11/6/09

There's just something about Wisconsin, it seems. As I sat last night reading the news of the day, I received a pre-planned assignment to pick up after this morning's drop. As usual, my delivery was scheduled for 9am (can't deliver early) and the next pickup time said 9:30am, 80 miles away in Bloomington, Minnesota. As always, I confirmed it. The run itself was going to require absolute efficiency on my part and some cooperation from the traffic gods, as it would use every single hour available to me under the 70 hour rule. It was set to deliver this evening in some town in Wisconsin that I can't spell. All good though. We can get 'er done.

On my way to the consignee this morning, I got a message from my fleet manager asking me to let him know what time I could reach the next shipper. I took a peek at the nearest mile marker and did some quick calculation, then replied that I should be there around 10am. Nothing further followed so I took this as a sign that everything was good. Then I got to the consignee. Check in, get the bills signed, drop my trailer, grab an emp... umm...



That ain't funny, dude. No freaking empties. How in the hell am I supposed to pick up my next load without an empty trailer? So I had to check back with the traffic people at the consignee. They told me to get lost for three hours, then come back and try again. Fantastic. I called my fleet manager to fill him in on the situation and then scooted over to the local truck stop to wait it out.

Since I apparently was the only one in the area able to pick up the next load, there was some uncertainty as to what would follow. My 14 hour clock would allow me to work until 7:30pm Central, so an hour and a half of driving to the shipper and five more hours to the consignee would back us up to 1pm. My three hour 'check back' time at this morning's consignee was 11:45am. Assuming that the shipper could wait for me and that it wouldn't take too long to get loaded, there was a chance that we could pull it off.

I sat at the truck stop and caught up on some e-mails. There was one from my mother, hidden among the usual barrage of dumb anti-Obama chain letters. Looks like Dad bagged a nice one this season. A darling of PETA, he is not.


I headed back over to the distribution center in Menomonie after a couple more hours, circled the drop lot a few times, and found nada. Instead of going back to the truck stop I decided to park at the edge of the lot and wait it out. Given the scheduling situation, I wanted to be ready to grab the first empty trailer that showed up as soon as it became available. I wouldn't want to be sitting at the truck stop when the spotter brought out a trailer, only to have one of my coworkers make a drop/hook and snag it while I wasn't around. So I sat... and waited. Lots of empty trailers cruising by. Knight, Schneider, Swift, Dart, you name it. No Con-way Truckload or CFI trailers though.

Once I sat for another hour without any luck, I sent a message letting my fleet manager know that there still were no empties. A short time later, the load out of Minnesota was unassigned. Bummer. Could have been a nice 400 miles tacked onto my week. With me sitting there and watching my Friday afternoon tick away, there could be no certainty that anything good would take its place. I did get a message from the detention people though, asking for my arrival and departure times. Maybe I'll get my $12 an hour or whatever it is.

At some point in the afternoon I went for a walk and saw that the only CFI trailer in a dock was the one that I dropped this morning. That can't be good. Usually those distribution centers have a bunch of our trailers floating around. I checked with the traffic control lady and she said that it was being unloaded and then it would be in the queue for the yard dog to pull. Okay then. Back to our regularly scheduled sitting.

Around 2:20pm a security lady in a pickup truck told me that I can't "camp out in the yard" and that I would have to leave. Yeah, clearly my pup tent and s'mores were a dead giveaway. Moron. I explained the situation to her and she said that I could park over by the traffic control office and check with the lady in there again. The gal in the office checked her computer and, this time, came up with the number of an empty. Yep, the one that I dropped this morning. Since it was finally empty and I had been there all day, she called the yard dog and asked him to put my trailer ahead of the others on his list so that I could leave. He did so very quickly and even dropped it right behind where I was parked. I just had to back under it and we were good to go.

Back over at the truck stop, I found myself on the board at #1. Could have been worse then, I suppose. Sometimes, on a Friday afternoon, the ready board can get a little crowded if there isn't enough freight to get everyone planned for the weekend. With my 14 hour clock having been reduced to a 5 hour clock, I sent in my detention times and then kicked back to see what was next.

Despite whatever you Drudge-reading neanderthals out there may think, global warming landed squarely in Wisconsin today. The temperature got into the 60's and the sun was shining brightly. Seasonal weather fluctuation? Phooey. I sprayed a can of Right Gard in the air last week. My dividend was paid today. Plus the truck stop next to the distribution center has a SubWay. All in all, if I was destined to get jerked around, this wasn't the worst time and place for it to happen.

After about an hour and a half on the board I received a new assignment. Those 400 miles that I lost this afternoon were replaced by a 437 mile deadhead to Remington, Indiana. From there I'll be heading to Taylor, Michigan. Since the load is bound for Canada and I'm a no-border-crossing kinda dude, we can assume that my home time will begin once I make it to the terminal. I hit the road right away and made it back to the Petro in Portage (where I spent last night) before my 14 hour clock ran out. Good enough.

The load in Remington is scheduled to pick up at 2pm. For obvious reasons (2:30pm kickoff), I'm going to show up early and see what happens. I know that these chuckleheads are going to dispatch me to arrive in Taylor at some goofy hour on Sunday morning, since I won't have the hours to get there tomorrow. They'll factor in a ten hour break and the computer will say 4:13am sounds good or something. So, that being the case, I would prefer to get some driving done early in the afternoon and then catch the football game during my ten hour break. If I can't get rolling until after 2pm, I'll probably just drive and listen on the radio again. Some of you may think that nothing is on the line against the middies since they broke the streak. If you try really hard though, you can believe that 2007 never happened.