While I was sitting in the drivers' room in Alabama a few days ago, waiting to get loaded, one of the other guys was talking about how he was going to take some local gig paying beaucoup bucks and so forth. I mentioned that the jobs back home seem to be paying less and less as time goes by. In my daily e-mail of job listings, I often see ads for local positions requiring a CDL-A and hazmat, paying in the $12-$15 hourly range. The same jobs were paying at least $19 an hour as recently as last year. Today I saw a listing that seemed a lot better. Home daily, making $71K-$84K? That's better than a kick in the balls. The 70 hour work weeks would suck though. Oh, and it's in North Dakota. I won't say that you couldn't pay me enough because there's a price for everything, but it would take quite a bit more to convince me to live in North Dakota.
This afternoon brought a nice and easy drive through Pennsylvania and over to the New Jersey Turnpike. I needed to use the restroom and didn't really feel like going into Connecticut today anyway, so the Vince Lombardi service plaza was the end of the line. I've never stopped here before, so I was surprised to find that it's actually a pretty nice place. Clean showers, clean restrooms, etc. I hadn't expected that. Plus I get the benefit of a nice fast internet connection so I'm able to watch the Tigers as they're losing another one to those degenerates from Boston.
Tomorrow's drive should be somewhere around 200 miles. I know that there's a truck stop on US-1 somewhere in the general area of where I'm delivering on Monday. I stopped there once before. This time I should actually get some better value for my company's $6.
Now, if you'll excuse me, the Tigers have just tied the game so it's time to wrap this thing up.
Wasn't it supposed to rain today?
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Friday, May 14, 2010
5/14/10
It has been almost nine months since I declared inependence from excessive text messages. For some people who were habitual offenders, there was a period of adjustment before they got used to the three-message limit. Others adapted more quickly. The net result has been a lot less annoyance and wasted time on my end, plus perhaps a few entertaining phone calls that otherwise wouldn't have taken place. One particular textaholic, however, has basically washed her hands of me. Casualties of war, I suppose. Since I consider some of you to be polite company, we'll just call her a friend of mine. She's not really much of a friend, as evidenced by the fact that she doesn't call anymore, but I lead a solitary life and I have no dignity. You can do the math from there.
So yeah, despite the fact that I haven't heard from her in a while, I gave her a call this morning. She lives near the truck stop in Harrisonburg, Virginia, in case you're still not pickin' up what I'm puttin' down here. (Like I said, I have no dignity.) Alas, I got no answer and she never returned my call. So I continued onward to the Pilot in Hagerstown, Maryland before deciding to call it a day. Now we're left to analyze - was the crackdown on excessive text messages worth it? After weighing the pros and cons, I have to say yes. The policy has been worthwhile. One more night alone at a truck stop is no big deal in the grand scheme of things. From this broad, we would have been talking literally hundreds of text messages over the past nine months. And she never really had anything useful to say. Life is a series of tradeoffs and so forth.
The drive was about as good as could be expected, given the weight of my payload and the hilly terrain. If I was a little ahead of schedule after yesterday's drive, then I must be well ahead of schedule after today's. My paid miles for this trip were 1,279 and I've driven something like 830 so far, so I basically have two days left in which to drive seven or eight hours. My kinda pace.
I've been sleeping late and staying up late (as I'm prone to do), so I'm not sure that I'll be inclined to go all the way into New England tomorrow. Given that it's a weekend, I could probably find parking at night but there doesn't seem to be a reason to try. Things with me are always subject to change, but I'm thinking I'll probably stop short tomorrow and leave a few hours of work for Sunday. That should work out just groovy.
Wasn't it supposed to rain today?
So yeah, despite the fact that I haven't heard from her in a while, I gave her a call this morning. She lives near the truck stop in Harrisonburg, Virginia, in case you're still not pickin' up what I'm puttin' down here. (Like I said, I have no dignity.) Alas, I got no answer and she never returned my call. So I continued onward to the Pilot in Hagerstown, Maryland before deciding to call it a day. Now we're left to analyze - was the crackdown on excessive text messages worth it? After weighing the pros and cons, I have to say yes. The policy has been worthwhile. One more night alone at a truck stop is no big deal in the grand scheme of things. From this broad, we would have been talking literally hundreds of text messages over the past nine months. And she never really had anything useful to say. Life is a series of tradeoffs and so forth.
The drive was about as good as could be expected, given the weight of my payload and the hilly terrain. If I was a little ahead of schedule after yesterday's drive, then I must be well ahead of schedule after today's. My paid miles for this trip were 1,279 and I've driven something like 830 so far, so I basically have two days left in which to drive seven or eight hours. My kinda pace.
