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.

West Memphis, AR - Going nowhere slowly

I meant to post this about four hours ago. Oh well. >_>

Due to the storm, they ended up canceling my delivery and had me drop it as a relay right here at the OC. Since I didn't get much sleep last night and just have been really groggy all day as a result, I ended up going absolutely nowhere. I'll be getting up early tomorrow and (hopefully) getting quite a bit more sleep to facilitate a full day's work, though if I get an assignment before bed that allows me the luxury of sleeping in, I'll be very happy to do so. For now, I'm just relaxing in the OC since it's not as hot as the truck (though I'd swear the air conditioning is off) and just enjoying the afternoon.

West Memphis, AR - Racing the storm

Well, this is a familiar predicament. I'm en route to a place that's threatened by a tropical cyclone. In this case, it's Ike, bearing down on the Texas Gulf Coast. However, I should be able to deliver this load either late tomorrow afternoon or first thing Friday morning, hopefully before everything gets shut down, if indeed they do force an evacuation. However, given how many people are on the coast and how long it would take to actually evacuate everyone, I'm not so sure about that. I'll just keep checking the radio every few hours to ensure that there haven't been any more evacuation orders posted and hope for the best. At least I'm not going to be down there on the same day it makes landfall, assuming they can find some freight to get me out of there; the last time I dealt with a tropical storm (Fay) I was delivering on the very same morning it made landfall.

Indianapolis, IN - Getting ready to go again

The shop finished up the truck earlier this afternoon, so I went back over to the operating center to double-check their work. Unlike Atlanta, they did everything that I'd asked for. The truck actually drives in a straight line! I don't have any obnoxious sounds coming from the radio! But since it was about 3 PM by the time I was ready to go, I decided to take one more night off and be ready to leave at about six in the morning. Hopefully they'll have a good run for me out of here since I really need to make some miles this week.

Amazingly, operations didn't seem to mind that I'd taken the time off without even trying to get a loaner truck; my manager just said that everything was okay and reminded me to send in an update on my hours to run and such. I'll send in about hotel reimbursement tomorrow once I'm ready to go since there's a chance I'll even get the room covered. Overall, this could be quite a good week.

Indianapolis, IN - In the shop again

When I arrived in Indy this evening, I had to drop a trailer for a relay, then went to the shop to put my truck in for all the things that Atlanta didn't fix. As soon as I said the truck needed an alignment, the mechanic just glanced at my steer tires and said "Yeah, those are shot." I'm confident that I'll get everything fixed this time. Though it'll be about Tuesday by the time I'm done waiting on repair (assuming they stay on schedule) it'll be worth it to get all those things fixed. I'm just annoyed that Atlanta didn't fix them the first time.

I'm also somewhat annoyed that operations gave me a work assignment even after I'd written the truck up; I sent a message back telling them that my truck is in the shop and I will not be able to make the delivery. I left them my cell phone number and told them that they could call me if they absolutely, positively had to, but so far I've not gotten a call back. Knowing my luck, I'll get chewed out on Monday for missing the delivery appointment even though I explicitly said that I couldn't take the load due to truck repair. They'd probably have me take a loaner truck again if I actually called them myself, but I'd like to avoid that mess since it took so long to return the loaner last time, resulting in the sort of anemic paycheck I can't afford right now.

Anyway, I'm off to sleep to enjoy yet another couple of days off.

Cornersville, TN - On The Road Again

First day back out and I get a 750 mile run. I'll also be going through Indianapolis to get the truck double-checked. I'd say this is a pretty good start.

Panama City, FL - 150 miles and 2.5 hours left

Yes, that subject is right: I need to average sixty miles per hour to get home without getting cute on my logs. Considering that I'm not taking any Interstates, there's a roughly equal chance of flying pigs. I'm still planning on getting there regardless; with as screwy as this week has been I'm overdue for a few days off.

Marianna, FL - 240 miles to go

I have finally been released to go home, but I have to go 70 miles out of the way to drop this empty trailer. As such, I have serious dou ts about making it home before my hours run out; I'm going to round things well in my favor on my logbook if that is the only way I'll get home today.

Atlanta, GA - Going nowhere, slowly

I never did find out who took my time at home out of the computer, though supposedly operations is going to look into it. I also was told that the load I was assigned - with a live unload that would keep me 180 miles from home until 10 AM Friday - would be the best they could possibly do for me. I've told them that I could get it there at 4 PM or so today, assuming the place has any afternoon receiving hours, though it looks very unlikely that I'll be able to deliver it then. If they reschedule it for some ridiculously early hour of the morning, I'll go back to sleep and drive all night to get there. Operations once again promised that I'd get to go home, since apparently they'll let me bobtail anywhere under 200 miles to get home. In other words, Atlanta is 37 miles too far away for them to just send me directly home.

I don't know what's going to happen at this point but none of it is good.

Atlanta, GA - Who says you can't go home?

I have no idea how this is possible, but when I called in from the OC to complain that the run I'd been assigned wasn't going to get me any closer to home, I was told that I didn't have any time at home in the computer. Someone apparently deleted my request and, as such, apparently nobody knew that I was supposed to be home yesterday; the only request in the computer was to be routed through Atlanta to return the loaner truck. I have my alarm set for 7 AM and I'm not leaving the operating center here until this mess is sorted out. So far, I've gotten nothing but lies from the trip planners this week and I am completely exasperated by their inability to give me a single correct, honest piece of information. In short: I'm going to call and whine that I want to go home since, apparently, that's about the only way I'm going to get sent home at all.

In (somewhat) related news, the shop here in Atlanta sucks. Even given five days to work on my truck, the only thing they fixed were the windshield wipers. I'm going to walk over there in the morning to get a print out of what exactly was fixed and, hopefully, an explanation of why certain things weren't fixed. Most worryingly, three of my tires are still in questionable condition; I'm certain that one of them wouldn't pass a DOT inspection. If there's no note about the tires at all on the shop's report, I'm going to have someone from the shop take a good, long look at it and, if he still insists that it doesn't need repair or replacement, have him sign my logbook as verification that I had a mechanic inspect it.

Before any of this, though, I'm going to bed; hopefully six hours of sleep will at least get me through the day tomorrow.

Tuscaloosa, AL - Off we go

Looks like things are finally not insane. I was told to head in to the consignee at 8 PM, which is doable. Now I just have to hope they actually will route me directly to Atlanta as I've been promised; most of this week has just been changed assignments and being left hanging.

Tuscaloosa, AL - All together now

Over the course of the evening, it seems like every piece of information I've had about this load has changed at least twice. Though my work assignment originally said noon on Thursday, it turns out that the actual appointment was 5PM on Wednesday, something that I couldn't possibly make. Even my most optimistic estimate had me there around 6PM and that's assuming nothing went wrong, which it always does. So when I picked up the load, I updated my information once again... only to get back a snarky message telling me that the load had already been rescheduled twice and that I had better figure out what I'm doing before I send in another update. Never mind the fact that operations apparently couldn't communicate any useful information to me or that I kept having to adjust my entire sleep schedule around this load; they expected me to have everything sorted out for them.

So, when I shut down here, I called in and explained the situation to someone in support shift for at least the second time today. I was told to send in another update with my best estimate - which ended up being different than anything I'd communicated previously because I'm going to hit Chattanooga at rush hour - then call in the morning as well to confirm that everything was in order. I've done that, so now I just need to get to sleep and hope that, somehow, things miraculously sort themselves out in the next seven hours. Assuming that I am delivering this load and get routed immediately and directly back to Atlanta, it's 541 miles, which leaves me just about enough time to shut down for the night; I'll still have 237 miles to drive on Thursday to get home. If they have me relay it in Atlanta and just go home, it's 438 miles; needless to say, I'd much prefer this option since I'd actually get home on time.

Of course, every single thing that I'm posting here is speculation and requires operations to have things together. If they don't, I'll be lucky to see home this weekend at all.

Brookhaven, MS - I'm doing what now?

They moved the delivery appointment up to 5PM eastern time tomorrow. I'll have to drive all night to have any chance of making that; even then it's going to be close. I guess it's a good thing that I slept in unil noon today.

Brookhaven, MS - Going nowhere quickly

I finally have an assignment, but it's not at all helpful. It's a live unload at noon on Thursday at a place about 160 miles from Atlanta. While they (supposedly) have a lot of freight in that area going back toward Atlanta and, in turn, home, I wouldn't be getting to my park location until about 12:30 AM Friday morning.

I've been on hold for almost 40 minutes now, trying to get this load relayed in Atlanta or simply to get assigned something better, though the latter is extremely unlikely. First shift is gone for the day so here's hoping that support shift can be useful for a change. Of course, I'd be thrilled just to have someone answer the phone.

Jackson, MS - Still idling

I've been waiting all day for a work assignment to come in, but right now, 26 hours after I shut down yesterday, I still don't have an assignment to take me anywhere. I did get permission to move the truck up here so I could get a good meal and a shower, neither of which I could do at the little hole-in-the-wall I'd stopped at last night. I'm going to head inside to get a drink then go to bed, just leaving the Qualcomm next to me so its incoming message beeps wake me up for when I do finally get an assignment.

