2 More Drives Down

DATELINE: JACKSON, MS, 8:30 p.m. CDT

Miles Today: 295
Miles Yesterday: 598
(Note: Some of today's miles were actually part of yesterday's shift, which ran beyond midnight.)

A bit of catching up to do today, 'cuz I'm a shift behind in your updates. I am still on the load bound for Louisiana; I'll make the delivery in about 10-1/2 hours from now. So let me fill you in on how the trip has gone so far.

As you recall, yesterday I wrote an update before starting my shift, and had awoken to snow in western Michigan. It was still snowing just after noon as I started my shift and drove to Paw Paw to make the pickup. That turned out to be a drop-and-hook, where I drop my empty trailer and pick up a pre-loaded one. The drop part went fine, then I drove around the building to the shipping office to get the info for the trailer I was to pick up (the guard shack where I checked in told me about the drop part). No problems there, either; the new trailer was back in the same lot where I dropped the old one. Then came the problem: I couldn't find the trailer with the assigned number, which was 53568. Being that there were only 8 to 10 USA Truck trailers to choose from (they were all parked in the same area of the lot), it didn't take long to exhaust the possibilities. There was one trailer with the number 55568, so the likely answer was obvious--a typo. To make sure, I drove back around to the shipping office to inquire. Their solution: hook up to 55568, back it into a dock door and have them verify the trailer's contents against the bill of lading.

OK, so this was no longer a simple drop-and-hook-and-drive-away pickup. I had an extra backing maneuver thrown into the mix. That went alright, relatively (did I mention that the snow had turned to rain sometime during the time at the shipper?). And it turned out that 55568 was the correct trailer, so I was finally on my way.

The confusion and verification process added about an hour to the pickup, so my shift was going to run later than I had hoped. But my task at this point was to drive as far as possible during the shift, which turned out to be much farther than I expected.

I followed I-94 west into Illinios, and didn't even get so much as slowed down as usually happens approaching the Chicagoland area. I hopped on I-57 south and made the long trek (350+ miles) straight down through Illinois. 20 or so miles after crossing the mighty Mississippi into Missouri, I-57 ends and I picked up I-55 southbound. From there it was only about 2-1/2 hours to West Memphis, AR and USA's terminal there. I arrived there just as my shift's 14-hour driving window was expiring. What luck! Very good traffic conditions had allowed me to put an extra-long chunk of the drive to Louisiana behind me.

After my requisite 10-hour break, some quick calculations determined that I could drive to the delivery area today, then get in another full 10-hour break before making the delivery Friday morning. I decided to stop here in Jackson, which is about 2 hours north of my destination in Hammond, LA, so I can start tomorrow's shift at 4:00 a.m. and get back on my preferred work schedule. So today's drive was only 4 hours. I'm at the same Flying J where I stayed on Super Bowl Sunday. I arrived here at about 3:00 p.m. local time, got some lunch/dinner, and was going to blog then, but when I got back to the truck the effort from Wednesday night caught up to me. So I took a nap for a few hours.

Now it's time to wrap up so I can get back to sleep. My delivery is set for 7:00 a.m., so hitting the road at 4:00 will get me there early, with wiggle room for traffic or any other potential delays. Thanks once more for stopping by. Please be so kind as to add a comment to this post, so I can track what's going on in the real world. And do keep on truckin'.