11/19/09

Given the choice between falling asleep at 5am and waking at 5am, I'll take the first option every time. Early morning wakeup calls are the bane of my existence. That being said, my one minor concern about getting trapped into an overnight schedule this week was that it might wreck my weekend. A full week of graveyard shifts isn't so bad once you settle into the routine. On a short week though, the act of delivering in the morning and then blowing the whole day on a ten hour break can be costly. It looks like I may end up being correct, although I hope otherwise.

By the time I was empty at 4:30am today, I was a little tired. I had been up all day yesterday, prepared to work, so the late night was an inconvenience but not a terrible one. I'm often awake until 4:30am for no particular reason, after all. So I bounced over to the local truck stop and found a place to park for a nap. My 14 hour clock was set to expire at 9:30am, so either I would get something before then or I would be forced to stay parked until after 2:45pm today.

Around 8am I received my new assignment. I will be picking up a load at the Con-way terminal on the south side of Florence, Kentucky tonight and passing it off to someone at our West Memphis terminal tomorrow morning. Good enough, as far as that goes. The miles are pretty solid and clearing the cities along that route during the overnight hours should be nice and easy. The one issue, as one might have guessed, was the scheduling. Normally they like us to arrive at the shipper, drop an empty trailer, take a ten hour break, and then make the run with a fresh clock. In my estimation though, I didn't think that I would be able get through Cincinnati at 8:30am and cover the rest of the 67 miles to the shipper, then drop my empty trailer by 9:30am. I would have to stay at the truck stop and finish out a ten hour break instead.

The deadhead and the loaded run combine for around 550 miles, so it won't be a problem to make the whole trip within one day's 11 driving hours and 14 hour on-duty window. Just a bit of an inconvenience for me and probably some kind of violation of protocol according to the suits, since I wasn't set up and staged for the load ten hours early. Whatever dude. Nothing I can do about it. I don't write the laws. The load is set to relay in West Memphis by 6:30am (my time) tomorrow, so I'll sit here in Monroe until 4:30pm and then head down to the shipper. It's a fairly small facility according to my recollection, meaning that they may need my empty trailer. If I can show up before 6pm I'll be giving them a three hour head start. That should be plenty.

Then we get to the more legitimate potential negative about the whole overnight scheduling deal. However the drive goes, my hours will be pretty well spent by the time I get to West Memphis. So I'll have to take ten hours of down time there, carrying me well into Friday afternoon before I can get back on the board. Terminals on weekends, as we've discussed plenty of times here, can be hit and miss. Sometimes there are sixty trucks and no freight and sometimes they hand you a choice of loads right away. Time will tell. In the interest of getting at least a few hundred bucks in net pay out of this week, I'm hoping for the latter.

Update:5:50pm
It's worth observing that, so far, the Con-way terminal in Walton, Kentucky is my new favorite. I thought that I had been here before but I was mistaken. Here's what we've learned about the place thus far: My directions were accurate and easy to follow. The yard appears to have been designed to allow trucks to navigate (novel concept). The terminal is large enough to operate efficiently but small enough that it's not an absolute zoo like the big city locations are. The drop area is not located directly across from any bizarre obstacles. And lastly, in a pleasant twist, the employees have all been polite and helpful. Eye contact, complete sentences, the whole nine yards. Consider me impressed. I'm supposed to check back with them in a few hours, so let's hope it continues.