Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Columbus, OH - The who with the where now?

Things have gotten rather interesting with regard to this next load. I started off painfully early this morning (2:30 AM), made a fuel stop, and arrived at the consignee for the previous load about half an hour early. Good thing, too, since it took three attempts to get a valid delivery number, which was erroneously listed as a bill of lading number. You'd think that customer service could at least keep track of what number is good for what. Once out of there, I had another load, this time going to Delaware. There were a few problems with being assigned this, namely that I probably don't have enough hours to go all the way out there in two days (I'd have about 10 on my 70) and I was promised that I'd be kept off the east coast. I was told to pick it up while they looked for alternatives, such as a relay.

So I dropped my now-empty trailer, got the paperwork, found the loaded trailer... and found it to be missing its PM sticker. I called road repair and was told that it was overdue for a PM and that it needed to be done before the load could head toward its destination. So I called ops to tell them what was going on (and to reiterate that we really needed to relay the load) and went to the OC. Upon arriving, I parked the truck and trailer, went into the shop, and found out that the trailer had a PM done back in April; nobody had bothered to update it until now. So I was given the PM sticker, called ops to update it, and was told to just drop the load as a relay to ensure that I didn't get totally screwed over on time.

After taking care of all that, I told ops that I'm interested in taking a 34-hour restart in either Indianapolis or Seville, OH; there aren't even shower facilities here at the Columbus OC so staying here is definitely not an option that I'd like to be stuck with. However, another phone call has revealed that there's no freight that would get me to another operating center and, with my 14 dwindling down, it's looking increasingly unlikely that I'll get something that would get me to an OC. There's still an outside shot of making it to Indianapolis, if something comes up in the next half hour or so, but beyond that I'd have to get either really creative with my logbook or just concede defeat and stay parked here in Columbus for the next two days. I should have a final answer within the next half hour.

1 comment:

  1. Actually, there is all of one shower at the Columbus OC. Pretty much as soon as you enter the driver's entrance go straight across that room, and there it is! :D

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