Darien, CT - U-turn on the highway

I was supposed to originally make delivery up in Milford, CT at 8 AM this morning. I knew I was going to be late for that, but had hoped to get up there by noon, which I had been told would be okay. Turns out that the place I'm delivering to closes at 11 AM, though. Which is just as well, as I forgot how bad traffic on I-95 in Connecticut is. I figured I'd lose some time, yes, but I didn't expect to find that traffic was moving at 15 to 20 mph along the entire highway, from New York to Massachusetts.

I pulled into a service plaza for both a quick rest break and to find out what I should do about this load: I don't have enough hours on my 11 to even make it to where I'm supposed to be going now. About 20 minutes later, I'd found out that the next available appointment was for the same time next Wednesday and that the nearest drop yard was, unfortunately, the one back in New Jersey. I'll either have to go straight through NYC on I-95 (and, given that it's New Year's, that's not likely) or go around 287 and have to drive twice as far. Neither option is very good, but hopefully they'll get me out of the northeast soon enough.

Seville, OH - Overnight express

I was supposed to leave from Green Bay around 6 PM yesterday, but I just didn't have the energy to do anything. As such, I didn't leave from there until nearly 1 AM this morning. I picked up the trailer, started driving, but found myself so tired that I could only just keep the rig on the road by 8 AM. I've already told operations that this is not going to get delivered on time and that the weather forecast for overnight snow (2 to 8 inches along nearly my entire route) could further delay delivery. I dropped the trailer in case they want to have another driver pick up the relay, but regardless, I'm going to get about nine hours of sleep now. *thud*

Jackson, MS - (Not Quite) Home for the Holidays

The last time I was here in this part of the state, it took me almost three days to get a load going where I needed to go. This time, I'm up to seven hours already and there's no sign at all of freight. At least ops had the decency to send me a message telling me they were going to wait until morning to see if anything develops. So I'm getting food now and going to cal it a "night" rather early and catch up on sleep. If something comes in overnight that would allow me to get home, awesome. Otherwise, if I'm still here at 9:15 tomorrow morning, I'll collect a day of layover.

Winona, MS - Rest

For the first time in well over a week, I'm not compelled to get moving the moment I legally can! It's still in my best interest to not sleep too late (I have the alarm set for 5 AM), but at least I can afford to get a full nine hours of sleep to make up for the rest I didn't get while I was on my restart.

Since I have a bit of time, allow me to type in my recap. I thought that the zero was a restart, which still put me at 55.25 hours for the five days since then, but it wasn't. I only parked in Denver for about 31 hours, which wasn't enough to reset the clock. I haven't heard from regulatory yet, but I just sent my logs in tonight and I'll be surprised if I don't get a message later in the week about it.

Date	Hours	Last8
12	9.75	9.75
13	9.5	19.25
14	0	19.25
15	9.25	28.5
16	12	40.5
17	10.5	51
18	11.75	62.75
19	11.75	73.5

Salina, KS - Logbook screwup

I've pulled a big oops on my logs and just have to hoppe regulatory doesn't notice until I shut down tomorrow. I'll post the details then. Hee...

Salina, KS - Halfway point

I'm a little less than halfway between Denver and Indianapolis, but this was as far as I could get today. And, in reality, I went slightly over my 14 (and well over my 11) just getting this far. This leaves me 666 miles to drive tomorrow. It's a tall order, for sure, but I think I can make something work.

So why did i end up shutting down here, some 30 miles earlier than I intended? The weather. This morning, I had to drive through the Rockies. This would have been bad enough on a clear day, but I was going through at night, in intermittent snow showers, on an ice-covered road, with a 45,000 pound load. I was smoking the brakes on at least two occasions (plus probably one more, in which I smelled burning but it was too dark to see smoke), including as I came into Denver in the morning. I was seriously worried about throwing myself off the mountain; in both cases where the brakes faded to nearly nothing, I was lucky enough to be at the bottom of a downgrade. When I stopped for fuel, I parked for about an extra hour just to let the brakes cool off. Even now, eight hours later, I still smell something funny back there, so I'll have to get the shop at Indy to check it out.

