Reprieve

DATELINE: SPICELAND, IN, 9:00 a.m. EDT

I decided to give it a shot this morning and brought my laptop inside to the drivers' lounge and plugged it in. Lo and behold, this time the power connected and I can recharge. Hurray! So I have a few minutes to bring y'all up to date while the battery recovers full power. Well, I have plenty of time, actually, because my deliveries (2 stops) aren't 'till 8:00 and 9:00 tonight, less than 100 miles away, in Urbana and Springfield, OH. But how (and why) did I get here?

In my last report, I was poised (again, 100 miles away) for an early Thursday morning delivery in Dallas. That went fine, as I arrived about 30 minutes early, dropped my loaded trailer as instructed, and found me a nice, newish empty to take with me. I took my time after hooking up the empty before leaving the site to give Dispatch a chance to get my next assignment to me while I completed the trip's paperwork. Since it was a large facility with a large lot, I wasn't in anybody's way just staying there a while. Besides, at 4:00 a.m., there wasn't much traffic to be in the way of.

Anyway, I was done with the delivery by 4:00, and by 4:15 I had my next assignment. It was to pick up a load in semi-nearby Fort Worth...at 9:00 a.m. Dispatch confirmed that the pickup was a set assignment time, so I couldn't boogie over there early. So I had some time to kill.

I first headed to the Love's just southeast of Dallas to get me a Steak and Egg Burrito at the Carl's Jr. there. Always a favorite.

It'd been a couple of days since I'd had a shower, so next I headed over to Fort Worth, to a Pilot just a few miles from my next pickup site. That Pilot is in USA's fuel network, so by fueling up there (and swiping my Pilot rewards program card at the pump) I earned a shower credit that I used right away. Afterwards, I had to kill another half hour or so before heading over to make my pickup, so I spent it working on puzzles in Games Magazine.

The pickup went fine, and now I'm waiting to head out to deliver that load I picked up in Fort Worth. It's going to two facilities of the same company, in the aforementioned Urbana and Springfield, OH. Again the deliveries are set appointments, so I can't run over there whenever I please, and I have to wait 'til this evening to get rolling. Looks like tonight'll be one of those overnight shifts I disdain so much. Then again, I don't know how many loads are available on Sunday nights, so maybe I'll get to retreat to the Vandalia terminal after delivering the load. We'll see.

On the way here to Spiceland (I guess we now know where the Spice Girls came from) I spent nights in Checotah, OK (hometown of one-time American Idol champ and country music superstar Carrie Underwood) and Pacific, MO. My available hours were low for each of last couple of days, hence the shorter trips those days.

Oh, I should mention an interesting encounter. As I was driving along I-70 through Indianapolis yesterday, I noticed a motorcade coming up an entrance ramp to my right. It included 3 large tour buses and several SUVs and state police cruisers with lights a-flashin'. It pulled onto the road alongside me, and someone in one of the SUVs stuck out a hand to signal me to back off. So I let them pull ahead of me and followed them for a few miles before they pulled onto another highway. I had no clue who might have been in the motorcade 'til later that day, after parking here, I caught some news on CNN on one of the TVs. It turns out Barack Obama was in Indy and other points in the Hoosier state yesterday. So it's a good thing I was driving safely, or you'd-a seen me on the news.

Now let me respond to reader mrr's query: "You occasionally mention 'paperwork' in your reports. Question: What do you do with all the papers? Do you collect a bunch, then send them in to HQ? Or do you drop them off when you hit one of USA's terminals? Or do you just keep them all in your log for your records?"

After each trip, or load, I need to turn in a copy of the bill of lading, or BOL, so the company can bill the shipper and get paid (and they can pay me). I also send in my completed log pages (one for each day) and receipts and reimbursement form for expenses I paid, such as scale tickets and turnpike tolls. Sending them in is now an electronic process, via scan/fax stations at our terminals and most of the truck stop chains. (Back in the olden days when I started, I had to put the papers into an envelope--pre-printed, provided by the company--and mail 'em in or drop them in drop boxes at the terminals.) The scans go to a third company that processes the trip data for many companies, so I also need to fill out and include a cover sheet for each scan to identify it as USA Truck data and the specific load. I then keep the papers for each trip 'til I get a message from USA that the scan has been processed and accepted. At that point I just keep the scan receipt and drop the other papers into shred boxes at a terminal. So that's my paperwork story.

And now you're back in step with me. Thanks for checking in, and keep on truckin'.

By the way, I may have a lead on my laptop power problem. It's seeming that, in order for the thing to draw power through the cord, the batter has to be run all the way down. That was the case this morning when I plugged in. Weird, huh?