At this point, though, they need to route me back to Atlanta post-haste if I'm going to have any chance of making it home Wednesday, as planned. As I see it, they have to find a load that I'll either deliver near Atlanta or relay at the operating center tomorrow; if they don't, I might not even have the truck back in time for the other driver who needs it. Then, on Wednesday, the only thing I can think of would be getting a load to Mobile or, for that matter, pretty much anywhere in the southern half of Alabama. They could possibly have me relay something at the drop yard I normally park at, though that's somewhat less likely. It's not entirely impossible that they'll have me do something else with the goal of getting me home Thursday and, since freight is extremely soft, there's a risk that will happen. I seriously hope it doesn't, though, as I already have plans for Thursday evening and through the weekend.

Brookshaven, MS - Waiting Game

Apparently freight is extremely soft today. It's rare that I have to wait this long for a load, but even though I told operations I'd be ready to move six hours ago, I have yet to get a work assignment. I plan on calling in before they leave just to ensure they realize that I have to be back in Atlanta by tomorrow, or to get permission to drive the truck somewhere that has more services. I could really go for a steak dinner at Petro or, at the very least, a cool shower at Pilot. I just don't want to drive the 50 or so miles to get to those truck stops without having a reason for it, since that would definitely not help my chances of getting the low out-of-route bonus.

Atlanta, GA

I'm too tired to write in all the details, but here's the short version of what had me so worked up last night. Instead of being shut down while waiting for my truck to get through a PM, they ended up assigning me another load. I then find out from support shift that I'm supposed to pick up a loaner truck, something that nobody had bothered to tell me until after I had planned to get the work done on my tractor. So I went to the shop to have them write my truck up, only to be told that since it wouldn't be ready until Tuesday afternoon, it would no longer be assigned to me by the time they finished the work; Schneider only lets drivers stay assigned to their truck if they're not gone more than five days. So, in other words, the shop figured that whatever loaner I was assigned would be a permanent change. This is what had me so irate last night: changes like this are not something I should find out from the weekend shift in the tractor shop.

I ended up calling in this morning to get the mess straightened out. Turns out that the truck I'm temporarily assigned to is part of a special program we have and, as such, it would have to be back here by Wednesday morning anyway. They're going to do everything they can to route me back here Monday evening; if that happens, I'll be taking tomorrow to deliver a load, then coming right back here on Monday, though I'm still not holding my breath about that. I'm also not sure how this is going to change the situation for time at home, since I'm scheduled to be done on Wednesday and I've a weird feeling that it's not going to work very smoothly.

Failure to Communicate

I'm so pissed off at every level of management at the company that I am completely at a loss for words. In short, I have to permanently give up my truck for a "loaner" because nobody knows what they're doing. Details later once I have anything to say that isn't saturated in profanity.

Work Assignments

I've mentioned my work assignments before, but I've never really gone into detail about what an assignment consists of. I'm going to provide examples of one below and explain what the gibberish means. Each message requires at least one response.

Fuel and Directions (one for each load)

PLZ SEND FUEL LVL FOR LD XX12345 TO RECEIVE DIRECTIONS

For this message, a reply presents a form on which I have to input two things: my fuel level (in increments of 1/8 tank) and what kind of directions I want (fueling only, company directions from nearest major highway, or street-level directions akin to Google's). This is the only way to get fuel directions so I generally round down to the next-lower fuel increment to be safe.

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Equipment Disposition (one for each movement of unloaded equipment, rarely more than two per load)

Unfortunately, I don't have an example of this handy right now. But all it does is provide a customer code, what I'm doing with equipment (picking up or dropping off a trailer, deadheading, or bobtailing), and the number of miles I'm getting paid for it. In a case where I'm picking up an empty trailer and taking it to another yard - which is common for places that only receive or only ship - I'll get one message to pick up the trailer and another message to drop it. Each one requires a reply so they know when I picked it up and that I did, in fact, get the trailer I was supposed to get. If for some reason the trailer I've been told to pick up is not available, there are fields that I can input that information on; I then have to wait and find out what they want me to do.

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Pickup Information (one for each pick up point)

PU INFO  LOC ID ABC12_ LD# XX12345 CUST NAME GENERIC WAREHOUSING #42 ADDRESS 123 NOWHERE RD CITY CORINTH____________ STATE MS PU STOP# 01 OF 01 BOX # TA987654 PRELDED___ PU RELAY N EST ARRIVE DTTM 08/21 0800 PU WINDOW 08/21 08:00 16:00 ON AVG DUR 00:30  HV______ MILES LDED 320 MILES FROM PREV LOC 0

Yay, details! This message provides the information I'll need in order to get directions, when I'm expected to arrive there, and how much I'm getting paid for it. In this case, I'm going to pick up a load that I have to pick up on the 21st between 8AM and 4PM and will get paid 320 miles for delivering it. If "miles from previous location" weren't zero, I'd be getting paid just to drive there. This is often the case if I've dropped a load at the previous customer and am picking up a preloaded trailer. Any specific information for the load or customer will be in this message as well, listed below the information in my example. This message requires two replies: one when I arrive and one when I depart. When I leave, I need to include the trailer number I've taken with me so the company can track what equipment is where.

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Pickup Billing & Service Verification (one for each pick up point unless load is picked up as a relay)

PU BILLING & SERVICE VERIFICATION LOC ID ABC12_              LD # XX12345 CUST NAME GENERIC WAREHOUSING #42 PCS 3495 WEIGHT 30360 CMDTY PAPER, BALED MB/L 123454321 PU # R2-D2 HAND LOAD? NO X PART _ FULL _ LMPR _ PALJACK _

And more details! The first three lines just repeat information I already know, but the rest is useful. In this case, the load is just over 30,000 pounds so I need to be somewhat concerned about weight. I also have a bill of lading and a pick up number; most loads will only have one or the other, but in this case I have both. It's also not a hand load, though that's pretty obvious for preloaded trailers. When I reply to this, I have to fill in the correct number of pieces, the weight, and the bill of lading number. "Lumper" services are loading or unloading services we have to pay for and, frankly, are a pain in the ass. But that's a post for another time.

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Delivery Information (one for each drop/unload point)

DEL INFO LOC ID ZZ987_ LD# XX12345 CUST NAME BIG BOX MART #7269 ADDRESS 500 DUELING BANJO LN CITY MCDONOUGH________ STATE GA DEL STOP # 01 OF 01    DP RELAY N EST ARRIVE DTTM 08/21 1539  DP LDED DEL WINDOW 08/22 00:01 23:59 BY AVG DUR 00:30 MILES FROM PREV LOC 320 SND MAC29 IF DEL IS OUTSIDE SVC WINDOW

And now for information about the place I'm going to. This has similar information to the pickup info message, only detailing my delivery. In this case, it's a "by" delivery, which means I can drop it any time I want as long as it's by the time listed; if I get this load delivered by 11:59PM on the 22nd, it's considered on time. Of course, I can deliver it early; the computer figures I can get there before 4PM on the 21st. It's to my advantage to deliver as early as possible, since the sooner I deliver a load the sooner I can get on something else to rack up more mileage. Like the pick up info, this message requires a reply both at arrival and departure.

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Delivery Billing & Service Verification (one for each pick up point unless load is dropped off as a relay)

DEL BILLING & SERVICE VERIFICATION LOC ID ZZ987_              LD # XX12345 CUST NAME BIG BOX MART #7269 PCS 3495 WEIGHT 30360 CMDTY PAPER, BALED HAND LOAD? NO X PART _ FULL _ LMPR _ PALJACK _

The delivery message contains completely redundant information. All I have to do is, once I get the bills signed or stamped, reply to this so they know to send out a freight bill.

There may be an additional message with pick up or delivery numbers, such as PO numbers that may or many not be necessary, or any other unusual information I might need. I still haven't figured out why they can't just include it in the load-specific information on the pick up or delivery info messages, but that's not my thing to figure out

Satsuma, AL

1:15PM - Ugh. I got to Kimberly Clark in Mobile and picked up my load without too much trouble, though it wasn't in the yard they normally keep our trailers at. This trailer is in pretty rough shape, though; there are two tires that only just met DOT specifications and the tandem slider barely worked the first time I tried it. So what's the problem? The tandems didn't move after I scaled the load and found I am 100 pounds overweight on the trailer. While I've dealt with worse things before, I sent in an overweight message, waited half an hour, then after not getting a response called operations. Rather than telling me to run with it (as I've been told to in the past), they warned me that if I got a ticket I'm responsible for it and suggested I call road repair. So now I'm on hold waiting for them to answer the phone. At least that Bluetooth-enabled CB radio is working out nicely; it's a fantastically loud speaker for when I'm waiting on hold, saving me the trouble of holding a phone up to my head.

1:45PM - That was a long time to accomplish next to nothing. I was told to go to a place 25 miles away to get this fixed, so I'm going well out of my way; hopefully I can at least get credit for driving down there. And I really hope that the place I'm delivering to will allow me to park since I'm waiting on a load to come out of there; I'm going to have one heck of a time finding parking tonight if they don't.

Crestview, FL

I stopped at the Florida welcome center to update operations about the load. Despite my best efforts, there's no way I could have made the delivery appointment I had. The unload of my previous load took nearly four hours; it was supposed to be done within two. And even if I'd gotten out of there on time, I'd have had only one hour to spare on this load. So when I got a message that said "Please call me" I prepared for the worst, since I didn't think it was anything good.

Turns out, though, that they want me to relay the load somewhere. It's going to be a relay not because I'm late but because of Tropical Storm Fay. I'm just waiting at a rest area right now for instructions on where I need to go. I'll be particularly happy if they route me to the place I've parked my car and I can just take the rest of the day off, but I doubt I'll get that lucky.