When I resumed, the weather in eastern Colorado was just fine. As I got into Kansas, though, clouds started rolling in. At first I wasn't very worried - it was 45 degrees and driving in the rain is nothing to me - but as it started to precipitate the temperature plunged back to 30 degrees. And, on top of that, it started getting foggy. Freezing fog. It sounds innocuous enough, but as everything started icing up, the road became incredibly slick. So, to recap, it's raining on and off, visibility is a quarter mile (or less), and there's ice everywhere, including on my mirrors. Fantastic, hm? It got even worse after dark, since high beams just reflect all that back; visibility was just enough that I could see the road and, if I squinted, the tail lights of cars a thousand feet ahead. Thankfully, that all started to clear up before I shut down here. Apparently this kind of crap is going to continue most of the night, though, and I'll be catching up to the storm when I get moving first thing in the morning.

At least, once I get to Indianapolis, I'll have enough reasons to put the truck and trailer in the shop that, hopefully, I'll get a day (or at least a few extra hours) off. I still need to do all the math on my logbook but I believe I'll be running out of hours anyway.

Blown Fuses

This is what's left of the 20 amp turn-signal fuse that I mentioned in my last post. I'm pretty sure they're supposed to fail long before they reach this level of damage...

Ogden, UT - 575 miles to get to nowhere!

Today was one of those days that I'd really, really like to get to do over, if anyone happens to have a remote that can actually rewind time by 24 hours. I got started on time this morning and, despite a little bit of snow, made great time getting over to the consignee and dropped my trailer. My work assignment told me to pick up a trailer from that place; they only had one of our trailers and it was unsealed. I couldn't find my flashlight to take a more careful look inside, but the trailer sounded hollow and, if anything were in it, the thing would be sealed, right?

So, after finishing the rest of my pre-trip inspection, I drove down to the shipper for my next load. For the record, US 40 in Utah would be scary enough on a clear night with a full moon; I had to drive down it in heavy snow, with the road so heavily covered that I couldn't tell where the lanes were, with my driver's side windshield completely covered in ice since the defroster on that side went out again. As such, I had visibility of roughly a hundred feet, even after it stopped snowing, resulting in an average speed of roughly 25 mph for about four hours.

Once the sun rose, conditions improved significantly and I finished the roughly 250 mile trip to the shipper. The first warning I had that something was wrong was when my truck scaled out as "empty" at 40,000 pounds even; even figuring in the tire chains, full load of fuel, and winter supplies I've picked up, it shouldn't have been much over 33,000. I went into the shipping office anyway, checked in, got assigned a dock, drove over there, opened the doors... and saw the trailer was roughly 1/4 full of auto parts. Added bonus problem: air bag systems are class 9 hazmat and I didn't have placards. Needless to say, I didn't tell operations that when I called in.

After nearly 45 minutes on the phone (30 of that on hold), even ops acknowledged this was going to be a Chinese fire drill. I had to go back and return the trailer, meaning my trip through the blizzard was meaningless. Then I have to go and pick up an empty from the Salt Lake OC and pick up the load. Obviously, both pickup and delivery are getting bumped back now, especially since I'll have to put my truck in the shop somewhere to get a few things fixed.

Even though I ended up blowing my 11 and 14 by roughly two hours, I ended up taking the trailer back and parking at a truck stop right up the road. I didn't get a message from regulatory telling me that I was over on time, one of the few good things that's happened today, but I imagine that message will be waiting for me when I finish eating. While I was pulling into the truck stop, I had all my turn signal lights go out again, which meant that traffic didn't even have blinkers to ignore; getting around on the highway when you can't signal is a pain in the butt. It's just a fuse that keeps blowing, but I'll need to get some more spares when I go through the OC in the morning, just to make sure I have enough in case the problem comes up again.

So, in a nutshell, I have roughly nine hours left to get some rest, hope I can make it to Denver tomorrow, and somehow try to make Cincinnati by Friday. The last isn't going to happen, so unless the place has weekend hours, I might be relaying this off near St. Louis or (preferably) Indianapolis. But, of course, I won't know any of that for sure until I call operations tomorrow and verify what's going on. And I don't even know what's going on yet since I have to figure out where I can stop for the next two days.