I've been sleeping late and staying up late (as I'm prone to do), so I'm not sure that I'll be inclined to go all the way into New England tomorrow. Given that it's a weekend, I could probably find parking at night but there doesn't seem to be a reason to try. Things with me are always subject to change, but I'm thinking I'll probably stop short tomorrow and leave a few hours of work for Sunday. That should work out just groovy.
Wasn't it supposed to rain today?
Thursday, May 13, 2010
5/13/10
Akron, Ohio and Chattanooga, Tennessee. Off the top of my head, these two cities have the most disproportionate afternoon traffic in the country. Not necessarily the heaviest traffic. That would belong to places like Chicago, Miami, New York, Los Angeles and, ahem, Austin. But for two cities that aren't all that big, Akron and Chattanooga seem to get bizarrely congested. According to the mighty W, Akron has a population of slightly over 200,000 people. Also according to the W, Chattanooga has something less than 200,000 people. Hit either town in the afternoon and you'll be lucky to maintain a 25mph pace. This inconsequential bit of half-baked analysis comes to you this evening courtesy of today's route. I got to Chattanooga at 3:20pm and it was a parking lot. No apparent reason for it. Just traffic at a dead stop.
Aside from that little bit of annoyance, the day's drive wasn't bad. I caught Knoxville (a much bigger city than Chattanooga) right at 5pm so the traffic was heavy, but it was moving at 55mph. Since the nominal speed limit there is 55mph, I just hung out in the right lane and let people make their way around me.
I was looking forward to listening to the Tigers tonight once I got parked in White Pine, Tennessee. Alas, I forgot that today was Thursday and the game was in Detroit. They play day games up there on Thursdays. Bummer. The boys won again though, taking three out of four from the Evil Empire this week. Not too shabby.
I covered a little over 400 miles today, so I guess I'm ahead of the required pace to reach Massachusetts by Sunday night. Depending on how the next couple of days go, I may just finish the trip on Saturday and take a day off. Or maybe I'll just work 4-5 hours a day for the next few days. You know how it goes. We'll just hit the road whenever the sun wakes me tomorrow and then let the chips fall where they may.
Aside from that little bit of annoyance, the day's drive wasn't bad. I caught Knoxville (a much bigger city than Chattanooga) right at 5pm so the traffic was heavy, but it was moving at 55mph. Since the nominal speed limit there is 55mph, I just hung out in the right lane and let people make their way around me.
I was looking forward to listening to the Tigers tonight once I got parked in White Pine, Tennessee. Alas, I forgot that today was Thursday and the game was in Detroit. They play day games up there on Thursdays. Bummer. The boys won again though, taking three out of four from the Evil Empire this week. Not too shabby.
I covered a little over 400 miles today, so I guess I'm ahead of the required pace to reach Massachusetts by Sunday night. Depending on how the next couple of days go, I may just finish the trip on Saturday and take a day off. Or maybe I'll just work 4-5 hours a day for the next few days. You know how it goes. We'll just hit the road whenever the sun wakes me tomorrow and then let the chips fall where they may.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
5/12/10
Given that yesterday's driving was cut short by my late assignment and the 14 hour rule, forcing me to use most of my hours on the way to Alabama this morning, what were the odds that I could have used an extra hour at the end of the day today? Give yourself a gold star if you said that the odds were pretty damned good. Yeah, trucking.
It was raining like a mutha by the time my ten hour break was up and I got rolling this morning. At such an early hour though, I was able to get past St. Louis without any major delays and then the rest of the route was pretty rustic. The rain stopped by the time I reached Tennessee and the sun was shining for the rest of the day. I followed mainly the same route that I did on my last trip through Alabama, with two minor exceptions. First was that I didn't miss the truck bypass in Jackson this time around. Second was that I angled down on AL-157 from US-72 instead of taking the more northerly route again, since today's delivery was down along I-65. All in all, not a bad ride. With only 10,000 pounds in the wagon, I'd actually have to say it was nice and easy.
I checked in at the consignee and dropped my loaded trailer, then rolled over to grab an empty. The security guard had written down the numbers of two trailers that were available to me. My company had sent me the number of the trailer that had been at the location for the longest time, suggesting that I take it. The general concept here is that the trailers should be cycled in and out so that they all stay in the flow of freight and none of them get neglected. Fair enough. The trailer that the company suggested happened to be one of those that the security guard wrote down, so all was well. I backed under it, connected the air and electric lines, and started to check it over.
Everything on the outside looked good. Then I opened the doors. Not cool. It was full of garbage, for one thing, but I could handle that. Some of those warehouse guys are real dicks about leaving our trailers in a filthy state. The real problem was that the floor of the trailer had a 10" hole in it. That's not an embellishment and there's nothing to interpret. A 10" section of one of the boards was completely missing. Look inside the trailer and you see the ground. How much do I love calling Joplin? Let me count the ways...
