The last few days have been quite ... something, to say the least. It started off simply enough, with a delivery near Scranton, PA late Monday night. Then, Tuesday morning, I found that I still hadn't received a work assignment, so I called in to ask about it. They ended up assigning me something that I could have easily picked up six hours ago, driven most of the way to the consignee, taken a break, then delivered at my 3 AM appointment. Instead, since they took so long to give it to me, I had to drive through the night Tuesday and arrived in Maine around 2:30 AM Wednesday. They assigned me a dock immediately and told me it would be "a couple hours, at least" so I backed in and promptly took a nap.
It was around 9 AM when they finished and brought the paperwork out. Things weren't so hot; three problems were found with the load. Two were just between the consignee and the vendor - I just had to acknowledge that we were aware of it - but the third was a delivery of 40 cases of a product that the customer doesn't even carry and that they placed back on the truck. They gave me permission to wait as long as necessary to get things sorted out, so I called cargo claims to explain the situation, got instructions to take it to another facility a few miles away, and went back to sleep for a couple more hours until my break was up.
Upon arriving at the LTL facility, I checked in, opened the trailer, backed in, felt a forklift... then double-checked my presumably empty trailer only to find that the pallet was spilled all over the floor. They blamed me for it in a completely unprofessional and condescending manner; I made another angry phone call to claims because I knew the product hadn't been like that when I backed in. Ultimately, I was assured that the staff there would "assist" in restacking the pallets, but they told me off again when I asked. Adding to the frustration was that there weren't 40 cases; there were 61 and there was no way it was going to fit on one pallet. I ended up having to restack it onto two, made yet another phone call asking for a correction to be made on the load information, then ultimately just had the facility scratch out the old number and write in the new. What should have been just a simple, 15 minute stop ultimately became an hour and a half ordeal. The net result of all this was that I was still a good three hours ahead of schedule. Good thing, too, since that meant I could afford to average "only" 56 mph on the run instead of needing to do at least 60 the whole way. The rest of things that day went pretty smoothly, even if I did have to drive considerably later than I'd have liked; I shut down in Lamar, PA around 2:30 AM.
Ultimately, though, it proved obvious that there was no way that I could get this delivered on time without sticking to the Interstate and, unfortunately, the toll roads in Ohio and Indiana. Normally we're not authorized to take those, but after a short phone call explaining the situation, I got it approved. I left the moment my break was up, made a single fuel stop, and arrived in Zion, IL just after midnight this morning. The end result? I did over 750 miles yesterday, all legally, easily setting a new record. I also provided myself about a half-hour cushion on the delivery, while I'd otherwise have had to relay the load off in Gary, IN for lack of time to deliver. I arrived here perhaps half an hour ago, backed in to a door, and typed all this while they're unloading me. It sounds like they're just about done now; I have one more stop to make on this run, then probably will be routed to Gary, IN for routine maintenance. I'll be posting another update from there at the end of the night.
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