Greenville, VA - Taking it slow

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

Knoxville, TN - Ready to go

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

Knoxville, TN - Hauled Away

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

Knoxville, TN - Getting towed, maybe?

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

Knoxville, TN - Waiting on a wrecker

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

Knoxville, TN - I blew what now?

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

Knoxville, TN - R.I.P.?

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

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

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

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

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

Dallas, TX - And off we go

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

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

West Memphis, AR - Continuing Insanity

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

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

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

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

Nashville, TN - WHARRGARBL

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

Red Boiling Spring, TN - Time is of the essence

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

East St. Louis, IL - Simmering

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

Fenton, MO - Boiling point

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

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

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

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

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

Gary, IN - Laid over once again

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

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

Reddit for Truck Drivers

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

Gary, IN - Not so fast

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

Elkton, IL - I've got nothing

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

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

West Memphis, AR - No rest for the weary

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