Ogden, UT - Eastbound

I'm not getting out o the west coast. That's the bad news. The good news is that I have another 1500 mile run, this time to Ohio. I'll be passing through a few nice places, too: Denver, St. Louis, and Indianapolis. Not sure if I'll be stopping at any of those (though Denver will likely be where I shut down tonight if I get lucky), but at least I know that I'll be following I-70 for roughly a thousand miles.

I should probably get moving to pick this load up, though I'm on track to be more than an hour early. At least that gives me spare time if road conditions get dicey. If I get to the shipper too early, I'll take a nap.

Evanston, WY - Racing the weather

It seems like I can't get a break with the weather up here. Early this morning, part of I-80 was completely covered in ice and snow; I could just barely make out the yellow stripe on the left edge of the road and ended up finding the rumble strip a few times. Of course, this was on a five-mile long 5% downgrade. I took it in sixth gear, bouncing between 15 and 20 mph. A few drivers passed me, but I was pulling away from someone behind me, so at least I wasn't the only one worried about conditions.

That drained me a lot, though, so I used the weather as an excuse to pull into a parking area and get a couple hours of sleep. They knew that my delivery was contingent on the weather being decent, and while the weather is okay right now, the road conditions near Laramie were really dicey. I only averaged 41 mph this morning; to make my delivery on time, I'd have to average at least 49. So I sent in messages telling operations that I was going to be late; they've updated the customer and, far as we know, there's no issue with the fact I'm going to be 16 hours late.

Of course, even that assumes that conditions tonight are good. I-80 is fine right now, but it's just started snowing here and there's a winter storm warning in effect for the area I'm going into. If the highway is impassible, there's obviously nothing I can do, but I need to at try make progress on this load, even if it means I'm doing 15 miles per hour through a blizzard. I still have no idea where I'm going after this load, but I wouldn't be surprised if they wait until I deliver this one before assigning me something else, just because the weather out here is so unstable right now.

Laredo, TX - Go west, young man, go west!

Of all the places I thought I'd get routed, Utah wasn't somewhere I'd expected at all. But, as the 1,418 mile work assignment in front of me indicates, I'm heading out that way. I need to get tire chains somewhere - I'm on hold trying to figure that out now - but otherwise this looks awesome. Whee!

Laredo, TX - Zero mile run!

Today was a day in which absolutely nothing was accomplished. I arrived here in Laredo around 4:30 PM yesterday, parked the truck, and went to bed exceptionally early. It's nice catching up on sleep! I woke up... still nothing. I waited until about 12:30 this afternoon to call in and see what freight's like. Unsurprisingly, it's not that good down here; I found out, though, that they have drivers doing load saves down here to keep us from just sitting around. Meaning, in other words, they're trying to give us loads that would break up a layover.

Not ten minutes after I get off the phone, I have a work assignment come in. It was supposed to pick up here at the OC and deliver to somewhere else in Laredo. Because we're paid on book miles, which are calculated city to city, a run that stays within a single town is zero miles. Unhappy about this, for several reasons, I call in and find out that runs like that are paid at a flat $25, plus any applicable detention pay. Since this was expected to be a two hour unload, I would likely have received an additional $15 for that, bringing the total to $40. Layover pay is $90. Meaning, in other words, I would have received $50 less by working than I would have earned for sitting still another three hours.

However, note that I'm referring to this load in the past tense, not as one that I actually took. I can't refuse a load (not without risking my job, anyway), but when I got over to the trailer, there was no paperwork on it; it just had a slip saying to see the fuel desk. I went inside, talked to the people there, and found out that they didn't have the paperwork either; they sent me into the office to see who had it in there. So I went in there and not even they knew where the paperwork was at first. When I told them, rather tersely, that I needed the paperwork to move the load since it was due for delivery in the next 90 minutes (I'd lost nearly an hour trying just to find the trailer and doing my pre-trip), they looked in one last place. Sure enough, the paperwork was there... along with a note saying that customs had rejected the load and that nobody could legally touch that trailer or its contents until we had the okay.

