10/19/09

Webster's dictionary will tell you that a mile is a unit of linear measurement equal to 5,280 feet. I will submit to you that not all miles are created equally. Each of the 495 that went on my odometer today had to count for a minimum of 10,000 feet.

As I sat and typed last night's post, I watched one of my CTL colleagues pull into the truck stop and park. He had delivered at the same consignee as I had last night, arriving in their lot as I was leaving. After typing that post I took myself off the board and went to sleep. I already had been parked for a couple of hours, so I needed around eight more hours off in order to complete a ten hour break. I slept for about six hours, then woke and watched my aforementioned colleague leave the truck stop before my break was over. I'm nobody's babysitter and I really don't give a damn one way or the other, but it seemed rather unlikely to me that he could have completed any kind of legal break in the time that he had spent parked a few spaces down from me. He sure as hell hadn't been at the truck stop for ten (or even eight) hours. I don't know. Maybe he had time on his 14 from last night or something. Just struck me as curious.

After completing my break, I sent in my 'on duty' form and then received an assignment within a half hour. I had to go back up to Neenah and grab a load heading to Ohio. If not for the fact that the forklift people's lunch break came in the middle of their loading of my trailer, I would have been rolling very quickly. As it was, I was in and out within an hour and a half. Not so bad.

I got past Milwaukee before traffic started to get really heavy but I was heading right into the usual afternoon shitstorm in Chicago. Since my last few trips through town have been less than impressive, I decided to try going around on I-294 this time. I don't know man. It may have saved a minute or two. It may have added a minute or two. It's hard to say. The traffic was jammed up solidly all the way down past I-290. Once I got out of the construction though, everything was moving freely. Sometimes I think they should just sink that whole region into Lake Michigan and be done with it.

Getting to the little town of De Graff, Ohio proved to be quite a tedious process in its own right. The Indiana portion of the drive, while a little slow in spots, wasn't too bad. I dropped out of South Bend on US-31, then took the US-20 loop over to US-33 and down to Fort Wayne. Into Ohio on US-30, no worries. Just the 55mph speed limit and watching the other trucks pass me with regularity. Then I got to the good stuff. OH-309 into Lima was a little slow, mainly due to slow cars and the fact that there was no room for me to pass them. From Lima to De Graff, I would have to estimate that it was around 30-40 miles and took well over an hour. This is after the Chicago nonsense and the 45-55mph speed zones for most of Indiana and Ohio. I was paid for 461 miles today. I left the shipper in Neenah with 9 miles on my trip odometer, having driven those 9 miles from the truck stop in Oshkosh to make my pickup. My odometer said 495 miles at the end of the day. Those 486 loaded miles took ten hours. Thus, not all miles are created equally.

I'm in a gravel area at the end of some hick street for the night. There are two warehouses here, with neither of them displaying an address nor the name of a business. In following my directions to get here, I was sent past a sign saying that no trucks were allowed on the residential street leading to the warehouses. Overall, a pretty half-assed arrangment, if you ask me. Despite all of this, I'm just thankful that there was a place here for me to park and go to bed. I had no 'Plan B.' I am due to deliver at 9am and there were no truck stops anywhere near here that I could see. Furthermore, the trip down here took so damn long that I wouldn't have been able to take a ten hour break and then deliver on time, even if there had been a truck stop on the way. Now, since I'm already here, I can just use a split. Eight hours in the bunk will get me enough time to check in and back into the loading dock. Then I'll need to take two more hours off in order to get back the time that I used today, but I can probably knock most of that out by taking a nap while they unload my trailer. I don't know. Whatever. I'll figure out the details in the morning. This was a long day. I'm tired.