Green Bay, WI - Exercises in futility

Though the facility I spent the night at last night was allegedly open 8 AM to 4 PM, there was still nobody at the shipping office when I rang the bell at eight in the morning. Twenty minutes of ringing and a frustrated call to support shift later, I ultimately wandered through an open door of the warehouse and flagged down somebody manning a printing press; he sent someone to the shipping area to meet me. Unfortunately, the weekend people are just there to man the presses and know absolutely nothing about the shipping and receiving department. After a series of phone calls we found out that I was just picking up a preloaded trailer but the paperwork for said trailer didn't exist. The guy there just made up some stuff, asked me to provide a fax number for the consignee, and sent me on my way.

The trip through the snowy midwest was relatively uneventful. The snow plows in Iowa seemed to focus entirely on the right lane, which led to lengthy lines of cars behind every plow and a precarious mess in the left lane for those trying to pass. I skated by several groups without losing significant speed as I tried to make it to Green Bay as quickly as practical. That went mostly well and I arrived here a good hour earlier than expected. However, the place I'm delivering to is open 24/7 except when they aren't. I went to the gate clearly marked as shipping and receiving, pulled onto the scale... and got nothing at all. Nobody at the receiving department was paying any attention.

Between the mess there and the next load I was assigned - one that I couldn't conceivably deliver on time - I'd had quite enough. I called support shift, told them that I was dropping this load at the Green Bay OC, and called it a night. I'll be chewing out first shift in the morning and telling them that they really need to find some practical way of getting me home soon, because I'm seriously doubting their ability to get me anywhere productive right now. But as nobody who is capable of helping me will be in for another eight and a half hours, that sounds like a good reason to get eight and a half hours rest.

Carroll, IA - Freezing my @#*( off

After getting that air leak fixed in Chicago, I was given a couple of local assignments. First I picked up my load from the OC and delivered that as a live unload, then I received another assignment in Chicagoland. I didn't even get on the Interstate for it; I went straight up one of the state routes to the facility, got the trailer loaded, and started heading toward a logistics yard to drop off the relay. In hindsight I probably shouldn't have even bothered getting on I-55, as traffic was starting to back up around 3 PM. The end result is that it took me over an hour and a half to go just 30 miles. The guy who was bringing in my next load as a relay was even more backed up and didn't arrive until after I'd run out of hours for the day.

Since I couldn't go anywhere last night with the relay, I had to get started around 2 AM this morning. I found the relay trailer quickly enough, but just scaling the load out turned into a significant problem; I had to take a detour to avoid various DOT scales, then came to a Pilot only to find that their scale was out of service. I tried a TA next and discovered that they didn't even have a CAT scale. It was another thirty miles to a Love's that actually had a working CAT scale; I had to pay the $9 out of pocket but found that I was legal weight wise and continued on my way.

Upon arriving at my delivery point, I checked in at the guard house, then proceeded to the receiving office and was told that I was only dropping the load, not waiting on a live unload. Fantastic, I thought, as drop and hook deals are generally much faster. I dropped off the trailer, grabbed the empty I was assigned ... and discovered that I could move it absolutely nowhere. In the process of doing my pre-trip inspection I'd managed to pack the snow down into nothing but ice, making it impossible to move that trailer at all. At the suggestion of the shipping office I unhooked and managed to somehow wiggle my way out from under the trailer. They assigned me another empty; I grabbed it and worried about doing my inspection after I got it off the ice. Everything checked out, so I called ops about a load, but they only said they were working on something.

While I waited to get a work assignment I went and grabbed lunch from a diner. After food I found I had a load that I can't get until tomorrow morning, but it's at a place that allows overnight parking. I had just enough time on my 14 to get there today so I just got behind the wheel and got moving. Finding the place was a challenge, though, as none of the warehouses on this block have street addresses visible and the facility's name on the street doesn't match what was on my work assignment or their voice mail. But I'm in the right place now, there's nobody here in the shipping office, and I'm far enough out of the way that I can't imagine they'll complain about me being here until they officially open at eight in the morning.