First step - find out what the road service guys have to say. If the trailer could be fixed on site, then they just needed to send someone out and I could take the other trailer. If it needed to be taken to a trailer shop, then either I or someone else would have to drag it out of there. Dial the number, wait on hold... The road service guy told me that the preferred approach would be to pull it down to a shop near Birmingham. He asked if I was going to be headed in that direction. Umm, dunno yet. Okay, so we need to talk to my fleet manager and see what he has to say.
Second step - find out what the dispatchers have to say. Transferred to my fleet manager's extension, wait on hold... one caller ahead of me... wait on hold... wait on hold. After twenty minutes, I chose to press '1' and be connected to the next available fleet manager. The guy who took my call seemed to have his shit together, which was nice. I gave him the rundown on the situation and he asked if I would rather go to the shop or get on the board. That's an obvious one (sitting at 673 miles for the week on Wednesday afternoon), but I do occasionally try to do things the right way. I obviously wasn't the first person to find a hole in that trailer, but if they had no work for me today then I might as well be the last. He decided to defer to the load planners. That way neither he nor I would be on the hook for either (a) leaving a shitty trailer behind or (b) leaving the company without enough available trucks in Alabama.
Third step - find out what the load planners have to say. I waited on hold while they had a brief conversation. "He said take a different empty," came the explanation. Alrighty then.
Fourth step - bring the road service guys up to speed on the situation. Transferred back over, wait on hold... I got a different guy in the road service department this time around. He said that the guy with whom I spoke the first time was busy with another call, so I had to give this second guy a summary of the situation. I had been told to take an empty, meaning that there was something that I needed to haul, so it wasn't my place to argue. I just wanted the shop guys to be aware of the situation so the trailer didn't sit there getting ignored for all eternity. He said that he would note the conversation on his computer and he asked me to send the 'going to shop' form with the trailer number and the location. Sure thing dude.
After I rolled down the street to the local truck stop, I got a message saying to call the shop regarding the form that I had just sent. This message was sent by a third road service dude. Something about the right hand knowing what the left hand is doing comes to mind at this point. I was on hold for fifteen minutes and the call of nature was not going to be denied, so I gave up on the call. Screw it. If they do any kind of documentation up there, then they can figure out what was the deal. I talked to three different people and sent the satellite message as directed. Good enough.
Shortly after I got back out to my truck, I received a new assignment. Math time. When I sent in my empty call, I stated that I had 2.25 hours available. I actually had 2.5, but our dispatch system rounds the numbers off and I didn't want to deal with any shenanigans. If the computer thinks I have 3 hours and I only have 2.5, well, you can see what I'm saying here. So as far as they knew I had 2.25 hours left to drive today. This should mean that the computer shows 2 hours for me. My next pickup was in Demopolis - 161 miles away. So what is that, an 80mph dispatch? Even with the 2.5 that I actually had, it was a 64mph dispatch. That's pushing it. But given that they were short on trucks down here and I was short on miles this week, I was determined to make it work if at all possible. I had to employ the good old 4:08pm = 4:15pm routine on the front end and the 6:51pm = 6:45pm routine on the back end but I pulled it off. Legal and everything.
My pickup appointment was actually for midnight, but midnight would be well after today's 14 hour clock had expired. I wound up getting loaded after only a few hours at the shipper though. My 14 hours had indeed been used up by then, so the best I could do was drive down the street to the local truck stop and call it a night. Good enough for me. This was a long day.
This run will take me up to Massachusetts for a Monday morning delivery. It's yet another 44,000 pounder, so the hilly route will be tedious to say the least. Aside from that though, it's not a bad deal. Almost $40 in northeast pay, no alarm clock until Monday morning, and I'll get to hit that Bronx/Connecticut crap on the weekend when the traffic should be at least a little lighter than normal. Decent enough outcome, all told. As long as we can crack 2,100 miles on a slow week and mix in a few busy ones, I won't have to resort to Plan B.
It was raining like a mutha by the time my ten hour break was up and I got rolling this morning. At such an early hour though, I was able to get past St. Louis without any major delays and then the rest of the route was pretty rustic. The rain stopped by the time I reached Tennessee and the sun was shining for the rest of the day. I followed mainly the same route that I did on my last trip through Alabama, with two minor exceptions. First was that I didn't miss the truck bypass in Jackson this time around. Second was that I angled down on AL-157 from US-72 instead of taking the more northerly route again, since today's delivery was down along I-65. All in all, not a bad ride. With only 10,000 pounds in the wagon, I'd actually have to say it was nice and easy.
