Cusseta, GA - Two flats for the price of one!

Things were going fairly well this morning. I got up a little later than planned, perhaps, but otherwise all was fine and dandy until I noticed an ever-increasing cloud of smoke coming from my right-rear trailer tires. Given that I'm on US 280 and there's not really a shoulder - it's maybe two feet wide - I kept driving trying to find a safe place to pull over. This would have worked if I weren't in such a rural area, perhaps, but instead it resulted in me losing the other tire on that side as well and the rims starting to bounce on the ground, resulting in sparks. Soon as I saw sparking I just pulled as far over as I could and stopped; I'm blocking the right lane of the highway but there's no way I could possibly proceed any further up the road. So now I have the joy of waiting for road repair yet again; they should be here in another 45 minutes or so.

In the meantime, have some photos of the resulting carnage; it's been too long since I've posted images here anyway.

Update (8:54 AM): Road repair is here, and not a moment too soon; the sheriff's deputy who was keeping an eye on traffic was not happy about how long it was taking. He'd originally threatened to have the truck impounded if the guy hadn't arrived by 8:30 but apparently thought otherwise somewhere along the line. How here's hoping it'll take a relatively short time for them to replace all that mess.

Jacksonville, FL - Who wants the what now?

After a rather annoyingly schedule run yesterday that delivered here in Jacksonville today, I have yet another assignment: a zero mile run. Yes, that's right, zero miles; every stop is within the city limits of Jacksonville. From the consignee for my last load to the drop lot with this loaded trailer was half a mile; from there to the load's consignee was another 4.3. I'll get a flat $25 for that, too, which works very much in my favor.

Of course, that's assuming that we ever can get the freight off the trailer. There's no bill of lading for this load. The guard at the drop lot said that all the paperwork should have been left with the trailer; since it's not there, she claimed, the other driver must have forgotten to leave it. After 35 minutes on hold to try talk with ops, I was given a rough explanation: it's a return load. Therefore, a bill of lading likely doesn't exist in the first place. I was given information to write up a bill of our own, but as soon as I handed it to the receiving office here they handed it back and said they can't accept those. So now I'm playing Qualcomm tag with operations trying to get someone to create a bill of lading and fax it here because they've explicitly said they won't accept the load until they have an original copy of that from the load's shipper.

I just received word that they've gotten in touch with the shipper (whoever they're holding responsible for this, anyway) and that it should be getting sent shortly. It's just really annoying that we have to go through all these hoops just to get a single pallet of freight unloaded...

College Park, GA - Failtastic

I'd say it's been one of those days, but it's really been just one of those weekends overall. It started off promisingly enough, with a 1,000 mile run out of an area that I was worried wouldn't have any freight and enough spare time that I could, just maybe, earn a layover in Atlanta. I even managed to find parking at the Carlisle OC at about 10 PM on a Friday, as the shop was pulling dropped trailers out of the transient section. Unfortunately, that's about the last case of things going well.

First, I significantly overslept and didn't leave there until late Saturday morning. Then, while things were going reasonably well for most of the day, I had a tire blow out as I reached Statesville, NC. That cost me nearly four hours. It took over an hour just to get through to emergency maintenance; I found out during that call that they had exactly four people answering maintenance calls for our entire 14,000 truck fleet. Then it was nearly two and a half hours before Wingfoot arrived to replace the tire, and another half hour for the replacement to actually get bolted on. As such, while I'd originally planned on reaching Charlotte by about 5 or 6 PM, I didn't get there until after 10. This also ruined my plans of making Atlanta by Sunday morning; since I had a 9 AM appointment here I needed to be in Atlanta by about 8 AM yesterday in order to actually get paid for the layover.

So I decided at that point that I was going to stay in Charlotte instead, despite not having anything to do in the area, and leave at about 3 o'clock this morning to ensure that I'd get here on time. At least I was able to do that, as much as I loathe getting up that far before dawn. I wasn't able to get breakfast before I left, though, and due to concerns about the inevitable traffic jam in Atlanta I didn't want to risk leaving any later than I did. Sure enough, there were delays in Atlanta, including the smoldering remains of a car that bore an eerie resemblance to my own, but nothing as bad as I had expected. I attempted to park at a truck stop to get breakfast, but due to the place being badly overcrowded and my truck's clutch acting up in a way I haven't seen in ages, I just gave up, losing about 15 minutes and still being hungry.

I arrived here about 8:40, twenty minutes before my appointment. I should have figured something was amiss, given that it was showing an appointment for a drop and hook, though I have had a few of those before. But of course, they're starting to pull the same thing on me as they are on another driver: marking loads as drop and hook when they're really live unloads. It gets even more frustrating, though; while I was getting checked in, another truck pulled in and blocked me from getting to the docks, claimed he didn't have an appointment but he was supposed to be here anyway, then took the dock that I'd been assigned. Now they're unloading him while I'm backed into the dock next to him and my freight hasn't been touched. This means I'm losing even more time that I didn't really want to kill in the first place.