So, all that done, I had to go out, call operations to get taken off the load (and spend 25 minutes on hold), unhook from the trailer, and find another parking space. The lot here is in such bad shape that I got stuck in gravel. I eventually got out, by playing with the power divider, dumping the clutch, spinning the tires, and generally doing all sorts of things that the mechanics would probably really prefer I not have done to the truck. However, since I did ask for help and the shop basically told me to figure it out on my own, I really don't feel guilty about anything I did there. I parked in a space that I wasn't going to get stuck in (another 75 feet from the building) and have been sitting here since.

Though operations said they'd give me another load as soon as they could, it's been about six hours and I still haven't had anything come in. I'll probably set the Qualcomm right next to my pillow, so any incoming message beeps will wake me up, but I'll be very surprised if I get something before about 8 o'clock in the morning. In any case, if I'm still here at 4:30 tomorrow, I'll get credit for another day of layover, but I'm going to call in tomorrow just to make sure that everything is in the computer. I don't want to get short-changed on pay again.

Laredo, TX - There's how many of us here?

Three long days of driving have led me to Laredo, TX. However, when I called to ask about freight, I was told there are "about seventy" drivers here waiting on a load. Operations encouraged me to update to show that I was available sooner than 9 o'clock tomorrow morning, if I wanted; I told them that I'm not going to bother because, if there are this many of us waiting here, I'll be surprised to get an assignment by 9 AM Friday. *grumble*

LaGrange, GA - (Un)professional drivers

Things were going great today right up until I got to the truck stop here. There's a McDonald's with truck parking just in front of the Pilot here; getting into both requires a left turn. I was waiting to turn and, in the driveway, a cop had pulled another trucker over. I had room to turn until a damn four-wheeler pulled right into the center of the open space, ensuring that I couldn't get around him. When he started forward, he continued to block me by pulling so close to the front of my truck that I couldn't move without hitting him. Just as the idiot finally got out of my way, the cop left and the trucker pulled into the one open space at the McDonald's.

Given that I had to wait nearly ten minutes to turn due to traffic, that put me in a bad enough mood. Going into the truck stop and finding that there's no parking at all this early at night didn't help my mood either; a truck stop should not be completely full at 5:30 in the afternoon. As I came back out, I looped around the McDonald's parking to see if a space had opened; as I drove by the space the ticketed driver had taken, he left. I didn't have enough room to get into it from the other direction, so I tried to go out and back around. Of course, another "professional" driver was blocking the driveway, blocking me in. And, of course, just as the other driver got out of my way, another trucker speeding out of the truck stop took the open space. I have a sore throat now from the string of obscenities I was screaming at my windshield.

While I was still waiting to get into the McDonald's, since I still had to use that lot to turn around now, yet another driver left. This time, I made a few decidedly unprofessional moves myself, but I'm parked in that spot right now. I'm getting out of here as soon as my ten hour break is up. I never want to see this truck stop again.

Wando, SC - Dude, where's my load?

I'm just fifteen minutes early for my appointment here, but the container worth of stuff that's supposed to get loaded on my trailer hasn't arrived yet and they don't have any idea when it'll get here. I'm just waiting in the drop yard right now until they come and get me, at which point I'll go to the truck dock, back in, get loaded, and hopefully get plenty of miles in today. My work assignment lists an average duration of two hours; I'm hoping that I can get out of here in less than three, since that ensures I'll be able to use my full eleven hours of driving time.

Still, I think that this is the first time I've ever gotten to a customer and my load hadn't actually arrived yet...

Lugoff, SC - Running on full

Looks like I'm going to have a lot of miles for the next couple of days at least. From here I'll be heading over toward Charleston to pick something up, then all the way down to Laredo to drop it off. Just under 1,500 miles. I'm going to be tired as heck the next three days but my paycheck is most definitely going to thank me. To get this done, though, I have to get up at 4:30 AM, pick up an empty from a facility just a mile up the road, then go nearly 130 miles by 8 o'clock to get the trailer loaded. It's going to be a much tighter schedule than I think they realize, but I'm optimistic about it. I just have to make sure I fill up here before I take off, since I definitely need the fuel and I can't afford to stop on my way over to pick this up.

