USA At It Again

DATELINE: SHOULD BE HOME, 7:00 p.m. EDT

Well, I should be heading back to my truck tomorrow morning to start up another tour of duty. But wait! I'm 600+ miles away, in Rock Hill, SC. And so is my truck!

Yes, dear readers, it's another case of "Dump On the Driver", USA Truck style. Here's how they engineered this one.

As you recall from my last posting, they assigned me a load to deliver in Monroe, MI early Monday morning. I had picked up the load in Blue Island, IL on Saturday and had enough hours available to drive to the TA truck stop in Dexter, MI, near home. I arrived there around 5:30. Since I was on a load, I stayed with the truck Saturday night. On Sunday I had the chance to go to church with Mrs. R.T., do some errands around town, then drop by Measure for Measure's rehearsal that night. After that I headed back to my truck to get ready for my wee-hours delivery. (Getting ready included taking a nap of nearly a couple hours.)

I got up just after 2:00 a.m. so I could get rolling at 2:30. Doing so got me to the delivery right at 3:30, the appointed hour. It was a drop-and-hook delivery (I'd delivered there a couple times before, so I was expecting that), so I was done there within 30 minutes. I sent a message to Dispatch for them to verify that I was done and I was to go home for my hometime. Their reply was a big "10-4", so I replied back, "OK, back on Thursday."

I should have known something was up when they messaged back, "Is that what your Fleet Manager told you? Check with him on Monday." I let it slide 'cuz I was tired, and headed up the road to park my truck and await my ride home. (Many thanks to reader jerry for graciously letting me wake him at that ungodly hour and driving out to Romulus to ferry me home.)

I got home around 6:30 Monday morning and headed right to bed. Somewhere around 2:30 that afternoon I was awakened by my cell phone ringing (unfortunately I had brought it up and put it on the bookcase headboard of our bed). It was my Fleet Manager (OK, it was "Mike" who identified himself as my F.M. My F.M. had been Jeff. Was there a change nobody ever told me about?) calling to clear up the "confusion" about when I was due back in my truck. I didn't have any confusion. I got home that morning, so I was due back on Thursday. I'd been on the road for 3 weeks, so I was due 3 days at home. Mike disagreed.

His claim was that since I had been parked so close to my house over the weekend, and I didn't have to move the truck at all on Sunday, USA started counting my home time from the time I arrived in Dexter. So, with the 3 days coming to me, they calculated that I was due back in the truck on Tuesday afternoon.

I won't waste your time with all my arguments for why their heads are where the sun don't shine; you can probably figure them out yourself. But with drivers being lowest on the company totem pole, and my decided lack of extemporaneous debating skills, I couldn't win that argument. So I just hung up on him.

Needless to say, I need the job, and I don't need the headaches from trying to pursue a grievance, so Tuesday afternoon I headed back to the truck. After sending my "back to work" message, I sent in another to get on the record that I felt I had been cheated (although instead of "cheated" I used a word that rhymes with "food") out of most of my hometime and listed the reasons why. Mike replied back that he noted my comments. Big whoop; I'm sure nothing's ever going to come of it.

Anyway, within 45 minutes I had an assignment: Pick up a load in Old Fort (yes, that's an "O" in the second word in the name) OH and take it to a company in Martin, SC. Delivery on Thursday morning. What was interesting was that the pickup time in the assignment was "1400" (or 2:00 p.m.), and I got the assignment at 1600. And Old Fort was nearly a 2-hour drive away. So I was starting out behind schedule. Chalk one more up for Dispatch!

The drive down to Old Fort was fine, and this time I even found the turn I had missed the first time I had made a pickup at this company (a few months ago). Because of the tight schedule, based on distance to the delivery and number of hours to make the trip, I decided I'd have to drive as far into the night as I could, instead of finding a parking spot soon so I could revert to a daytime shift. I made it to the Tamarack Service Plaza in Beckley, WV at 3:00, hoping to find a parking space because I was getting pretty tired by then. (I had been up since around 6:00 Tuesday morning.) Even though it's a big place with a large truck parking lot, it was jammed. Many trucks were parked in "unofficial" spots. But one lone legal spot was miraculously open, and I nabbed it. It was even easy to get into, right by a driveway that I could pull up into in order to line up with the parking space before backing into it. Halleluja! I parked, then went right to bed.

I slept 'til around 9:40 this morning, not quite as long as I'd have liked, but it'd do. I did some mindless web surfing 'til around noon, when I went inside to grab some lunch before starting today's work day. (Since I'd arrived at 3:00, my 10-hour break would be over at 1:00 p.m., and I wanted to hit the road then.) The Service Plaza has a Quizno's among its culinary choices, and I rather like their Mesquite Chicken sandwich, so I treated myself to one. (I do plan to eat a lot more of my meals in my truck this time around, and I've brought a good bit of food with me. But I'll allow myself to buy one meal a day; most of those'll be lunches while trying to make tracks.)

So today was a short work day, as I finished up at 6:00 here in Rock Hill, at a Flying J where I've stayed once before. My delivery in Martin is at 7:00 tomorrow morning, so I'll be up and rolling early to get there on time. I've stopped here instead of going a bit further because truck stop choices are limited between here and there; I'll be doing a bit of "back roading" to get to Martin once I get past Columbia. Besides, I was also getting pretty tired during my last hour of driving this afternoon. I'm gonna head right to bed after finishing this up.

Thanks for checking in today. I hope my hometime depletion isn't as troubling to you as it was to me. Send me your comments and questions, and keep on truckin'.

Miles Yesterday: 315Miles Today: 338
(Many of today's miles were on the tail end of yesteday's shift, but we log the miles per calendar day, not by shift.)