Once I get this load, I have the pleasure of going 470 miles to Green Bay, WI. Of that, none of the route is on the Interstate, though portions in Wisconsin have been built up to Interstate standards and much of the route in Iowa is a four-lane divided highway. I'm just hoping that I don't run into any inclement weather and that the roads are clear and dry, as I'd prefer to have enough time to go somewhere else after I deliver the load. In the best-case scenario, I'll have at least two hours to run and can get somewhere south of Milwaukee. At worst, I'll have to shut down early and deliver it Monday instead. Kinda hard to say, though, until I actually get on the road and assess things. 

Gary, IN - Air leaks

Yesterday was a pretty simple day, though it again reaffirmed my dislike for a particular corporation. I drove straight there from Evergreen, pulled up to the gate, told them I was there to drop a trailer... and told that I was not dropping it but instead had to wait on a live unload and that I'd have to go to a facility a good 10 minute drive away to do it. They assured me that it would take fifteen minutes tops; in reality, I wasted over an hour to that crap. While I was being unloaded I called in to ops to find out about another load and got assigned something out of the same facility. So after being unloaded I headed back over them, gave them my information... and once again was told to go somewhere else, to a third warehouse this time. The load wasn't supposed to be ready for me to get live loaded until the next morning, but they'd actually preloaded a trailer and had the paperwork ready. Once that was done, I went to the nearest truck stop and called it a day.

This morning started off early enough; I was on the road before 3 AM and just ran straight through except for a brief stop in Indianapolis to check on a tire. Aside from that, I continued to Gary and arrived here around 12:15 this afternoon. Upon arriving I pulled straight to the shop as the trailer's within its inspection window and I apparently damaged an air line in the dash during my pre-trip inspection yesterday. Rather than writing it up there, they sent me directly over to the express bay, which certainly didn't help my mood; Gary has the slowest "express" shop in the entire company. I was waiting in line almost 45 minutes before they even got me in here, then had to spend several minutes explaining to the tech why an annual inspection sticker that says "due 1/10" means the trailer's within its maintenance window right now.

It's going on 1:30 now and I still am waiting inside the shop for them to finish repairs. After the guy finished the trailer job, he was ready for me to leave until I said my truck's still out of service. They identified the problem quickly enough, but it's going to take an hour to fix it and they're not even going to start working on the thing until they get another truck out of the way first. I still haven't eaten or showered yet today, so I'm really losing my patience for this stuff. At this point I wish they had just written it up so I could get out of the darn truck!

Evergreen, AL - Come hell or high water...

My first day back on the road after a weekend off got off to a particularly rough start. Not because of anything in the truck, mind you, but because it was nigh impossible to even make it to the pumpkin! As a result of major flooding in southern Alabama, I had to go about a hundred miles out of the way to make it here, more than doubling the distance. This led to me being nearly five hours late getting to the truck and left me little time to do anything other than grab an empty trailer and head to pick up my first load.

The trip to the shipper was pretty easy: a straight shot west on US 84. It took roughly 45 minutes to make the trip, leaving me just 45 minutes to spare on the pick up window. Once there, things went incredibly fast. I was in and out of the facility in under twenty minutes. Rather than take back roads through rural Alabama, I decided to just come right back here and call it a day early. I just didn't want to chance running across any other flooding, nor brave unfamiliar roads at night, nor do much of anything on relatively little sleep. Tomorrow's another day after all.

