Darien, CT - U-turn on the highway

I was supposed to originally make delivery up in Milford, CT at 8 AM this morning. I knew I was going to be late for that, but had hoped to get up there by noon, which I had been told would be okay. Turns out that the place I'm delivering to closes at 11 AM, though. Which is just as well, as I forgot how bad traffic on I-95 in Connecticut is. I figured I'd lose some time, yes, but I didn't expect to find that traffic was moving at 15 to 20 mph along the entire highway, from New York to Massachusetts.

I pulled into a service plaza for both a quick rest break and to find out what I should do about this load: I don't have enough hours on my 11 to even make it to where I'm supposed to be going now. About 20 minutes later, I'd found out that the next available appointment was for the same time next Wednesday and that the nearest drop yard was, unfortunately, the one back in New Jersey. I'll either have to go straight through NYC on I-95 (and, given that it's New Year's, that's not likely) or go around 287 and have to drive twice as far. Neither option is very good, but hopefully they'll get me out of the northeast soon enough.

Seville, OH - Overnight express

I was supposed to leave from Green Bay around 6 PM yesterday, but I just didn't have the energy to do anything. As such, I didn't leave from there until nearly 1 AM this morning. I picked up the trailer, started driving, but found myself so tired that I could only just keep the rig on the road by 8 AM. I've already told operations that this is not going to get delivered on time and that the weather forecast for overnight snow (2 to 8 inches along nearly my entire route) could further delay delivery. I dropped the trailer in case they want to have another driver pick up the relay, but regardless, I'm going to get about nine hours of sleep now. *thud*

Jackson, MS - (Not Quite) Home for the Holidays

The last time I was here in this part of the state, it took me almost three days to get a load going where I needed to go. This time, I'm up to seven hours already and there's no sign at all of freight. At least ops had the decency to send me a message telling me they were going to wait until morning to see if anything develops. So I'm getting food now and going to cal it a "night" rather early and catch up on sleep. If something comes in overnight that would allow me to get home, awesome. Otherwise, if I'm still here at 9:15 tomorrow morning, I'll collect a day of layover.

Winona, MS - Rest

For the first time in well over a week, I'm not compelled to get moving the moment I legally can! It's still in my best interest to not sleep too late (I have the alarm set for 5 AM), but at least I can afford to get a full nine hours of sleep to make up for the rest I didn't get while I was on my restart.

Since I have a bit of time, allow me to type in my recap. I thought that the zero was a restart, which still put me at 55.25 hours for the five days since then, but it wasn't. I only parked in Denver for about 31 hours, which wasn't enough to reset the clock. I haven't heard from regulatory yet, but I just sent my logs in tonight and I'll be surprised if I don't get a message later in the week about it.

Date	Hours	Last8
12	9.75	9.75
13	9.5	19.25
14	0	19.25
15	9.25	28.5
16	12	40.5
17	10.5	51
18	11.75	62.75
19	11.75	73.5

Salina, KS - Logbook screwup

I've pulled a big oops on my logs and just have to hoppe regulatory doesn't notice until I shut down tomorrow. I'll post the details then. Hee...

Salina, KS - Halfway point

I'm a little less than halfway between Denver and Indianapolis, but this was as far as I could get today. And, in reality, I went slightly over my 14 (and well over my 11) just getting this far. This leaves me 666 miles to drive tomorrow. It's a tall order, for sure, but I think I can make something work.

So why did i end up shutting down here, some 30 miles earlier than I intended? The weather. This morning, I had to drive through the Rockies. This would have been bad enough on a clear day, but I was going through at night, in intermittent snow showers, on an ice-covered road, with a 45,000 pound load. I was smoking the brakes on at least two occasions (plus probably one more, in which I smelled burning but it was too dark to see smoke), including as I came into Denver in the morning. I was seriously worried about throwing myself off the mountain; in both cases where the brakes faded to nearly nothing, I was lucky enough to be at the bottom of a downgrade. When I stopped for fuel, I parked for about an extra hour just to let the brakes cool off. Even now, eight hours later, I still smell something funny back there, so I'll have to get the shop at Indy to check it out.

When I resumed, the weather in eastern Colorado was just fine. As I got into Kansas, though, clouds started rolling in. At first I wasn't very worried - it was 45 degrees and driving in the rain is nothing to me - but as it started to precipitate the temperature plunged back to 30 degrees. And, on top of that, it started getting foggy. Freezing fog. It sounds innocuous enough, but as everything started icing up, the road became incredibly slick. So, to recap, it's raining on and off, visibility is a quarter mile (or less), and there's ice everywhere, including on my mirrors. Fantastic, hm? It got even worse after dark, since high beams just reflect all that back; visibility was just enough that I could see the road and, if I squinted, the tail lights of cars a thousand feet ahead. Thankfully, that all started to clear up before I shut down here. Apparently this kind of crap is going to continue most of the night, though, and I'll be catching up to the storm when I get moving first thing in the morning.

At least, once I get to Indianapolis, I'll have enough reasons to put the truck and trailer in the shop that, hopefully, I'll get a day (or at least a few extra hours) off. I still need to do all the math on my logbook but I believe I'll be running out of hours anyway.

Blown Fuses

This is what's left of the 20 amp turn-signal fuse that I mentioned in my last post. I'm pretty sure they're supposed to fail long before they reach this level of damage...

Ogden, UT - 575 miles to get to nowhere!

Today was one of those days that I'd really, really like to get to do over, if anyone happens to have a remote that can actually rewind time by 24 hours. I got started on time this morning and, despite a little bit of snow, made great time getting over to the consignee and dropped my trailer. My work assignment told me to pick up a trailer from that place; they only had one of our trailers and it was unsealed. I couldn't find my flashlight to take a more careful look inside, but the trailer sounded hollow and, if anything were in it, the thing would be sealed, right?

So, after finishing the rest of my pre-trip inspection, I drove down to the shipper for my next load. For the record, US 40 in Utah would be scary enough on a clear night with a full moon; I had to drive down it in heavy snow, with the road so heavily covered that I couldn't tell where the lanes were, with my driver's side windshield completely covered in ice since the defroster on that side went out again. As such, I had visibility of roughly a hundred feet, even after it stopped snowing, resulting in an average speed of roughly 25 mph for about four hours.

Once the sun rose, conditions improved significantly and I finished the roughly 250 mile trip to the shipper. The first warning I had that something was wrong was when my truck scaled out as "empty" at 40,000 pounds even; even figuring in the tire chains, full load of fuel, and winter supplies I've picked up, it shouldn't have been much over 33,000. I went into the shipping office anyway, checked in, got assigned a dock, drove over there, opened the doors... and saw the trailer was roughly 1/4 full of auto parts. Added bonus problem: air bag systems are class 9 hazmat and I didn't have placards. Needless to say, I didn't tell operations that when I called in.

After nearly 45 minutes on the phone (30 of that on hold), even ops acknowledged this was going to be a Chinese fire drill. I had to go back and return the trailer, meaning my trip through the blizzard was meaningless. Then I have to go and pick up an empty from the Salt Lake OC and pick up the load. Obviously, both pickup and delivery are getting bumped back now, especially since I'll have to put my truck in the shop somewhere to get a few things fixed.

Even though I ended up blowing my 11 and 14 by roughly two hours, I ended up taking the trailer back and parking at a truck stop right up the road. I didn't get a message from regulatory telling me that I was over on time, one of the few good things that's happened today, but I imagine that message will be waiting for me when I finish eating. While I was pulling into the truck stop, I had all my turn signal lights go out again, which meant that traffic didn't even have blinkers to ignore; getting around on the highway when you can't signal is a pain in the butt. It's just a fuse that keeps blowing, but I'll need to get some more spares when I go through the OC in the morning, just to make sure I have enough in case the problem comes up again.

So, in a nutshell, I have roughly nine hours left to get some rest, hope I can make it to Denver tomorrow, and somehow try to make Cincinnati by Friday. The last isn't going to happen, so unless the place has weekend hours, I might be relaying this off near St. Louis or (preferably) Indianapolis. But, of course, I won't know any of that for sure until I call operations tomorrow and verify what's going on. And I don't even know what's going on yet since I have to figure out where I can stop for the next two days.

Ogden, UT - Eastbound

I'm not getting out o the west coast. That's the bad news. The good news is that I have another 1500 mile run, this time to Ohio. I'll be passing through a few nice places, too: Denver, St. Louis, and Indianapolis. Not sure if I'll be stopping at any of those (though Denver will likely be where I shut down tonight if I get lucky), but at least I know that I'll be following I-70 for roughly a thousand miles.

I should probably get moving to pick this load up, though I'm on track to be more than an hour early. At least that gives me spare time if road conditions get dicey. If I get to the shipper too early, I'll take a nap.

Evanston, WY - Racing the weather

It seems like I can't get a break with the weather up here. Early this morning, part of I-80 was completely covered in ice and snow; I could just barely make out the yellow stripe on the left edge of the road and ended up finding the rumble strip a few times. Of course, this was on a five-mile long 5% downgrade. I took it in sixth gear, bouncing between 15 and 20 mph. A few drivers passed me, but I was pulling away from someone behind me, so at least I wasn't the only one worried about conditions.

That drained me a lot, though, so I used the weather as an excuse to pull into a parking area and get a couple hours of sleep. They knew that my delivery was contingent on the weather being decent, and while the weather is okay right now, the road conditions near Laramie were really dicey. I only averaged 41 mph this morning; to make my delivery on time, I'd have to average at least 49. So I sent in messages telling operations that I was going to be late; they've updated the customer and, far as we know, there's no issue with the fact I'm going to be 16 hours late.