Into the Storm

I get to drive into a tropical cyclone and dispatch doesn't care. I hope it's just whatever support shift is smoking and first shift is more reasonable.

Browns Summit, NC

I'm starting to write this while I wait on road repair. Yay.

Anyway, my day started off with the unexpected beeping of the Qualcomm as I received a work assignment. I'd been hoping to sleep in, but no, I ended up waking up at 7:30 to that infernal thing. I looked at it and saw that I had an open pickup window and a delivery appointment on Saturday, leaving me some extra time, so I tried to get back to sleep. And failed miserably. I gave up on it entirely around 10 o'clock, got online for a little while, then decided to head inside for lunch and a shower. Even that didn't work out so well; I had a long wait for the lunch line and the shower line was so long that I decided to forego that entirely instead of waiting at least another 30 minutes.

So, I ended up hitting the road. I got to where I was picking up an empty trailer, only to find that the trailer I'd been assigned wasn't there. Instead, they had just one of our trailers, an "A" trailer that probably is as old as I am. It wasn't in the best of shape, either; it was road legal, but had one rear marker light out and another that looked ready to fall off. Also, it looked like someone had broken open an economy-sized bag of popcorn, as there were kernels strewn about the trailer. And I only have a hand broom, so I only swept out the worst of it and hoped that the next place didn't notice or care.

Thankfully, they didn't say anything, but that's because this is such a bureaucracy that it's a wonder they can actually ship anything out at all. I arrived at 6 o'clock (or so), slid the tandems and opened the door... then needed nearly twenty minutes to back the trailer into a spot since there's so little room to maneuver here. It took me three tries; the first two attempts were so far off that I couldn't salvage anything useful and I just had to go around again. Once I dropped it, I had to drive to another lot to get the load, or so I was told. Turns out that it wasn't there either, so I was directed to a third facility. They said it was there, but that I had to go to a fourth location to pick up my paperwork, then come back to get the trailer. So, after more than half an hour of running around aimlessly, I had my paperwork in hand and found the trailer.

But, as I wrote earlier, I was waiting on road repair. Why? Because as I walked around, I noticed a big rip in a tire's sidewall. We're talking an eight-inch gash along the inside. Needless to say, the tire was completely flat. So I called, spent ten minutes on hold, and tried to work the landing gear. Even that proved difficult; for some reason, the high gears were extremely tight and I nearly threw my back out trying to get the blasted thing to move at all. I had only just finished raising the legs when someone answered; I gave the information, provided directions for the facility... then got called back five minutes later by the local business that does tire repair to get asked for directions once again. They initially quoted an ETA of two hours, though after I complained they lowered that estimate to one hour. Sure enough, the guy arrived here in a little under 45 minutes, which is just about the only thing that has gone well today. He sounds like he's nearly done mounting the new tire right now.

Once I'm out of here, I'm going to head down to the Charlotte OC for the night. Unless I've seriously done my math wrong, I can afford to stop there tonight, drive only about 400 miles or so tomorrow to get to Birmingham, AL, then finish the run Monday morning in time to make the delivery in southern Mississippi. I'll probably take this trailer to the shop to get the landing gear fixed while I'm in Charlotte since I really don't want to hurt myself trying to drop this trailer later on.

They're finally done with the tire replacement, so now I can finally get on the road again. Joy.

Browns Summit, NC

This load is getting incredibly frustrating. Right now I'm waiting on tire repair. I'll post details later tonight.

Riviera Beach, FL

Getting unloaded now, but they said it's going to be two and a half hours. Given that the trailer was overloaded and several boxes were ready to fall out when I opened the door, it wouldn't surprise me if they take longer, but they certainly seem to be working quickly. In any case, the guy working receiving has a serious attitude problem; he started yelling at me about being late as I climbed out to look for the receiving office, then started cursing at me when I didn't immediately move the truck and open the other door after they restacked the freight that was going to fall over. I showed as much restraint as possibly could have by simply saying I don't appreciate his language and that I'd like to keep things civil; I didn't even listen to anything else he said after that.

In any case, I have another assignment already, this one good for a thousand miles. It's a live load early this afternoon; hopefully I'll be able to get there on time for that, but not so early that they chew me out for arriving too early. There's exactly nowhere to stop along the way - there isn't even a rest area - so I'll have to go straight down there and hope they let me wait there if they're not ready for me. If not, I have no idea what I can do; the nearest parking is about 30 miles north of here and the place I'm going is 70 miles south. At least my next run is easy to plan for: straight up I-95. I just hope that I can find a truck stop along the way; there aren't that many along that route.

Cartersville, GA

Today was one of those days that I thought would never end. It started off with me sleeping in about twenty minutes late; not a good thing considering the load I'm currently on had barely an hour to spare on it even if I woke up on time. So I took off, delivered my previous load, then found out that the place had no empty trailers. So instead of being out of there with an empty in thirty minutes, I instead wait that long just to get directions to another place that is supposed to have empties, 50 miles away. I go down there and the guard says they don't have any empties but I'm welcome to look. Amazingly, they just finished unloading a trailer and, as I was driving in, a yard jockey had just dropped it off. I promptly went over there and took it, then headed up to pick up my load, despite being at least two hours behind schedule. I arrived and picked the load up without further incident, though it's nearly five tons heavier than I was told it would be; my work assignment said 21,000 pounds and the bill of lading says 30,500.

After taking back roads for nearly seventy miles just to get back to the Interstate, I realized that there was no chance at all I was going to make Atlanta tonight, which I had originally planned on. I'd lost too much time just trying to find a trailer. So I peeked in the truck stop guide and found a couple of stops along the way, including the TA here. OF course, not even that could go entirely without a hitch; as I drove along, I noticed my truck struggling more and more when going up hills. I'm not sure if it's my fuel filter acting up, the turbocharger going out, or something else entirely, but I have nearly no power when the engine is revved above 1500 RPM. Even as low as fourth gear, I can feel the lack of power at that speed and feel the truck jerk around as soon as I hit that number. Even in neutral there's still a noticeable change in the engine's sound. I'm currently on hold waiting for maintenance to pick up so I can find out whether or not this is a major problem that requires road repair, one that I should drive to Atlanta to get fixed, or one that they'd rather wait to fix until the truck is due for PM. I guess I'll find out soon as someone answers the phone.

West Memphis, AR - Keeping Busy

I really should update this thing more often, but I've been running so hard lately that I don't want to do anything but sleep when I get parked. It's not going to let up over the next couple of days, either; I need to run as hard as I can to make this next delivery, which is going to require me to be up at 2 AM on Monday. I'm not at all looking forward to it, but at least I'm getting plenty of miles, which will equate to a nice paycheck. For now, I need sleep; I have to be up at 5:30.

Chamblee, GA

I only have a few minutes to type this while they're unloading my truck, but I did have two people that nearly caused accidents just within the first six miles out of the Charlotte operating center. The first incident happened while I was just pulling out of the gate; there's a fairly steep hill on the way out of there and, with a 44,000 pound load, I couldn't get above 10 mph on it. It's a two lane road, marked with double yellow lines, but some idiot in a van decided to pass me... and very nearly crashed head on into a vehicle that was just cresting the hill. They missed one another by inches; they're both lucky that there was a wide shoulder on that side of the road. I couldn't have done anything about it, either, since it was happening too quickly to react and if I stopped I don't think I could have gotten the truck rolling again. Even dumber, though, is that the van was for some professional services company; if he had stopped at the red light at the end of the road, I would have taken down his unit number and called it in, but he wasn't even phased by that.

The second incident was on the Interstate, about three miles down the highway. There was just one vehicle trying to merge onto the highway, which has a speed limit of 60 going through Charlotte. I was in the right lane and signaled left to try and give him room to get onto the road, but a vehicle in the next lane over wasn't about to yield or shift lanes, even though he had plenty of room to do so. As for the merging vehicle, rather than accelerating to get ahead of me or waiting and getting on the road behind me, he decided to move left and get in front of me while he was still doing about 35. I couldn't have stopped in time; while I had plenty of distance to the next vehicle in front of me, I couldn't have stopped for the moron that had merged onto the road while doing barely half the posted speed limit. So, I did the only thing I could do; hit the brakes so hard that I spilled my drink and tugged on the horn. He took the hint and accelerated just enough to avoid the collision, which left me doing 45 and losing speed while going up hill.

Seriously, is anyone else seeing problems with people being stupid on the road lately or is that just a phenomenon in Charlotte?

Greenland, NH

Wow. I never thought Connecticut's traffic would be as bad as it was, but I-95 was horrible going through the state. I-91 wasn't much better; only once I picked up I-84 did traffic start to clear up. Even then, I still had to fight off Boston's rush hour; since I was held up by traffic. When I found I had an assignment to New Hampshire, I figured I'd be going south out of here... instead, I'm picking up a load in Maine tomorrow morning, then going clear down to Atlanta, over 1200 miles away. Thankfully, it's an appointment on Monday so support shift has no reason to screw with this assignment. The only thing that I have to worry about is finding a place to park tomorrow evening; there's very few places to park in New England and I don't have any chance of making it back to the Carlisle OC. Still, it's nice to have some decent miles. And as a bonus, I can finally catch up on sleep.