Gary, IN - Inside the winter storm

The weather around here has taken a serious turn for the worst in the last eight hours. This afternoon was quite pleasant, if overcast, with temps in the low 40s. Then a hailstorm rolled through, followed by freezing rain, which has left an inch-deep slush across the entire lot here. My next assignment came across during that time: pick up a load from a place 50 miles west of here and take it down to Indianapolis. If the weather and traffic conditions were more favorable, I could have probably picked that up and either came back here or driven all the way down to Indy. Instead, I'll be trying to leave from here around one in the morning, pick up the load, then drive straight down to deliver it. On top of that, my work assignment says this is a full driver unload; I'll be spending two or more hours manually taking down boxes and rearranging things at this place. Once that's done I have to head over to the Indy OC to get my windshield fixed; they replaced it during my PM, but the thing leaks profusely all over my dash so they'll probably have to redo the whole job. I'm supposed to somehow make it home for the weekend, but I'm starting to doubt that's even possible due to all these unforeseeable delays.

New London, WI - Uncluefulness

While waiting at the consignee for the last load, I received another assignment, this time to pick up a load from here and take it to a place just north of Chicago. It's not due for delivery until Monday, so I asked if they were intending for me to go to Gary for my truck PM. I instead got back a message saying that I was supposed to wait on the load after I got it, deliver it Monday, then go get the maintenance done. That would not only keep me from doing anything useful over the weekend, but it would leave me stuck in Gary for a day or two after that, pretty much guaranteeing that I'd accomplish nothing useful. I asked for confirmation of that, pointing out the lengthy wait if they expected me to follow that plan, but didn't get a reply before I left the facility.

An hour later I arrived here at the shipper, only to find the guard shack unoccupied. They had a snowed-over sign instructing drivers to call security on the CB, which I did... they had no idea where the security guard went, so they had to send someone else out there. Ten minutes later someone showed up, grumbling about the guy who was supposed to be there, and checked me in. I finally made my way to the shipping office to get my load, but there was just one problem. They have no more loads for us tonight as another driver picked up the last of our freight earlier today.

To try and get things sorted out, I called ops. After ten minutes on hold, I got someone, gave them my driver number, and was hung up on after a brief pause. Then I called back, had to wait another five minutes, explained the situation, got put on hold for ten minutes, then was told that the shipper must be the one that made the mistake and that all we really need is a trailer number. They repeated this information despite me pointing out that there's no more loads at all for us. None. They have no freight for us. And yet I'm still expected to wait here half an hour while they figure out why because the person paying for the load is supposedly going to get right back to us. This is not cool; it's freezing cold.

Random Lake, WI - First Frost

The last few days have been quite ... something, to say the least. It started off simply enough, with a delivery near Scranton, PA late Monday night. Then, Tuesday morning, I found that I still hadn't received a work assignment, so I called in to ask about it. They ended up assigning me something that I could have easily picked up six hours ago, driven most of the way to the consignee, taken a break, then delivered at my 3 AM appointment. Instead, since they took so long to give it to me, I had to drive through the night Tuesday and arrived in Maine around 2:30 AM Wednesday. They assigned me a dock immediately and told me it would be "a couple hours, at least" so I backed in and promptly took a nap.

It was around 9 AM when they finished and brought the paperwork out. Things weren't so hot; three problems were found with the load. Two were just between the consignee and the vendor - I just had to acknowledge that we were aware of it - but the third was a delivery of 40 cases of a product that the customer doesn't even carry and that they placed back on the truck. They gave me permission to wait as long as necessary to get things sorted out, so I called cargo claims to explain the situation, got instructions to take it to another facility a few miles away, and went back to sleep for a couple more hours until my break was up.

Upon arriving at the LTL facility, I checked in, opened the trailer, backed in, felt a forklift... then double-checked my presumably empty trailer only to find that the pallet was spilled all over the floor. They blamed me for it in a completely unprofessional and condescending manner; I made another angry phone call to claims because I knew the product hadn't been like that when I backed in. Ultimately, I was assured that the staff there would "assist" in restacking the pallets, but they told me off again when I asked. Adding to the frustration was that there weren't 40 cases; there were 61 and there was no way it was going to fit on one pallet. I ended up having to restack it onto two, made yet another phone call asking for a correction to be made on the load information, then ultimately just had the facility scratch out the old number and write in the new. What should have been just a simple, 15 minute stop ultimately became an hour and a half ordeal. The net result of all this was that I was still a good three hours ahead of schedule. Good thing, too, since that meant I could afford to average "only" 56 mph on the run instead of needing to do at least 60 the whole way. The rest of things that day went pretty smoothly, even if I did have to drive considerably later than I'd have liked; I shut down in Lamar, PA around 2:30 AM.