Of course, even that assumes that conditions tonight are good. I-80 is fine right now, but it's just started snowing here and there's a winter storm warning in effect for the area I'm going into. If the highway is impassible, there's obviously nothing I can do, but I need to at try make progress on this load, even if it means I'm doing 15 miles per hour through a blizzard. I still have no idea where I'm going after this load, but I wouldn't be surprised if they wait until I deliver this one before assigning me something else, just because the weather out here is so unstable right now.

Laredo, TX - Go west, young man, go west!

Of all the places I thought I'd get routed, Utah wasn't somewhere I'd expected at all. But, as the 1,418 mile work assignment in front of me indicates, I'm heading out that way. I need to get tire chains somewhere - I'm on hold trying to figure that out now - but otherwise this looks awesome. Whee!

Laredo, TX - Zero mile run!

Today was a day in which absolutely nothing was accomplished. I arrived here in Laredo around 4:30 PM yesterday, parked the truck, and went to bed exceptionally early. It's nice catching up on sleep! I woke up... still nothing. I waited until about 12:30 this afternoon to call in and see what freight's like. Unsurprisingly, it's not that good down here; I found out, though, that they have drivers doing load saves down here to keep us from just sitting around. Meaning, in other words, they're trying to give us loads that would break up a layover.

Not ten minutes after I get off the phone, I have a work assignment come in. It was supposed to pick up here at the OC and deliver to somewhere else in Laredo. Because we're paid on book miles, which are calculated city to city, a run that stays within a single town is zero miles. Unhappy about this, for several reasons, I call in and find out that runs like that are paid at a flat $25, plus any applicable detention pay. Since this was expected to be a two hour unload, I would likely have received an additional $15 for that, bringing the total to $40. Layover pay is $90. Meaning, in other words, I would have received $50 less by working than I would have earned for sitting still another three hours.

However, note that I'm referring to this load in the past tense, not as one that I actually took. I can't refuse a load (not without risking my job, anyway), but when I got over to the trailer, there was no paperwork on it; it just had a slip saying to see the fuel desk. I went inside, talked to the people there, and found out that they didn't have the paperwork either; they sent me into the office to see who had it in there. So I went in there and not even they knew where the paperwork was at first. When I told them, rather tersely, that I needed the paperwork to move the load since it was due for delivery in the next 90 minutes (I'd lost nearly an hour trying just to find the trailer and doing my pre-trip), they looked in one last place. Sure enough, the paperwork was there... along with a note saying that customs had rejected the load and that nobody could legally touch that trailer or its contents until we had the okay.

So, all that done, I had to go out, call operations to get taken off the load (and spend 25 minutes on hold), unhook from the trailer, and find another parking space. The lot here is in such bad shape that I got stuck in gravel. I eventually got out, by playing with the power divider, dumping the clutch, spinning the tires, and generally doing all sorts of things that the mechanics would probably really prefer I not have done to the truck. However, since I did ask for help and the shop basically told me to figure it out on my own, I really don't feel guilty about anything I did there. I parked in a space that I wasn't going to get stuck in (another 75 feet from the building) and have been sitting here since.

Though operations said they'd give me another load as soon as they could, it's been about six hours and I still haven't had anything come in. I'll probably set the Qualcomm right next to my pillow, so any incoming message beeps will wake me up, but I'll be very surprised if I get something before about 8 o'clock in the morning. In any case, if I'm still here at 4:30 tomorrow, I'll get credit for another day of layover, but I'm going to call in tomorrow just to make sure that everything is in the computer. I don't want to get short-changed on pay again.

Laredo, TX - There's how many of us here?

Three long days of driving have led me to Laredo, TX. However, when I called to ask about freight, I was told there are "about seventy" drivers here waiting on a load. Operations encouraged me to update to show that I was available sooner than 9 o'clock tomorrow morning, if I wanted; I told them that I'm not going to bother because, if there are this many of us waiting here, I'll be surprised to get an assignment by 9 AM Friday. *grumble*

LaGrange, GA - (Un)professional drivers

Things were going great today right up until I got to the truck stop here. There's a McDonald's with truck parking just in front of the Pilot here; getting into both requires a left turn. I was waiting to turn and, in the driveway, a cop had pulled another trucker over. I had room to turn until a damn four-wheeler pulled right into the center of the open space, ensuring that I couldn't get around him. When he started forward, he continued to block me by pulling so close to the front of my truck that I couldn't move without hitting him. Just as the idiot finally got out of my way, the cop left and the trucker pulled into the one open space at the McDonald's.

Given that I had to wait nearly ten minutes to turn due to traffic, that put me in a bad enough mood. Going into the truck stop and finding that there's no parking at all this early at night didn't help my mood either; a truck stop should not be completely full at 5:30 in the afternoon. As I came back out, I looped around the McDonald's parking to see if a space had opened; as I drove by the space the ticketed driver had taken, he left. I didn't have enough room to get into it from the other direction, so I tried to go out and back around. Of course, another "professional" driver was blocking the driveway, blocking me in. And, of course, just as the other driver got out of my way, another trucker speeding out of the truck stop took the open space. I have a sore throat now from the string of obscenities I was screaming at my windshield.

While I was still waiting to get into the McDonald's, since I still had to use that lot to turn around now, yet another driver left. This time, I made a few decidedly unprofessional moves myself, but I'm parked in that spot right now. I'm getting out of here as soon as my ten hour break is up. I never want to see this truck stop again.

Wando, SC - Dude, where's my load?

I'm just fifteen minutes early for my appointment here, but the container worth of stuff that's supposed to get loaded on my trailer hasn't arrived yet and they don't have any idea when it'll get here. I'm just waiting in the drop yard right now until they come and get me, at which point I'll go to the truck dock, back in, get loaded, and hopefully get plenty of miles in today. My work assignment lists an average duration of two hours; I'm hoping that I can get out of here in less than three, since that ensures I'll be able to use my full eleven hours of driving time.

Still, I think that this is the first time I've ever gotten to a customer and my load hadn't actually arrived yet...

Lugoff, SC - Running on full

Looks like I'm going to have a lot of miles for the next couple of days at least. From here I'll be heading over toward Charleston to pick something up, then all the way down to Laredo to drop it off. Just under 1,500 miles. I'm going to be tired as heck the next three days but my paycheck is most definitely going to thank me. To get this done, though, I have to get up at 4:30 AM, pick up an empty from a facility just a mile up the road, then go nearly 130 miles by 8 o'clock to get the trailer loaded. It's going to be a much tighter schedule than I think they realize, but I'm optimistic about it. I just have to make sure I fill up here before I take off, since I definitely need the fuel and I can't afford to stop on my way over to pick this up.

But, rather than ramble on for a couple more paragraphs, I'm posting this and getting to bed. I might even get seven and a half hours of rest for once!

Indianapolis, IN - Snow, snow, more snow.

For various reasons - some work related, some not - I ended up sleeping rather late today. And by the time I woke up, there was quite a bit of snow on the ground and reports were coming in from all over the place warning that the road conditions were treacherous, at best.

The result? I'm 641 miles from the place I'm delivering and I have until 9 PM EST tomorrow to get there. I'll probably leave from here rather early tomorrow - hopefully by 6 AM, but maybe as early as 4 - and driving with as few stops as possible to ensure that I get there in time. The good news is that there's a truck stop at the same exit as my delivery point in South Carolina, so at least there's a pretty good chance that I'll have somewhere to park when I'm done. As for freight, there's no telling what will happen, but it'll definitely be Monday morning since I won't have any hours to go anywhere.

Monee, IL - It's a new record!

I pulled a whopping 644 miles today. I may have had to round a couple things on my logbook in my favor, but I actually didn't have to resort to outright cheating to make things happen the way they needed to. The trip up to Illinois was remarkably boring; absolutely nothing happened along the way that was even remotely memorable. I did, however, get my "appointment" moved up to 4PM today, from 4PM tomorrow. Notice, though, that I have appointment in quotes.

It turns out that the place I was going to doesn't even allow the kind of load I have to be live unloaded. Why? Because they had hundreds of boxes from thirty different vendors, all loaded haphazardly in the trailer. As a result, they'd have to unload the entire trailer, scan in every single box, sort them out since each box was likely going to a different store, then put the freight they didn't need back on the truck. The listed seven-hour unload time on my work assignment is actually unrealistically optimistic for that kind of thing. So, rather than have me put up with all that, they simply had me drop the trailer. That freed me to go to the Petro up here, where I had a nice dinner.

Tomorrow, I'm going to head to Gary to get my truck in for a PM. It turns out that I really am due for both an A (check up only) and a B (oil change) right now. Why they scheduled them so closely is beyond my comprehension - not even the mechanics were able to explain why - but it does mean that there's a pretty good chance that I'll be tied up for a while. At the absolute best, I'll lose half a day tomorrow, but given that Green Bay had a five-day wait for maintenance, I wouldn't be surprised to lose a day or two. But, in any case, I'll have to actually get over there before I can confirm exactly what is - or isn't - going to happen. Hopefully I can do so before Chicago's rush hour kicks in to high gear.

East Point, GA - Appointments? What are those?

I received several messages over the weekend telling me that this is a critically important, cannot be even one minute late delivery. So I end up busting my tail over the weekend and get moving as early as possible this morning to try and ensure that I'm not late. I've never seen traffic on 285 moving this smoothly during rush hour, but perhaps I just got through before the backups reached that part of the loop; traffic on 75 south was more trouble than I'm used to.

