Indianapolis, IN - Hang up

Things the last couple of days have gone reasonably well - hence the lack of anything to post about - but something happened shortly after my arrival here at the Indy OC that drove me up the wall. I was assigned another load (yes, more than a day before I'm delivering this one) that has a rather strict time window and required I call in to assure everyone involved I could deliver it on time. After a brief glance, it looks like I can just make the pick up tomorrow and head to the nearby Carlisle, PA operating center to take my break. The problem, however, is that I only have 12:15 left out of my 70 and will likely use all of that up tomorrow trying to get things moved around. I'm picking up 5:30 for Wednesday, of which I'll need about half of that just to get to where I'm delivering, 100 miles away to a small town south of Baltimore. That leaves me - in the absolute best case scenario - just three hours with which to get another load and/or find a legal place to park.

I tried to convey my concerns about this while on the conference call, but neither my DBL nor the person from customer service would even listen to that; they both refused to even consider anything other than the implications of my upcoming assignment. After we had things more or less sorted out on that run, the customer service person thanked me for my time and hung up. I tried then bringing up the concerns I had about the situation to my DBL, but she also hung up before I could even finish a sentence. And, of course, it was exactly 4 o'clock when she hung up; when I tried calling back my call was immediately routed to the night shift, who wouldn't know the situation or have the authority to do anything about it.

About the only thing that I can do at this point is to call in sometime tomorrow, likely before I head to pick the load up at all. I've no intention of even taking the load if they can't assure me that I won't be stranded somewhere in the middle of nowhere and forced into taking a 34 hour break at a place without facilities. I've had it happen before; I'm not going to let it happen again. The only other thing I can take some solace in is the simple fact that, in six days, I'll be going on my vacation and transferring to another OC, ensuring I won't have to deal with any of these people in the future.

West Memphis, AR - What the truck?

After the frustrations of dealing with Minnesota and the surrounding states recently, I'm glad I've finally gotten far enough south to see temperatures that are near freezing, as opposed to dealing with things well below zero. Just getting started this morning was a pain in the butt though, as my front-left trailer brakes were stuck. Thankfully the tires just slid on the ice harmlessly before I noticed it. It then took a good twenty minutes of hammering away at the thing to get them to free up before I went on my way. Today's drive was mercifully uneventful. The snow had stopped before I took off late this morning, so I just saw the aftermath, including two semis and lots of cars stuck in the median in Iowa. Road conditions were about what I expected; left lane mostly covered in snow, right lane partially cleared. Once I got out of Iowa things improved somewhat, and by St. Louis the roads were basically dry.

Upon arriving in West Memphis I tried to get those DOT things taken care of. The estimator, though, wanted none of it. He started shouting at me, explaining why he wouldn't write up a repair on the inspection report (the steer horn) and that he refused to even sign my logbook stating that it was not something that needed repair under any circumstances. I called road repair to try get a second opinion, for lack of anyone else to talk to, only to watch the estimator walk out about two minutes later, apologize, and say he'd already written everything up for repair. I'm in the shop now waiting for someone to get started; soon as they get done I'm going to bed and hoping I don't have to withstand someone's temper tomorrow. :p

Update (12:45 AM): Repairs are finally done. The headlight issue took only about five minutes. The horn, however, took three mechanics over an hour to fix. It was all I could do to not burst out laughing as they climbed around trying to figure out why the infernal thing wouldn't work. But they fixed it all, signed off on the repairs, and I'm legal to get moving in the morning.

South St. Paul, MN - Breakdowns

It has been one thing after another the last couple of days. After spending the entire weekend idling at the Iowa 80, I went to pick up a load and noticed that my truck was struggling up hill. That might be normal if I were hauling a heavy load, but I was bobtailing and still had very little power. I sent a message off to operations asking them when I'd be by an OC, hoping that I could get away with running it in that condition... no dice. My load turned out to be 45,000 pounds (not the 15,000 my work assignment listed), condemning me to limping along I-380 at dangerously low speeds. I took some water out of the fuel filter when I stopped to scale the load and the truck ran slightly better for a couple of miles, but it just wasn't enough. I averaged less than 35 mph along the Interstate until I made my next stop.

I was pleasantly surprised when I got to the truck stop and found they had a shop on site. I called the breakdown line to explain the situation and that I was 99.9% sure I just needed a fuel filter. They said that the existing filter should be on just hand tight and that, even though I had no tools at all to remove it, I should be able to take care of it myself. So I struggled with it while the truck filled up...no dice. I tried buying a filter wrench from the fuel desk, but it was too small. So I called breakdown again... turns out they'd closed out the work order, for some obnoxious reason, so I had to explain everything in exacting detail once again to a female who was quite condescending about it. They refused to deal with the shop on site, for reasons that were never elaborated upon; I had to wait almost 45 minutes for a road service guy to come out. The only solace I had was that, even with a filter wrench, he struggled to get the old filter off. So who hand-tightened the filter, Donkey Kong? Once they put the new filter on, the rest of the evening passed without further incident. I dropped my load, found parking, and took my break.

