Since I picked up my load, things had been going fairly well. I managed to drive more than 670 miles each of the last two days, allowing me to stop in far western New Mexico on Thursday and in Bakersfield, CA yesterday afternoon. There are some really nice photos I took along the way; I'll try to upload those sometime later this weekend. I woke up early this morning (technically, late last night), got food, and got on the road the moment my break was up. Five hours later, I found myself at the consignee's locked gate.
Yep, that's right. They have me do 1,720 miles of driving over more than three days, yet don't even bother checking to see whether or not the place I'm delivering to is open. There was a guard on site, at least, who was able to provide me with my appointment number (the one customer service insisted that I didn't need) and who informed me that they aren't open at all on Saturday (despite operations insisting they were open 24/7 and my work assignment telling me to arrive today). I drove about ten miles down here to the operating center, where I'm going to be stuck for the weekend. Relaying isn't an option, though support shift was lying when they told me that there wasn't any freight in the area so I wouldn't have anywhere to go; we have 19 loads here and only three drivers, but since there aren't enough drivers, there wouldn't be anyone to cover the relay if I dropped this off. Even operations admitted that this situation was inexcusably bad, but there's really nothing we can do about it. Customer service pretty much ignores any complaints about their inability to provide accurate information and there's absolutely no accountability even when they screw up like this.
I won't even get to finish a 34-hour restart - I'll be less than an hour short - since I have to deliver it at four o'clock tomorrow afternoon. As such, I'll have only about 20 hours for the next three days, before the 10+ hour days I drove to get out west start rolling off my recap. That might end up working out as days of eleven hours Monday and nine on Tuesday or something similar, meaning I'd never even get to take a full restart. The alternative is that, if freight doesn't stay busy, I end up stuck here for yet another day and a half. I still wish I could get sent to the southern part of the state for various reasons; had I known that this was a delivery for tomorrow, I could have just stayed south and driven up here tomorrow. If it were entirely up to me (even though, in reality, what I ask for doesn't mean a thing) I'd get a load that either delivered to a suburb of Los Angeles or something that I could relay in Fontana and take a 34 hour restart at the operating center down there. In reality, they'll probably have me deliver this, leave me stranded here until Monday, and have me do some crappy run to northern California or Utah.
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