When I arrived here about 8 AM (eastern), I walked in and handed over my paperwork... only to be told that they don't even do appointments at 9 AM, which is what I'd been told my time was for. They say they'll get to me after the truck that is currently being unloaded. He leaves, I back into the dock, then go in to hand over my paperwork. While I'm waiting, two other Schneider drivers come up, one of whom also was told to get here at nine. They don't even have enough floor space to unload one trailer full of rolls now, much less to accommodate three of us, so I'm currently waiting for them to make room just so they can start unloading me.

Freight in the area is a bit of a question mark right now. I was told that it probably will be a longer wait today, but that I should call and ask about things when they do finish unloading the trailer. If I get some work, that'd be nice, since I could at least earn some good mileage. If not, then I might be stuck going to the Atlanta OC (eww) and probably be forced to get maintenance done on the truck since something is due to be done today. Whatever ends up happening, I just hope that I get to know about it at least slightly in advance.

Dalton, GA - McSleepy

After working 41 hours in four days (and at least 11 three of the last four), I'm completely exhausted. I ended up hitting two traffic jams today: one north of Nashville and a second west of Chattanooga. I've never seen this much traffic on the road on a Sunday before and I really hope the increased travel was only a result of the holiday weekend and not the start of a long-term increase. I still have to be up as early as possible tomorrow, due to the early appointment time, the fact I'm still about 90 miles away, and that I have to go around Atlanta during morning rush hour. Not looking forward to any of those but I'll cope, I suppose.

I-65 Southbound in TN - Going nowhere

Traffic is bumper-to-bumper as far as I can see in front of me and traffic is at a standstill. I think I heard someone say that they're forcing all traffic to exit but I couldn't really understand what was being said clearly. This is definitely not the kind of thing I needed today; time was short without this thing.

Gary, IN - Faster! FASTER!

I can't complain about the miles I've been getting, that's for sure. It is, however, getting very tiring to have to work three 10+ hour days in a row, which is what I'll have done by the time I shut down tomorrow. If things go according to plan tomorrow (what plan?) I might be able to catch up on sleep a little. No telling what tomorrow will bring though.

Instead, let me recap today: I started from Green Bay, grabbed an empty trailer, sent in my message... and got told to take a different empty. Turns out the blasted thing is out of service for a leak, something that I couldn't spot on a pre-trip inspection. Much grumbling ensued, but I grabbed the other empty and drove north into Michigan to pick up my load. I went the wrong way around a customer's lot, only to end up exactly where I needed to be. I dropped and hooked, then hit the road once more.

The trip down to Gary was relatively uneventful except for a brief stint in Chicago: a Roadway truck plowed into the back of an SUV, blocking I-94 except for the left shoulder. As a result, traffic was at a crawl for several miles. Nobody would let me over, either, even though I'd signaled for an obnoxiously long time to try and get into the flow of traffic; I had cars backed up behind me as far as I could see.

Tomorrow is going to be an extremely long day. I have to get up at 5:30 and get on the road by six, ideally. Then I have to drive as far as I possibly can to ensure that I make this delivery Monday morning. I need to go at least 550 miles, ideally at least 600, and can't spare the time to make any extra stops. If I pull off 600 miles, I should be able to catch up on sleep, but I don't want to get overly optimistic about that until it happens. For now, though, sleep sounds like a very good thing.

Green Bay, WI - Run after run

I've had two thousand-mile runs come up since I've come back out, which hasn't really left me much time to update this. I started out from home on Wednesday, delivered up here in Green Bay this afternoon, and will be down in Atlanta by Monday morning. I'll try to make a longer post later, but right now I need as much sleep as I can get.

Home - Days off

I'm just making a quick post to let everyone know that I've made it home safely. I'll be returning to work no earlier than Tuesday morning; if there's no freight than I'll be at home longer. I'll post again when I'm back out on the road.

West Memphis, AR - Still working

Somehow, despite getting an extremely pessimistic assessment from the manager I work with, I still have a job. I'll be delivering my current load this afternoon, dropping the empty trailer back here, and taking a defensive driving course at 7 AM tomorrow. Presumably, I'll be routed home immediately after that; this means I might get home a few hours earlier than I'd originally thought. I was, however, given a very simple message to take away: if I have another accident within the next 12 months, I'm fired and there won't be another company willing to even let me look at their trucks, much less offer me a job.

West Memphis, AR - Countdown

I have no idea what's going to happen Monday. I'm going to spend a few hours today cleaning out the truck. If I end up fired, at least I'll be able to leave quickly. If I still have a job, I'd have to clean and pack for my upcoming time at home anyway. I'm not sure how they're going to get me home if I deliver this load, though, but it would be at least 8 PM Tuesday even if they sent me straight to the parking lot. Hopefully this appointment can be moved forward to sometime tomorrow afternoon; I wouldn't complain about having an extra few hundred miles or getting home a day early. Of course, this all hinges on the assumption that I'm still a truck driver tomorrow.

Atlanta, GA - Nowhere to go

Unsurprisingly, I ended up screwed out of several hundred miles again. Rather than delivering this load all the way into Florida, I lost 450 miles by relaying it in Atlanta due to operations insistence upon it. Even more screwed up is that, even though I was told that the driver was waiting, I found out that he had been taken off the load and assigned something else since he's on break until at least 10 PM tonight.

So, what do I get out of sacrificing yet another 400 miles? At least two days of layover pay. Rather than assigning me something decent, I end up with a 375 mile run to Memphis, delivering Tuesday afternoon. I could easily make it there tomorrow if they could get the appointment moved up and I'll be calling in tomorrow morning to try and arrange that. If it can't be done for any reason, I'll be stuck sitting and waiting.

Of course, there's that "meeting" that I have to have with the safety people. Whether it's actually going to consist of anything more than me handing in the truck keys is still anyone's guess. Once it's established that I still have a job, I'm going to have a long conversation of my own with the guy I'm working with now; I've been shafted out of more than two thousand miles in the last three weeks due to his poor planning and I'm really getting tired of it. We'll see how any of that goes, though.

Knoxville, TN - On we go!

I guess that I have one thing that suggests I'm keeping my job: miles. My current run is a thousand-mile trip all the way down to Florida. I'm hoping to make it into the state tomorrow, ensuring that it's just a short run early on Saturday to deliver. Then I just have to hope that the weekend shift can continue to find freight and that I don't end up running out of hours on my 70 before I'm able to get home.

Knoxville, TN - On we go!

I guess that I have one thing that suggests I'm keeping my job: miles. My current run is a thousand-mile trip all the way down to Florida. I'm hoping to make it into the state tomorrow, ensuring that it's just a short run early on Saturday to deliver. Then I just have to hope that the weekend shift can continue to find freight and that I don't end up running out of hours on my 70 before I'm able to get home.

Carlisle, PA - Bureaucrats

Due to the two incidents yesterday, I had to call in and explain the situation again to operations, then again to someone in the safety department. The safety guy had to go for an emergency halfway through my explanation, though, which means I'll get to explain it yet again at some point. They're going to route me down there to "discuss my options" in person. I asked if those options were along the lines of going home via a bus or a rental car, figuring they were using that as a euphemism for firing me, though operations insisted that wasn't the case. The guy I spoke to said that he's comfortable with my driving and he doesn't feel that these incidents really are properly reflective of the way I actually am on the road, especially given that the first incident was something that he admitted he would have handled the exact same way. We'll see, though; the fact they continue to insist that I discuss it with them in person is more than a little unsettling.

Milford, NJ - Oops?

Well, this was not a good afternoon. Not one, but two accidents in the span of an hour. The first wasn't my fault, though: a narrow overpass and an oncoming driver who decided not to even slow down when he saw me coming. As such, I either had to hit him or the overpass; I ended up nearly taking off my passenger side mirror. Because the mirror was so far out of adjustment, I couldn't see clearly when backing up at a customer and ended up hitting their building, causing a new hole in the brick. If I could see what I was doing I'd never have hit it, I'm sure. As it is, though, I'm not sure who they're going to blame for the mess. I just have to go by an operating center on my next run to have that mirror looked at.

Carlisle, PA - Moneyhaul

I need to get rolling fairly soon, so I don't have time to write all the details (but I may edit this post later to include them). But I am getting three back days of layover pay and 157 miles for a total of $326.57 before taxes. Trying to get anyone to actually commit to the policies was as useful as nailing Jello to a wall. For one thing, they're now claiming that the 39¢ per mile they offer to drivers includes the 2¢ bonus and a 1¢ geographic premium. Meaning that, assuming I earn the bonus, I'll be where I should be. One other piece of good news: out of route is not a factor in my bonus, though it's in everyone's best interest that I keep it as low as possible. The less money I waste on fuel, the more they'll (supposedly) have to pay drivers. That money will come in on next Friday's paycheck, since payroll has already been run for this week.

There are plenty of other bits of weirdness going on but that's another post to make later.

Carlisle, PA - End of the line

Today was one of those days that makes me wonder if I'm going to be in an orange truck for much longer. I ended up having to drive nearly 700 miles and go nearly three hours over my 14 today just to have a chance of making on time delivery tomorrow. As it is, I'm going to barely make it and even that's only if traffic is cooperative tomorrow afternoon. The one that absolutely floored me, though, is when operations started trying to tell me that I don't get layover pay if I get a motel room, even though the employee handbook clearly states that the two are both given assuming I get authorization for it. And there is no way that I'm going to spend 48 hours (or more) in the truck without work to be done, considering that I don't have a heater and the batteries only will last about 12 hours.