My current load has not been any better though. It started off easily enough, but things started going downhill very quickly once I crossed into Minnesota on I-94. I was pulled into the scale and given a level two DOT Inspection, which consists of walking around the truck and checking for anything immediately obvious. The headlight short became an issue, as did my non-functioning city horn (which I'd been told the shop doesn't fix, ever). The biggest pain in the butt, though, was that one of my trailer tires had gone flat. The officer "did me a favor" by only marking it down as underinflated, which isn't an out of service violation and doesn't immediately result in a fine, but he also insisted that I put air in that or get it replaced before I made this delivery.

I needed to make a fuel stop here in South St. Paul. While the truck stop didn't have an air hose, the Peterbilt dealership just across the street did and they directed me to pull up to a door so they could air up the tire. While trying to turn around, though, I heard a pop and a loud hissing noise, followed quickly by my trailer brakes locking up and groaning in protest as I tried to move the thing. At this point I knew I was pretty much fucked, so I called the breakdown line once again. I pointed out that I was already at a place that does repairs, but once again they wouldn't let me get it fixed at the obvious place. At least they provided a reason this time: the shop was swamped and they wouldn't get to me for at least three to four hours. However, since I could unhook from the trailer, I could take it to another shop where they could get it fixed. I bobtailed eight miles down the road, got both air lines replaced, and returned to grab my trailer.

Since it was pretty obvious I couldn't get the trailer around to where I had to get air - and with that violation looming over all this - I called breakdown once more to ask about getting the offending tire replaced. I could see the big, blue Goodyear sign glowing off in the distance and was "lucky" enough that they do commercial tire replacements. They're only open during bankers' hours, though, so I'm still waiting for a technician to get here for an after-hours call. I was told that it'd be only an hour - as opposed to two to three for a road call - but that still leaves me way behind on this run.

While originally I was going to just barely make on time delivery for this run, I'll now be fortunate if I'm only four hours late. Customer service is freaking out, even though none of this is my fault; the load's a service critical, just-in-time delivery that could leave the consignee unable to do business if I can't get it there on time. They've advised me to call in once I park for the night to see about setting up a relay. It's not a good situation for anyone, since it'd leave the driver picking up the load very few miles (I'll be within 50 of the consignee) and there's probably little freight around here to get me moving again tomorrow. But there's absolutely nothing anybody can do with this load until the trailer gets fixed.

Walcott, IA - Six below

It seems like this is becoming a trend: I end up stuck in Iowa during a period where the temperature drops to -5°F or colder. This time, though, I'm parked at the Iowa 80 truck stop for the weekend. Apparently every shipper we work with between Des Moines and Chicago has closed for the weekend, as there are a grand total of four loads in the entire region until Monday. I was "lucky" enough to get one of those: a load picking up anytime after 9 PM Sunday and going 250 miles due north into western Wisconsin. I just have to get it there sometime on the fourth, so I may just wait until the following morning to fetch it. Beyond that, there's really no telling what I'll be doing next, but I definitely need to get the truck by a shop to get it looked at.

The hardest part about getting here to Iowa was simply leaving Indianapolis. I'd taken a 34 hour break there for New Year's, then tried starting the truck after having it parked for a day and a half. It was very slow to crank, though it caught after turning over twice. That's about when things started to go badly. A large plume of white smoke came up the stack. The cab started shaking, which got even worse as time progressed. Ultimately I turned the engine off for fear that something was going to shake itself loose and I'd be stuck. I waited about half an hour before trying again, during which time I looked under the hood for anything out of the ordinary, but found nothing: all the fluids were normal and there was no visible damage to components.

I tried starting the truck a second time, which worked... for about half a minute. It then died out completely. With the third attempt, I got nothing. It would almost start, but then fall back to just being turned over by the starter. At this point the battery was down to only 11.7 volts, well below the normal 12.2 volt cutoff, as something is slowly draining power from the batteries while my rig is parked. I walked to the shop, explained the situation; they sent someone over expecting to change the fuel filter and/or give the rig a jump start. Before anything, though, the guy sprayed ether into intake, which was enough to help the engine start up. The first time it died out after about twenty seconds, but the second attempt was successful, as long as I kept my foot to the floor. Another problem then arose though: the check engine light suddenly came on and the engine refused to rev past 1400, far below the normal limit of 1800. Due to a problem with the replaced brake switch, we had no way of reading the long diagnostic code, but shutting the engine off let us read a blinking light code: vehicle speed sensor fault. Neither I nor the mechanic could figure out why the vehicle speed sensor would have anything to do with the engine speed though; he suggested I go through express bay and hope that a fuel filter fixed the problem.

During all this, I called operations several times to explain what was going on and look for a solution. They had lined up a loaner truck for me, as there was no time to find someone to relay the load I had (it was due for delivery 375 miles away in nine hours). I'd left the truck idling during all this; the temperature was finally up to around 140 and the voltmeter had reached the usual 14 volts. So I shut the truck off to tell the shop estimator what we'd decided to do and make sure the loaner truck I'd been assigned was ready to go. Everything checked out, so I went back to my cab, started it up.. and everything worked. The check engine light went out. I could rev the thing to 1800. The speedometer - which previously failed to work due to that sensor fault - was reading corectly. I once again went inside and told the mechanic what happened; he hypothesized that the sensor was acting up because there wasn't enough voltage going to it when the truck started up.