But, rather than ramble on for a couple more paragraphs, I'm posting this and getting to bed. I might even get seven and a half hours of rest for once!

Indianapolis, IN - Snow, snow, more snow.

For various reasons - some work related, some not - I ended up sleeping rather late today. And by the time I woke up, there was quite a bit of snow on the ground and reports were coming in from all over the place warning that the road conditions were treacherous, at best.

The result? I'm 641 miles from the place I'm delivering and I have until 9 PM EST tomorrow to get there. I'll probably leave from here rather early tomorrow - hopefully by 6 AM, but maybe as early as 4 - and driving with as few stops as possible to ensure that I get there in time. The good news is that there's a truck stop at the same exit as my delivery point in South Carolina, so at least there's a pretty good chance that I'll have somewhere to park when I'm done. As for freight, there's no telling what will happen, but it'll definitely be Monday morning since I won't have any hours to go anywhere.

Monee, IL - It's a new record!

I pulled a whopping 644 miles today. I may have had to round a couple things on my logbook in my favor, but I actually didn't have to resort to outright cheating to make things happen the way they needed to. The trip up to Illinois was remarkably boring; absolutely nothing happened along the way that was even remotely memorable. I did, however, get my "appointment" moved up to 4PM today, from 4PM tomorrow. Notice, though, that I have appointment in quotes.

It turns out that the place I was going to doesn't even allow the kind of load I have to be live unloaded. Why? Because they had hundreds of boxes from thirty different vendors, all loaded haphazardly in the trailer. As a result, they'd have to unload the entire trailer, scan in every single box, sort them out since each box was likely going to a different store, then put the freight they didn't need back on the truck. The listed seven-hour unload time on my work assignment is actually unrealistically optimistic for that kind of thing. So, rather than have me put up with all that, they simply had me drop the trailer. That freed me to go to the Petro up here, where I had a nice dinner.

Tomorrow, I'm going to head to Gary to get my truck in for a PM. It turns out that I really am due for both an A (check up only) and a B (oil change) right now. Why they scheduled them so closely is beyond my comprehension - not even the mechanics were able to explain why - but it does mean that there's a pretty good chance that I'll be tied up for a while. At the absolute best, I'll lose half a day tomorrow, but given that Green Bay had a five-day wait for maintenance, I wouldn't be surprised to lose a day or two. But, in any case, I'll have to actually get over there before I can confirm exactly what is - or isn't - going to happen. Hopefully I can do so before Chicago's rush hour kicks in to high gear.

East Point, GA - Appointments? What are those?

I received several messages over the weekend telling me that this is a critically important, cannot be even one minute late delivery. So I end up busting my tail over the weekend and get moving as early as possible this morning to try and ensure that I'm not late. I've never seen traffic on 285 moving this smoothly during rush hour, but perhaps I just got through before the backups reached that part of the loop; traffic on 75 south was more trouble than I'm used to.

When I arrived here about 8 AM (eastern), I walked in and handed over my paperwork... only to be told that they don't even do appointments at 9 AM, which is what I'd been told my time was for. They say they'll get to me after the truck that is currently being unloaded. He leaves, I back into the dock, then go in to hand over my paperwork. While I'm waiting, two other Schneider drivers come up, one of whom also was told to get here at nine. They don't even have enough floor space to unload one trailer full of rolls now, much less to accommodate three of us, so I'm currently waiting for them to make room just so they can start unloading me.

Freight in the area is a bit of a question mark right now. I was told that it probably will be a longer wait today, but that I should call and ask about things when they do finish unloading the trailer. If I get some work, that'd be nice, since I could at least earn some good mileage. If not, then I might be stuck going to the Atlanta OC (eww) and probably be forced to get maintenance done on the truck since something is due to be done today. Whatever ends up happening, I just hope that I get to know about it at least slightly in advance.