Here's the relevant sections directly out of the book. I've just copied and pasted them here for everyone to interpret. Please tell me if you see any way that could possibly suggest that I am not able to collect both layover pay and motel reimbursement; I cannot find any possible way of interpreting it that way. I've underlined a few key words.

Layover: Company directs a driver to layover in excess of 24 consecutive hours at a location other than the driver‟s home, park location, assigned operating center or designated maintenance facility, and the driver does, in fact, layover. The driver must receive prior authorization from the DBL to be compensated.  Under normal circumstances this authorization will occur in a discussion between the DBL and the driver prior to incurring the layover. (Voluntary layover is not compensable including voluntary 34 hour Hours of Service re-set)

Motel: If the company requires a driver to layover for more than 24 consecutive hours or in case of a breakdown exceeding 8 hours, motels will be reimbursed.

On top of that, it looks like they're also not putting my routing points. That is also threatening to take away my bonus and cost me more than $100 just in the last week. I'll be calling operations in the morning to point that out to them and inform them that, if they aren't willing to pay me fairly, then I'm not willing to work for them. The most basic thing any employer offers an employee is a paycheck; if they can't even get that right then I'm jumping ship before it goes down. Now that I have a year of experience I can find somebody else to drive for.

Edit (2:45 AM): I've spent the last hour or so just downloading my last month's worth of pay stubs and doing the math. In the process, I discovered a whopping $730.62 in pay that I should have received that's omitted. Five days of layover ($80 each, $400 total), 450 miles worth of routing points ($162), and the fact that I'm getting underpaid two cents per mile across the board, ($0.02 times 8,431 miles is $168.62). Even if they are going to come up with some excuse to not give me layover pay - and I'm going to insist that they put the policy in writing and fax me a copy - that's $330 and change that I'm owed in back pay. I'm going to insist that it be added to my next paycheck or that they just consider the call my two weeks notice.

Carlisle, PA - Disarming honesty

Given that I am two days ahead of schedule on my current run, I called this morning to see if there's any chance I could relay the load and take something else to ensure that I get some half decent miles. Allow me to quote my conversation this morning.

Me: "Hi, this is <driver>, number 12345."
Ops: "What can I do for you?"
Me: "Well, I'm trying to relay this thing, if there's a better run available."
Ops: "Let me be straight up with you. You're screwed."

Yeah, when operations is throwing that kind of language around, you know that it's bad. Right now, we have 1,200 drivers who don't even have load, which doesn't even account for the folks that have loads that are severely under-utilizing their trucks, like me. Basically, the entire country is very soft right now; there isn't a single market east of I-35 in which we're oversold. On the bright side, I'm up to three days of layover pay this week: one for being in New Hampshire and two for being here in Pennsylvania. I'll deliver this thing Monday and hope that things are slightly better then. If not, I'll be stuck in rural Virginia.

Epping, NH - Big miles, no whammies! ... double whammy?

Hooray for 80s game show references.

My situation here in Hew Hampshire really hasn't improved much. I ended up going back to sleep last night after I hadn't gotten an assignment, but put the Qualcomm right next to me so I'd wake up when it started beeping. I was ecstatic to see my assignment, too: 1,200 miles, going through Indianapolis and ending up in Saint Louis, two areas I enjoy spending time in. I also would have had about a day to spare, since I'd be able to make Saint Louis on Sunday and the consignee wasn't open until 8 AM on Monday. Notice, though, that I'm writing about this assignment in the past tense. This time, though, it's not operations fault that I'm off the load. The shipper changed our pick up appoint from today to Tuesday, meaning I didn't have anything there to pick up. And without anything to pick up, obviously I've nothing to deliver and no reason to drive a thousand miles west. It sucks, but I really can't blame them for someone else's inability to even get freight ready.

So, I wait. And I wait. Even though I found out I wasn't going to be able to pick up the load two hours ago, I only now received confirmation that I'm officially off that run. They're going to try find something for me, but freight is always pretty weak in this area, just since it's so far removed from most of the country. On the bright side, I've already earned one day of layover and they already put that in the computer, so all I have to do is enjoy having the extra money on my paycheck. My only gripe is that New Hampshire has pretty strict anti-idle laws, meaning I probably shouldn't turn the truck on for electricity or heat. That said, I'm doing it anyway. :p

Epping, NH - Workin' day and night

Having spent the day in Carlisle doing various errands, I ended up leaving there overnight and drove non-stop to get where I needed to be this morning. It's the only time I've ever driven through Connecticut where traffic wasn't bumper to bumper the entire way through the state, which was a pleasant change. I was able to get the trailer unloaded and, amazingly, backed into the dock on one try, without having to pull forward or get out and double-check where I was. Still is awesome when I get that to work. Once the trailer was unloaded, I ended up having to drive to a parking lot a couple miles up the road, since that customer only had room for one truck to park overnight and another driver had already taken that space. I'm now just waiting on a work assignment and was told that being available this time of night is a huge advantage, since we're a 24-hour company but 95% of drivers aren't available for full nights of driving. Of course, if there's no freight up here, it doesn't matter what time I'm available. They asked me to call back around midnight to double-check.

Carlisle, PA - Why do days only have 24 hours?

I've been running all over the place lately. In the last three days, I've worked 29 hours; this is probably the highest three-day total I've had since August. I've already logged more than an hour today, since I shut down at 1:15 AM, right as my 14 hours ran out. Why so late tonight? Because I'm now only about 450 miles from where I'm going: New Hampshire. Given how bad traffic in the New England states can be, I wanted to ensure that I could make it to the consignee for this load tomorrow evening, take my break there, get unloaded in the morning, and then have enough time to get out of the area. Things have been zany with work assignments lately; I'll try to write something more detailed about that tomorrow, if time and sleep requirements permit.

Sylacauga, AL - Long days, longer nights

I'm far too tired to write a full post right now, but suffice to say that weekend shift never listens and I'm exhausted after going 530 miles with a single ten-minute food stop. At least I can park and sleep here.

Carlisle, PA - Going around in circles

Yes, I'm still in Pennsylvania. After a rather lengthy discussion with operations, I found out that my options were to either take the overweight load back to the shipper and have them rework it or be stuck here even longer. So I took it back, they took one pallet off, and I'm now about 1,000 pounds below the legal limit. I'm now heading west and have about 525 miles to go tomorrow. They set up an appointment for Saturday, so I'm hoping I can get to the area soon enough that I'll get credit for 24 hours of layover. Too tired to write more tonight but, as a result of the laundry taking forever, I have only time to get six hours of sleep.

Carlisle, PA - My trailer needs a diet

The legal limit on the US highway system is a gross weight of 80,000 pounds. The tandems (drives and trailer) have to be 34,000 or less. So when I picked up a relay at an operating center, weighed it, and had the results above, I was ... well, several things, none of which I can write about and maintain this blog's PG rating. Operations is insisting that I take it back to the shipper in the morning, meaning I waste an entire night here won't be able to make the delivery on time, on top of having to try and get used to being awake during the day again. Instead, I'm going to finish eating, call them, and tell them that I refuse to move an overweight trailer, that I'm not going to lose an entire night of driving because another driver didn't do his job, and that I want another load assigned immediately so I am not out even more miles. I'll post with the results of that later.

Ortanna, PA - Argumentative

I was explicitly told by the shipping and receiving people that I could park in this facility's driveway as long as I got as far out of the way as possible. There was another driver parked in the very same space that I am right now and, far as I know, nobody gave him any trouble for it. Of course, I did; there was a driver who works for this place who banged on the side of the truck and demanding to know when my appointment was and why I was parked here. I should have taken down his truck number and called the office to complain about his attitude. Why the heck did he think he knew something that his employers didn't?

Ortanna, PA - Nightshift

I swear, these guys are trying to run me into the ground. I woke up at 7 PM and found I had a total of fifteen messages on the Qualcomm, which is never a good sign. It turns out that I'd received two work assignments, one of which had been canceled. Of course, the one they took me off of was 400 miles longer; I ended up on a "critical" load that was only 370 miles and that - even if things went perfectly - I wouldn't have made by more than a few minutes. So I got dinner and hit the road, driving 180 miles to the shipper and arriving just before midnight. That's when things started to go wrong.

First, I followed my directions exactly, but they led me to the wrong entrance. There were no signs at all indicating that it was not the main entrance. I tried calling the customer and nobody answered the phone. I called operations, who in turn found another number to call somebody on, set up a three-way call, and only then did I find out that I just needed to go another half block up the road, over a hill. Then I received the paperwork, went with one of the yard guys over to the trailer yard (which is where I was in the first place), nearly lost control of the truck trying to go down a 15% grade on a gravel road... and found that the trailer number on the paperwork was wrong. It matched five out of six digits and had the right product on it, but that meant I had to eventually go back to the shipping office and get it corrected. More pressing was the fact that the trailer had an air leak and it took both me and the other guy to figure out where it was leaking from and a few good smacks from a hammer to fix it. By the time all that was done, I'd spent more than an hour and a half just trying to pick up the load when I could only afford to take half an hour.

The rest of the night was fairly uneventful, which made it rather tricky to stay awake. At least I made it here without causing an accident; that's as much as I can say for my drive up here. The problems only resumed when I arrived at the consignee. Nobody here knew where I was supposed to go. I checked with the main office and the receptionist sent me back to shipping. I checked in there and was told to come around to the front again. I was parked and looking for a loading dock when someone on a forklift came over and led me to the docks, though there was another driver who was blocking things off. Only after a fifteen-minute wait did someone else come over to take my paperwork and tell me to back in. I'm getting unloaded now and it sounds like they're nearly finished. When they're done, I don't have any time left that I can continue working, so I get to park in the facility's driveway and take my break. Seriously, that's where they said I could park the truck. So I'll get nine or so hours of much-needed sleep and hope that I don't find another dozen or so messages in the morning.

