Thursday, January 31, 2008

Sarasota, FL

After a couple of days of high-stress work, getting down here to Florida is a refreshing change. I'll just run down the last couple of days here.

Tuesday: After getting my previous load rescheduled for a 9AM delivery today (as opposed to 6AM Sunday), I actually earned layover pay for the delay. So, for doing absolutely nothing on Monday, I earned $80. Needless to say, this put me in an exceptionally good mood for having to hit the road at 5AM. I got there at about 8:50AM and it took me just over ten minutes to back into the dock, so I was essentially right on time. Unfortunately, the unload took longer than I expected and I was about two hours late to pick up the next load. At least they were nice about it, as they understood that the delay wasn't really my fault. It still took them the expected three hours to load it, meaning I had just enough time to make it down to Nashville, TN that night. It's a good thing that I stopped, too, as the weather got really nasty about an hour after I went on break.

Wednesday: An even earlier morning today; I had to be up at 4AM. I wanted to make Ocala originally, but hesitated to plan on driving 630 miles in my 11 hour driving time. So, instead, I decided to aim for a truck stop about 600 miles away; still more than they'd suggest I plan on, but I knew I could do it. I made just one stop all day, and that to grab a bite to eat to help wake me up. I was also rather lucky with traffic, as the only delays I hit were near Atlanta and that simply due to the volume of traffic trying to take the I-285 exit. I actually could have pushed on to the Pilot at exit 341, but instead stopped at a Petro at exit 368 for one reason and one reason only: steak. And it was well worth the stop, too; their food never disappoints. I went to bed even earlier - about 6:30PM - but struggled to get to sleep until at least 8 o'clock.

Thursday: Even earlier? Well, yes; I had to be on the road by 3AM (4AM Eastern), so I set the alarm for 2. I only hit the snooze button twice, much to my surprise, before actually getting up and taking care of a few things before I had to start driving. I planned on leaving so early to ensure that I'd have no problems making it here on time, since I wasn't sure how early traffic near Tampa would start getting backed up. It was slightly congested, but traffic still flowed smoothly as I sailed on through. As such, I was one full hour early for my appointment, though they already had a door open and let me in. Good thing, too, as it took me half an hour just to get into this blasted place since there was NO room to maneuver the trailer around. It was basically a matter of getting it set up perfectly or having to try again. Right now, I'm just sitting here waiting for them to finish unloading the trailer. I don't have another work assignment yet, but it's unlikely this will be a short run, since I'm already pretty darn far south on the peninsula. I just hope that I have another one before they finish this so I know where I'm going after I leave here. Having to sit and wait at a truck stop is not a good thing.

Saturday, January 26, 2008

Edwardsville, IL

After having to sleep at a customer last night, I woke up and immediately picked up the load. Thanks to a bit of good luck (for a change), I was able to drive all the way down to deliver it in one go, without having to take a break, which allowed me to deliver it on time despite all the potential problems with the load. I still got lost trying to find the place, which resulted in even more frustration; why can't the directions I get from the company be more useful?

That gripe aside, I still got off the load and put my truck in the shop for a minor repair. Specifically, they're looking at the utility lights that are supposed to operate when the truck is either parked or in reverse; they're not working when the truck's in reverse, which makes backing even more difficult because I can't see a blasted thing. I told them that I need the truck by 8PM, though really, if it's done by even 10 o'clock I'll be fine. My next load is exactly 300 miles and gets live-unloaded tomorrow at 6AM, so I'll just drive through the night to deliver it, then hope they have something good waiting for me.

Friday, January 25, 2008

Detroit, MI

Today was one of those days where almost anything that could have gone badly did. I really wish I didn't have to wake up at all. Basically, I found out that I had a really, really tight schedule for this next load. I also overslept a bit, making my drop even tighter. I had no problems on the highway, but once I tried to find my exit, things quickly fell apart. I somehow missed the street I was supposed to turn on immediately after getting off the Interstate. I then found it, but couldn't find the side street I needed to turn on, which resulted in screaming, hair pulling, crying, and extreme frustration. After about twenty minutes, I found what looked like the right place... only it was the wrong entrance to the place, forcing me to go back out on the street and try again.