Ultimately, though, it proved obvious that there was no way that I could get this delivered on time without sticking to the Interstate and, unfortunately, the toll roads in Ohio and Indiana. Normally we're not authorized to take those, but after a short phone call explaining the situation, I got it approved. I left the moment my break was up, made a single fuel stop, and arrived in Zion, IL just after midnight this morning. The end result? I did over 750 miles yesterday, all legally, easily setting a new record. I also provided myself about a half-hour cushion on the delivery, while I'd otherwise have had to relay the load off in Gary, IN for lack of time to deliver. I arrived here perhaps half an hour ago, backed in to a door, and typed all this while they're unloading me. It sounds like they're just about done now; I have one more stop to make on this run, then probably will be routed to Gary, IN for routine maintenance. I'll be posting another update from there at the end of the night.

Pittston, PA - Here we go again

After getting significantly more time off for Thanksgiving than originally planned, I'm out on the road again. Things have started off easily enough, at least for the most part. I picked up a load in Mobile, stopped in Charlotte Sunday night... then had the displeasure of arguing with the mechanics there as they flagged my trailer as being out of service for a tire issue that they outright refused to identify. That's right: they refused to let me leave but wouldn't tell me why. I lost over an hour due to that crap, leaving me just enough time to drive 580 miles with a single stop for dinner.

Upon arriving around 10:30 PM last night, I dropped the loaded trailer, called operations, and found out that they didn't have anything up here. A short drive later, I parked at a truck stop for the night. Now, almost fourteen hours later, I'm still sitting here and waiting for something from ops. I just called them once more and was told I should have something "in five to ten minutes." I'll double-check the Qualcomm shortly, but I'm hoping they give me something that takes me over toward Indianapolis or Chicago; my truck's due for maintenance in a couple days and it'd be nice to get it done at one of our better shops.

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.

Beaverdam, OH - Out of the frozen tundra

Though things here in the midwest aren't nearly as bad as they are out in the Rockies - it's above freezing and there's no risk of snow - the weather has been unseasonably cold over the last few days. It's brushing rather close to freezing, but nothing going below that mark. Things have cooled off quite a bit with work as well. While I had been running close to that seventy hour limit last week, that came to a very sudden halt when I arrived in Seville on Saturday and found that there was no freight whatsoever for me to take if I relayed my current load. As such I was left taking an unwanted 34-hour restart; the only positive things are that I get a day of layover and accomplished some personal errands.

Things today were about as simple as they get: an early morning start to drive straight to a consignee. I stopped for breakfast and a short nap along the way, but the trip itself was dreadfully uneventful. I was unloaded in about one-fourth the time I was told to expect, though, so I made a phone call to find out whether or not I'd be getting another load any time soon. Ops originally said that there was nothing around but, upon finding out that the area planner was doing dispatch, they also informed me that they'd lined up a 750 mile run to Georgia. I stopped briefly for lunch on the way since I needed to kill about 45 minutes before I could arrive at the consignee. Upon arriving there, I found out that they were in the process of loading another one of our trailers, rather than live loading the one I brought with me. They took their sweet time with it, but I ended up getting out of there about 20 minutes earlier than expected. After one final stop to scale the load, I came down here for my break.

Tomorrow is going to be dead simple: straight down I-75 as far as I feel like going. I'll probably stop about 30 miles north of I-285, since there are two truck stops at an exit in that area and no other ones beyond that point. Then it's an early morning on Wednesday to get the load delivered on time, but nothing like the 2 AM trips I had to make last week. What happens beyond that is anyone's guess, but ops has about two days to figure something out for me.

