Indianapolis, IN - Out for a week?

I sprained my shoulder this past Wednesday night. At the time, I was on a "critical" run going to western Ohio, with the understanding that I'd be sent home for the weekend after its delivery. Instead, I went to the ER, was checked out, and told to follow up with my normal doctor as soon as possible. Thursday, I had to talk to occupational health and the safety department to ensure them that I was in a condition good enough to drive home. I did, though the safety department insisted that I not come back to work until I've had the doctor ensure that it wasn't going to become a long-term, chronic issue. I was ultimately given a run picking up from a northwest suburb of Chicago and dropping off at a place 50 miles south of Indy so I could go home after I delivered it. That work assignment arrived at the truck around 5 PM.

Due to my assigned empty trailer being misplaced, it took me almost 45 minutes to find the thing. I knew it was going to be late for the pick up at this point and ops was already aware that I was likely to miss it, so I decided to get a quick bite to go from the cafeteria. I was inside about twenty minutes (from 5:50 to 6:10) and, when I returned to the truck, saw a message saying I'd been pulled to cover a more critical run and had a new assignment going to Bowling Green, KY for delivery at 10:30 AM Friday morning. That, in short, wasn't going to work; I was being sent home directly for medical reasons and had other obligations for Friday night already. I called support shift to explain to them why I had been assigned my previous run and why I was not, under any circumstances, going to Kentucky. The subhuman creature on the other end of the phone insisted that I could be sent straight back to Indianapolis and claimed to speak with people who had left the office more than an hour ago. I, in turn, called her everything short of a compulsive liar and repeated myself for a total of about 35 minutes until I was finally put back on my previous load and told to follow up with my board in the morning.

The shipper really didn't seem to mind that I was running late when I arrived an hour after that, around 8:15 central time. I was loaded in about an hour and drove nonstop to my delivery. A quick drop later, I was headed back north to Indianapolis. I arrived there at somewhere around three or four in the morning. I went to sleep, woke up, and found a primary care doctor who could get me into her office Tuesday morning. I sent that information off to ops via Qualcomm, sent the various other messages that have to be sent before I go home, and went on my way.

Yesterday, the doctor's appointment went reasonably well. I did, however, get a prescription for something that lists drowsiness and dizziness as potential side effects, which disqualifies me from driving until I've finished the course of medication on Monday. I called into work around 1:30 PM Eastern to tell them that; the guy I spoke with seemed unhappy that I had to be taken off a load and such but was reasonably understanding about it. I offered to fax a copy of the doctor's note if they wanted any sort of documentation about it but he said that wasn't necessary.

Today I decided to go to the truck and get the rest of my clothing out of it, plus a few other things... only to find out that my truck wasn't there. I know I hadn't written it up for maintenance so I knew that wasn't where it was. So I went inside to the fuel desk, asked where it was, and found out that it was in Kentucky and heading south. Uh. So I tried calling operations to complain about the situation, but they turned the phones off at 3 PM Central instead of 4 like they're supposed to; I called at 4:09 PM eastern and was directed to support shift. It turns out that my stuff was thrown (yes, thrown) into bags by someone else and I was basically told to take those and leave. Someone claimed they called me this morning to give me the chance to do it myself, but this was a single phone call from an unlisted, unrecognized number at 10:53 AM. The time stamp on the paperwork attached to my bags was from around 11:30. Even if I had answered the phone, 30 minutes would not have been adequate time to get up there and do anything, especially with an injured shoulder.

Some people have already decided to speculate that I've been fired but, so far as I know, that is not the case. The company policy is that, if a driver is out of work more than five days, the driver is supposed to clean out the truck so it can be reassigned. I was not, however, informed at any time that said policy would be invoked over my present medical leave, and I intend on filing a grievance over the situation as soon as I can find out where it needs to be directed. Assuming the medication I'm on works I'll be able to resume work Monday morning. If not I will be out on an even longer absence due to MRIs and things of that nature. As a result of a potentially extended absence this blog will probably not be updated much for the foreseeable future.

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.

Dublin, GA - Smooth sailing

Just to prove that my job doesn't suck all the time, allow me to state for the record that today was one of those rather rare days where everything went swimmingly. I made it to the consignee on time, was unloaded ahead of schedule, then headed to the shipper for my next load. I arrived more than an hour early and they still assigned me a dock, loaded me, and let me get on my way promptly. I scaled out and found I was just barely legal on the first try, drove another two hours, and proceeded to a truck stop that has exactly five parking spaces. Against all odds one of those spaces was open; I claimed it and have been parked here since lunchtime. I've an early afternoon appointment in Savannah, GA for my delivery, so I might have to get a slightly earlier meal than I might otherwise like, but the facility is only 120 miles from here and is located just off a major route so it should be trivial to find. Hopefully this trend of good days of driving will continue.