Pottsville, PA

It's only 10:30 in the morning and it's been a rather interesting day so far. I got started a little later than I'd planned on, which made me nearly ten minutes late getting here... but this place is rather significantly behind schedule and there are two people in front of me; even if I'd been on time I would still be waiting to get loaded. It took a bit of luck - and a map from Google - to find this place at all; one of the roads to get here was completely unmarked and I very nearly missed it. Another driver did miss the turn and I heard the lady in the shipping office getting increasingly irritated until she simply transferred him to someone else and slammed the phone down. I then found out that I had to wait and got told to back up into the main parking lot. Somehow, backing up caught the attention of a passing state trooper, who stopped me to ask a few questions. Specifically, he thought it was odd that I'd been backing up, then got out of the truck to look around, then got back in as they were pulling into the lot. This is actually standard procedure for us; they probably said "get out and look" a hundred times during training. Once they established I wasn't trying to pull anything they let me go, but only after warning me not to take off. Once I pointed out that if I take off, I don't get paid, they laughed and walked off.

In any case, I'm still waiting for my turn in the dock. And ... bang, there it is.

Davenport, FL

The last couple of days have been rather busy, to say the least; I've pulled about 1150 miles. During that time, I've gone through construction, heavy downpours, and seen all manner of stupid driving. I'd have posted sooner, but seeing as my last load - currently being unloaded - was extremely expensive stuff, I'd rather not have taken any chances. I've yet to get a new assignment, though, which is somewhat worrying; they seem to be nearly done unloading me even as I type this. Granted, dispatch seemed to think that it would take five hours to unload it when it's not even half a truck load, but I couldn't necessarily prove them wrong so I just had to go with that estimate, absurd as it was.

Anyway, on to another bad driving award. Pop quiz! You're trying to get to a service plaza (oasis, whatever) on the turnpike. Somehow, you miss the on ramp. What do you do?

1. Drive to the next plaza and just wait 45 minutes.
2. Stop immediately after, back up on the shoulder, then drive into the plaza's entrance ramp.
3. Drive by, stop in the plaza's exit ramp (the acceleration lane), then back up in that lane of travel?

Seeing as I'm writing about this under a "bad driving" award, I hope you can guess which of the three our esteemed driver chose. Yes, someone actually stopped in an acceleration lane and started to back up. I don't know if he got hit, since I was continuing down the highway, but I'd have loved to watch that happen. I wouldn't necessarily have wanted anyone to get hurt - I'm not that mean - but it would have been hilarious to hear the guy try to justify what he was doing to the insurance company and the police. This is the sort of stuff that makes me wonder whether people still have to take a test to get a driver's license.

Yawn

Another reasonably good day, but I'm too tired to make a full post about it. I'll make a full(er) update tomorrow.

Indianapolis, IN - Things go right occasionally

Today was one of those rare days where everything actually went according to plan. I woke up when my alarm went off, found an empty trailer, picked up the load without incident, found out that the load was already perfectly balanced, never ran in to any problems with traffic, and arrived here at the operating center just early enough that I'll be able to complete a 34-hour restart before I have to deliver this load. I really hope I have more days like this.

Also, I have one crappy driving award to give out to an idiot at a traffic light. Apparently he didn't realize the "stop here on red" sign and line actually applied to him. The line was perhaps 50 feet from the intersection; he pulled past it all the way to the pedestrian crosswalk. I stopped far enough back to give him room to back up behind the line, as well as to ensure I didn't trip the sensor; I wanted to see how Tweedledumb would handle it. Sure enough, since nobody was on the sensor, the light never turned green. The ramp in front of us got a green light; we didn't. The guy even pulled forward, ready to take off, but instead the cross-traffic got the green. Even then he didn't realize his mistake and kept inching forward until traffic on the street actually had to swerve around him. As soon as it was clear, he took off, ignoring the red light. I wish I'd been recording the incident; it would make for a wonderful YouTube video.

In any case, I'm taking a 34 hour break now; I have a live unload at 8 Monday morning. Obviously I have no idea where I'm going after that but I certainly hope for some decent miles.

Bedford, PA

I never thought I'd be stopping at a Wal-Mart for the night, but apparently the distribution center here also doubles as an operating center. I was originally going to just pick up an empty trailer from here and hope I made it to another truck stop before time ran out for the night, but instead I'm parked here and will comfortably be able to make Indianapolis tomorrow afternoon. I'll be getting there a little later than I might like, but at least I'll be there without having to get cute with my logbook.

The last few days have been pretty much hell. Support shift has continued to screw with my work assignments, given me conflicting information, and generally just made my day very unpleasant. Yesterday, I was given an assignment based on outdated information, though even if that information held up I don't see how I'd ever have been able to make the load on time. Instead, I would have been nine hours late. I was told last night that it was an open delivery appointment, even though my work assignment said at 9 AM; any time that day would have been acceptable. I planned based on that information and updated operations. Then, while driving today, I got taken off that load. So I stopped again, updated them with correct information before they could screw up once more. This time, they finally gave me an assignment I could legally make. Sure, it doesn't deliver until Tuesday morning, up near Chicago, but that just means I'll be able to take a day off and possibly even get paid for it.

So, despite the cosmic pain in the butt the last few days have been, I think that things are going to improve markedly over the next week or so.

White Pine, TN - (No) Support Shift

That guy who said he would confirm everything and that I'd have something by morning? Bull. No message this morning. Operations had no clue what I was talking about. I'm still on the load even though my first pick up was for an hour ago. They'd better not blame me for this.

White Pine, TN - Late Night Parking

Today was a much longer day than I expected. It started off well enough, though I left Carlisle a couple hours later than I intended. That ended up screwing a few things up further down the line, not that I realized how bad it was going to get at the time. Only when I stopped for lunch in the late afternoon did I realize that I might be in time trouble. I got a work assignment just as I was leaving the truck stop, which made me pull into the next area to check it. It was about 600 miles, straight across I-40; I would have been quite content with that. Of course, I'm writing that in the past tense because, shortly after first shift left for the weekend, support shift took me off the load to assign me something else. That "something else" was based on the assumption I'd left Carlisle early in the morning, not shortly before noon.

Problems never come alone, though. As I approached the Tennessee state line, I felt the truck's handling become increasingly unstable. It felt like it was coming from the back right, so I pulled into a rest area to check it out. Sure enough, one of my trailer tires was just about ready to go; it was badly bulged out. So I called maintenance, updated operations with a message saying I'd be at least two hours late to pick up my newly-assigned load, and sat around to wait. It was only about an hour before someone arrived to replace the bad tire; normally it's two or three hours on a weekend. That still pushed me even further behind schedule, though.

By the time I dropped the load, it was obvious that I'd be at least four hours late to get the trailer loaded, possibly five. I updated them with that and sent in a second message asking them to confirm what my new pick up appointments would be. I got a reply... asking me what time I went on break, even though I was still driving to find a truck stop. I seriously am starting to wonder if support shift even bothers looking at the driver information before sending out half-assed responses like that. At least I found parking; normally stopping at 11PM on a weeknight guarantees that truck stops are going to be jammed full. I called operations when I parked and got told that the trip planners will try to find someone else in the area or, failing that, get the appointments rescheduled. They know when I can leave here (no earlier than 9:15 local time) and are planning around that. Hopefully they won't assign me a different load that requires me to work too late tomorrow; I don't want to have to get lucky and find improbable parking again.

Carlisle, PA

Yesterday was a nice, short day. I woke up early, headed into New Jersey on I-95... and hit bumper to bumper traffic that had me going nine miles an hour. As in I was held up for an hour and the traffic jam was nine miles long. Ugh. At least once I got to the I-295 split, it cleared up considerably and I was able to go full speed. I picked up an empty, headed over to Philadelphia, and picked up my load. Due to the traffic, I got there right at noon for my appointment; I don't like cutting it that close, but at least I wasn't late and got out of there within an hour. Amusingly, the load is only five pallets and weighs 1,550 pounds; it's the third lightest load I've had.

I could have gone further than Carlisle yesterday. I also could have gone anywhere today. But I wanted to get a shower, some decent food, and relax a little while I can afford to do so. I'll update operations before bed by putting in that I'll deliver it tomorrow afternoon and probably go right on break again, pushing myself out 'til Friday morning. They haven't complained about me doing that (yet), probably because they know that I generally am not physically or psychologically up to working more hours than I show. Lately it's been mostly psychological; I've just really not felt the desire to work more than I have to. Even so, I'll gradually try to get myself back in the habit of being up at 3 or 4 AM, being ready to work a full 14 hours, then getting to bed shortly after I go on break. I'll be able to take a day off if I run out of hours to work, after all.

Elkton, MD

About five hundred miles today; I could use a few more days like this to help my wallet out. Aside from people driving like crazies around Washington DC, there really wasn't a whole lot that happened out of the ordinary. It would be nice if people would actually use their turn signals once in a while, but that's the worst thing I have to complain about. Seriously, though, your blinkers are not decorative. Use them. Really.

Charlotte, NC

First day back on the road and I'm already putting in twelve hour days. If I could keep it up, I'd be set, but instead it feels like I'm burning myself out very quickly. I'm far too tired to write more at the moment, but I'll probably make a longer post after I get some much-needed sleep.

Troutville, VA

Yep, I'm still here. Why? Because operations has screwed things up so badly. I called in the morning and, apparently, they have only two loads in the entire state of Virginia today, neither of which could get me home. Worse, I found out that the load I've been assigned wasn't a typo when it said my pickup window started at 2349; the load won't be ready until late tonight. At least they confirmed that I could pick it up early tomorrow morning and it'll be okay. However, they originally said that dropping it in Charlotte isn't going to help; we don't have any freight there either! There's another driver with a load going to Mobile; if he agrees to swap freight, I can drop the load down there, take the truck back to my usual park location, then finally drive home. Even if that happens, though, it won't be until Sunday since there's likely no way I can drive all the way from Charlotte to Mobile to where I park on Saturday.