On a better note, I was assigned to a new board. More accurately, because of how they're re-organizing things now, they seem to be splitting boards up and I ended up on a different number. I don't know how well (or badly) that will work out since the person I'll be calling is still in training for his new position and won't be ready to take calls until Friday or Monday; I'll be routed to my existing board in the meantime. There is, however, something rather odd about having seniority over my boss despite having only 13 months of experience...

Black Mountain, NC - Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

I started off the night by leaving Carlisle a little later than I planned, but I made up plenty of time on the road just driving toward Virginia; by the time I stopped for fuel (when I amde my previous post) I had made up nearly an hour and, as such, was well ahead of schedule. Good thing, too, because that fuel stop cost me 45 minutes for what should have taken only fifteen. I've never seen the place that busy; there were even drivers blocking the exit driveway when I was trying to leave.

It's a good thing that I made up so much time, too, given how the weather conditions deteriorated. As I continued south, then east, the wind picked up significantly, until even with a 42,000 pound load I was getting blown out of my lane. And, in the last 30 or so miles, it started to snow. I couldn't believe it, considering there was no snow in the forecast, no forecast temperatures below 35°F, and my dash said 40°F. But, sure enough, the distinctive swirl of snow was on the road, making conditions even more treacherous. For some reason, my truck was handling badly enough in the (freezing?) rain up near Carlisle, but the snow made me reluctant to exceed 45 mph despite the posted speed limit of 70. I got here about an hour and a half ago and, in that time, the snow has just gotten heavier and heavier. It's blowing sideways, too, which makes me very nervous, since I'll be leaving here with a completely empty trailer. The nearest truck stop that I know of is roughly 18 miles away, so it'll be a bit of an adventure to try and get there.

They're done, so I need to post this and scoot. If anything happens worth writing about, I'll make another post before I go to bed.

Troutville, VA - Midnight Motion

For reasons that defy logical explanation, all six lanes of the Pilot are in use. I've been waiting on one to open for ten minutes now. Why on earth is this little place so crowded at this ungodly hour?

Carlisle, PA - All bundled up and nowhere to go

It seems like things just haven't been working out with work. I got a work assignment that, had it come in a few hours earlier, I could have made the pick up Friday evening and parked at a shipper. Instead, because I was told to just find "any truck stop" I ended up going 250 miles in the wrong direction. Specifically, I went to the nearest place that I knew would have parking because dispatch hadn't given me any information on a load, then I got an assignment to go up to Philadelphia after I'd already gone down to Norfolk, VA. Had they bothered assigning me that two hours earlier, I could have earned two full days of layover; instead, I get about 42 hours. I'll still be catching up on sleep, at least.

After I get out of here tomorrow morning, I'll be going down to North Carolina. The delivery appointment isn't until Tuesday morning, so I still have some time to spare, but I do want to get down there so I don't have to get up exceptionally early for the appointment. I just hope they can find me something better than this soon, since 550 miles in three days is not very productive.

Temperanceville, VA - Nowhere to go

Turns out that they're not going to be able to get me a decent load after all. In fact, this is a first-come-first-served market and there's a long list already. The only concession they made is that I can drive to any truck stop that I have enough logbook time to get to and will get paid for it. Good thing, too; Ruther Glen, VA is the nearest truck stop with more than 20 spaces and it's 197 miles away from here. So I need to close the laptop now and hope I can make it there within three hours, forty-five minutes, or else I'm going to be over my 14. I don't even want to think about my 11; if I've used more than seven hours of driving time so far I'm screwed no matter what.

Suffolk, VA - Quirks

Been a weird day so far. Woke up an hour late due to neglecting time zones. The place I needed an empty from insisted that I be in and out within 15 minutes. Found rolls of wrapping paper in the trailer along with a lot of trash. Misread a road sign and "accidentally" took the right exit. Going to chance a 13'6" tunnel since the detour adds 240 miles. All this and it's not even noon yet...

Ruther Glen, VA - Where's the mileage?

As I was driving down the road, I saw a message come in about me needing to relay something, then a "work assignment change" message. The last one almost always means that a load got canceled or something otherwise went very wrong. Instead, in this case, I was supposed to take it to a truck stop to relay it off to another driver, as I posted earlier. When I got there, I found out that he'd only just arrived a few minutes before I had, not that he had been waiting several hours as I was told on the phone by operations. So that's one strike against them.

Then, once I unhooked from the trailer and waited for a fuel lane to open up so I could fill the tanks, I looked at my work assignment and growled at the Qualcomm. Rather than getting something good to make up for the fact that I'd lost 200 miles, I got something that requires me to pick up an empty trailer 120 miles away, take it 20 miles to get it live loaded, then just 109 miles to drop the delivery. Strike two.

I then attempted to trip plan it out, though one thing was almost immediately obvious: even though I said I would be available at 6 AM, which has proved to be exactly accurate, I would have to leave no later than 5:30 to have any chance of picking the trailer up on time. Strike three.

So I called support shift to complain, ask why I was given such a horrible load instead of being rewarded by getting something good, and ask to either be pre-assigned a load immediately following this one or, even better, get taken off of it and assigned something else entirely. They insisted that this was a critical load and that, if I didn't pick up and deliver on time, it would cause factories to shut down. Given that I'm only bringing in a load of pallets, I find that hard to believe that the absence of my trailer would be more than a minor inconvenience. He also said there's freight in the area, but that he didn't know what I'd be assigned and that he wasn't able (or, more likely, wasn't willing) to pre-assign me something to at least ensure I don't continue to get screwed over like this. The only good news that came out of the conversation was that the pick up time isn't critical, though I still need to get there as early as I legally can. Making the delivery never was a problem, since I have twelve hours to spare on that end.

For lack of any other solution to this situation, I'll be calling operations tomorrow while the trailer is getting loaded and probably taking someone's head off. Can you do that over the phone? I'd rather like to see video of that sometime. But if they don't find me a good load - preferably at least a thousand miles - I'm going to have a few choice words for people.

Mount Jackson, VA - U-turn

Another driver his an "emergency" and I have to relay my load off to help him get home. If it's an emergency, why are they making him wait on my relay? I also lose about 200 miles as a result of this, if they corrected everything in the computer; I'll be out 400 miles and be showing a lot of out-of-route otherwise. They owe me for this.

Carlisle, PA - At least it's not New Jersey

So I delivered the load this morning and, as expected, traffic in New Jersey was terrible. The closer I got to Newark, the worse things got. It's quite hilarious now, but at the time it was all I could do to avoid screaming obscenities in tongues at people. Seriously, I think I would have started swearing in Swahili if I had to stay in that state much longer. The best moment of it all? Seeing cars go five wide in a section of highway with two lanes without even using the shoulder. That move doesn't even work in NASCAR so I was stunned to see five non-professional drivers manage to pull that off without anyone colliding with anyone else.

It also took quite a few tries to get my load picked up. The guy couldn't find the paperwork for my trailer, nor could he find anything matching my load number. So I went out to the truck, called operations, complained about the traffic, and scared them because I never get worked up as I was this morning. That five-wide traffic comment made both of us burst out laughing; what else can you do about such insane drivers? I was sent about fifteen different numbers and basically got to go play bingo with that. The shipping office's response? "You know what you can do with those numbers? ... Nothing." Given that he left that sentence hanging in the air for about three seconds before finishing the statement, I was bracing for a typically New York area response, the sort of thing that would likely cause a sailor to blush. It turns out, though, that the information I had the first time was right; the other guy working behind the counter had grabbed the paperwork and nearly handed it to another driver for a different company. Oops. So after all that, I went to their other yard a mile up the road, picked up the trailer, and came here to Carlisle.

As I'm still trying to get back on any sort of rational sleep pattern, I'm not going to deliver this load tomorrow. Instead, I'm planning on stopping in Charlotte, taking my break there, and hoping to somehow coerce myself to get out of bed at around 4 AM. Even writing "out of bed" and "4 AM" in the same sentence makes me cringe, though it could be worse; I had to run today at 3 AM and that on less than two hours of sleep. I just wish it weren't so cold, since I still don't have a heater in the truck. It's ten degrees below average so I'm not just complaining for sake of complaining; this really is unseasonably cold. At least it'll be warmer once I get south, if I don't freeze something off tonight.

Naples, NC - Circles

Tonight was an exercise in frustration, if nothing else. My next work assignment came in during the afternoon... a 2 PM live load at a location about 80 miles from where I was unloaded previously. The problem is that, at this time of morning, parking is all but impossible to find. I tried three truck stops along the way before just calling support shift, exasperated with the situation. Rather than acknowledging that, if I couldn't find a stop that was directly along the way I'd not be able to pick the load up on time, the moron on the line insisted that I could go 45 miles out of the way to take my break and still be on time for the load. I hung up after I asked him to explain his math and got this answer: I'd be ready to drive at 1 PM, be 67 miles away, and still somehow be able to make the pick up on time.

So I started driving and hoped for the best; I figured that if I didn't somehow find something along the way, there was a truck stop about 15 miles past the shipper that I could use. I really, really hate having to go 30 miles out of the way, but even my last-ditch solution was better than anything support shift had come up with. Instead, I lucked out and found a place directly on the way with a large gravel lot that had some room to park. I am on break now and, even better, am only a few miles from where I need to pick this thing up tomorrow. So, when I come off break at 1:30, I'll have half an hour to go nine miles. I'll then have most of the afternoon to drive and probably will shut down at the Carlisle OC tomorrow night. Getting to Carlisle would be over 550 miles, so it would certainly be a productive day if I can get that far. Of course, the way things are going lately, "if" is the key phrase here.

