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.
No comments:
Post a Comment