On the bright side, because of how badly this has gotten screwed up, operations is giving me two days worth of layover pay. So for sitting on my rear, I'm getting $160. While I'd rather be home than getting paid for wasting my time at a truck stop, I can't complain too much about getting two days worth of layover for a delay of roughly 36 hours. I'll type up additional posts if anything else happens, but I really hope that this is the end of it and that I'll finally be on my way home.

Troutville, VA

Well, this was entirely unproductive. Nine hours after I started my day and I'm back here in Troutville, parked at the same stop I was at last night with the same empty trailer. What happened? After several hours of waiting (and waiting, and waiting, and..) I finally got a work assignment for a live load tomorrow that picks up about fifty miles east of here. I can pick it up any time, so I'm probably going to sleep in a little to try and get my sleep pattern back on track. Of course, by "sleeping in" I still mean that I'm going to get out of here around 6 or 7 AM, but that's quite a bit later than the time my required break will be up: 3 AM.

Once I pick up the load, my goal is to just get down to Charlotte, NC and see if I can relay the load there. Why? Because, even though it's picked up tomorrow, it only delivers in Augusta, GA on the 7th. There's no way I'm going to hold it over the weekend. As it is, though, there's no way at all I'll make it down to Evergreen tomorrow unless they have me picking up a preloaded trailer that's on the way; even then, I seriously doubt I can make it that far in the eleven hours I can drive. So, at best, I'll be getting home on the morning of Saturday, the 5th, and even that assumes that they don't screw up anything else.

Before I head to bed, I'm going to send operations a message explaining all that to them. I'm also going to call once I get to Charlotte and ask them for detention pay since I waited six hours at the "shipper" for that misplaced load. I got there at 9:15 and finally left at 3:15; that's exactly six hours and worth $45 if they're going to pay me for it. I'd really like it if they just gave me layover pay, which I'm eligible for if I have a 24-hour delay; that's $80 and, given how long it took them to give me a load that actually is there to be picked up, I think I can make a case for it. Either of those that will offset the cost of getting IdleAire in the truck tonight, which will allow me to finally get a good night's sleep, something I've been sorely lacking since I lost air conditioning a few days ago.

In any case, I'm going to enjoy a nice, steak dinner here before heading out to the truck to post this and the couple other posts I've typed up.

Covington, VA

Thursday, 12:35PM - I didn't think it was possible for dispatch to screw up this badly, but they've done it. I got here to pick up a load and gave them my information.. only to get told that the load left here on June 23. Yes, that's 10 days ago. I asked them to double check; they confirmed that yeah, that load and trailer number matched perfectly for a load that was long gone. Wonderful. I called dispatch to find out what was going on and got given a second pick up number that differed by only one digit (it had a 9 instead of a 2), but that number was for the same trailer. It had a second number because they had to load stuff from two different mills. So I called back a second time and they just said they were going to pull me off the load and find something else. That was two and a half hours ago.

I'm running out of hours for today and it's looking increasingly difficult to make it home on the 4th; at the rate things are going, I might be lucky to even make it down to Charlotte. If I do make it down there, that leaves me about 450 miles from home, which is a longer drive than I'd like but something I can certainly do within one day. Of course, this depends entirely on whether or not they give me a load going that way; if they give me a load that takes me west toward, say, Knoxville, I'll have to come up with a completely different plan. If I don't get a load assignment in the next few minutes, I'll probably call in again and ask what the delay is. They probably just don't have any freight heading out of this area, but I'd like to find that out for sure and, ideally, get told that I can drive back the 47 miles to the nearest truck stop. I could really use a shower after sitting in this truck in broad sunlight for three hours.

... also, completely unrelated, they just had another rain delay at Wimbledon and NBC started playing "Here Comes the Rain Again" by the Eurythmics. I had to laugh.

Troutville, VA

Wednesday, 6:20PM; Salem, VA - Just for the record, I love the name of this city. :)

Anyway, joking aside, since I couldn't get the appointment moved up, I arrived down here around 5:30PM eastern, still half an hour before my appointment. I still have no idea how I made up so much time; I took a rather lengthy lunch break. I'll let regulatory figure it out if I ended up cheating somewhere without realizing it. They're unloading the truck right now and, soon as they're done, I'm going to head directly to a truck stop to take my DOT break. Soon as that's up, I'll pick up one last load and take it to a drop yard before going home. I should be getting there around noon on Friday, give or take a couple hours. I've already packed nearly everything; all I have to do is grab a couple of final items (such as my TV and video games), hop in the car, and head home.

---

Wednesday, 8:10PM - With a few minor hiccups, I've managed to find parking at a truck stop about fifteen miles back toward where I'm going. I'm parked next to the scale in a no parking zone, but someone who works here actually told me to park there. So I'm on break now. I'll be leaving from here in the morning as soon as my 10 hour break is up, picking up this load, coming back down here to scale it out, then stopping in Charlotte for fuel, lunch, and possibly my break; I haven't decided yet whether or not to stop there or push on toward Atlanta. I'll be pushing my luck a little in trying to make Atlanta, but it'll leave me just 250 miles to go tomorrow if I can make it. At worst, I can just find another truck stop on the way and park there. Here's hoping that isn't necessary.

Carlisle, PA

No luck on getting that delivery rescheduled. At least operations apologized for not getting back to me about it after I reminded them that I was still waiting for an answer. So I'll be getting there at 6, trying to get out of there in the three hours I've been told to expect, and hoping that there's still parking at a truck stop.

Carlisle, PA

Another day, another five hundred miles. I've actually worked my full seventy hours in the last eight days; tomorrow, I only have the 7.75 hours I'm picking up at midnight. I have a delivery appointment scheduled for 6PM, though, which presents a fascinating dilemma. I have three options: leave here the moment my break is up and risk being turned away and missing the appointment later, take the current appointment and risk not finding parking at a truck stop, or call operations first thing in the morning and try to get them to move it up. I'm going with number three, since that still saves me about four hours.

Even better, though, is that I already have the load that's going to get me home. After I get unloaded, I have about 50 miles to drive to pick it up, though I probably will take my break on the way there. I just swap trailers at that point, scale the load to double-check the weight, then drive toward Charlotte or Atlanta for another break. I'll be able to get home either early in the morning on July 4 if I get unloaded early or around noon if I don't. Either way, I'm actually getting back on the day I requested, which is a very pleasant surprise. :)

Indianapolis, IN

Don't you love it when you have one of those days that goes exactly according to plan? I kinda wish I had a few of those. :)

Joking aside, though, it went pretty close to plan compared to how things have gone lately. I started a little later than I intended, but I made up almost an hour on the road, which negated that loss. When I got to the operating center, apparently the hole in the roof was too large for a simple plug and needed a full-size patch welded on, among lots of other repairs, which would have cost me at least six hours. However, I called operations and they assigned me a different empty, which meant I was out of there even faster than I expected. I lost most of that time dealing with the shipper, though; the female at the guard shack was exceptionally rude and the facility was difficult to maneuver. I made a quick stop for a snack on the way here and ended up arriving here at the operating center more or less on schedule.

I'm currently waiting in line to get a couple of tires replaced on the trailer, then going to take my 10 hour break here. I'm not sure when I'll leave in the morning yet, but it will probably be fairly early. I'll drive into Pennsylvania, take a break at whatever truck stop I come across when I'm running out of hours. That will leave me anywhere between one and four hours to go in the morning and presumably just enough time to make it to the Carlisle OC.

There's just one problem left that I can't get repaired here in Indianapolis: my air conditioning. It broke yesterday morning and now blows exceptionally hot no matter what I set the temperature dial to. But if I put it in the shop here at Indy it would be at least Wednesday before they got to it and it's unlikely I'd get paid for the downtime. If I get routed to Carlisle, I might be able to get paid (and reimbursed for a hotel), but I don't know anyone there so it would be a very boring 34+ hours. And in both cases, I'll delay getting home, though I might need a 34 hour break anyway. Anyone have any thoughts on that?

Oak Grove, IA

Another day, another round of frustration and annoyances. Apparently Kansas drivers not only understand the concept of a "speed limit" but they take it a little too far; I was stuck behind someone doing at least 10 under the limit more times than I'm willing to count. I also had an instance where I made a wrong turn. How I can be going west and make a right turn to go south is entirely beyond me. On the flip side, though, I don't even know which direction I was driving on that road; it was simultaneously east 160, west 400, and north 69. I'll post a photo of the sign later.

At least I have a decent work assignment for someone other than Kimberly Clark; I'm picking up at a place in the same industrial park as our Edwardsville, IL operating center, so I might be able to kill a bit of time there in the morning before the load is ready, presumably at 8AM. From there, I'll probably go to Indianapolis and make it a slightly short day, then leave from there and drive my full 11 hours to get into northern PA. If all goes according to plan, that will leave me a little under 50 miles to go on the run, which will be trivially easy to finish on Tuesday morning. That leaves me about 1,080 miles from the drop yard I use as my "home" location, which is a decent two days of driving. There's obviously no way of telling whether or not they're going to route me straight home or not, but I would be surprised if they didn't start sending me that way. Of course, I've been wrong before.