Charlotte, NC - Coolant leak? THAT coolant leak!

I fully expected to find problems with the coolant again after the issues getting it "fixed" in West Virginia, but I didn't expect the problem to manifest quite so quickly. I checked the coolant before I left for the day and found that it was about an inch above the "minimum" line on the coolant tank. However, when I stopped at a rest area about a hundred miles down the road, the level was just below minimum while the engine was hot. I sent a message to road repair asking for advice; they said I needed to get that to an OC for repairs as soon as possible. Fast forward another hundred miles, when I arrived at the consignee, and the coolant level was noticeably below the minimum.

Going to Charlotte for repair was obviously necessary as there's no way my truck would have made it to my destination in New Jersey or, failing that, to any other operating center we have. Support shift, however, refused to acknowledge that there was a problem with this situation. They knew that I was having mechanical problems with the truck and still put me on a service critical load then refused to take me off it when I told them that my truck wasn't going to make it or when I told them that repairs wouldn't be finished until Monday evening. Instead, they said there weren't any drivers capable of taking that as a relay - claiming that the weather was a factor even though it had stopped snowing two days ago - and demanded that I take a loaner truck up there. After significant complaining about it I told them that I'd only be willing to do that if they found me a load to get me back to Charlotte immediately; they found one and I was pretty much stuck.

The only good news is that the trip to and from New Jersey was, if not uneventful, at least safe. The only significant delays on the road were due to construction in Richmond, VA. The consignee for that load going to Jersey nearly refused to accept my paper, temporary license until I told them that they'd either have to take it or I'd have to tell ops they were refusing the load. When I was trying to get an empty, I spent a few minutes arguing with support shift about whether a trailer was for a dedicated account or not; that argument was settled quickly when the box planners put the thing on me, overriding the decision. Trying to get to the shipper for the next load I made a wrong turn and ended up taking a residential road a couple miles until I made a tight buttonhook turn to return to US 9 and head in the right direction. I picked it up, scaled it out, and drove straight back here without any further stops.

My current load delivers at a place roughly 300 miles away at 6:30 tomorrow morning, so I decided to take a bit of time to eat a decent breakfast for a change. I'll be heading out of here shortly, driving that direction, and parking at a truck stop perhaps ten miles away from the facility. While I'm hoping they'll find me another decent run I don't like my chances; we already have 20 drivers waiting on loads in the area so I may be sitting for several hours.

Beckley, WV - Coolant leak? What coolant leak?

I'd hoped that after yesterday's debacle today would turn out better. Silly me!

The morning started off rather roughly when I tried to back the truck out of the bobtail parking, only to find myself hung up on some ice. After several attempts and a few curses at the steering wheel, one of the snow plow drivers helped me out and extricated the tractor from that mess. I found the loaded trailer, updated my paperwork, then hit the road.

Conditions in Indiana were significantly worse than I expected. The snow had slowed to mere flurries by the time I hit the road, but 15 mph winds were enough to blow things everywhere. As such, the left lane was quite heavily covered in snow and ice while the right was jammed with vehicles doing about 25 in a 70. It was quite hard to even tell where one lane ended and the other lane began but I muddled through to Eaton, OH, where I tried to make a quick stop for breakfast.

The quick stop turned out to be not so quick: what should have taken only twenty minutes ended up taking most of an hour. The off-ramp was temporarily blocked due to an accident. The entrance to the truck stop was alsoblocked by a truck caught on a snow drift. Those two incidents combined to cost me at least a half hour. Once I got into the truck stop I scaled out quickly (and, thankfully, was legal weight on the first try), grabbed some breakfast, then tried to hit the road again. This time the exit was blocked by the line of trucks trying to get around, a situation that took nearly ten minutes to remedy itself. Only then could I get back on the highway.

From there, conditions improved dramatically, particularly once I got on US 35 east of Dayton, OH. I averaged nearly 55 on that leg of the trip and quickly made it to the West Virginia turnpike. Twenty miles down the turnpike, though, the low coolant warning came on and I barely made it onto the "shoulder" - little more than a drainage ditch - before the engine shut off. I took a moment to regain my composure, put out my warning triangles, then opened the hood... only to discover nothing useful at all. That's right: aside from the coolant reservoir being far below the "min" line there was no indivation at all as to where the problem was.