Keeney, PA - EPIC FAIL

I'm not sure if it's possible for an entire department to be maliciously stupid, but that seems to be the only thing that fully encompasses just how utterly asinine things have become when our customer service department gets involved. Things started off simply enough this morning: the consignee will accept the load as soon as I can get it there. With that knowledge in mind, I started as soon as my break was up and went to scale the load out. After getting the scale ticket, I came back to the truck to find a message waiting for me: appointment scheduled for 11 PM. This conflict wasn't just a contradiction: it presented an impossibility, as my hours for the day were going to run out at 11:15 PM and the consignee doesn't allow parking.

I called in immediately after seeing that mess on the Qualcomm and explained the problem to ops; my DBL agreed that it was not cool that customer service was screwing things up this badly yet again. He said he was going to work on something, probably a relay, and that I should just head to the Carlisle OC. If I didn't hear anything by the time I arrived, I was to call back in and see what the updates were.

Nothing arrived, of course, so I was left to call in. Once again my DBL said that he was working on something and that he had a likely candidate for a relay, but that nothing was confirmed. I ended up calling back in after another hour and found that I was still stuck trying to deliver the thing at 11 PM, but that two people in customer service had talked to two people at the consignee and both said that I could park for the night in a lot they had on the facility. I said that was fine, albeit questionable, but at least I had the names of the people involved this time rather than a faceless case of "customer service talked to the consignee" as so often happens. So I got dinner, waited a couple hours, then hit the road yet again.

Upon arriving at the consignee around 10:15, I found out that everything I had been told about the load was wrong. No, I couldn't have gotten there as early as 9 PM and been worked in. No, there isn't anywhere on their property to take a break even if I don't have enough hours. No, I can't drop my trailer in a dock door and leave to take my break. I called ops again and got the first reasonable, straightforward answer I'd had in quite some time: get out of there and find a legal place for my break while I still had time. I didn't ask twice about that, but I did stop by the receiving office to explain the situation and make one last appeal for an alternative. In the process, I found out that even my work assignment was wrong; it originally said to get there between 7 AM and noon today, but that all unloads have to be confirmed appointments, scheduled in advance, and that absolutely no trucks are handled on a first come first served basis. So, in short, this load wasn't just doomed to fail from the beginning; we never even had a time set up for it. So much for it being a service critical/line shutdown load, right?

One of the few good things happened after I left: I actually found a legal parking place just as my 14 ran out. I called operations yet again, explained the situation, gave an estimated time of delivery, explained that I didn't have a Qualcomm signal, then was asked to send in a message over the Qualcomm with my estimated time of delivery. After facepalming, I explained yet again that I had no signal and repeated that the best I can do now is 11 AM. Ops then tried to tell me to just go back in there as soon as possible to get the load delivered; I told them that I'll go in there when and if I get an appointment and, according to the receiving office, they're already booked solid for tomorrow.

Regardless of what happens overnight, I'll be calling in to first shift when I wake up and trying to get some actual answers from the people who screwed this thing up in the first place. I really hope I get to relay the load, just so it turns into somebody else's problem, as I'm quite tired of feeling like I'm doing the work of almost every department we have in Green Bay. Seriously, is it that hard for anybody up there to just get this stuff right the first time?

Watkins Glen, NY - Operations and irresponsibility

This isn't the first time that ops has completely ignored my mac 18 (the message that tells them when I'm available and for how long), but it is the first time that they've left me in this much of a clusterfuck because of it. I'd originally sent in that I want to park for the day by 6 PM since, past that, it's increasingly difficult to find truck parking. I was done with my previous load around 1 PM local time, went to a nearby truck stop, and parked there to wait for a load. When the Qualcomm beeped just before 5 PM eastern, I figured that it was something for me to pick up tomorrow morning. Instead, it was something that had to be done by 10 PM tonight, with a delivery 250 miles away by noon tomorrow.

