Erie Island, OH

DATELINE: ERIE ISLAND SERVICE PLAZA, OH TURNPIKE, 9:00 p.m. EDT

I've had a busy 2-1/2 days since last I reported for you. Well, parts of those 2-1/2 days have been busy, anyway. The busy-ness didn't start 'til 6:00 on Sunday night.

That's when I left lovely Spiceland for my deliveries in Urbana and Springfield, OH. My first appointment was for 8:00 p.m., and I duly made the trek and arrived about 15 minutes early. The place was a warehouse used by the plant where the balance of my load was going in my second stop of the night. Anyway, when I arrived, their gate was closed! Another truck was parked on the shoulder of the road across the street from the gate, so I found places to make a couple turn-arounds and pulled in behind. Then I sat and waited. And sat and waited. And sat and waited some more. Turns out the place doesn't even open 'til 10:00 on Sunday nights. My guess is whoever data-entered the load assignment saw "10:00 p.m." and translated that to 20:00 military time (instead of the correct 22:00), which is the format the times are listed in the assignments. Sigh. Just another example of how we drivers have to suffer for others' mistakes.

So at 10:00 the opened the gate and we (there were by then 3 of us waiting to get in) got to enter the lot, then wait another few minutes 'til they opened up the driver check-in desk. All in all, I invested a lot of time at that place just for them to take 3--count 'em, t-h-r-e-e--pallets off the back of my trailer. After backing into my assigned door, by the time I climbed out, walked to the back to shove a chock under a trailer tire, and walked back over to the check-in desk (at this place, drivers are required to wait inside while their trailers are unloaded), they guy was done with the 3 pallets from my load. So I just grabbed the paperwork and prepared to head to stop #2.

The drive over to the next stop was good 'n quick, 20 minutes maybe. This delivery was a drop-and-hook, so at least I didn't have to do any waiting while a dock crew pulled the goods off the trailer. But after parking and dropping my loaded trailer and finding an empty to take with me, I did have to wait some for my next assignment. I decided to wait there instead of heading to our Vandalia terminal to wait 'cuz there was a possibility I could get assigned a load from that facility (the guard at the gate had mentioned when I checked in that they had a couple of pre-loaded USA trailers waiting to get taken away), and it was a large facility so I wasn't in anybody's way just waiting around there. But after a 30 or 45-minute wait, my next assignment wasn't a pickup at that site.

Dispatch assigned me to head up to Detroit to grab a load from another driver who, due to documentation problems, couldn't go into Canada. That's right, it was time to head back into the land of the Maple Leaf. That's way I didn't submit an update for y'all yesterday; my Verizon plan for my laptop's wireless internet card isn't international.

The other driver was at the customs clearance company at the foot of the Ambassador bridge, and had already cleared the load. All I had to do was get there, swap trailers with her, and head across the border. It was already about midnight by the time I got rolling from Springfield, and with a fuel stop en route, I didn't get to the swap 'til about 4:00 a.m., and didn't get back underway 'til about 4:45. The load was due for delivery at 8:00 a.m. in Milton, ON, 200 or so miles along highway 401. I wasn't going to be able to reach the delivery either on time or before my 14-hour window for that shift expired, so I let Dispatch know and gave them my ETA after I could take the mandated 10-hour break.

Now, did I mention that I had been awake since about 7:30 Sunday morning? I had planned to nap during the afternoon before heading out to the evening deliveries, but that just didn't work out. So by the time I was across the bridge and rolling across southern Ontario, I was getting a mite tired. I called it a night when I reached the Pilot Travel Center in Tilbury at 6:00, just as dawn was taking hold. I had to grab a quick bite before bedding down 'cuz I was at least as hungry as I was tired. But once prone in my bunk, I had a fitful day's sleep.

It didn't help that around 9:00 my Fleet Manager woke me up with a few messages asking about my status with the load. Apparently, such word doesn't get passed around back at the home office. After that intrusion, I couldn't get back to sleep, so I pulled down my laptop and worked on numbing myself back to weariness with a number of games of Freecell. That eventually worked, and I did doze back off. But, again, my sleep was fitful.

Since I had stopped at 6:00, I could get back to work at 4:00 p.m. to go make the delivery. From Tilbury I still had about 3 more hours to drive to get to Milton.
Yada, yada, I can see this post is stretching out already, so I'll cut to: I made the delivery--'twas another drop-and-hook, and after dropping the loaded trailer, I discovered they didn't have any empty USA trailers in their lot. So I bobtailed over to a nearby truck stop, a "Fifth Wheel" (a Canadian chain) conveniently located off the same highway exit in Milton, to wait for my next assignment. I had let Dispatch know that I was trailer-less, so they'd have to find me either a place to pick up an empty, or a pre-loaded pickup that would let me make the pickup without leaving an empty in its place. That could complicate things.

Anyway, I parked at the Fifth Wheel and walked down the block to a McDonald's since I was once again hungry. Of course, after eating my sandwich at McD's, I walked out to find that the rain had moved in. Not a heavy downpour, but a pretty good rain with some wind. Nice. I hadn't worn a jacket since the weather had been nice 'n warm. I just had a long sleeve denim shirt over a T-shirt along with jeans and my work boots, so I got a little damp on the walk back. No load assignment had come in yet, so I settled in for a nap while the Load Coordinators worked on finding me something to do. This was now around 10:00 p.m.

Because of my long day's journey from Sunday into Monday morning, I had felt a bit "off" since waking up in Tilbury, so I was totally worn out as I hit the sack in Milton. Round about 1:00 I was awakened by an assignment message coming in. It was to pick up a load--a live load, not a pre-loaded trailer--in Buffalo, NY at 8:00 Tuesday morning. Of course, I still didn't have a trailer, so after a few messages back and forth, we decided that I'd go back over to the place to which I'd delivered that evening and see if they'd emptied any USA trailers yet. (I had seen a few loaded ones sitting around when I was there, including one or two already in dock doors.) BUT we also decided that I'd complete a 10-hour break first. Doing so meant I couldn't make the Buffalo pickup on time, but I'd only be an our or two late.

I got rolling again at 7:00 this morning and made the 5-minute drive back over to that company. The guard at the gate told me that he was sure they didn't have any empties for me, but he let me drive through their empties row to make sure. Lo and behold, I found one! Someone had slipped on in and hadn't updated the guard's list yet. Hallelujah! So I hooked it up to my truck and started shuffling off to Buffalo, which was only 80 or so miles away. (By the way, I grabbed that empty just in time. As I was leaving the site with it, another USA Truck truck was pulling in. He'd have to deal with the lack of empties this time.)

Man, it's getting late now and I'm tired yet again. Let me sum up today by saying I had another long wait at the Buffalo pickup (I was "Buffaloed in New York") due to missing info in the load assignment--my Fleet Manager had to contact the customer to get the proper load number. This load is due for a 9:00 a.m. delivery Wednesday morning in Livonia, MI, so I headed west all afternoon. I stopped here (see "Dateline" above), about 30 miles east of Toledo 'cuz it was reaching that time of the evening when trucker parking spaces start getting more difficult to find. I'll get up and rolling between 6:30 and 7:00 in the morning, giving me time for a fuel stop en route to the delivery.

I thing k that gets you caught up with what I've been up to lately. Thanks for stopping by. Please drop me some questions and comments, and keep on truckin'.