on the left but the area was pretty dark. I had no idea where I might turn around if I missed the terminal, so I decided to step on the brakes and hang a left. Estes. Not Con-way. Shit. Somehow I managed to do a complete 270º spin in the confined space of the driveway and get myself back onto US-20 headed in the right direction. Sweet. Four or five more minutes wasted though as I got turned around and then waited for an opening in the traffic.

A little further up the road I saw the nice bright sign for the Con-way terminal and swung into their driveway... at 10:03pm... and found a locked gate. Shit. At least my driving for the night was done so that an eight hour break would get me to 6am (the scheduled delivery time). Then I could make the drop and take another two hours off to complete my split. I decided to try the dispatch office and see if anyone was still in there though, just in case. Yep. The guy from the office said that it would be no trouble to make the drop tonight. He came out and unlocked the gate, then showed me where to drop the trailer. Further to that, since the truck stop down the street is overloaded at this late hour, he said that I could park my truck outside the gate and spend the night, then come in and grab an empty trailer in the morning. Sounds like a plan, my man.

I sent in my 'dropped trailer' form and got the obligatory error message since I chose not to go on the board tonight. The error message says that we have to call Joplin when we don't get on the board but they're always short on manpower at night, so I just sent a satellite message instead of calling. The reply that I received said simply, "Joe thanks," so I guess that means there's no problem. Most people there call me Joseph, so I felt at least a little special this time around.

I'm a pretty skeptical dude for the most part and tonight is no different. I just swallowed a couple of NyQuil liquid gel capsule things in hopes that I'll wake without the sore throat, headache, and runny nose that I have at the moment. I'm skeptical because there must have been a reason to endure the awful taste of NyQuil for all those years growing up, right? You couldn't possibly get the same effect in a flavorless capsule. Here's hoping that my skepticism is unfounded. I'm feeling good and shitty right about now. Ten hours of rest and a couple of blue-green gel things... we'll see.