When I had to drop a relay in New Jersey, the drop yard they sent me to was full. By full, I mean that the only places I could have dropped the trailer would have either blocked in a bobtail, at least five trailers, or a driveway to another facility in the same complex. In short, there was absolutely nowhere I could possibly have put my trailer. So, upon advice from the guard and another driver who was waiting for road repair, I went to an intermodal drop yard - also owned by us - that was just around the corner and dropped my trailer there. Turns out that the load I was picking up was also in that drop yard; in other words, even if I had dropped my trailer in the space I picked up the relay, it still would have been in the "wrong" yard.
So, trying to be helpful, I sent in a freeform message telling operations that I had to drop the trailer somewhere else. They respond demanding to know why I did so. I tell them that the place I was sent to was full and that the guard had advised me to take it down the street. Rather than responding in a rational fashion and simply updating the trailer information, operations (presumably support shift) sends back a message trying to guilt trip me, claiming that they had to pull a driver off his time at home just to put the trailer where it was supposed to be and that I shouldn't have done that.
At this point, I'm pretty much fed up. I did the only thing I reasonably could have done with the damn thing. So I responded by telling them, flatly, that it doesn't matter who they have go down to that place; there's no space for a trailer. None. If they sent someone else there to move trailers, he's wasting his time and won't find any space either. They then insist that I should have called in for instructions, as if blocking the driveway and wasting time on hold would have miraculously caused an opening to appear in the lot. What the hell are they expecting? A crane to lift my trailer up and drop it atop another? So I replied yet again, this time pointing out that my relay trailer was also in that other yard and asking a question of my own: did they waste this much effort harassing the other driver for where he put the trailer?
I just find it infuriating that I do the only thing that I could reasonably expect to do, try to be helpful by updating operations so they can make a note of it in the computer, and then instead have to spend most of the day playing Qualcomm tag as they berate me over something simple. If they send me anything else on the subject, I'm going to just call in, tell them that I'm dropping the trailer I have right now in the truck stop, and that I'll drive over there to move the damn thing myself so they'll shut up. I'll also tell them, however, that in doing so I'll be both violating my 14 and ensuring that there is no chance at all my next load will be delivered on time. Since, clearly, they feel that it's more important to have a trailer dropped somewhere it can't go, I'll be down there doing circles around the yard until someone else comes in to take a trailer out. So if I don't make a blog post for a few days, it's probably because our night shift really is that dense and I really am down there attempting to shove a trailer where it can't physically go.
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