Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Laredo, TX - Laredo, we have a problem

Yesterday I felt something was a bit ... wrong with the truck. I couldn't quite place it, and part of it could have simply been fatigue messing with my mind, but I did a particularly thorough pre-trip. I found a few relatively minor things - my cab's air bags went flat and I appear to have a slow coolant leak - but I had one major problem: a chip in my driver's side steer brake drum. Damage to the brakes is an out of service item, but even so, I'm not about to take a chance with the brakes after that tow truck incident in California.

Since I was on a load that I had to pick up by noon, I just picked that up here in town, then came back for the repairs. It took a while for them to get the truck into the shop; by the time it was done, it was too late in the evening for further driving to be worthwhile. This leaves me about 1,150 miles to go and two days to get there. I've a pretty good idea of where I'll be parking tomorrow, since it's almost exactly 660 miles away and would leave me just under 500 to go on Friday. The downside, though, is that I'll likely need to wake up far earlier than I'd like tomorrow to ensure I get to that truck stop at a reasonable hour. I really am getting sick of only being able to manage four to six hours of sleep.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Effingham, IL - Sunny side up

Today was one of those rare days where things went generally well. I have to remember to write about these once in a while. :)

Despite getting quite a bit less sleep than I should have last night, I felt quite energized when I woke up this morning. I fueled up, left exactly when I planned on, yet arrived at the customer nearly an hour ahead of schedule. They assigned me a dock, started unloading me shortly thereafter, and I left at the time I'd originally had an appointment for. While waiting, I found a shortcut that saved me more than half an hour getting to my next stop, to pick up another load.

I lost some of that time at my stop, though. Dropping my trailer was easy enough, but the loaded trailer was sitting with its landing gear in a sinkhole. One side of the trailer was leaning so far down that the bottom rail was nearly resting on the tires! I was ... less than thrilled at this point, as I was eager to get back on the road. It didn't help that I'd hopped a little too high getting into the truck and smacked my skull on the door frame. Further, I hit my chin with the landing gear handle as I tried to raise it a little. A twenty minute wait later, one of the yard guys came by and managed to pull the thing out by ramming under it at speed. I hooked up and got driving shortly thereafter.

The rest of the drive was relatively easy: 55+ mph through Michigan, Indiana, and half of Illinois to get here with 45 minutes left on my 11. I had to stop to scale out on the way, but otherwise the trip was uneventful. I tried to stop at a truck stop further north, but they apparently charged for parking - multiple signs said "authorized parking only; permits may be purchased at the fuel desk" - so I pressed on to arrive here. I've trip planned out the rest of my current load, so it's now just a matter of getting up on time to deliver the load when I said I would.

Monday, April 20, 2009

Charlotte, NC - Back to the frozen north

I've been neglecting this blog lately. For that, I apologize. Since I'm not entirely sure when I last updated this thing and I'm too tired (read: lazy) to go back and look, I'll instead summarize last night and today.

Last night I had the displeasure of delivering yet another Procter and Gamble load. I've really started to dislike hauling their freight, since they've become increasingly anal about load requirements. As such, I had to give my name and other information three separate times just to be allowed to drop a loaded trailer. It didn't help my mood that there was exactly one other driver on the yard who ended up in my way twice. :p At least they allowed me to park there while waiting for my next assignment.

I finally got assigned something around noon today. I needed to get an empty trailer from P&G, so I went in, was assigned one to pick up... that had considerable damage to the gasket on one of the doors, ensuring the thing would leak badly in the rain. I didn't want to deal with the guards again, so I just took it, went through the Charlotte OC, dropped it off for repair, and grabbed another empty. I sent in multiple messages telling ops what I was doing, including one that should override whatever they're doing up there, plus called in to ensure I was assigned the trailer I was taking. That's all well and good, at least until I got to the gate. The guard said, among other things, "Your DBL screwed you over. That trailer's staying here on this yard." I then had to back up about a hundred feet, forcing another guy out of the way, to call in and find out why the hell something I'd confirmed twice wasn't taken care of. Five minutes later, it was resolved and I was on the way.

The rest of the afternoon was, thankfully, uneventful. I dropped the empty trailer, picked up my next load, and came back here to Charlotte. Time is going to be against me the next two days, though: I have about three hours to spare on this load, at best, assuming everything goes well. That's three hours for anything and everything, inculding food or fuel stops. I'll be filling up before I leave here, but I'll likely need to top off somewhere along the way, since I'd be uncomfortably low on fuel by the time I arrive at the consignee. It doesn't have to arrive until 10 AM Wednesday, but I'll be fighting some traffic on the way, taking secondary routes for much of my travel through Ohio, and potentially dealing with snow once I get into Michigan. The city I'm delivering to has an 80% chance of snow Tuesday night and will only be in the upper thirties by the time I get there Wednesday.