Of course, the freight situation down here is a perfect case of SNAFU. Over the weekend we didn't have enough capacity to cover the loads already in the system, which is why I was told I couldn't relay the load off at the Atlanta OC and keep the truck moving; this morning we've 18 more drivers than loads. This means that I could have dropped the relay, covered a load they needed saved, and there would have been drivers coming available that could have delivered this. I'm seriously starting to question if the trip planners even bother looking at anything other than the first number that comes up on the screen without thinking about the implications of things a day or two out. So while I could probably have helped them cover loads on the weekend and gotten some really good miles out of the deal, instead I'll probably be stuck waiting for more freight to pop up before I can go anywhere.

About the only other thing I can do at this point is try to call in, explain the situation, and see if they can try sneak me up the line for load assignments. I doubt that will go anywhere, though.

Knoxville, TN - Oops I did it again

After spending the entire weekend in a hotel under the assumption that I just had to deliver to a place five miles up the road this morning, I came back to the truck at about 7:30 only to find that I'd been taken off that load and assigned something else. That's definitely not a good thing, since when I called yesterday morning, I was under the assumption I still had that delivery in Charlotte; had I been told that wasn't the case, I would have started moving on this load yesterday and delivered it right on time: seven o'clock this morning. The delivery window simply required me to deliver it by 2 PM, but by the time I had everything together - the paperwork, fuel, directions, and such - it was nearly 9 AM and I had to travel 300 miles, including a stint on US 74 (through a series of small towns with lots of traffic lights) and a ride through the Smokey Mountains on I-40. Needless to say, that wasn't happening.

Despite all that, and despite the fact that the entire situation could have been avoided had I just been in the truck like I probably should have been, somehow I'm not being blamed for a service failure on this load. A few rounds of Qualcomm tag later and I was first told that they were going to stay late to take me, then given a second message saying that they rescheduled it for tomorrow morning at 8 AM. The latter message left me slightly confused, since they (allegedly) open at 7; I was advised to try at seven and just hope for the best.

Thus I'm here in Knoxville with roughly 16 hours to kill. I'll probably head out of here around 6 to try arrive just after 7; it's about 60 miles away. In non-numeric terms, that means I have to get up at the butt-crack of dawn if I want to get breakfast before I hit the road. I don't have another work assignment yet, though I'm hoping one comes in overnight. Failing that I'll just call first shift while I'm being unloaded and hope they have some good news.

Charlotte, NC - Maintenance Downtime

After about a week off, I'm back on the road again. Coming out of the house I had yet another great run: over a thousand miles to central Pennsylvania. However, I also had a message telling me that I'm due for routine maintenance by the sixteenth. I didn't want to have to set up a relay on my very first load coming out of the house, so I delivered that load yesterday afternoon. Rather than merely hoping I was sent somewhere for maintenance, I called operations after dropping the trailer and asked them to find something that would get me through an OC. About ten minutes later, I was assigned a load that delivers here in Charlotte Monday morning.

The most stunning thing about the load? I had to deadhead (drive with an empty trailer) nearly three hundred miles to get it. I stopped about five miles from my pickup point, got there a few minutes late due to bad directions, get the trailer loaded, and went on my merry way. The load was far lighter than expected so I didn't have to scale or fuel up; I drove here with just a quick stop for lunch. After arriving in Charlotte just after 9 PM local time, I dropped the trailer in our lot, then went to talk to the mechanics. Only after I'd listed nearly a dozen items to get fixed did they say that I'd need to wait until tomorrow morning for the truck to be done; prior to mentioning that I needed work on the air conditioning (aka the ice maker) the estimator said I'd be able to get everything done in the express bay and be ready to go within two hours. I'll have to remember how quick the shop is down here since, usually, it's impossible to get anything done over a weekend.

Once all that was taken care of, I got a ride to the hotel and am enjoying the bliss of air conditioning while I type this up. I'm not sure what I'm going to do about the load, though most of that depends on whether or not the shop really can get the truck done by early tomorrow afternoon. If they do, then I'll probably need to ask operations to relay my current load off me so I can take something else and keep moving over the weekend. If the truck isn't going to be ready until late evening or sometime Sunday, I may need to at least inquire about a loaner to ensure that I can get layover pay since they've really become anal retentive about that sort of thing. Thankfully, they do have first shift available Saturday morning from 7 to 11 so I can talk to someone who may actually be willing to listen and consider all the options rather than simply reading from a script and following a flow chart.

However, none of this can happen until morning. There was a small chance of them getting my truck in tonight, but most likely it'll be 5 AM before anyone touches it. Everything hinges on what I find out when I call in the morning.

Pensacola, FL - Relay race

Amazingly, operations actually did something useful for a change. Over the weekend I'd been assigned a load that is to deliver in south Florida Wednesday night. Normally I wouldn't complain about getting 1,250 miles out of Laredo, TX, but I was supposed to be home Wednesday afternoon and - if I delivered the load - I wouldn't have enough time on my seventy to get home before Friday. The weekend shift was being entirely unhelpful as well; when I complained they sent back a snarky message defending the work assignment as getting me closer to home, even though it only moved me from a place 775 miles away to a place 525 away.

So I got a hold of my guy in first shift yesterday morning, explained the situation, and he said he was going to work on a relay. A few hours later - after I'd parked here in town - I received a call telling me to relay the load off somewhere else today and just head home after that. Thus, all I need to do today is get to the truck, do my pre trip, drive 30 miles to the truck stop in question, drop off the trailer, then drive 30 miles back to Pensacola and enjoy a beautiful weekend off. I'll be heading back out on Monday, June 8.