The Long Way Home

DATELINE: HOME!

Many apologies for not reporting for you the last few days. They were "non-standard" days: long, late (and early morning) hours, lengthy waits at customer sites and for assignments, the inability of Dispatch to get me home on the day I requested (Monday), and a REALLY bad streak of luck at the poker tables. So for those main reasons I had neither much time nor the right mind-set to write up blog reports. But I did get home yesterday, have all day today free, and head back to the road tomorrow morning. So here's a quick update of last weekend.

On Friday morning I finally got my truck in the shop at the Vandalia, OH terminal for its regular maintenance. After my 3-hour wait for that, I got underway at 11:00 a.m. with a load bound for Springfield, MA. Just after I left, I got a call from Dispatch: they wanted me to give a driver a ride to Bethel, PA so he could pick up his new truck. (Note: the company has recently closed the Bethel terminal, but is keeping it as a drop yard.) So I circled around, picked him up, and we headed east.

Picking up the other driver was a big help, because by letting him do some of the driving, I could fit in a break and still get to the Springfield delivery by the 8:00 a.m. appointment on Saturday. Without the temporary co-driver, I never could have gotten there on time. (At least not within DOT hours of service regulations.) We rolled into Bethel around 9:00 p.m., and I squeezed in a few hours of sleep before I had to get rolling to Springfield around 2:00 a.m.

On Saturday I finished the drive to Springfield. At this site I had to park my trailer, unhook it and park my cab in a waiting area, wait for them to pull my trailer to a dock and unload it before returning it. I had a 2-hour-plus wait before they finished up, then I drove over to a nearby truck stop to wait for my next assignment. That wait was almost 1-1/2 hours, and the pickup was in Montville, CT, 60-ish miles away.

Because of the lengthy drive in the morning and the time I had spent waiting, by the time I got to that next pickup, I had only 2 hours left of my 14-hour window before I'd have to take a 10-hour break. I've picked up a load at that company once before, but that time the pickup was a drop-and-hook. However, this time it would be a live load. Also, they were loading at only one dock, and 3 trucks were already waiting in line ahead of me, besides the one already in the dock. Uh-oh.

Long story short, I was there for 3 hours. (Once I got in the dock, the load was very quick, less than 30 minutes--I don't know why all the other trucks weren't that quick as well.) Despite being "overtime", I still needed to get to a place to spend the night. So I drove over to a Pilot Travel Center in Milford, CT. After a long day, I was ready for bed.

My load from Montville was destined for delivery at 1:00 p.m. on Sunday in Biglerville, PA, which is in the south-central part of that state. That allowed me to sleep in "late" and not get rolling 'til 6:00. Even starting then, I arrived at the delivery 30 minutes early. That delivery went quickly, too, despite one other truck ahead of me (again a single-dock operation). Afterwards I drove up the road to the Flying J in Carlisle, PA, expecting to get a load assignment to get me home on Monday. Nuh-uh.

It took several hours and two or three prompts to Dispatch to get a reply that I had an assignment. However, that assignment was a pickup in Delaware City, DE at 8:00 Monday morning. Dispatch told me that it was the only load they could find that was headed to MI, Ferndale in this case. That meant there was now way I could get home on time. Oh well. At least there wasn't any specific event I was aiming to get home for. And I could still get home early on Tuesday.

And so I did. Pickup in DE was easy and quick. I'd made that run--pickup at that company and taking it to the Ferndale company--once before, so I was familiar with it. After the pickup, I headed east. I stopped for the night in Somerset, PA at the turnpike Service Plaza there. (Actually, I stopped for the afternoon, 'cuz I stopped at 3:00, just too tired to continue. I had had a short night of sleep the night before, due to "disappointment" with the news that I wouldn't get home on time.) With an early start--2:00--on Tuesday morning, I'd still get home reasonably early.

My delivery in Ferndale was actually scheduled for Wednesday morning, but I got the OK to deliver the load when I could get there on Tuesday. That turned out to be 11:30 a.m. Unloading there went quickly, too, thankfully, and afterwards I made for the Dexter TA to park my truck for my time at home. Many thanks to my brother-in-law for picking me up in Dexter and giving me a ride home.

So now you're once again caught up with me. Thanks for your patience while I've been non-communicative. I hope my schedule in the future will allow me the time and energy to post updates every day, 'cuz I know you do want to keep up with me. Thanks for looking in today. Send me your comments and questions, and keep on truckin'.