Upon arriving at the correct entrance, I was just told to drop the trailer anywhere. That wouldn't be so bad, except that there were only two empty spaces in the entire facility, both of which were in rather awkward positions. It took me thirty minutes just to get the trailer dropped, as well as even more frustration. If I weren't already so worked up, I might have had a slightly easier time of it, but it's kinda hard to back a trailer in when you're unable to even see straight.

By the time I got out of there, it was about 11:30PM. I then had to bobtail over to a place about 15 miles away to pick up an empty trailer. The directions I had were lousy, though; they directed me to an industrial park without telling me which entrance to use or where within the park I needed to go to find someone who could tell me where I was supposed to go. I ultimately drove by it, forcing me to turn around AGAIN, though this time it was easier as I didn't have a 53' trailer to worry about.

I then found the empty trailer and it was in good condition. The problem? The lot that I was in was completely unlit and my backup lights don't work unless the parking brake is set, rendering them completely useless for backing. Also, when I tried to leave, because it was completely dark, I nearly drove straight into a concrete barrier; I stopped dead just six inches short of hitting it at about 10mph. A little careful, creative backing got me out of there, but not without making me even more shaken up.

Driving to the next place - where I dropped the trailer and am waiting to pick up my load - was also an adventure. I couldn't go back out the way I came in; I needed to make a left turn to get to the Interstate and it was a right turn only back onto the road. There was a U-turn lane, though, which allowed me to get back toward the Interstate. Once on the highway, things were fine until I got to the exit I needed and found it was closed. The ONLY exit they had closed was the one I needed. I took the next ramp, then saw that other cars were turning around and going back to the "closed" exit by using the eastbound exit, since only the westbound ramp was closed. I took the same approach.

Thankfully, I found this place without incident, as I actually had useful directions this time (something like: turn here, then at the first light, then it's the first building on the left). I then was told to drop my trailer in a dock and to come back to find out about my load. I was able to drop it without any significant problems, though I did run over a 2-by-4 they were using as a wheel chock, which scared me for a moment. When I came back up, though, I found out that I needed a trailer number to get the load. I then called support shift to find out that this load isn't ready yet, despite being told it was pre-loaded and available to pick it up by 11:30AM. Frustratingly, I can't even start working until 12:15PM, since my break won't be up until then, which puts me 45 minutes behind schedule on a run that has NO spare time to begin with.

It's 557 miles from here to where I'm delivering. I have to be there by 9AM Central time Saturday. I won't be able to leave here until, at best, 11:45AM central time, and that's assuming that I wake up, get the paperwork, complete my pre-trip inspection, and be on the road within 30 minutes. Even under that "best" case scenario, I have 21 hours to make a 12-hour drive (at 50mph, rounding up, which is how the company supposedly calculates things) and take a 10 hour break. Now, last time I checked, 12+10=22, and I only have 21 to work with. This means that I can't afford any stops whatsoever, have to take the bare minimum break, and still have to make up at least one hour on the highway. Granted, this is a fairly pessimistic estimate, but considering how things have gone the last couple of days, I'm wondering if it's all too accurate.

In any event, before any of this can happen, I need to get at least eight hours of sleep. Despite sleeping in until 3PM today, I'm already exhausted and just want to pass out in the sleeper. Hopefully nine hours of rest will be enough for me to feel reasonably well in the morning.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Eden, NY

It's been a very long, very stressful few days. I've had to drive almost non-stop outside of my breaks, which in turn has left me really feeling out of sorts. It doesn't help that the weather has been the worst I've had to deal with so far; last night the visibility was down to maybe 500 feet, the roads were icy, and my driver's side defroster went out which allowed the windshield to ice over as well. Thankfully, conditions were better today, but I still struggled to maintain a speed of above 55mph, so I ended up 15 minutes late on a rather critical delivery time. I don't plan on telling them I can even work a full day tomorrow; soon as I finish writing this, I'll send in a message saying I only want to work six hours (or less) tomorrow and try to recover from the rather bad couple of days.

Monday, January 21, 2008

Grand Rapids, MI

Up here in the frozen north and, well, freezing. Last night the low was a mere 4 degrees, which in turn meant I had to leave the tractor on all night, not that I minded leaving the heater running at full-blast. I had to get taken off my previous work assignment since I couldn't make the pick up on time (I needed to take my break first), but in turn got a much better assignment, so I can't complain too much. The only problem with it is that I have to get going as soon as possible and I really, really cannot afford to lose any time due to inclement weather. As it is, if I don't have a trailer to pick up in the next half hour or so, I'm at a very high risk of being late for the deliver since it's a 480 mile drive and I'll have a mere 10 hours available to actually drive if I get out of here at midnight it's much later than that, there's just about no chance at all of me making this, which is bound to piss off customer service since I had to convince them that I could do this. Granted, a delay at the shipper is not my fault, but that isn't going to make service any happier about it. I just have to hope the weather cooperates.