Valdosta, GA - Northbound

Just about ready to get out of here. I'm a little behind schedule, at least relative to what I'd intended to do this evening, but it really doesn't matter. I'm less than 400 miles from where I deliver this load and my delivery appointment isn't for another 24 hours. I'll pick it up tonight and possibly stop in Atlanta, just since I can get a free shower there, but I might continue on toward where I'm delivering. Either way, I just hope they can find me something after I deliver this, since I really don't want to have to try find a place to park the truck at 1:30 AM on Monday; parking at that time of the morning is nearly impossible.

Valdosta, GA - Ahead of the game

I had a 2 PM appointment here and they were ready for me. Instead of this taking 3.5 hours like Izd been told, it looks very probable that I will be out of here within 20 minutes. I think they're done unloading and just need to take care of the paperwork now. Of course, this only helps if there's any freight out here.

??? - Excessive safety

This place is so anal retentive about safety that I had to watch a seven-minute video on the subject before they'd let me in the gate. The guard also wouldn't let me walk 100 feet back to my truck without wearing a hard hat and wrap-around safety glasses. I just "love" it when policy triumphs over common sense...

Laredo, TX - Finally, something

Because of the kind of load I'm on, I don't want to go into specifics, but I have something to pick up tomorrow and deliver on Friday. It's a nice, long run too, though I do have a reasonable amount of time to deliver it. If I've planned it out just right, I should have roughly eight hours to spare in case something happens or (more likely) I just want to sleep in on Thursday or Friday morning. For now, though, I'm off to bed and have a 7 AM wake up call coming from the front desk.

Laredo, TX - Nowhere, slowly

As expected, freight is terrible. All the bobtail parking is taken; presumably, all those drivers are waiting on loads. There are about 15 people inside here alone. So I drove the seven miles to drop the load and get back to th OC. Now I get to wait a day (or more) to see if they can find some loads.

Laredo, TX - Next to the border

I can't say "south of the border" for obvious reasons, but there are plenty of places in Mexico that are further north than this. Of course, the place I was supposed to deliver to is closed on the weekend and we don't have any freight, so I just had to take a layover. I honestly am to the point where I want to work; I've had so much time off lately that I don't even know what to do with myself. However, freight is always bad down here and things are exceptionally soft nationwide, so I've a bad feeling I might be waiting quite a bit longer to get something. At least the hotel they use here is decent; they have a security guard on site so I don't have to worry about anyone in the neighborhood causing trouble. But for now, I'm off to bed; if they did find me a load I want to be able to run all day tomorrow.

Baytown, TX - Same place, different day

I was originally given an assignment telling me to drop this load as a relay in Houston, then pick up a load from there and take it to Laredo. However, I could barely sleep last night so I was nearly eight hours behind schedule; I finally got to sleep around the time I'd originally intended to wake up. When I did wake up, I found several messages asking me why I hadn't moved and telling me that the other driver was waiting. So I called in and made a very simple suggestion: have the other driver pick up the relay I was supposed to have and let me continue down to Laredo with my current load. Nobody gains or loses any miles and the other guy isn't stuck waiting for me. They seemed rather dumbstruck that I had such a simple solution to the problem.

I would have continued into Houston to take my break at the operating center, but traffic on I-10 was terrible once I got close so I stopped about ten miles early at a truck stop here. On the bright side, I was able to get dinner (and won a free burger from McDonald's in their Monopoly game) and watch a bit of TV, both things I would not have been able to do at the OC. I'm taking it somewhat easier than I should, but given that we never have enough freight coming out of Laredo and things have been particularly soft the last six weeks, I'd be shocked to find a load ready for me when I get down there. At least, on the bright side, I should have some decent miles coming out of there simply because there are few places that aren't at least a day's drive from the border.

Hammond, LA - Here we go again

Operations actually seemed worried that I disappeared for a few days. They took me off the load I was previously assigned but gave me another load with comparable mileage. Hopefully they'll keep me busy now.

Evergreen, AL - Failure to communicate

When I came back to the truck Tuesday, I had a load to be delivered by noon on the 10th. I took that opportunity to go home and take care of a few personal matters (including casting an absentee ballot). When I returned to the truck this morning, however, I saw that my delivery had been moved up to the 8th by 6 PM. That message came in on the 7th at about 5 PM, several hours after I had left.

So the took me off the load and asked me to call in. I dd so, explained the situation, and they seemed to understand. At least I won't have to try and get home again before my vacation in November; I took care of everything I needed to do at home over the next six weeks. Now I just need a new work assignment - hopefully one without several days to kill - and I'll be on my merry way.

Atlanta, GA - You just hit MY truck?

Yeah, that subject line is right: I had a driver from the Sure Wish I Finished Training transportation company hit my truck. I was waiting to make a right turn; he came along and made a right turn coming toward me and the front corner of his trailer hit my driver's side mirror. It cracked the plastic housing for the mirror enough that I can't get it back into place and will likely need to resort to duct tape to hold everything together. This after a rather frustrating time at a customer; I absolutely hate it when the guard doesn't speak enough English to even tell me where I'm supposed to drop my loaded trailer or to find the empties. Took me an hour to do something that should have taken twenty minutes.

In any case, despite all the irritations, I'm still about fifteen minutes ahead of schedule. I was making killer time on the highway today (I was averaging 59 mph until I hit Atlanta) so that cancels out the problems I had here in town. I plan on getting a shower and getting to sleep as quickly as I can, though, since the sooner I get moving the sooner I'll make it home tomorrow. And it is very nice to get home at least once in a while.

Middletown, TN - Something Special

The route to get to this place was... an adventure, to say the least. A narrow road with plenty of potholes. I hit one and worried I broke my steer axle; a quick inspection in that area showed no immediately obvious damage. So now I'm just waiting to get loaded. Since it's loose boxes, I really have no idea if they're even working on my truck, but it sounds like there's something going on back there.

While I was waiting, I also called operations to find out what happened about the first customer I picked up from, since they had several concerns. Ops is going to contact customer service and pass the information along; they should take it more positively coming from my board instead of directly from a driver. I also found out that I'm doing incredibly well in every category that they measure: insanely low idle (I was actually encouraged to "live it up a little" since 2.5% was so low), excellent service, better than 7 mpg, and extremely low out-out-route mileage. He said he needs to get back to me to find out just what I'm doing right, whether it's simply a matter of paying attention to detail or some special technique I have. I can't say that I've any particular technique, though it is very, very good to hear that I'm doing so well.

Russel, IL - Ahead of the game

I'm so, so thankful that September is finally over. I don't know why, but somehow, now that the blasted month is over with, things seem much better. That might have something to do with a few things going on outside of work, like getting those extra days off, but things seem genuinely good right now. Of course, assignments are as frustrating and misleading as ever: the first pick up for my current load was scheduled to be picked up tomorrow, any time between 7 AM and 5 PM, at a customer that allowed parking. In reality, they weren't planning on being ready for me until 9 AM and do not allow drivers to park. However, this is October! A wonderful new month! Instead of just telling me off and leaving me to complain to operations, they actually worked me in and loaded the trailer immediately. I was there less than 30 minutes.

So I'm at a TA just south of the WI/IL state line and am two hours into my break. I plan on getting moving as soon as my 10 hour break is up and making the second pick up stop for this load. I may then take my break in Indianapolis and just make it a half day (to catch up on sleep) or press on and try to have three 10+ hour days in a row. Both options certainly have their appeal, especially since the harder I run the better my assigned runs seem to become. However, before any of that can happen, I need to get the seven or so hours of sleep I can manage before it's time to resume working. :)

Neely's Landing, MO - Exasperation

After going every wrong way, I finally found this place. This time, they had both the name and city wrong. Charming, hm? In any case, I have a 10 PM appointment, which means I won't get to finish my break before they get to me. I could be cute and just not log the time it takes for them to load the truck (lumping it into my break) but I'm not sure if I could get away with that. If I do it that way, it'll ensure that I can use another very full day tomorrow, if nothing else.

Anyway, as for that last load, I hadn't been taken off of it when I made my last post. I was told that by operations but I then received a message from the trip planner explaining that I was still on it and that I would make pickup and both deliveries on time, even after I explained that I couldn't possibly do it. I responded by explaining (again) that it would put me over both the 11 and 14 hour rules unless I averaged more than 57 mph and didn't stop for anything whatsoever; when trip planning, they tell us to normally plan on an average of 50 mph and to allow an hour for miscellaneous stops or delays. Only after I said that it would be illegal for me to do so and that I flat-out refused to do it did they take me off the load, though there was a note telling me to call in before I'd be assigned something else.

So I called in and talked to operations and explained the above. They were as bewildered as I was as to how the trip planner thought I could take the load legally. Even more unusual is that the trip planner claimed she wasn't the one to assign me the load, even though it was on her shift; the information about the load assigner disappeared after the load was canceled. At least ops had some good news: I get to go home next weekend because it'll be the one time this month I want to go home. I need to check the mail and such, especially because they mailed all the drivers a coupon for a free pair of boots, good in October only. Also, I found out that we're doing away with the trip planners entirely, which means I won't have to deal with this kind of load-related crap as often; I'll be dealing directly with operations and operations will handle everything that is normally done by trip planning. There was some bad news, though: I do not get a bonus for this month like I was previously told. At least she took the time to look into it and research the correct answer this time around.