Even if I left immediately, it was pretty unlikely that I was going to get it there on time, so I tried calling operations to find out who put me on the load and why I was given a load that was just setting me up to fail. Of course, first shift shut the phones off early again, so I was whisked away to support shift, who can never actually answer anything. I was just told to pick the load up anyway, despite my protests and my complaints that I was going to be short on hours, and to update once I had the trailer loaded with information about my estimated delivery time.

Arguing clearly wasn't going to go anywhere so I growled in protest as I left the truck stop to head here to pick up the load. It took two hours to get here, as expected, but the trip itself was quite stressful. I missed a turn at one point and then ended up stuck behind someone doing 45 in a 55 with no way of passing him for at least 25 miles; he kept accelerating to 60 as soon as I had enough clear road to get around. I found the facility without further incident, though, and checked in only to find there was a considerable line of trucks ahead of me (I counted seven). The facility is first come, first serve as well, so despite the issues with my hours of service and the fact this is a just-in-time, service critical load for a major corporation, I'm stuck at the back of the line waiting for a dock to come available. Even now, more than an hour and a half later, there's still at least two trucks ahead of me, plus the ones in the facility's three docks.

Once it became obvious that I wasn't even going to have enough hours to get to a safe and legal parking spot for my DOT break - the nearest truck stop is about 45 miles away - I called in to ops to protest again. That went absolutely nowhere, despite being on the phone for just over an hour and explaining, repeatedly, when I started, how many hours I used, when my 14 hours for the day expires, that there's no way at all for me to deliver this on time, that I need to relay the load, that customer service needs to talk to regulatory if they think I can do this, and pretty much every other protest that is laid out in the above text. And, despite all that, I'm still on the load and customer service won't take me off of it for any reason short of the truck catching fire.

The only thing I can do at this point is wait to get loaded, go the 45 miles to that truck stop (regardless of how many hours I actually have left), scale it out, and hope that there's somehow a parking space available. There are two rest areas along the way, which improves my odds just slightly, but I'm not at all confident that I'll be able to get a parking space at midnight, which is about when I'll be arriving. I'm supposed to give another update to customer service once I'm parked for the night and have a better ETA, but based on the information I have now, I'm going to be at least three hours late.

In the morning I plan on having a long discussion with operations about this load. There is no excuse for any of this happening, at all, and I'm not going to let people just get away with this crap this time.

Charlotte, NC - Time for a tranny

I ended up delivering a load to Marietta, GA, then found out that I was being held for another customer. Given that nobody could assure me that I was going to be sent back to Charlotte for my truck, I wasn't about to accept that for an answer. A couple phone calls and a bit of firm discussion later, I was assigned two loads: one to save, and a 1,000+ mile run that would take me back through Charlotte. I agreed, though I had my doubts about being able to make the load save in the first place.

My fears proved to be well founded: the journey was significantly longer than the paid miles and, coupled with a delay due to road construction on I-20, I ended up being a solid twenty minutes late for my delivery. This put me on standby, pushed me behind the 10 PM appointments, and turned a 30-minute live unload into a two-hour waiting game. If things went well, I could have just made it back here last night; these delays ensured that the best I could do was Atlanta, since the handful of truck stops along I-85 would likely be full.

Delays didn't end with that live unload, either. The next load was a preloaded trailer pickup from a facility that was listed having 24/7 access to trailers. Turns out that it wasn't; the guard was on an hour-long lunch break when I arrived and I lost nearly 45 minutes more as a result. I called operations to complain; their suggestion was that I just take my break somewhere else and pick the load up in the morning. In hindsight, that might have been a better idea, but I stubbornly sat there, waited, and left with the trailer around 12:30 AM.

