Chester, PA - Night shift into neutral

The last few days have gone remarkably well with work, which is why I haven't had anything to write about. It's far more interesting writing about conflict than merely saying "everything's wonderful" all the time after all. I've been getting plenty of miles, not had any completely unreasonable work assignments, and so on. I was less than thrilled about being sent to Delaware on a run, but it turned out the route there (US 30 and PA 41) was in better shape than the Pennsylvania turnpike; the roads were almost completely clear of snow and traffic was far less of an issue.

Tonight's about the first time that something hasn't gone so well in the last few nights. I picked up the only empty trailer from the last facility I was at, did a rather thorough pre-trip since it's one of our older trailers, and found nothing wrong. Fast forward an hour, to where I had to open the doors to drop it, and I found a  significant leak in a ceiling crack. I'd shone the flashlight directly upon that and didn't see anything like that, nor was there any water or snow in the back of the trailer; I just got extremely unlucky. apparently, though the guard didn't seem to notice as I drove by with the doors open.

The other part of my current misfortune is that this load won't be ready early. I'd sent a message off saying that I really, really needed them to find out if I could get this early or not since there was essentially nowhere to park between the consignee for the last load and the shipper for this one. I didn't get anything in response, however, not even the usual form message telling me that I need to call in to get approval for it. So I just decided to go for it, fingers crossed, and got unlucky. I was lucky enough to find a parking space on the side of the street, so I'm not going to have to leave, but it does mean that I'm not going to be able to make any progress at all on this run 'til late morning. I might have to make a significant detour to ensure I end up somewhere that will have truck parking at night (probably Indy OC) but that'll be operations problem, not mine. For now, though, I just need to rest up since tomorrow's likely to be another very long day.