I checked in at the consignee and dropped my loaded trailer, then rolled over to grab an empty. The security guard had written down the numbers of two trailers that were available to me. My company had sent me the number of the trailer that had been at the location for the longest time, suggesting that I take it. The general concept here is that the trailers should be cycled in and out so that they all stay in the flow of freight and none of them get neglected. Fair enough. The trailer that the company suggested happened to be one of those that the security guard wrote down, so all was well. I backed under it, connected the air and electric lines, and started to check it over.
Everything on the outside looked good. Then I opened the doors. Not cool. It was full of garbage, for one thing, but I could handle that. Some of those warehouse guys are real dicks about leaving our trailers in a filthy state. The real problem was that the floor of the trailer had a 10" hole in it. That's not an embellishment and there's nothing to interpret. A 10" section of one of the boards was completely missing. Look inside the trailer and you see the ground. How much do I love calling Joplin? Let me count the ways...
First step - find out what the road service guys have to say. If the trailer could be fixed on site, then they just needed to send someone out and I could take the other trailer. If it needed to be taken to a trailer shop, then either I or someone else would have to drag it out of there. Dial the number, wait on hold... The road service guy told me that the preferred approach would be to pull it down to a shop near Birmingham. He asked if I was going to be headed in that direction. Umm, dunno yet. Okay, so we need to talk to my fleet manager and see what he has to say.
Second step - find out what the dispatchers have to say. Transferred to my fleet manager's extension, wait on hold... one caller ahead of me... wait on hold... wait on hold. After twenty minutes, I chose to press '1' and be connected to the next available fleet manager. The guy who took my call seemed to have his shit together, which was nice. I gave him the rundown on the situation and he asked if I would rather go to the shop or get on the board. That's an obvious one (sitting at 673 miles for the week on Wednesday afternoon), but I do occasionally try to do things the right way. I obviously wasn't the first person to find a hole in that trailer, but if they had no work for me today then I might as well be the last. He decided to defer to the load planners. That way neither he nor I would be on the hook for either (a) leaving a shitty trailer behind or (b) leaving the company without enough available trucks in Alabama.
Third step - find out what the load planners have to say. I waited on hold while they had a brief conversation. "He said take a different empty," came the explanation. Alrighty then.
Fourth step - bring the road service guys up to speed on the situation. Transferred back over, wait on hold... I got a different guy in the road service department this time around. He said that the guy with whom I spoke the first time was busy with another call, so I had to give this second guy a summary of the situation. I had been told to take an empty, meaning that there was something that I needed to haul, so it wasn't my place to argue. I just wanted the shop guys to be aware of the situation so the trailer didn't sit there getting ignored for all eternity. He said that he would note the conversation on his computer and he asked me to send the 'going to shop' form with the trailer number and the location. Sure thing dude.
After I rolled down the street to the local truck stop, I got a message saying to call the shop regarding the form that I had just sent. This message was sent by a third road service dude. Something about the right hand knowing what the left hand is doing comes to mind at this point. I was on hold for fifteen minutes and the call of nature was not going to be denied, so I gave up on the call. Screw it. If they do any kind of documentation up there, then they can figure out what was the deal. I talked to three different people and sent the satellite message as directed. Good enough.
Shortly after I got back out to my truck, I received a new assignment. Math time. When I sent in my empty call, I stated that I had 2.25 hours available. I actually had 2.5, but our dispatch system rounds the numbers off and I didn't want to deal with any shenanigans. If the computer thinks I have 3 hours and I only have 2.5, well, you can see what I'm saying here. So as far as they knew I had 2.25 hours left to drive today. This should mean that the computer shows 2 hours for me. My next pickup was in Demopolis - 161 miles away. So what is that, an 80mph dispatch? Even with the 2.5 that I actually had, it was a 64mph dispatch. That's pushing it. But given that they were short on trucks down here and I was short on miles this week, I was determined to make it work if at all possible. I had to employ the good old 4:08pm = 4:15pm routine on the front end and the 6:51pm = 6:45pm routine on the back end but I pulled it off. Legal and everything.
My pickup appointment was actually for midnight, but midnight would be well after today's 14 hour clock had expired. I wound up getting loaded after only a few hours at the shipper though. My 14 hours had indeed been used up by then, so the best I could do was drive down the street to the local truck stop and call it a night. Good enough for me. This was a long day.
This run will take me up to Massachusetts for a Monday morning delivery. It's yet another 44,000 pounder, so the hilly route will be tedious to say the least. Aside from that though, it's not a bad deal. Almost $40 in northeast pay, no alarm clock until Monday morning, and I'll get to hit that Bronx/Connecticut crap on the weekend when the traffic should be at least a little lighter than normal. Decent enough outcome, all told. As long as we can crack 2,100 miles on a slow week and mix in a few busy ones, I won't have to resort to Plan B.
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