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Bucksville, AL

I'd have updated this thing sooner, but the last few days have been exceptionally busy. It's honestly a rather refreshing change from the slow pace things have been on lately. I had to work 13 hours on Tuesday to get everything done, though now that I'm here, I'll be taking about 24 hours off before I have to deliver this load at 6AM tomorrow. I'm too tired to come up with a more lengthy/detailed update, though, so I'll just go to bed now...

Monday, January 14, 2008

West Memphis, AR

Today was a rather good day, surprisingly. I woke up just before my alarm went off and got lunch before I started driving. I found my empty trailer without problem, coupled to it, and arrived at the customer to pick up the load. Since I was almost two hours early, they didn't have the trailer pre-loaded, but it took them less than an hour to load the one I brought in. As an added bonus, they were giving away free bottled water, so I received two free cases of it just for picking up a load.

The only real problem of the evening was my weight. Specifically, being overweight by 60 pounds on the drive tandems and being only 140 pounds under on the trailer, forcing me to put that weight onto my steer tires by sliding the fifth wheel. I've never had to do that before; the trainers all kinda skipped over that. So, by getting out the textbook, I found the procedure and managed to slide it one notch forward. I was trying for two, such that I'd never have to worry about sliding it again, but I think I've jammed it in place. It should be fine, but when I'm due for the next round of maintenance, I'll probably ask them to look at it.

When I arrived here in West Memphis, I found out that my trailer was due for maintenance. Specifically, the annual inspection sticker expires next month and they like to avoid those things expiring when at all possible. I had to go to the shop anyway: one of the splash guards (mud flaps) on the tractor was damaged from the blowout I had a week or so ago, one of my tires was just about flat, and three others were a little low on air. It took much longer than I'd like for the work to get done - nearly two and a half hours - but at least I'm cleared to go as soon as I want to leave in the morning.

So, my current plan is something like this. Soon as I post this, I'm going to bed and setting my alarm for 3PM. I don't plan on sleeping 11 or 12 hours, but I'm completely exhausted right now and I think I'm getting sick, so I just might. When I wake up, I'll just go inside to talk to my manager; since West Memphis is my "home" OC, I may as well save a phone call. I'll also take care of my laundry, get a shower, and eat before I hit the road, probably around 7PM or so. I have just under 500 miles to drive before I drop this off, so it'll be a long (profitable) night of driving. I like those long drives. :)

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Knoxville, TN

Toady was a rather uneventful day, but compared to all the incidents the last couple of days, I'll take 'uneventful'. I dropped the trailer off somewhere that I had enough room to simply whip around and back it straight in, so that wasn't an issue. And since I don't have a trailer right now, parking at the truck stop was trivially easy. My current trip plan has me driving about 500 miles tomorrow (well, technically, today since it's almost 1:30AM), which in turn leaves me about 500 more miles to go the next day. I'll be stopping in the West Memphis operating center - my home OC - on the way, though I might also stop in Dallas since that would be a rather short detour. To any other drivers that are reading this, which do you think the company would prefer? That I took a break just before making a delivery and left myself a full day's hours to go or that I delivered it and then had to immediately go on break since I had almost no time left to work?

Anyway, as an added bonus, this run lets me start driving mostly at night again, since I can take the extra several hours that I'd need to burn to get back on a night schedule. I just have to make this pick up at exactly 6PM, or at least as close to it as I can manage; the rest of this run will be easy to do since I have about an extra day to do it.

Friday, January 11, 2008

Greenville, VA

Today was another rather rough day. I had to wake up around 5:30AM and drive through Washington DC. Amazingly, traffic wasn't too bad, but that's about the only thing that went well today. I took a wrong turn getting off the Interstate, which left me in the middle of downtown of some random city. After losing nearly half an hour trying to get back to where I was supposed to be, I got to the customer only to find that their dock was remarkably small and I had no room to get turned around. I ended up backed in there at a horrible angle, but at least I was in there.

