11:45 - Wow, this is going to be one heck of a long day, if it goes the way I think it might. It looks as if they're considering having me drive to a drop yard and relay the load face-to-face with another driver. This is a load they're kind of paranoid about and they don't want me leaving it unsecured in an open drop yard. However, the place they want me to go is a whopping 668 miles away; to get there within my eleven hours, I'd have to average 60.7 mph. Yes, my truck now only does 60 on cruise control, but I can use the accelerator to go 63. Of course, I can round a few things in my favor to add some time; making up half an hour means I only have to average 58.
Either way, it's going to be ridiculously close, probably questionably legal, but if I make it down there tonight I'm less than a two hour drive from home, which I will be more than happy to do in the morning, once I can legally move the truck again. I'm currently on hold, waiting to talk to the trip planners; hopefully they'll have some good news or a bright idea. At least I have a few pieces of information to give them. Specifically, the shipper said they are ahead of schedule and might be able to load me immediately after lunch, but they can only guarantee my 2:15PM appointment. Once they start, it should take about an hour. This means that I shouldn't be out of here any later than 3:15... eleven hours of driving with a fuel stop works out to roughly 2:30AM at the drop yard. This means I could leave there no earlier than 1PM... I'll be getting home a few hours later than I'd have liked, but at least it won't be complete chaos when I get there. And... it's ringing. More to come!
12:10 - It looks like there's only one driver available to pick up this relay and he'll be there around 9:30AM. That means I might not get a full eight hours of sleep before I have to hand over the paperwork, but it also means that there's already at least one possible option for getting this load handed off. I just need to get the load here, update operations with an expected arrival time, and hope that I can somehow make it there within my driving time limit. It's going to be yet another exceptionally long night, but given how much I want to get home, I'll make it work one way or another.
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