Long Drive Looming

DATELINE: ASHDOWN, AR

Greetings, vicarious truckers. My apologies for no post yesterday; that day was all about driving as far as I could in my allotted 11 hours, and I made it from far eastern central Illinois to Texarkana, Arkansas, a total of 633 miles. Once I got done, I was too tired to correspond to you. That drive put me only 200-ish miles from my delivery appointment for 9:00 this morning in a northeast Dallas suburb. So I got up and hit the road by 4:00. (Since I had stopped at 5:45 last night, that gave me my requisite 10-hour break.)

Today was about more glitches. (Is there a theme to this job?) I arrived at the delivery customer, was sent to one receiving office, which sent me to another, where everyone was on break so I had to wait a few minutes, then they sent me down along the building to another dock area so I could make a U-turn in order to take my trailer to a certain spot to drop it. Needless to say, the dock where I was to make that U-turn was ju-u-u-u-ust a bit too small to do so easily. That took a bit of time, but I finally succeeded. Then I found the spot where they wanted me to put my trailer. It required backing into an angled space with ju-u-u-u-ust a bit too little space to swing my tractor around during the backing process. (Did I also mention it was backing and turning to the passenger side, so driver visibility was limited? It's much easier turning to the driver's side whilst backing.) So after wasting some time attempting that, they finally relented and let me put it in a more favorable spot. Once I dropped that trailer, they pointed out an empty for me to take with me, so I easily backed under that one, hooked it up, then rolled off for lunch.

I had that lunch at noon at a truck stop a few miles down the highway and waited for my next load assignment. That came at 1:15, and it was to pick up a load in SE Dallas and take it back to the place I was in the morning. The glitch was the delivery appointment was for after my 14-hour driving window for the day was over. (Refresher: I can drive 11 hours a shift, but those 11 hours must come within 14 hours of when I come on duty for that shift.) So I reported that to dispatch and waited some more for another assignment. They sent one, then almost immediately sent another. PLUS, my dispatcher called my and made sure I got the second one; that he had wrangled hard to get it for me. He said it would be an easy drop-and-hook (drop off my empty trailer and hook up a pre-loaded one). The pickup was in this town (see "DATELINE", above), just north of Texarkana. That was a 3-hour drive from where I was by Dallas, and I had 4 hours left on my 14. No problem. (You believe that, don't you?)

So I made the drive here without any troubles. Once I got here (did I mention I'm parked for the night in the trailer yard of the shipper?), I discovered they have an inspection station for all of the trailers that come in. Well, that was no problem except that it ate into my 14 hours. After I passed the inspection (after having to sweep out the trailer and pull some nails from the floor--remind me to send a letter of thanks to the company that set me up with that messy thing), they then informed me that I was a "live load" rather than a drop and hook. Good thing to find out with 15 minutes left in your day. But what could I do? Refuse the load? OK, I knew by then that I was gonna sleep here anyway (they have signs up mentioning it is permitted to do so), so I figured I'd just record the time getting to the dock and back here to the lot as "On Duty- Not Driving" since I wouldn't be on the open road anyway.

I finally got the dock assignment at 6:00, got docked by 6:30, then waited. They didn't start loading my trailer 'til about 7:45, and finished 1/2 hour later. Soby 8:30 I was done; parked, paperwork completed, and ready to tell you all about it. Oh, by the way, this load is going to Hoboken, only a 1354-mile jaunt. And I have 'til Monday morning to get it there. So Saturday and Sunday are both gonna be a lot like yesterday was. My goal for tomorrow (Saturday) is to get to Knoxville, TN. I figure it's about 4-1/2 hours from here to Memphis, then another 6 or so across Tenessee to Knoxville. Thankfully, the truck stop I want to get to is a bit west of Knoxville, so that'll knock a few miles off the measurement.

So that's the story of the last 2 days. Hopefully I'll be reporting from my goal site tomorrow evening. If not, I'll tell you what glitches conspired to keep it from happening.

Thanks ever so much once more for reading, and keep on truckin' (and commenting!)