Things just got worse at the next place, though. The area I had to back into was so small that I had to get it perfectly right, since there was no room to correct it. After about twenty minutes of trying, another driver came over to help me out and it still took another half hour for me to get in there. At this point, I was whimpering and shaking just trying to keep things under control. When I was trying to close the doors after the trailer was loaded, I had to slam them shut; in the process, one of the handles hit my face hard hard; I'm still bleeding from my lip where it struck me, despite that incident being four hours ago.

I just pulled into a truck stop here and, once again, was presented with a situation where I had to back in. Between the angle of the sun and my complete lack of confidence (or perhaps just a complete lack of ability), I couldn't back the truck into an area with four open parking spaces in a row. To put it another way, I couldn't even hit a 35-foot-wide target with my truck. I feel absolutely horrible right now, both physically and mentally. I'm hoping that getting a solid 10 hours of sleep will help with that. At least I can afford to catch up on sleep; I can deliver this load any time tomorrow, and while I'd like to get there early, getting sleep takes priority tonight.

Baltimore, MD

What is it with Maryland and every facility having an absurdly small area to back into the dock? Both of the places I've had to go today (one to get unloaded, one to get a new load) have had exceptionally small areas to back into. They finished loading me really quick though, so I need to get driving again.

Thursday, January 10, 2008

Hendersonville, SC

Today was definitely one of those days. I started it off by oversleeping by two hours, then I got lost trying to find a customer, resulting in me nearly causing at least three accidents and having to turn around on a dead-end street with barely enough room to do so. I also had to detour around a major accident that had Interstate 4 closed for about 15 miles, which cost me nearly an hour. Then, near Jacksonville, construction had traffic so screwed up I had to drive down the left shoulder; the right two lanes were closed and there were only two lanes to begin with!

When it came time to shut down, about an hour before my 14-hour-day ran out, I started to look around. But NOTHING had any parking spaces. I checked two truck stops, two rest areas, and a weigh station, all to no avail. Ultimately, right now, I'm parked quasi-legally in a rest area; this isn't a parking space, but I'm not blocking traffic in any way, so I hope that I'll be okay. I've already had a panic attack worrying about getting harrassed by the DOT over this. I really, really hope that nothing else goes wrong. I don't think I can take any more right now.

I need a hug. :(

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Boca Raton, FL

After being unable to sleep last night, the last thing that I wanted to do was unload a 29,000 pound load from my trailer. Turns out, though, that this place requires drivers to hire a lumper (unloading) service, so I couldn't do the work even if I wanted to. And, believe me, I don't. I'm going to try and catch a nap while they're unloading me, since it probably is going to take a couple of hours; the whole load is on the floor, not on pallets. Of course, as usual, the people with the lumper service are jerks. It seems like that's a pretty common theme, at least for the two times I've had to deal with such a service at all. I hope it doesn't become a regular occurrence.

Sunday, January 6, 2008

Gainesville, FL

After a rather long day I've made it a rather short distance. I dropped off the load I've been sitting on for the last two days, only to get another work assignment that also stinks. This one is longer - about 480 miles - but is a hand unload at 5:30AM Tuesday morning. As such, I have to get up around 3AM, drive 75 miles (there are no closer truck stops), unload it, and hope that I get a decent run on the way back out of south Florida. I usually do - I haven't had one under 1,000 miles yet - but I still am rather frustrated at how unproductive this weekend has been.

I had a drive tire blow out on me earlier today, which certainly put a damper on things; I should have been able to get a lot further tonight than I did. As it was, both truck stops down here were full, forcing me to go back to an Interstate rest area for the evening. Tomorrow needs to be a better day than today; I'll be too frustrated if it isn't. @_@

Friday, January 4, 2008

Atlanta, GA

The last couple have days have been rather kind to me. Though I've had incidents with backing (again), nothing serious has happened. And aside from that, it's been smooth sailing. No problems with traffic or weather. It's been cold (about 18°F right now), but I have a new sleeping bag I've been using that keeps me nice and toasty. I've also been getting really good runs; this run is the second in a row that I've had of 1000+ miles, which is bound to increase my next paycheck. Also, I put in today for time off in mid-February, thus ensuring that I'll have a mini-vacation then. Just gotta keep the wheels running until then!