Upon arriving at the Atlanta OC, I didn't know what to expect for parking; it's one of our smaller yards and it tends to fill up quickly. I was fortunate enough to get parking in the very front row, in one of the few spaces reserved for transient combination parking. I promptly went to bed, slept for nine hours, got food with the remaining time, and hit the road. There were no further delays on the way to Charlotte, as I was leaving Atlanta around noon and arrived here before rush hour settled in.

My first stop was to head to the shop and find out whether or not my truck was done. Turns it it wasn't; the issues I was having were linked to the truck's entire transmission failing, a seven-hour repair job. As such, the estimated completion time was pushed back from 10 AM this morning to 4 PM tomorrow. I called ops to find out what they wanted to do and, ultimately, they decided to keep me on the load in the hopes that my truck is ready earlier than 4 PM since that would leave me perilously close to being late on delivering this load. I'm going to be getting in touch with the shop in the morning to find out if there's any chance at all of them speeding things up, since being able to leave here earlier would greatly help my chances of getting the load there with time to spare. If they're late, though, I may be stuck handing the load off to someone else and losing about 700 miles and another day out on the road. Only time will tell.

Charlotte, NC - Ops, we have a problem

Things with the truck have been kinda sketchy for a while, but today they went over the edge. I was finding it very difficult to get the truck into gear and - as the evening went on - it became increasingly difficult just to keep it in gear. This would have been bad enough on its own, but I also lost the high side of the engine brake, which made descending the various long grades in Virginia far more nerve-wracking than they needed to be. Attempting to go down a seven-mile long 6% downgrade is particularly frightening when you smell brakes burning, even if it later turns out to be someone else's.

By the time I arrived at the operating center, it was nearly impossible to drive. The truck fell out of gear twice just on the half-mile or so stretch of street between the Interstate and the OC's gate, then once more as I tried idling it to the shop. They wrote it up for maintenance, gave me a rough time estimate, and told me where to park it. Good thing, too; I barely could get it into gear at all because the clutch was nearly seizing up and it was practically impossible to shift out of gear without turning the truck off. There's no way at all this thing could have made it to my delivery tomorrow.

A bit of phone tag with operations later, and I was originally told that this was going to be a relay... then ops called back ten minutes later to tell me that there's so little capacity around here that I'll have to take a loaner and deliver it. I was assured that I'd be routed directly back to the operating center, but I'll believe that one only after I have a work assignment that tells me to stop here. Regardless, I'll have to call first shift in the morning to finalize the details on this run, attempt to get the delivery moved up a few hours, and pester them until they give me a run that brings me back to Charlotte tomorrow evening.

Rogers, MN - Back and forth

After getting stuck on a rather lousy run in Pennsylvania, I was given a nice trip out to Minnesota, worth over a thousand miles. Getting out here was pretty easy, despite a few routing mistakes, since there are only so many ways one can go on the Interstate. I arrived here slightly earlier than planned despite the detour, largely due to Chicago traffic being far better than anticipated. I get to deliver this thing around 6 in the morning tomorrow, then take a relay back toward Chicago for a Monday delivery. I need a weekend free. :)

Kennebunk, ME - More early mornings

The last few mornings have been incredibly early starts; I had to be up around 1 AM to try pick a load up Friday morning and had a 5 AM delivery today. Things were going pretty decently yesterday, so I decided to push my luck and try hit a truck stop much closer to the delivery location than I'd originally planned. My hours were running out, so I decided to go to a rest area instead of the truck stop I wanted to reach. That might have worked out well, except that the New York State Police were doing level three inspections. In other words, logbook checks. By the time I arrived there, due to traffic and hills, I was already fifteen minutes over my time for the day.

The officer had his share of issues with the paperwork, though most of them were the sort of mistakes a rookie would make. For one, he asked me to open the trailer to get the VIN and other information off it; that stuff is on a plate right near the gladhands. For another, he thought that "AR" on my logbook was the abbreviation for Arizona, not Arkansas. He also noted that yes, I am pushing it, but "I'm not going to bust your balls for fifteen minutes" he said as he returned everything to me with a clean inspection report. I was forced to park there, of course, but given the shortage of hours I'd planned on that anyway, so I only lost the half hour due to the inspection.

