I'm starting to run out of polite ways of titling these posts. Really, I'm trying to be nice. My parents read this after all.
Things started out from Tampa on Friday, when I got an assignment to pick up a load going to Albany, GA. I was promised decent miles, among other things, but the 300-mile run wasn't even ready to be picked up until 2 AM the next morning, leaving me a nearly 12 hour wait just to get started. At least I had parking available. My DBL insisted that he told me that was the case, but he had never communicated that to me. At least he confirmed I could deliver it Saturday, as long as I arrived before 2 PM. I got there around 10 and, after weathering intermittent severe thunderstorms, made it out of there and parked at a truck stop in time for lunch. I got an assignment while waiting, but it was one that I couldn't pick up until 9 PM, so I just got it early Sunday morning.
Sunday was relatively uneventful, since it was the only day out of this entire series of events that I simply had to worry about driving. Four hundred miles in total, taking me up to Memphis. I found parking at one of the truck stops there, leaving me about 15 miles from the delivery, though that proved to be a nearly half-hour drive on the city streets. I left at 3:30 AM Monday, arrived at 4, checked in at 4:25, and backed into a dock by 4:35. That's about when things started to go downhill. Specifically, I found out that I wasn't going to be able to hire a lumper, per the instructions of the shipper; if I did so, it was coming out of my paycheck as I was not going to be reimbursed for it. Nowhere on my work assignment did it say I was going to be responsible for unloading the truck, but I was basically told that I either had to do it or I was going to be out $75. I was also told that my DBL should have told me what the terms of the load were, among other things, none of which I'd ever been told by anyone. It took me three hours to finish pulling the freight off, during which time I received more than my share of harassment by the people working the facility. The part that ticks me off the most? Another Schneider driver was backed into the dock right next to mine and he was allowed to hire the lumpers without any problem at all.
After finishing that up, I picked up another load, though this too had its problems. Specifically, just after I arrived, I received a message saying the load was cancelled. I go to check in and get told the same thing; the message was waiting for me when I got back to the truck, along with one saying I was back on the load. I call in, find out that they were working on it but it might take half an hour, so I get to sit and wait. At this point, I'm completely exhausted from having to unload 16,000 pounds worth of stuff from a trailer earlier in the morning, frustrated that I keep getting conflicting information that varies simply depending on who I talk to, and have long since exhausted my patience. Forty-five minutes later, after receiving no confirmation from anyone, I call ops and get told that things were good to go about 40 minutes ago; this was never communicated to me. At least there were no further incidents: when I went to check back in, I was assigned a dock, loaded, and ready to go in less than 45 minutes.
The rest of the day was generally uneventful: I scaled the load out and found it to be legal on my first try, got lunch, fueled up, and ended up stopping at a Pilot in Birmingham, AL. The truck stop was a mess, to say the least, in part because the parking spaces were actually too short for two 53' trailers to be parked back-to-back. I ended up backing into the trailer behind me and most of my tractor was still in the aisle. The guy behind me left before I could even apologize for the collision (not that anyone cares much about trailer-to-trailer rear bumps like that), so I backed out of the way to ensure I wouldn't be blocking anyone else. That made getting out a bit harder, but at least I was able to sleep without being disturbed.
That brings us to today, Tuesday. I got a work assignment while I was about 20 miles from the consignee, so I pulled into a rest area to check it, just in case something was amiss. It's picking up from the same place I'm delivering (very good), but is a live unload (bad), a lousy 150 miles (bad), and the unload's expected completion time wouldn't leave me enough time to even legally pull off their property, much less drive back to the operating center here. I sent in a message saying that, if I arrived on time and it took the expected two hours, I would have no time to leave; I got back a reply telling me that it shouldn't take that long and that I should be fine anyway. While I was on the yard - and fighting with a painfully stubborn trailer tandem slider - I called and asked for help planning it out. I asked my DBL to either try get the appointment moved up or to confirm that it would take under two hours, and get back to me as soon as he found out what could be done about either of those. Of course, he never got back to me at all, nor was he even at his desk when I called in after my fears were confirmed: at 4:15 eastern, there was no sign of my trailer being done.
By the time they were done, it was just about 4:30, leaving me half an hour to drive and at least 25 minutes away from the operating center. After fighting stupid four-wheelers, city busses that stopped everywhere except their designated stops, badly time traffic lights, and the usual freeway problems, I arrived at the OC at about 5:07 PM, just barely in time to legally round my driving time back to five o'clock. This is not a situation that should have arisen at all; when I said I wasn't going to be able to make the delivery and have hours to leave, I should have been taken off the load right there unless it was confirmed that the times in question were not accurate. No confirmation, once again, a trend that I'm finding to be exceptionally frustrating. While here, I got a PM done on my new tractor, so I don't have to worry about maintenance for a while. I'm parked next to the only truck in the entire yard that's idling, annoyingly enough.
I'm going to head to bed shorty, after sending in a message marking myself as available in the wee hours of the morning. If the Qualcomm wakes me up with a work assignment, fantastic; if not, I've set the alarm for 6 AM just in case things are slow. Given that freight is apparently balanced here right now, it's a 50/50 chance that I'll get something that requires me to get moving before sunrise. However, given the sheer number of issues that I've listed above, I will likely be calling operations and asking to talk to someone higher up to figure out why so many things are going unresolved and being left to me, the driver, to clean up after their mess. There's really no reason for this.
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