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.
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