Dalton, GA - An exercise in frustration

Today has been one of those days in which even Murphy's Law just doesn't seem to go far enough. I ended up getting to the consignee later than expected due to traffic. The consignee didn't have an empty trailer. The Atlanta OC didn't have an empty available. Ops felt like making up excuses relating to policies I was already following instead of trying to actually fix the problem; it's the first time I've ever hung up on someone after they escalated a shouting match. I arrived at the shipper fifteen minutes late and was accepted, only to find myself at the back of a line seven trucks long. The scale at the shipper was on the fritz so I still have no idea if this load is actually legal or not. I had to go fifteen minutes over my 14 hour limit just to get to the nearest truck stop after that.

All told, I'm a full three hours behind schedule now. I need a small miracle tomorrow - namely, going at least 600 miles without any delays or issues whatsoever - just to have a small chance of getting to the consignee at the time I'm currently expected to be there. Failing that my odds are completely nonexistent and I'll be losing time on Friday. I'm really not expecting much of anything good at this point, though. The only even slightly favorable thing is that I plan on calling my DBL's boss at some point later in the week, explaining what happened, and asking to be moved to a different board. Today was very much the last straw in dealing with that.

Wilmington, OH - South for the winter

After spending a considerable amount of time in New England, I'm
finally getting a run that takes me toward the center of the country.
In this case, my destination is Kentucky and my estimated time of
arrival is about 10 o'clock tomorrow. I'm not sure what's going to
come after that, as usual, but ops said there was no freight down
there and thus no reason for me to try press on and make it there any
earlier than I'm already going to arrive. Hopefully something will
come available by the time I reach the facility since rural Kentucky
is definitely not an area that provides much hope of finding freight.

Things recently have been rather steady, though. It seems like I could
be running as many miles as I want, as there's rarely a shortage of
freight. Yesterday was the first day in nearly three weeks that they
just couldn't find a load for me, regardless of where I was; I had to
kill most of a day in western Ohio waiting to pick something up this
morning. Once I had the load, though, I had to make a couple of
detours. First I had to get a damaged tire replaced to ensure the
trailer was safe to haul, then I had to detour around a DOT scale
since there was no way of ensuring my weight was legal before I'd have
crossed it. It's a good thing I took the side trip; I was 750 pounds
overweight on the trailer tandems. Beyond that, it was just a straight
shot down I-71 to get here. The McDonald's at this exit has twice as
much parking as the truck stop, so I parked here instead since the
truc stop was already full.

In the morning I just need to get up, get fuel, get food, and get
moving. There's really not much else to this run now that I have the
weight legal and a decent trip plan in place. The only concern now is
hoping that ops finds a run for me to get me back out of there,
preferably in the direction of a city actually worth being in.

Westborough, MA - Two long weeks

I apologize for not updating this more often, but the last two weeks have been utterly insane; I completely ran out my 70 hours in my first seven days on the road. In the eight days since then, I've logged another 67 hours. I've had time to do little more than work, eat, and sleep. If we're still in a recession, it's clearly not affecting any of the customers that I've been hauling freight for. There have been a few minor hiccups, but overall things are going pretty darn well out here. I'll try to update more often in the future, but there's just too much to write about retroactively.