As we were wrapping up the conversation, my current work assignment came in, complete with an appointment four hours after my time ran out. Since I was still on the phone, ops just put me on hold and called the shipper; they're allowing me to take my break here. Of course, what should have been a roughly hour trip here turned into nearly double that, resulting in me ending up in downtown of a small city and having to turn around in open lots twice. I'm finally here, I checked in, and it looks like they're just going to take me in the order I arrived. There are three trucks in front of me right now, so once I post this I'm going to get to sleep, since I don't anticipate them being ready for me within the next three hours. The sooner they finish my trailer, of course, the better; I want to get as close to a full night's sleep as I can.

This load is going up to Wisconsin and the route is easy enough, at least: I-55 to I-94 to the consignee. It shouldn't be a problem, since I can deliver the load any time tomorrow, but Chicago traffic is always horrible. I'll just have to cross my fingers on that front. It looks like one truck has been loaded in the time it took me to write this, which means these guys are working remarkably fast tonight. I might not even bother with a nap and just get eight (or more) solid hours of sleep after they finish the trailer if this keeps up. But for now I'm just going to post this and hope that I don't have anything else happen tonight that's worth writing about.

Bloomsdale, MO - uh?

Things are so screwed up that I don't know where to begin. I have an assignment though, so details will come later.

Mount Olive, IL - Unpossible

They took me off the lord, so I'm going to get fuel. Whee.

Mount Olive, IL - Do what now?

My next load is impossible. More than 600 miles and one day to do it. It might be possible if things go perfectly, but it's a two stop delivery. I would just make the first if I got extremely lucky. Now I'm on hold with ops trying to find out how this is possible or if they'll admit they goofed and not try forcing me into an illegal, unsafe run.

Waddy, KY - Long days ahead

Thanks to all the problems last night, I'm going to just barely make delivery on this load. I'm pretty sure I can make it, since I have about 360 miles to go (I think) and a little under eight hours to get there once I get off my break. I can't afford to take any more time on break than the DOT requires, but if things go well (for once) I should at least be able to make a stop for an early lunch on my way to the consignee. There's conflicting information on this load, though: the work assignment specifies "at" noon while the notes say "by" noon. It doesn't make much difference in this case since there's a very slim chance I'd be there before 11 AM anyway. Hopefully they'll be able to find me another decent load right away; I'm doing pretty decently right now and I'd really like to keep up the positive momentum while I can.

Big Island, VA - Exactly on schedule

Even though I'm here at a manufacturer, I'm stuck waiting for "about an hour" for them to get ready to load my trailer with product. I don't see how these guys can't have the product ready to go several hours in advance; it's not like there are a lot of other trucks getting loaded and they can't keep up. I now have the dilemma of either taking my break here tonight and leaving as quickly as possible in the morning or trying to make about 200 miles tonight and putting myself within one more day's drive of my delivery. Sure, this thing has to be delivered at noon on Tuesday, but the closer I can get to the place on Monday, the easier that task becomes. If I play my cards just right, I could even get to take my break Monday night near St. Louis, where we have an operating center, so I can at least be sure of having a parking space and a shower. However, that requires I get loaded and feel up to driving another three to four hours, which I may or may not want to do. That decision will come after I have a full trailer.

Big Island, VA - Hurry up and wait

I arrived here about 30 minutes ago. It took this long to cut through the bureaucracy and get told where to go. They started unloading me quickly, but my next load isn't ready for another three hours. On the bright side, since this was a shorthaul and wasn't supposed to be a live unload, I got an extra $40.

Carlisle, PA - Relaxation

I hadn't originally planned on taking all day off today. I was thinking I'd sleep in a little, get a shower, then drive into Virginia this afternoon. That plan fell apart when "sleep in a little" became sleeping in until 11 AM. This load has to be delivered by 11:59 tomorrow night, so it's not like I can't spare the time. I guess I'll just relax up here and leave mid-morning tomorrow.

Carlisle, PA - Run to the woods

After finally getting rid of that last @#$*(@#$ load, I got another assignment to move an empty trailer around, then pick up a load going to a place that's 50+ miles off the interstate. I stopped here since there were a couple of things operations wanted me to do while at an operating center. I have two days to spare on this load, if I feel like taking that long, but since I'm pretty desperate for miles I'll probably deliver it quickly as I can and hope they can find me another load. On the bright side, the load is just short enough to qualify for short haul, so I get a couple extra cents per mile. Too tired to think of much else to write tonight.

Mechanicsburg, PA - Where is it?

Pulled into a strip mall's parking lot to get directions since this place is not where my directions claimed. Can't these guys get anything right?

East Berlin, PA - Whose load is this anyway?

When I arrived about half an hour ago, I was promptly greeted by someone insisting I had the wrong place. They started arguing about it before walking off, leaving me confused. I called operations and found out that I was in the right place after all. Further, the load is a drop, not a live unload like I'd been told all week. My next load is just under 300 miles; I'm going to see if I can make it today.

Greenville, VA - Taking it slow

Because freight is horrible right now, I'm not in a huge hurry to deliver this load. I'm still planning on being up early tomorrow, getting a shower, and likely being on the road before dawn, but I could probably leave two hours or so before I actually will. I have a little more than 200 miles to go on the load, so even leaving at 6 AM or so means I'll be there around 10, four hours before the 2 PM deadline. Supposedly I'll be out of there in an hour or so, but it really doesn't make much difference; freight is really bad right now and it's unlikely they'll be able to find me a load no matter when I get out of there. Of course, that's what I figured last time and I ended up getting this 1,360 mile load to Pennsylvania. I wouldn't mind another one of these loads, provided I don't have the mechanical problems to go along with it.

Knoxville, TN - Ready to go

The truck had a problem with the SRS and TRS sensors. I have no idea what that means, aside from the fact it was ready to go several hours earlier than expected. Because the shop had told me that it would likely be late this afternoon before it was ready, operations is going to credit me for two days of layover so I'm not wasting a night in the hotel that I've already paid for. I'll be out of here at (or near) 8 AM tomorrow and hopefully won't have any further problems. I quite literally can't afford much more of this.

Knoxville, TN - Hauled Away

They got the truck towed. One of the guys here at the shop is going to give me a ride to a nearby hotel in a little bit. It'll be tomorrow before they begin working - it's technically after hours already - so hopefully they can get the work done tomorrow as well.

Knoxville, TN - Getting towed, maybe?

They got here about twenty minutes ago, but it seems like something is wrong given how they're acting. If this thing is so screwed up it can't even be towed, that would be impressive.

Knoxville, TN - Waiting on a wrecker

It turned out to be more than they could fix on the side of the road. I was told a wrecker would be here "within the hour" at 3:30. So far, nobody has shown up. I'm not going to have the hours to drive any further today. At least the new information for this load gave me about two days to spare.

Knoxville, TN - I blew what now?

While it might not be the only problem, I blew a fuse inside the battery box. I didn't know the truck had fuses there. The mechanic had to go back to get the fuse - they're larger than the ones in the cab - so I'm waiting again. Hopefully it won't be another two hours.

Knoxville, TN - R.I.P.?

This is... bad. I was riding along, when my engine suddenly stopped. Meaning I was coasting helplessly downhill at 60 mph. I had a gap to pull over; I did so immediately. The engine seemed to refire at about 20, but given that I also had a warning for low oil pressure, I parked it. Now I'm on hold waiting for maintenance. Oddly, the truck will restart, but dies immediately when I try drive. I'm pretty sure there's a shop at the exit I'm next to; there are three major truck stops here. I just hope I didn't kill the truck.

West Memphis, AR - Whose load is this, anyway?

This has to be one of the stranger loads I've had. I picked up the relay this morning, only to find that the paperwork was missing. Normally this is an annoyance that can be worked around; I just have to call operations to get the info I'd need to write up a bill of lading myself. However, in this case, not even operations had a clue about this load. Every bit of information we had about the trailer, its contents, its origin, and its destination was included in my work assignment. Also, it was originally set up for an 8 AM appointment on Wednesday, but when I sent in a message to confirm I could make that (it'd have been close), I received a response saying that if I wanted to request an early delivery I needed to call in, followed shortly by a new delivery information changing it to "on Friday" between 8 AM and 2 PM.

Confused as to why they would have rescheduled a load I'd said I could make, I called in once again. And more confusion ensued. Turns out that, because freight is so bad right now, customer service is doing a lot of things without confirming them in advance; otherwise we'd lose business to other companies that are more willing to cut corners. A few minutes on hold revealed that the load should have said "by Friday" instead. This means that, if correct, I could get there Wednesday morning and still get unloaded after racking up 1,500 miles in about three days. If it's not, I could potentially get two days of layover at the Carlisle OC while I wait for Friday morning to roll around, though they'd probably just have me drop it and take another load instead.

Either way, I need to haul ass tomorrow. If I don't knock out at least 600 miles, I'm in trouble. I have 931 miles to go on this load and time is very, very short if I want to make that original, Wednesday morning appointment. There's a stop I'd love to make it to up in Virginia, but it's 665 miles away; now that the trucks are at 60 mph, there's no way I can do that unless it's downhill most of the way and I have a good tailwind. Amusingly, there is a 5 to 10 mph tailwind along my route tomorrow. Of course, there are other places I can stop if time is running short.