North Little Rock, AR

June 27, 9PM

Today was... well, entirely uneventful. I left the operating center, made a quick stop for lunch, then drove down to the Petro truck stop here. I've about 20 miles left to deliver this load, then I'm picking up another trailer from the same facility and taking it 375 miles for another delivery. I'll have no problem doing them both tomorrow, though I hope that they'll have something a little better for me once I finish it; I should make the delivery by 3:30 or so, leaving me two and a half hours to run.

Edwardsville, IL - Up and Down

Today was a rather frustrating day, if nothing else. I put a trailer in for a PM last night and told them that I needed it done by 5AM. I checked at 6AM and got told that it was in the shop, but it had never even been written up as a PM. Even more amazing is that, despite not marking it as a PM to be done, it took them another two hours to finish what they were doing. I have no idea what they did, but the trailer was in worse shape when they were done; the ABS was no longer working and I'd swear the brakes were way out of adjustment. In any case, I was already two and a half hours behind schedule, so I didn't care enough to complain.

So I arrived the shipper and had a rare bit of good news: my load was on a pre-loaded trailer, instead of it being a live load. Whee! I just had to drop the one I had, hooked up to the one I needed, picked up the paperwork, and resumed driving in less than half an hour. Things were going well until I got to a truck stop to fuel and had to wait about ten minutes just to get to a fuel pump, in part because another driver deliberately blocked me from pulling up to the fuel island. I wanted to stop there for food, too, but I couldn't get into a parking space because - once again - other trucks kept getting in my way as I tried to maneuver into a parking space. Even once I gave up on it I had to wait several minutes for someone to stop blocking the exit so I could leave.

Those complaints aside, the day was pretty uneventful. I just wish that stuff like that would stop happening; I'm finding myself becoming increasingly impatient with such things. I guess that it's just as well that I will be home in about a week, if all goes well; I'm supposed to be back in Pensacola on Friday, July 4. Granted, knowing how my time at home usually goes, I'll be lucky to even be home over that weekend, but at last I have some time coming up.

One other thing: I managed to break my cell phone. Apparently I stepped on it or something, but it won't turn on. So unless I'm at an operating center or otherwise find wi-fi, this might be the last update until I get home. I'll type them up and post them later, but there probably won't be regular updates this week.

Green Bay ,WI

The freight I had in the trailer fell over, so I had the "pleasure" of restacking a pallet's worth of boxes. At least it was only one pallet and toilet paper doesn't weigh a lot. Of the 30 boxes, though, eight were wet and five were damaged, which is generally a bad thing... amazingly, though, these guys didn't care at all. And rather than having to unload the whole thing by hand, once I fixed that one pallet, they took care of the rest themselves. So I decided to come up to Green Bay to get a few repairs done; I had a nonessential light that was damaged and dangling by a wire, a tire that had something stuck in it, and a trailer due for its annual inspection. They're done with that, so now I'm just waiting on laundry to finish up while typing this.

I'll hopefully be down near St. Louis again tomorrow night, if all goes well, though that's entirely dependent on how long it
takes for them to load the trailer. If they finish in under 2 1/2 hours, I'll have that much time to spare; if they take more than that long, I'll have to either find somewhere else to park or make up some time on the road. I really hope it doesn't come down to that...

Sheboygan, WI

The drive up here was fairly uneventful, aside from the occasional rain shower that got people to actually drive the speed limit. For a little while, anyway. It got more interesting when I arrived at the consignee and saw I had a work assignment... that was for both pick up and delivery in the same town. So, as a a result, I would get paid zero miles. I was going to call and complain about that after I'd gotten backed into a dock, but they took me off the load; apparently it was something meant as part of a dedicated account. So I got another assignment instead, also going to the same town, but instead delivering about 700 miles away. As a bonus, it's a "by" delivery, so I can get there pretty much any time that I want, as long as it's no later than midnight on Saturday, though there's no reason I won't be able to deliver it by Friday afternoon.

In short, I've gotta some halfway decent miles and I intend to move as fast as I can with it.

Walcott, IA

After playing tag over the satellite system for a little while, requiring me to stop at three rest areas in a row, I found out that I couldn't get the load relayed and, at first, couldn't get the appointment moved up. Then, apparently, the consignee had a cancellation and my appointment got bumped up to 2:30PM, subtracting several hours from my wait. So now I get to wake up at 7AM, start driving at 8 or so, and arrive there (ideally) about half an hour before my scheduled time. I'm sure that it's going to take me more than the "average" three hours to unload this truck, since I'm not in particularly good shape; I'm almost hoping they require me to hire a lumper instead of doing it myself, since that would be faster. At least, if I have to do it myself, I get an extra $50.

Kearney, MO

You know that you've gotten a lousy work assignment when you call up the trip planner and even she comments about how horrible your utilization is. :)

I have an assignment... not Wal-Mart, like I was told it was going to be, though. It also was an open pick up window, so I slept in a little bit, and it doesn't deliver until tomorrow night at 8PM. The problem is that I could get there at 11AM very easily, and even that's assuming I average just 50mph, take the Interstate the whole way (there's a roughly 35 mile shortcut I could take), and take an extra half-hour worth of breaks along the way. So I'm on hold right now trying to either get the load relayed or the appointment moved up. Failing that, I might at least see if I can get hotel reimbursement for having to lose most of a day.

... and, apparently, she's on lunch so I got someone else. I'm going to have to keep driving with it in the meantime, but I need to stop for fuel at one of our drop yards anyway and I should have an answer by then. I wouldn't mind if they let me drop it there and allowed me to get on break, since I could then be up and running at 3 or 4 in the morning, as I should have been today.

Spring Hill, KS

After taking a day off yesterday, just to enjoy having another day off on a weekend, I drove the 280 miles from St. Louis out here. I'm getting unloaded right now; soon as the trailer is empty, I will probably be driving about five miles up the road to a truck stop and going on an unexpectedly early break. Why? While I was driving here, I got a message telling me to be ready to go at 4AM since they'll have a load ready for me, but that load apparently isn't ready and they don't have the information for it. I'm trying to see if I can find out where exactly I'm supposed to pick up the freight at and whether or not they'll let me park there. If so, it'll save me an extra half hour in the morning; if not, at least I have one place that I can stop near here.

2:20PM: Okay, this is more than a little frustrating. I was on hold for 15 minutes waiting  to talk to operations to find out what I need to do tonight, asked what I should do, then was put back on hold while they made a few phone calls and tried to find out. While I was on hold, my cell phone dropped the call. So I had to call back, wait another 15 minutes, and got someone else who wouldn't even look it up for me after I repeatedly asked her to. She wasted more time explaining to me why I should just park at the nearest truck stop then it would have taken her to look up the information I needed. So because nobody can confirm parking for me, I have to park here, leaving me 30 miles to drive at 3:30 in the morning. I really would have liked to get an extra half hour of sleep; apparently that's just not an option now.

Monee, IL

I decided on taking a short day today since I'd worked 32 hours in the last three days. It worked out rather well, too, since my next assignment actually took me toward the truck stop I planned on stopping at anyway. So instead of taking it as out of route, I got paid for it. Whee! So I had a nice, steak and shrimp dinner at the Iron Skillet up here and now I'm just winding down before bed. I have a live load to get at 9AM tomorrow... up in Chicago. I'm going to plan my route out tonight and expect to average about 25 mph going through Chicago; morning traffic is usually horrible, especially on the routes I'm likely going to need to take. I'm only dropping this as a relay over in Gary, but at least that leaves me enough time to go somewhere else. Hopefully I'll get another really nice run once I drop this relay off.

Pharr, TX - Miscommunication and sleep deprivation

This is definitely going to be "one of those nights." I had trouble enough falling asleep, but then, just a few minutes ago, I had a security guard start banging on the side of the truck. I tried to figure out what was going on, which was not easy since the guard spoke only minimal English, but apparently he thinks that this drop yard is closed and, as such, I shouldn't be parked here. Never mind that the guard on the previous shift, the manager at the shipper, and the people at customer service all have given me information saying that I can park here. He's gone away, for now, but both the operations people and I are worried that he's called the police, a tow truck, or done something similar.

Edit (10 minutes later): He came back and handed me a cell phone with someone back at the warehouse on the line. They apparently wanted me to move back over there and park against one of their docks, which contradicts what I was told earlier (specifically, that I could if I wanted to but it was not necessary). I explained this and that I wouldn't be leaving until at least 7 o'clock since I had a tire that needed to be replaced and that the tire bank won't be open until 8. So, after they explained all that to the guard, he just told me that they wouldn't open the gate until 6 (more than an hour before I need to leave) and is now letting me go back to sleep.  I'm not going to have nearly as much time to sleep now as I'd like, but at least I can be reasonably certain that I won't be disturbed again.

Pharr, TX - How low can I go?

Today was a very long... waiting game. I made the delivery at about 9 o'clock this morning, then drove back to a truck stop less than a mile away. While I was making that delivery, I got a message asking me about directions for the next load... but then I never got the rest of my work assignment. So I waited about an hour before I sent in a message asking what was going on. I got a response nearly an hour after that explaining that they had a load ready for me but they couldn't find any empty trailers, so they would have to wait until some empties were available. So I waited. And waited. Then waited some more. I finally got tired of waiting and sent in asking them to update me with some new information; they finally told me to just bobtail down there and that customer service would work out all the details.