Net result of all this? I delivered that load before I came here to the Iowa 80. I'm supposed to go through an OC - most likely Gary - to get this looked at as soon as practical, but the load I'm hauling next doesn't take me anywhere near a shop. The mechanics advised me to keep the engine running if I'm parked for anything more than a ten hour break, just to ensure the voltage doesn't drop off again, but in this cold I have to keep the engine on just to keep fluids from freezing up. If I weren't worried about having the thing break down on the road due to the combination of faults, I'd just leave everything until I go for vacation in two weeks. Having a break down before that trip, though, would be a disaster.

Indianapolis, IN - Four long days

The days since I returned to work after Christmas have been so busy that I've not had the chance to do any blogging. In short, I had 45 hours logged in four days, going all over the darn place, and culminating in my arrival in Indianapolis at 1 AM on New Year's Eve. Among other misadventures I had to deliberately break something on a trailer to get it legal, made deliveries on such short notice that even ops was surprised I saved the load, relayed things with absurd time requirements, had various minor repairs done, and did almost nothing but work, eat, and sleep.

As for it being 2010, all I'll say is that I'm not going to miss 2009.

Green Bay, WI - Exercises in futility

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

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

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

Carroll, IA - Freezing my @#*( off

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

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

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

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

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

Gary, IN - Air leaks

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gary, IN - Inside the winter storm

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

New London, WI - Uncluefulness

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

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

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

Random Lake, WI - First Frost

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

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

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

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

Pittston, PA - Here we go again

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

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

Dalton, GA - An exercise in frustration

Today has been one of those days in which even Murphy's Law just doesn't seem to go far enough. I ended up getting to the consignee later than expected due to traffic. The consignee didn't have an empty trailer. The Atlanta OC didn't have an empty available. Ops felt like making up excuses relating to policies I was already following instead of trying to actually fix the problem; it's the first time I've ever hung up on someone after they escalated a shouting match. I arrived at the shipper fifteen minutes late and was accepted, only to find myself at the back of a line seven trucks long. The scale at the shipper was on the fritz so I still have no idea if this load is actually legal or not. I had to go fifteen minutes over my 14 hour limit just to get to the nearest truck stop after that.

All told, I'm a full three hours behind schedule now. I need a small miracle tomorrow - namely, going at least 600 miles without any delays or issues whatsoever - just to have a small chance of getting to the consignee at the time I'm currently expected to be there. Failing that my odds are completely nonexistent and I'll be losing time on Friday. I'm really not expecting much of anything good at this point, though. The only even slightly favorable thing is that I plan on calling my DBL's boss at some point later in the week, explaining what happened, and asking to be moved to a different board. Today was very much the last straw in dealing with that.

Wilmington, OH - South for the winter

After spending a considerable amount of time in New England, I'm
finally getting a run that takes me toward the center of the country.
In this case, my destination is Kentucky and my estimated time of
arrival is about 10 o'clock tomorrow. I'm not sure what's going to
come after that, as usual, but ops said there was no freight down
there and thus no reason for me to try press on and make it there any
earlier than I'm already going to arrive. Hopefully something will
come available by the time I reach the facility since rural Kentucky
is definitely not an area that provides much hope of finding freight.

Things recently have been rather steady, though. It seems like I could
be running as many miles as I want, as there's rarely a shortage of
freight. Yesterday was the first day in nearly three weeks that they
just couldn't find a load for me, regardless of where I was; I had to
kill most of a day in western Ohio waiting to pick something up this
morning. Once I had the load, though, I had to make a couple of
detours. First I had to get a damaged tire replaced to ensure the
trailer was safe to haul, then I had to detour around a DOT scale
since there was no way of ensuring my weight was legal before I'd have
crossed it. It's a good thing I took the side trip; I was 750 pounds
overweight on the trailer tandems. Beyond that, it was just a straight
shot down I-71 to get here. The McDonald's at this exit has twice as
much parking as the truck stop, so I parked here instead since the
truc stop was already full.

In the morning I just need to get up, get fuel, get food, and get
moving. There's really not much else to this run now that I have the
weight legal and a decent trip plan in place. The only concern now is
hoping that ops finds a run for me to get me back out of there,
preferably in the direction of a city actually worth being in.

Westborough, MA - Two long weeks

I apologize for not updating this more often, but the last two weeks have been utterly insane; I completely ran out my 70 hours in my first seven days on the road. In the eight days since then, I've logged another 67 hours. I've had time to do little more than work, eat, and sleep. If we're still in a recession, it's clearly not affecting any of the customers that I've been hauling freight for. There have been a few minor hiccups, but overall things are going pretty darn well out here. I'll try to update more often in the future, but there's just too much to write about retroactively.

Beaverdam, OH - Out of the frozen tundra

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

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

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

Keeney, PA - EPIC FAIL

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

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

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

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

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

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

Watkins Glen, NY - Operations and irresponsibility

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

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

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

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

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

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

Charlotte, NC - Time for a tranny

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

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

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

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

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