Dallas, TX - And off we go

I woke up today quite a bit earlier than I intended due to the combination of heat and the Qualcomm beeping. However, the news was good for once: it's a whopping 1,368 paid miles to go into southern PA. This is, by far, the longest run I've had this month and it's about time I get something like this! Since I've been finding it impossible to get to sleep before about 2 AM lately, I decided to just try driving overnight for a little while and see how that goes. Once I get further north, the temperature shouldn't be as much of an issue and I should be able to sleep during the day somewhat comfortably.

One thing that I found incredibly disturbing, though, is that there was a homeless person lounging around in the operating center last night. It was pretty obvious he didn't work here; he had to ask where everything was even though there are signs all over the place and was wearing what appeared to be red bowling shoes instead of the boots any of our drivers wear. Given incidents that have happened in the past, I was worried he was going to pull out a gun or something. Thankfully he was only clueless, as opposed to dangerous, though security had missed him. They said more than six months ago they were going to put up an electric fence and sliding gates around the OC to improve security, but that has yet to happen. As it is, where as I once thought our operating centers were at least reasonably safe, this has proved that's not so and I'm probably going to avoid this place in the future, if I can help it.

West Memphis, AR - Continuing Insanity

Unsurprisingly, things have continued to remain chaotic. I left somewhat later this morning than I intended (though I did desperately need the sleep), only to find a massive line at the truck stop on my way out. I needed to use the scale but the line for the unleaded was so long that it had actually blocked the truck entrance off entirely. A quick look at my atlas and truck stop guide revealed that there was another Pilot truck stop about 40 miles further down the road and there were no government scales along the way.

So, of course, I went along. And as I suspected, I was overweight. Because of how close to the weight limit I was, I had to play around with the fifth wheel.For those of you who don't drive, it's hard to even convey how much of a pain in the rear this is; the truck lurches violently forward or backward when you're trying to move it, making the sort of small, controlled movements I needed impossible. Each notch is only two inches apart and the truck displayed a tendency to jump four inches at a time when I needed to make the adjustments. As such, it took over an hour and a half to finally get it where I needed it, to get re-weighed so I could prove the weight was legal, and to get back on the highway. This meant that I wasn't going to make it to Little Rock like I'd originally planned, especially since I needed to get a couple things fixed at the operating center here.

On the bright side, I'm doing laundry right now and had a lovely catfish dinner for $6. On the not-so-bright side, I have 500 miles left to go on this run that must be delivered tomorrow and a message came across the Qualcomm today saying freight is soft across the entire country this weekend. I'll probably end up going to another operating center after I deliver the load, even if it is a fifty mile drive, because I don't want to be stuck with a layover out in the middle of nowhere. Besides, I don't think there are any truck stops nearer than that; they seem to like sending me to places that are way off the Interstate lately. It'll all make sense tomorrow, I suppose.

Also, not directly related to trucking, what is it with gasoline prices? As the photo below shows, sometimes just going across the street can save you 42¢ per gallon. Yes, that Pilot is selling regular for $3.77 while the Shell is charging $4.19. There was another big line at Pilot while only one person filled up across the street.

Nashville, TN - WHARRGARBL

Things pretty steadily went from bad to worse after my last post. The "one hour" live load took almost an hour and a half. I was fifteen minutes over my fourteen hours when I got to the truck stop, then it took me an hour to actually get into a parking space; even that took the help of two other drivers. I could write more, but I really just want to curl up for a while, so I'm going to do that and only hope tomorrow results in me having fewer instances in which I want to rip my hair out.

Red Boiling Spring, TN - Time is of the essence

I was quite happy after I got my trailer unloaded at the last customer; what I had been told would take three hours ended up taking only 30 minutes and I looked like I'd have enough time to pick my next load up before I went on break. Of course, given the way things have been lately, you can imagine how it wouldn't be that easy. Turns out that this isn't a pre-loaded trailer like I'd been told. I was assured it would be an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes before I was loaded; it's been 45 minutes and they've not even started working my trailer yet. This is a big problem because the nearest truck stop I know of is a whopping 67 miles away, most of that on secondary roads, and I only have until 6:30 before I'm out of time for the night. If I were out of here by the top of the hour, there'd at least be a chance I could make it; if I'm not out by 5:15 I'm going to have to get really, really creative with the paperwork. I'm also going to rip customer service a new one when I call in tomorrow morning; this makes three out of my last four loads that they've completely screwed up.

East St. Louis, IL - Simmering

Amazingly, the rest of the day went well after that last post. I ended up getting to the next place, dropping my empty, and picking up the load in a grand total of 30 minutes. So I have a little wiggle room on this load, but only a little; I still have only seven and a half hours to go roughly 400 miles. At least it's all on the Interstate this time, unless I find a significant short cut somewhere; I'll be looking for one in the atlas tonight. For now, though, I'm planning on finishing dinner, doing a bit of exercise, getting a shower, and getting to bed. I'm going to need to catch up on sleep since I have to be up at 4 AM again.

Fenton, MO - Boiling point

I'm trying to be as patient as I can with things, but I'm finding that patience to be running extremely thin right now. I don't think they had a single piece of information right about this load. Originally it was supposed to be picked up yesterday but I never had enough time to get there and find a place to park; I had to get them to reschedule it. The delivery was supposed to be a drop at 4 PM, which then was bumped up to 2:30 after I called and said I could make it earlier; instead, nobody ever bothered contacting the consignee and - on top of that - this was a live unload and not a drop. As a result of that, I might not have enough hours left to pick up the next load and get to a truck stop, which is the same problem I ran into yesterday, only this time the nearest truck stop is about fifteen miles away. It doesn't help that I was berated by another driver for blocking the only trailer drop slot in the yard; I parked there because it was the only place that I could park the truck while I tried to figure out why none of the information I was given about this load was correct.

My hours run out at 6:30 - two and a half hours from now - and as I figure it there's no way I can get everything done before 6:15. Even that assumes that I get in the dock exactly at 4 o'clock, per the original appointment, get out of here within a half hour, get everything done at the next shipper (drop and hook) in less than an hour, then find no traffic problems at all as I drive through the middle of St. Louis at rush hour. Even then, it'll be a hell of a squeeze to try and get the delivery done tomorrow; I'll have roughly 400 miles to go and seven hours to do it in, which doesn't even leave me enough time to stop for a bathroom break. If I can somehow save even fifteen minutes somewhere, that will help immensely, though I seriously doubt anything is going to go in my favor at this point. It's now 4:10 and I just backed into the dock; they haven't even turned on the dock lock to let me know that they're ready to work on it. It's a small wonder I was even able to get it in here, though, due to another driver taking up most of the area I needed to maneuver. At least I'm not the first person who has had to cut across the grass to try and make this work.

I'd be really, really happy to just get assigned a simple drop and hook somewhere at this point. A load going to Wal-Mart would be wonderful; those are always easy to work with and generally have extra time in case something goes wrong. They've just started unloading my trailer (finally), so I'm going to post this and hope I can get out of here within the next ten minutes.

Antioch, TN - How many loads can a trip planner cancel?

So far today, I've had one load canceled outright and it looks like I can't pick up the on I'm currently assigned either. At this rate it's not unlikely that I'll just end up on break after this unload.

Gary, IN - Laid over once again

Due to the weather screwing with the area, the driver who was supposed to relay this load couldn't even get into the operating center; he was stuck in Forest Park, IL for almost twelve hours. I woke up late this morning, got lunch, got a shower... and then found that the trailer was overdue for a PM. You'd think that a driver dropping a relay could at least get that written up and put it in the maintenance row; this guy hadn't bothered to do that. So now I've been waiting nearly three hours for them to do whatever they need to do with this trailer. Instead of being able to deliver this load this afternoon or early tomorrow morning, it looks like I'll be stuck trying to deliver it early tomorrow afternoon, at best, and even that assumes they can get an appointment scheduled for then on such short notice. If I'm not out of here within another hour, it'll be after the consignee for this load is closed and they probably won't be able to set up a delivery even later than that.

It's amazing how many things can go wrong, isn't it?

Reddit for Truck Drivers

Despite the popularity of the site, I noticed that there wasn't a subreddit for truck drivers. So, given that I had a little extra time this morning, I set one up and populated it with a couple of recent news articles. So there's now a trucking reddit that needs links. Anyone have some content to submit or, if nothing else, any interest in joining?

Gary, IN - Not so fast

So here's an amusing problem: the load that I'm supposed to pick up here isn't here until morning, which means that the one time I do want to work I can't. At least it'll be here in time for me to get near my destination tomorrow and have more than enough time to sleep in as it's a live unload for 11:30 AM. Not really much else to write about today, since it was just a straight shot up I-55 to deliver my last load, then directly across I-80 to get here. Hopefully tomorrow will be this uneventful, though I'll be driving through the remnants of Ike later in the day, so I imagine that the weather will be getting rather interesting as I move south. I'll keep the camera on hand in case there's anything worth photographing.

Elkton, IL - I've got nothing

Looks like I am once again going to have more downtime than I know what to do with. Freight is terrible up here so I'm picking up an empty and parking at the nearest truck stop, roughly ten miles south of here. Hopefully they'll find something soon or at least let me to go the OC.

One minute later - Heh, incoming work assignment as I type. This better be good.

West Memphis, AR - No rest for the weary

I have a work assignment. Normally this would be a good thing, but not when it means I have to drive 380 miles by noon. I'm going to have to wake up at 3 AM to have any chance of making this delivery, two hours earlier than I said I'd be available. Apparently, as usual, support shift doesn't care about drivers; they only care about scheduling loads even when it's unsafe for me to be up so early as I'll have gotten barely seven hours sleep. I'll take this load as I'm pretty desperate for miles but I'll be complaining about the delivery appointment while I'm getting unloaded.