To make all this happen, though, I need to start snoring. I have to wake up in a little over six hours and be driving shortly after that.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Indianola, MS - Middle of nowhere

The weekend was entirely uneventful; I put the truck in the shop late Thursday evening to get the starter replaced and the repairs weren't complete until Sunday night. I asked for the time off to see a doctor; I'm on medication and getting better. Once back in the truck Monday afternoon, I received a work assignment telling me to go about 60 miles in under an hour, picking up an empty along the way. I just called in to tell ops that it was impossible; they told me to pick it up this morning.

So I woke up early this morning, fueled the truck up, and hit the road. It was rather annoying trying to get the empty trailer, since it was parked right against a curb, making it very difficult to get the tractor straight under it. On top of that, it was at a really awkward spot which forced me to get under it before working the landing gear to lower the trailer, so I needed nearly 45 minutes to do something that should have taken just under half that much time. From there, though, things were pretty simple: drive to the shipper, relax for an hour while the trailer was loaded, then drive to the consignee.

I'm thankful that this place has parking, since there's just about nothing else this far out. I'm at least an hour's drive from the nearest Interstate. Since I could use the rest, I just pushed myself out to the wee hours of the morning; I won't be getting assigned anything before 4 AM tomorrow. Given how slow freight usually is in Mississippi, though, I wouldn't be surprised to wake up and find that I'm still without a work assignment. That's entirely speculation for now, though; for the moment, I just need to get some sleep.

Saturday, April 4, 2009

West Memphis, AR - 34 hours of rest for the weary

After the way things started Friday morning, I was not expecting anything to go well at all for the next couple of days. I got a work assignment overnight Thursday, but there was some key information missing: specifically, we didn't have in-house (confirmed) directions for any part of my run, nor did we even have an address for the consignee! As such, there was no way for me to get directions; once you ask for any kind of directions, you can't send another message in, even if there are no directions to get. Support shift, as usual, was being completely unhelpful. First I got a message giving me the same incomplete addresses I already had, then I got a message telling me to use the automatic direction messages (the ones I'd already tried), then finally got a message saying I should call if I needed help finding the place. Instead, I decided to wait until first shift came in. As useless as my DBL has been lately, I figured I'd at least have someone to hold responsible when things fell apart.

So, while waiting for the normal crew to come in, I delivered my previous load. I was supposed to get an empty from the facility, but since numerous drivers had come in to pick up empties (a big no-no for that customer), they didn't have any to release. I sent that message in, fought with the trailer tandems (and lost), dropped the trailer, then called in to try and resolve some of the outstanding mess. As expected, my DBL was of little help directly, though he did find a load that needed to be saved. I still needed an empty trailer to swap with the driver I was picking the relay up from, though, and I was sent a message saying to pick one up from yet another place; this one had an invalid address (the street doesn't exist) and no in-house directions either. I was told to call back in half an hour.

Sure enough, when I called back, my DBL was nowhere to be  found. The person I talked to was actually helpful, though; we found another facility with empties available and valid directions. I went there, got approval from the guard to grab an empty, then got chewed out by the shipping office for taking one. :p  But I was allowed to leave with it anyway, went down a few questionable roads trying to get to the place I was picking the relay up from, swapped trailers, and went on my merry way. The route I needed to take was mostly US highways, which didn't help me make any time, but I arrived at the consignee less than ten minutes before they closed for the weekend.

While the trailer was getting unloaded, I looked at the next assignment I'd received: picking up Saturday at a facility just a few miles away, then delivering in Florida on Tuesday. I was getting unloaded much faster than expected, though, so I called the weekend shift to find out if we could get the appointment moved up. A few minutes on hold later, I was told that the shipper is generally extremely flexible on loads and that it wouldn't be a problem if I went up there after I was unloaded. So I ended up getting to the shipper 22 hours early, told that I "probably" could get loaded tonight... and, amazingly, actually was loaded and ready to leave just two hours later. The weight is extremely far forward - with my tandems all the way up I still have 33,000 on the trailer axles - but it was legal from the beginning.

So I parked at a truck stop, slept, woke up half an hour later than expected, then took two hours convincing myself to actually start driving. It doesn't matter too much, but it does mean I need to make decent time tomorrow, since I don't have a whole lot of time to spare. I'm going to have to leave here sometime around midnight tomorrow night (or Monday morning, if you prefer), which is less than ideal, given that it's too warm to sleep during the day. But if all goes well, I'll be in south Georgia Monday afternoon, then leave around midnight to make my delivery on Tuesday. There's obviously no telling what will happen after that, given that it's still more than two days away, but hopefully they'll either find some decent freight or, at the very least, confirm that there's nothing and let me catch up on sleep.