I called breakdown and played the waiting game. They said that, due to the weather, they were severely backed up and that it would probably be an hour before they could even call for a tow truck. As always, they said that they'd call me as soon as they had anything useful to say. Rather than getting a call, though, I was awakened from my nap by a knock on the truck door about an hour and twenty minutes later by someone who claimed to be with the towing company that the breakdown department called. The person got increasingly angry as I insisted that I wanted to call to verify that they were, in fact, the right company. Upon getting confirmation of that, the tow guy made a remark about never doubting a wrecker driver and continued to talk with extreme condescension toward me throughout the effort.

Rather than towing my truck, though, the company just put two gallons of water into the cooling system and told me to drive it to the next exit about two miles away. I was stunned, to say the least; we were paying them to tow the truck after all. The rig made it there without incident, to my pleasant surprise, at which point I unhooked the trailer and bobtailed to the repair facility. The place wasn't in Charleston as I'd been told though; it was in a remote small town about twenty miles from there. I was rather worried as the place did not look like the sort of facility we would normally use. I called breakdown to verify that I was in the right place and shouldn't be afraid of banjo music, just in case.

To keep this already long post from getting even longer: several hours of testing later, including idling the truck at 1,800 RPM for 30 minutes, revealed nothing. The mechanics blamed me for not checking to make sure there was enough coolant in the thing in the first place and sent me on my way. All told I lost a good four hours due to the incident and had to rely on yet another set of convenient rounding errors to keep me from logging a violation.

I'm now going to be almost half a day late on a service critical load and, since the shop couldn't actually find a problem, there's a chance that they'll blame me for failing to deliver it on time. Granted, with the weather being such a wild card, there's a pretty good chance I wouldn't have made it anyway, but there was still that glimmer of hope that I'd have been successful. Oh well, nothing can be done about it now.

Indianapolis, IN - Four hours to go nowhere.

Though the title says it all, allow me to elaborate on just how badly the day went. It started off around 9AM, when I called in to ask if I had a load and, if so, what the details were. I was told that I had a relay to pick up from the Indy OC, delivering 550 miles away by midnight Saturday night. I then asked, as confirmation, if I needed to do anything today or if I could just go back to sleep. I was told no, I could wait, if I felt the weather would be better later. With that settled, I took a nap.

When I woke up four hours later, I found that I had several messages from operations asking me why I wasn't at the shipper and why I missed an 11 AM appointment. I called back in to find out what on earth they were smoking and discovered that, while I was already on the phone, customer service quietly put a load save on me that hadn't shown up at the time. They pressed me on it and - against my better judgment - I ultimately agreed to try take the thing.

The road conditions going up to the operating center were lousy, at best; I was significantly delayed just due to accidents blocking travel lanes. The normally half-hour trip to the OC turned into nearly an hour and a quarter. By the time I'd loaded a few things into the truck (such as my gloves and a couple basic tools) it was almost 3 PM. I was told to pick up a trailer from the OC, then told that the trailer wasn't there after all. I received another trailer number, only to find it in the maintenance line, a month overdue for its annual inspection. Finally I received instructions to go to another facility three miles down the road to get a trailer; I found it and was on the way within fifteen minutes.

As a result of all this, it was already nearly 4 PM by the time I had a trailer. I'd originally been told to try get there at three and had received a warning that the customer was closing early. Because the facility was located in such an awkward area - only the exit from I-70 east could get me there - it took almost 45 minutes just to figure out how to get there. And, of course, the place was already closed up by the time I arrived. There wasn't even a car in the parking lot. I called ops just before 4 PM, sat on hold for ten minutes, then was transferred to support shift for no reason. At least support shift proved helpful; they looked into it and asked me to wait half an hour while they tried to contact the company paying for the load. Half an hour passed and I was told to take the still-empty trailer back to the OC for lack of anything else to do.

I arrived at the OC around 6:30 PM and experienced minimal delay due to the weather on the trip there. I dropped the trailer off and just parked the truck, making no effort to even find the next load. I figured that, having wasted almost five and a half hours on a wild goose chase, the least I was owed was a good night of sleep while the worst of the storm blew over. I certainly hoped that the first load after my vacation would go more smoothly.