If you enjoyed the warm and sunny weather in Michigan today, you're welcome. I found it in Wisconsin yesterday and decided to bring it with me. The folks at the Fenian Godfather Weather Service were kind enough to pull a few strings, so here we are.
It turned out that the drive down to this afternoon's shipper took only five hours, so I had another six hours available to me under the 70 hour rule once I was loaded. My dispatched miles from Remington to Taylor were 297 so the usual 47mph dispatch would have had to factor in a ten hour break. Once I sent in my loaded call though, the powers that be decided to play hardball and dispatched me to be in Taylor tonight. Okay then. Guess we're heading home. No stopping to watch football this time around.
The next hour was spent looking forward to a certain radio broadcast. The following four hours were spent resisting the urge to drive my truck into a bridge abutment every time I heard the words from my XM radio. Then the last hour was spent looking forward to some cold refreshment once I got home. Highs and lows, I suppose.
For various reasons it's about time for bed now, so we'll have to leave it there. But for what it's worth, I'm more fired up about next weekend than I ever was before. I've always loved a good fight and plenty of people around here will be talking shit for the next several days. Hopefully Our Lady's lads will come through for me this time around. I'm behind them 100%.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Friday, November 6, 2009
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.
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.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
11/5/09
How badly does the city of Chicago suck? I think this is one of the great questions of the modern age. In case you haven't guessed yet, my plan to sneak through in the early afternoon didn't quite work as planned. The place was a freaking parking lot. Ah well, what can you do? Just a day in the life.
The rest of the trip, before and after Chicago, was pretty nice. Foot to the floor, light traffic, good weather. My seven and a half available hours allowed me to cover 400 miles, reaching the Petro in Portage, Wisconsin, along with a fuel stop and a post-trip inspection. Not a bad day's work.
I'll have around 170 miles to cover in the morning before 9am Central in order to keep my delivery appointment, assuming that tomorrow is in fact the correct day. I already mentioned to you that the paperwork says Monday, but I do have a drop number and my company is usually pretty good about getting the appointments right with this particular customer. There have been a couple of exceptions over the last few years though, so we'll see.
After my drop/hook in the morning, I'll have somewhere around six hours available to use tomorrow. Then I pick up a steady stream of days in the 7-10 hour range. This should be plenty to allow me to handle whatever kind of schedule comes my way for the weekend. A delivery in Michigan a few days from now would obviously be quite welcome if it's in the cards. This last month or so on the road has been a pretty productive one, but once I know that I'll be heading home soon I tend to get a case of short-timers disease. The frosty cold goodness at Kelly's pub is calling my name, you know.
The rest of the trip, before and after Chicago, was pretty nice. Foot to the floor, light traffic, good weather. My seven and a half available hours allowed me to cover 400 miles, reaching the Petro in Portage, Wisconsin, along with a fuel stop and a post-trip inspection. Not a bad day's work.
I'll have around 170 miles to cover in the morning before 9am Central in order to keep my delivery appointment, assuming that tomorrow is in fact the correct day. I already mentioned to you that the paperwork says Monday, but I do have a drop number and my company is usually pretty good about getting the appointments right with this particular customer. There have been a couple of exceptions over the last few years though, so we'll see.
After my drop/hook in the morning, I'll have somewhere around six hours available to use tomorrow. Then I pick up a steady stream of days in the 7-10 hour range. This should be plenty to allow me to handle whatever kind of schedule comes my way for the weekend. A delivery in Michigan a few days from now would obviously be quite welcome if it's in the cards. This last month or so on the road has been a pretty productive one, but once I know that I'll be heading home soon I tend to get a case of short-timers disease. The frosty cold goodness at Kelly's pub is calling my name, you know.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
11/4/09
If your party ran a Notre Dame graduate for governor in 2009, you won 100% of the time. I'm still on a general strike against political talk, but I'll bet ole Dick Morris didn't spot that trend.
I tend to view 4:15am as the appropriate time to fall asleep, so you can probably guess how I felt about getting rolling at that time today. It was definitely a good idea to get out of Jersey City ahead of all of the traffic though. After a few hours I ducked off at a rest area in Pennsylvania and took a nice nap to get myself back on track. When I awoke I found that the cops had turned the rest area into a weigh station. Peckerheads. It took almost ten minutes to get out of there and back on the road.
The rest of the trip was pretty ho-hum. My 17,000 pound payload didn't drag me too badly in the hills, the weather was decent, and the traffic was reasonably light all the way across I-80. The hours that I had available were enough to get me to the last service plaza on the Ohio turnpike, so overall a pretty productive day.
The hours that I pick up tomorrow should get me within a couple hundred miles of my destination. Then I'll have to try to get some rest ahead of one more pre-dawn road trip on Friday. Tomorrow morning though, I think I'm sleeping in. There's not much sense in trying to get past Chicago during the morning rush so I'll just leave here a little later. Maybe I can cruise through in the late morning or early afternoon a little more easily than I have the last few times around. Maybe.
Guess it's time to go and watch the Matsui show now. Since I have no rooting interest, I was kinda hoping for a Game 7.
I tend to view 4:15am as the appropriate time to fall asleep, so you can probably guess how I felt about getting rolling at that time today. It was definitely a good idea to get out of Jersey City ahead of all of the traffic though. After a few hours I ducked off at a rest area in Pennsylvania and took a nice nap to get myself back on track. When I awoke I found that the cops had turned the rest area into a weigh station. Peckerheads. It took almost ten minutes to get out of there and back on the road.
The rest of the trip was pretty ho-hum. My 17,000 pound payload didn't drag me too badly in the hills, the weather was decent, and the traffic was reasonably light all the way across I-80. The hours that I had available were enough to get me to the last service plaza on the Ohio turnpike, so overall a pretty productive day.
The hours that I pick up tomorrow should get me within a couple hundred miles of my destination. Then I'll have to try to get some rest ahead of one more pre-dawn road trip on Friday. Tomorrow morning though, I think I'm sleeping in. There's not much sense in trying to get past Chicago during the morning rush so I'll just leave here a little later. Maybe I can cruise through in the late morning or early afternoon a little more easily than I have the last few times around. Maybe.
Guess it's time to go and watch the Matsui show now. Since I have no rooting interest, I was kinda hoping for a Game 7.
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