The Mad Dash to MD, Part II

DATELINE: BALTIMORE, MD, 6:35 p.m. EST

Miles Today: 507

Well, the mad dash to MD went better than expected. The Appalachians didn't slow me down as much as I thought they would (not very many steep, slow inclines) and I didn't hit any traffic tie-ups circling DC or Baltimore. So I made it to the delivery in only 8-3/4 hours of driving (plus 45 minutes for breaks), after hitting the road at 3:00 a.m. Then, just like at the shipper's end of this trip, I had to wait. When I arrived, one truck was in the one dock the customer uses for receiving, and one more was in line. The first one left fairly soon after my arrival, but the next one was in the dock for over an hour. Once I finally got into the dock and unloaded, I had been there for over 2-1/2 hours. Then I only had 1-1/2 hours left of my 14-hour driving window for the day.

Since my load assignments generally take an hour or more to get to me, I headed for a relatively nearby truck stop to wait for it, and probably to spend the night. Do you recall my tale a few weeks back about my flat tires and my lengthy wait at a truck stop service department to get them fixed? This is that same truck stop, right within Baltimore. Since I started the day so early, I got here pleny early to get an easy parking spot. I did have to back into it, but it was in the midst of many empty spaces, so I had no stress of trying to squeeze between other expensive pieces of machinery.

So now here I sit in Baltimore, not far from the inner harbor area. I was concerned while driving up today that the weather might pose a problem: the radio weather reports were giving snow advisories, and some counties in VA and MD were expecting to get 4-8 inches. When I got to D.C. and Baltimore, that had been revised to only 1-2 inches in this area. The snow did start falling pretty good during my loop around D.C., but it never amounted to much of anything on the highways, and didn't impede anybody's progress.

On to what's next, my assignment for tomorrow is to take my empty trailer to our Bethel, PA terminal, drop it there, then "bobtail" (drive the cab with no trailer) to a company in Aberdeen, MD, and pick up annother empty trailer there. Then I'll get another assignment to go pick up an actual load somewhere else. Don't know where that will be yet. But it had better not be too far from the midwest, as I'm scheduled to head home on Monday for my next brief reunion with my family. (After that one, I don't plan to be home again 'til Good Friday, so in all of March I'm likely to have only 2 (maybe 3) nights at home. Good grief! At least in a couple more weeks I get a raise! Another 1 cent per mile. Woo Hoo! (By the way, I don't get paid for the miles I report each day on this blog. Each trip is assigned a number of miles between the cities involved, and they pay me based on that figure, no matter how many miles I actually drive. And those figures they use tend to be a bit short of actual. Natch.)

Well, it's been another long day, and I am, once again, tired. So it's time to say, "So long". Thanks one more time for reading my rantings, keep those comments heading in, and keep on truckin'.