This morning I started as early as I could: 1:30 AM. I had to drive straight through and skip my originally planned fuel stop just to make it on time; I arrived just ten minutes before my appointment time. I checked in, found out we needed a lumper, grumbled about that for a couple minutes, called operations and got "approval" to have them do it, and took a nap while they worked. They finished just after 8 AM, came back with a price, and I called in to get a comcheck for payment. First shift decided to chew me out for not calling in sooner as the genius in support shift apparently decided not to update that information in the computer after I called. I was given a check, but still haven't received an authorization number; without one the fee comes out of my paycheck so I'll need to call first thing Monday morning to get that resolved.

Once the unloading stuff was taken care of, I went to the truck stop I originally was to fuel at and actually filled the truck up with the 51 gallons it needed. Operations wouldn't tell me anything about a work assignment except that I was being held for a customer. Only on the third call was I told that it's unlikely that I'd be assigned anything that would get me moving before a break and I should have considered the time immediately after I parked as the start of my break. I called them out on that, though, and said rather bluntly that if I'm having to get up at 1 in the morning they better find a way of utilizing me since I'm quite tired of busting my tail only to get screwed over again and again. The lady in ops then said she'd see if they'll at least get an assignment pushed out to me before they leave; I had one show up just after 11 for a customer other than the one they claimed I was on hold for.

This assignment is notable for one thing: it's the first time I've been told to deadhead more than 300 miles to get a load. Usually, they try to keep that under 100, or maybe 200 if they're truly desperate to get a load covered, but above that is unheard of for us. I'm not sure what's so special about the load, though; it's a pickup that I can make any time tomorrow (I plan on arriving around 5 AM) and a delivery 500 miles away for Monday at 4 PM. Looking at my hours and the details of this load, I should just be able to make it to the consignee tomorrow afternoon if I try; I sent in a macro asking if we can deliver it then so I'm free much earlier on Monday. If so, I can park on-site there and have a full slate of hours after my break. If not, I can easily claim layover pay for it. So, in this case, I pretty much can't lose. :)

Findlay, OH - Incredibly early mornings

I hate going to New England. There's almost no parking, almost no freight to get out of the area, and it's far too easy to get lost. So, of course, I end up with a load going to Connecticut that delivers at 5 AM Saturday. This means I have to get up around midnight tonight and tomorrow night and hope that I'm coherent enough to keep the truck on the road and on the only legal truck route anywhere near the consignee. It's going to be more than a little unpleasant, but I couldn't find any excuse to get them to take me off the load, leaving me stuck with it. I just hope they promptly get me out of the region since the only nearby parking is a pay lot.

Evergreen, AL - Three hundred miles to go nowhere

I finally ended up back to work today, though I got a bit of a later start than operations would have liked. I even got put back on the load that I'd told them yesterday that I probably wouldn't be able to pick up, since I had to go so far just to get an empty trailer, but they insisted that I run with it anyway since they found an empty that was more than 50 miles closer (83 v. 140). It worked out, but only just; I made it onto their property less than five minutes before they stopped taking new trucks for shipping. I got away with being in the wrong part of the facility, too, since I had to go from one gate to another, then to a scale, then past there to a fourth location to get the truck loaded. Once that was completed I was given a ticket off the facility's scale and sent on my way.

Since it was already getting kinda late and construction on US 84 cost me quite a bit of time, I just stopped back here in Evergreen for the night. The only other places I could have stopped were in Montgomery (if I were lucky) and potentially the consignee (if they were open past 7 PM), but I was feeling unusually tired so I just called it a day early. I'll have about 150 miles to go tomorrow to deliver this thing; hopefully my next run will be long enough to be worthwhile.