So, I proceeded down there. However, there's one thing that I hadn't accounted for: batshit crazy Mexican drivers. Of the people on US 83, about a third were driving reasonably, a third were doing at least 10 under the speed limit, and a third seemed intent on trying to cause accidents. I counted three separate times where someone passed over a double yellow line, two of those three nearly resulting in a head-on collision. I tried to pass one of the slowpokes, only to have him speed up, then slow down once I slowed down to try and get back into the right lane, all while another rig approached. Ultimately, I had to force the idiot onto the shoulder of the road to avoid a collision; I know that wasn't necessarily the best solution, but at least nobody was hit.

At least I made it down here. The place I picked up the load from handed me the paperwork, told me to go across the street to get the trailer, and said they had no problem with me taking my break here. So I get here, do my pre-trip... and find that one tire is just about shot. It's badly bulged out and definitely wouldn't pass a DOT inspection. I called maintenance and found out that we do have a tire bank we use down here... one that only is open 8-5. So I have to wait a couple of extra hours in the morning before I take off; I was originally planning on hitting the road by 6. On the bright side, this is directly along the way, so I won't be adding to my out of route. And this load is the second in a row that I've had of over 1,500 miles, so I have to show some love to the trip planner. Now I just have to catch up on sleep!

Laredo, TX

Another day, another several hundred miles. I had several more people decide to cut me off today, one of whom ended up on the shoulder of the road after I had to make a sudden move to get away from a mechanic working on a broken-down rig. I would rather get someone like that off the highway than take out a mechanic. Also, I had to make up a route around San Antonio since it seemed like traffic was at a standstill everywhere except going around the east side of I-410; traffic.com listed delays of several hours on I-10, I-35, and the west side of I-410.

In any case, the place I'm delivering to isn't open until 9AM tomorrow, meaning I have enough time to sleep in ('til about 7) get a shower, and still make the delivery at a reasonably early hour. I don't plan on working a full day tomorrow - I think I'll put myself as available for about nine hours - so I should be able to get back onto pattern of early morning hours if the freight allows it. Hopefully that will work out for me.

Colbert, OK - Window of Opportunity

I called maintenance to get that window fixed... and the tech pointed out that I'm less than two hours from Dallas, TX, where we have an operating center. It would be trivial for me to get it fixed there. So I ended up wasting 45 minutes for something that I should have thought of myself. Oops. At least this is more amusing than all the problems that happened yesterday.

Colbert, OK - Drivers are not OK

It seems like, after taking the day off yesterday, everything that could possibly have gotten on my nerves decided to come up. I had three separate people cut me off as they "merged" into traffic, including one dolt who insisted on doing 45 mph on the Oklahoma Turnpike, which has a speed limit of 75 and a posted minimum of 50. My truck was ready for me when I got back to the operating center, but they also managed to break at least one thing that wasn't broken before. Namely, my driver's side window switch. I was able to lower the window a couple times, but now it seems there's nothing left for it to make contact with. This, of course, after I put in a window screen, meaning I now have this screen stuck in my window unless I can somehow get the switch to work.

In any case, I'm tired, frustrated, and have to be up at 6AM to be on the road by 6:30. There's almost no chance that I'll be able to deliver this thing tomorrow, since it's still about 500 miles away, I have to get the trailer inspected at the nearby operating center, and they close at 4PM. Thankfully, I should be able to drop the load Tuesday morning, though that won't be until 7AM (when they open), meaning I'm going to lose a few hours. But to do any of that, I really need to get some sleep; this is going to be enough of a pain in the rear if I'm well rested and doubly so if I'm tired.

Edwardsville, IL - Restarted

I'm currently enjoying the tail end of a 34 hour break here, though I am going to have to sleep shortly, so this is going to be a similarly short post.

Ultimately, I did find my way around and picked up the load. Ultimately, I had to take US 12 all the way. I was in and out of the place in record time, too; I dropped, hooked, inspected, and left in 27 minutes. I stopped for fuel on the way down, since I didn't have enough to make it all the way down here, though even that went rather quickly. So in the morning, I have to get out of here as early as possible, do my pre-trip inspection and all that, then try to make as many miles as possible before it gets too late in the day. I'm hoping to make at least 550, though obviously that plan could change if anything unusual happens.

Relationships

Is it just me, or is the only thing that comes from being mated is having someone to nag you and tell you what not to do with your life? And not just telling you not to do something stupid, either, but insisting that you not do things that you'd happily do and enjoy if you didn't have "that special someone" telling you no. It seems that the overwhelming majority of people in relationships have no business being in them as they become, quite simply, worse people for it. There are a few that can make it work, I will concede that; I'm simply referring to a majority that become less enjoyable company simply because they are so busy worrying about someone else to actually enjoy themselves.

Yes, I'm ticked off about this because, despite it being so early this morning, I've already had tow people pull that card. Seriously, what the fuck?

Edwardsville, IL - Too tired to write

Today was far, far too long for its own good. I'm exhausted, though, so I'll have to write a full post in the morning after I've gotten some rest.

Mauston, WI

I-90 eastbound is closed. I need to take this route to Madison, where I'm picking up my load. There's no posted detour, either, unless I just can't find it via Google; the state's road information site simply says "travel in the area is not advised." So now what? Does anyone out there know something I don't? Please comment if you have any road information.

Durand, WI

After getting those loads, it was quite a quick drive to where I'm delivering to. I dropped the empty, picked up a second empty, took that to the new location, picked up my load, and hurried over here in record-setting time. I parked here, walked to the office... to see a sign that said "open 8-5, Monday-Friday." But, wait a second, I have a 7AM appointment! As I'm turning around, someone comes out from another exit and asks me what's going on. I explain. He then tells me to back up in front of the dock and just park; they'll have someone wake me up when it's time for my appointment. So I walked to a McDonald's a couple blocks away, got dinner, and now am just winding down for the night. Tomorrow's going to be several hundred miles of Interstate goodness; I hope I can make it to a decent park location by sundown.

Stevens Point, WI - Underappreciation week

I really, really would like to strangle the trip planner right about now. After waiting six hours for a work assignment, I finally got one that consists of a total of 140 miles and doesn't take me anywhere near an operating center. This means that I don't get to participate in any of the "appreciation week" stuff they have going on, don't get enough miles to really be anything other than happy, and have to drive through shitty back roads to get there. To add insult, the load is an appointment at 7AM tomorrow, so I have to park at this place overnight and simply wait until morning and hope that the next load I get sucks at least slightly less hard than this.

So, to summarize: dear trip planner, thanks for absolutely nothing, jackass. Insincerely, me.

Edit (3:21PM): Either the trip planner reads my blog or he just feels sorry for having kept me waiting so long. I've gotten 1500 miles to play with over the weekend at a place that I should be able to get to first thing on Monday morning. I'll also be running a bit low on hours, so there's a chance that I'll need to take a restart somewhere. Hopefully it'll be somewhere decent.

Stevens Point, WI

It's a full on waiting game today. I got a message this morning saying they had a load for me but were waiting for me. This was five hours ago. I'm still waiting...

Stevens Point, WI

They're done unloading but apparently their computer is screwed up. I have to be out of here within the next 20 minutes. I really hope they get it figured out by then.

Stevens Point, WI - Quick, to the pumpkin!

Today actually was a day worth writing about! It started off smoothly enough, though the weather got steadily worse as I drove north until it became a raging downpour near Des Moines, IA. I stopped for fuel there, quickly ran inside to the restroom, then continued north through the tempest. About half a mile before the I-35/I-80 split, though, I had a problem. Namely, my driver's side windshield wiper snapped off. I don't just mean that the blade came off, either; the arm itself broke. The wiper first started going further and further off to the side, then finally went a little too far, the wiper motor acted up, and it just snapped off against the hood. Amazingly, it's still dangling in place, but it definitely is a trouble item if the weather continues to act up. The rain stopped shortly after it broke, but it was extremely difficult (and, frankly, dangerous) driving with such poor visibility.

For the most part, the rest of the drive was uneventful. There were a few crazy drivers on the road, as always, including one who passed me around a blind curve on a two-lane highway. There's no way he could have seen an oncoming car, much less avoided one, but thankfully the road was clear. I don't see why he needed to do that, either, seeing as the road became a four-lane in just another mile and he'd been tailgating me for at least the last ten.

In any case, I'm currently waiting on a lumper service to unload the trailer. I had been told on my work assignment that it would require no work from me, but when I arrived at the receiving office, they said I either had to pull the 30 pallets off and restack them onto 38 pallets or pay $180 for the lumpers to do it. Needless to say, I was ticked, so I went out and called operations. At first they were trying to convince me to do it, though once I told them that it would require a restack (something else that wasn't listed on the work assignment), they went ahead and approved the lumper service. I'll have to call the first shift tomorrow to get an authorization number; without that, I'd have the $180 deducted from my paycheck. It's a pain in the rear, which is why I hate dealing with lumpers when they do come up. Doesn't anyone else see a problem with a company charging you to have their own freight unloaded?

I also have to worry about time here: my fourteen hour day runs out at 10PM, about an hour and a half from now. This place doesn't allow driver parking - at least according to my work assignment - and I really don't want to have to ask them to make an exception for me. There's a place roughly eight miles down the Interstate that looked to have plenty of parking (though that was about two hours ago); I'll be trying to get there if I have any time left. If I'm out of time and they won't let me stay here... well, then I'm pretty much screwed and have to just hope I don't get pulled over. I'll still have to explain it to regulatory at some point. I really hope I don't have to deal with all that crap and they get me out of here within the next hour or less.

