Coming North

DATELINE: FLORENCE, KY, 8:00 p.m. EST

Miles Today: 492

Today was another long, tiring drive. Well, it was tiring because of a short night of sleep, more so than just the act of driving for 9 hours (plus fuel and meal stops). Here's how my day went.

I woke up at 5:18 when a message arrived on my Qualcomm box. (The box beeps when messages come in.) Dispatch wanted to know if I was at the shipper picking up my load. I do wish these people would expect we drivers have to sleep sometimes; I've gotten messages from them at all hours. Anyway, I had to reply that no, I was down the road at a truck stop. But I got up. After all, I had my alarm set to wake me up in another 15 minutes, anyway.

I went inside and freshened up, then walked across the street to grab a couple of sausage burritos from McDonald's. I polished them off in my truck, then got going.

It took me about 20 or 25 minutes to drive the 16 miles back to the company where my new load was waiting for me. It was a drop-and-hook pickup, and I was rolling again within 20 minutes. Then it was just a matter of putting miles away for the rest of the day. I finished up today at a TA (with a Popeye's Chicken 'n Biscuits franchise, of course) in this town just south of Cincy, so I'm about 30 minutes away from the first delivery.

This load goes to 2 spots in Ohio, the first one in Loveland, a northeast Cincinnati suburb, and the second in Columbus. I still don't know when I'm expected to deliver at the first stopoff (and Dispatch doesn't know yet, either), but the Columbus delivery is set for 10:00 Monday morning. If I don't hear anything otherwise, I'll just plan on making the first delivery early on Monday before heading up to Columbus.

And that's how I spent my Saturday. It's looking like I'll get a rest day tomorrow before making my deliveries and heading home (finally) on Monday. I'd like to be able to just stay here all day tomorrow because I've done some driving every day since I ended my vacation and returned to my truck on the 2nd. Some of those days were fairly short, which is how I've managed to make it this long without having to sit out a 34-hour break to reset my 70-hour timeclock.

Thanks for looking in today, and keep on truckin'.