Kearny, MO

Another 500+ mile day. I'm really starting to like these, especially since that puts me on track to need a restart over the weekend. It would be particularly great if that put me at an operating center, since I could then put the truck in for a PM and get paid for the time I'm off the road. I'm going to have a particularly long day tomorrow, though: 550 miles to where I'm delivering, with a 7PM appointment that's expected to take four hours. This means there's a fairly significant chance that I'll run out of time while they're unloading. Since they don't allow driver parking, I have to hope they get done much faster than expected. I also have to leave here somewhat later than I otherwise would for that delivery; the earlier I get there, the more time I have to wait and the less time I'll have to leave. Here's hoping it works out well!

Dallas, TX

Another day, another couple hundred miles. Really not a lot happened today, aside from yet another incident in which a work assignment didn't come through the first time they sent it to me. I called in to complain... then apparently every copy they'd sent to me arrived at once, giving me four copies of the assignment. So now I'm at the operating center, nibbling on dinner, figuring out my trip plan for tomorrow, and getting ready to go to bed. I'll be up early enough to get a shower in the morning, do a pre-trip inspection, and be out of here as early as possible. I just need to make sure it's all ready to go.

Houston, TX

I managed to use up every moment of my 11 and 14 hour days yesterday, and even that required a bit of rounding in my favor. In reality, I did 676 miles, which is impossible to do in a truck that only does 60. In any case, the drive itself went rather well, so there's really not much to type about here. When I made the delivery, I got a bit flustered as I tried to back the trailer in, mostly because I was somewhat sleep deprived and knew I didn't have a lot of time to work with. I went to bed almost immediately after parking the truck and slept for about nine hours. Even so, I still felt lousy when I woke up; I need a couple more full nights of sleep.

In any case, I picked up the trailer I needed, found one tire that was low on air, but didn't feel like waiting an hour (or more) for the shop to get around to inflating it. So I'm waiting at the customer to get unloaded. I have a work assignment... sort of. They sent me the first message of it, but I've yet to get any pick up or delivery information. I asked them to re-send it but haven't gotten anything yet.

Houston, TX

Way, way too long a day today. I'm going to pass out and update during a live unload in the morning.

Lagrange, GA

The last two days have gone so smoothly, there was nothing worth posting about. So since I'm posting, you just know something went wrong. :)

In this case, I woke up about 3AM to make sure I had the time to get a shower before I had to hit the road. I turned the key on to activate the Qualcomm (message system) and saw that I had a pair of delivery messages ... but I didn't have any pick up messages to go with them. As I was looking at that and trying to figure out what was going on, the truck started beeping. At first I figured it was just the low air warning - my truck has a strange tendency to lose about half the air in its tanks some nights while not losing any on others - but I looked under the curtain to see "WARNING: LOW COOLANT LEVEL" flashing brightly on the display.

So, I did what any rational person would do. I wigged out.

Once I finished saying "oh shit," "damn it," and "fuck" about ten times each, I climbed out and tried to see anything I could. There was (and still is) a rather large pool of fluid under the truck, which at least suggests that it was a problem that didn't exist until I got here. However, as there was so much fluid - the truck's cooling system holds fourteen gallons - I had no idea where it could have come from. So I called maintenance and was told to pour water into the tank to see where the leak was. They said it would take several gallons and I'd probably have to go back and forth; I joked about it being such a big leak that it would be empty by the time I got back there. Unfortunately, that joke turned out to be a lot closer to reality than they anticipated.

Even as I was pouring the water into the system, I heard it splashing on the ground. At first I just thought I had missed the tank, but I then noticed it was flowing freely out of a hose connected to the bottom of the coolant reservoir. So, having established what the problem was, I called back to get them to send someone out. They said it would be about an hour to 90 minutes... and that was nearly two hours ago. I'll be calling them back as soon as I post this to find out what the problem is.

It gets even more frustrating, though. While I was waiting, I sent a message to overnight operations explaining the situation and asking them to resend the pick up information. They asked me whether or not I could take the load; I told them I needed the pick up info first before I could give them an answer. They then told me it needed to be done by 9AM... in a message that didn't include any other relevant load information. So, for a third time, I asked for pick up information, only to receive a message telling me I'd been taken off the load entirely due to the break down. Now, if this place is within a hundred miles and service gets here within the next hour, I could still have made it easily; they wouldn't even give me the information I needed to make a decision. I'm going to be making a very angry phone call to operations as soon as first shift comes in asking why the overnight people completely refused to give me the rest of my work assignment. Because of this crap, I lost at least 784 miles, since that's the distance to wherever I was supposed to pick up the load to the place it was to be delivered. If I don't get a new assignment with at least that many miles, I'm going to remain pissed off; the focus of that will simply expand to first shift as well.

At least, on the bright side, I didn't make the mistake of starting the engine to run the air conditioning or to recharge the batteries. That would not have ended well.

Update (5:30AM): I just got off the phone with maintenance and found out that they sent a message out explaining the problem ... to the wrong truck. In any case, I found out that they called six different vendors but nobody would even answer the phone. As the guy in maintenance put it, he called everyone within forty miles and couldn't even get someone to tell him no. This isn't the first time they've had a problem even getting an answer, either, according to the person on the phone. So, as such, I'm slowly losing time for the day because there's absolutely nobody who can get this truck fixed. I guess I would have had to get pulled off that load anyway at this rate.

Katy, TX

You know, I seem to be writing a lot of negative things here lately. But, let's face it: good days are boring. I can't imagine many of you want to hear about me simply putting it in gear and driving 600 miles down the highway; there's just not much to put there.

So, on to today's round of bullshit! This is brought to you by the wonderful folks at a distribution center. As I pulled in, I stopped to the side, near the gate, so as not to block traffic. Some guy on a golf cart with a heavy Mexican accent told me to move to door 25. Never mind that I hadn't checked in and he had no clue what I was picking up; he just told me to move. He never got out of the way, though, weaving his golf cart back and forth like a moron, before gesturing at another door. I stopped the truck, got out, and asked what the heck he was doing; he said he wanted me in 28. That was very, very obviously not what he'd said before; I told him as much, then had to wait once again for him to get out of the way before I could put the truck in the door.

After that, I went to check in... only to get told that my pick up number was wrong. She didn't even double check it; she said it was wrong immediately and told me to call dispatch. So, I did, getting increasingly irritated by the situation. Dispatch confirmed that the number I had was correct. I went back to the office, told them this, and they continued to insist that the number I had couldn't possibly be right. So they called over a supervisor of some sort and she told them to load the truck anyway despite my number being wrong. I saw them write the "correct" number down... which started with 1509, where my number started with 1407. If it were just one digit off, I could just chalk it up to a typo, but I don't see how they could get two numbers wrong without someone deliberately providing the wrong information.

In any case, right now, I'm in the truck, waiting to get told which dock I actually need to be in. So far, I've been waiting for 35 minutes. My appointment was for 1:45, but obviously they've missed that, even though I pulled onto the property at exactly 1:15 and finished up all the crap at the office before that deadline. I don't expect them to actually get me out of here within two hours, as expected, so I don't know where I'm going to end up parking for the evening. I just know that this is really, really getting on my nerves.

Houston, TX

I arrived exactly half an hour late for the delivery, but it seems like the consignee didn't care; they just put me in line and unloaded me in order. I got a rather crummy load next, though: a relay from the operating center here that I'm taking just 50 miles. Frustratingly, the trailer I'm picking up had a bad tire - it's not round - so I am currently waiting in line at the OC's shop to get that fixed. After that, I hit the road, drive 49 miles, deliver this thing, then potentially still have a few hours left with which to start on yet another load.

Carthage, TX

Today was yet another one of those long and frustrating days that I'm glad is over. I woke up at 3AM, got a shower, and hit the road. Dropping the loaded trailer off was the easy part, but the first trailer I was told to pick up was part of a dedicated account's fleet, so I couldn't take it. Operations assigned me a different number; unsurprisingly, that one wasn't there. I needed to go back to the office to clarify a few things anyway; they assigned me another trailer and I went on my merry way.

Only after arriving at the next place did another problem arise: the trailer I picked up had a hole in the roof. This isn't something that I could likely have seen; it was still dark when I picked it up, so there wouldn't have been any light shining into the trailer to give it away. But it did mean that I had to wait on hold for 20 minutes to get someone on the line. Ultimately, after an increasingly frustrating series of phone transfers - and well after my trailer was actually loaded, despite me asking the shipper to wait - I was told to take it to a repair shop on the way and hope it doesn't rain on the way there.

Thankfully, no rain was involved, but I did have to spend an hour and a half at the shop waiting on the repair. As such, I had just over two hours left on my 14-hour day, leaving me enough time to drive roughly 130 miles. I ended up using every minute of it, too; the truck stop I'd originally planned on going to apparently doesn't exist anymore, but I did find another one just as the clock rolled over to 6PM, the fourteen-hour mark. So I parked, ate dinner, and now am relaxing before bed. The only problem is that I won't be able to leave until 4:30AM (figuring in a 30-minute pretrip, as usual) and I'm 200 miles away; there's a nearly-zero chance I can make my 8AM appointment tomorrow. I've sent in a message telling operations this; hopefully the customer will accept it if I'm 30 minutes late or customer service can get it pushed back an hour or two.