And So It Goes...And Goes...And Goes...

DATELINE: BEAVERDAM, OH (Again!), 2:00 p.m. EST

Wow, has it really been 10 days since last I blogged? My, how time flies. Sorry to have left y'all with no news, but this job lately has just had a way of sapping my literary inclinations. But today I have LOTS of unexpected free time to overcome that and bang out a report. So I'd better get right to it before "the mood" settles back in.

First, though, a quick note in response to reader Heidi who wrote:
"Congratulations on the promotion! Happy to hear you're moving up in the world. - And I bet it isn't quite so lonesome having someone to talk to, is it?"

Thanks for the congrats, but it really wasn't a promotion, per se. I volunteered to become a trainer in response to posters up at the terminals promising extra pay for days with a student in my truck. Since more pay is a good (and necessary) thing, volunteering was an easy choice. And, no, it isn't quite so lonesome, but that really wasn't a problem for me before. But this truck I'm in now is quite a tight fit for 2. And what's worse than the potential loneliness is sitting in the passenger seat while the student drives. Not that I'm afraid he'll hit something, but it's just plain BO-O-O-O-O-O-O-RING! I'm not in the team driving portion of the training program, just the "Phase 1" part where I'm on duty while he's driving and vice-versa. (In teams, one sleeps while the other drives.) Anyway, back to our regularly(?) scheduled program.

Let's see, when last I wrote I was here at the Pilot in Beaverdam. Let's see, since then I (and my student) have been to Temperance (delivery) and Wyandotte (pickup), MI, Ansonia, OH (d), Moraine, OH (p), Buffalo, NY (d and a 34-hour break), Watkins Glen, NY (p), Wixom, MI (d), Woodburn, IN (p), West Memphis, AR (drop off the load and my student; pick up my next load), Louisville, KY (d), Dry Ridge, KY (aborted p), back to Louisville (p), and Lima, OH (aborted d). And my oh my has it (almost) all been frustrating.

Let's start back with the pickup in Wyandotte. There's a well-known company (not well-known for being in Wyandotte, but a nationwide company) up there that I've made pickups from 3 or 4 times in the past, but this time the pickup assignment directed us to another of the company's facilities a few miles from where I'd been before. Well to make a medium-length story short, they had sent us to the wrong facility. We actually needed to pick up our load at the one I had been to before, which is the company's central warehouse. So we ran over there and had no troubles (other than my student's unfamiliarity with setting up for and backing a big rig into a dock) picking up the load there.

The drive down and delivery in Ansonia and succeeding pickup in Moraine were unremarkable, which in retrospect given the last few days is pretty remarkable in itself. On to Buffalo where, when we arrived at the delivery, we were just about out of available driving hours. We had just enough (15 minutes, actually) to get to a nearby truck stop once the delivery was complete. Of course, the gang at HQ tried to muck things up a bit. My Fleet Manager wanted us to go pick up our next load, but I argued the point that we just couldn't legally do that. So that brought a couple other HQ personnel into the fray. Result, we just drove over to the truck stop and took our 34-hour restart break. Oh, and I didn't even mention that it took 3 hours for that delivery.

At least in Buffalo (this was on the weekend; delivery on Friday, free day on Sat.) I got my brother to come on over from his house near Rochester and take me over to the Anchor Bar for some authentic Buffalo Wings. (You DO know that the Anchor bar is where they originated, don't you?) YUMMMM! But back to our story.

Our break reached the 34-hour mark at about 10:00 p.m. Saturday night, so my student--John--and I anticipated having to start an overnight shift. We hit the sack early, then I got up at 10:00 to send in our "Back to Work" message to stimulate Dispatch to find us a load. They did after a little while (quite quickly, actually), but the pickup wasn't 'til Monday morning in Watkins Glen. So more sitting around time was in store for us. But we did get to go back to sleep for the night. On Sunday we drove over to a Pilot in Kanona, NY, a bit closer to Watkins Glen.

The W. Glen pickup was also trouble-free and relatively quick. After the day's drive we wound up in Canton, MI. The next morning we zipped up the road to the delivery in Wixom and started waiting. The company's docks (3 or 4 of 'em) were all already filled with trucks, but we were first in line, so we didn't actually have a very long wait 'til a dock opened up and we took it. However, after that we did have a long wait. Try a total of 4 or 5 hours (I forget which, and I'm too lazy to pull out my log book and look it up) from arrival time before we were unloaded. THEN we had another multi-hour wait before our next assignment came in. And THAT didn't happen 'til we gave in and drove over to Dexter, MI, which is about the closest truck stops (a TA and 2 Pilots) to Wixom. The load assignment didn't arrive 'til after we'd parked at the TA and had dinner at the Popeye's Chicken franchise inside. Next up was the pickup in Woodburn, IN, set for 6:00 the next morning. Actually, it was set for 10:30 that night, but we couldn't make it then due to the Hours of Service regulations. So we told Dispatch that and went to our bunks, to get up at 2:00 for the next work day. Little did we know what Wednesday held in store...

We did get up at 2:00 intending to get showers at the Pilot across the street before hitting the road at 2:45. Alas, we discovered that the shower credits I had on my account had expired (they do so after 5 days), so we had to do without. And so it began.

When we arrived at the pickup at about 5:35, we checked in at the guardhouse at the gate. The guard told us we'd have to wait 'til 6:20 to enter because of a shift change. And so it continued.

Once the guard opened up the gate and let us in, we proceeded to the drop yard the guard indicated so we could drop our empty trailer (we'd be picking up a loaded one). While doing that, the "yard jockey" (the guy who works there and shuttles trailers around between the docks and the yards) stopped by and asked us in the future to drop empties in the first yard (not the second, where the guard had told me to go) unless it had no available spaces. OK, not a big deal, just a minor annoyance. But it was just another thing as "it" continued.

After dropping the empty, we headed into the Shipping Office to get our paperwork. First of all, nobody was in there, so we had to wait a few minutes before someone showed. However, when we gave her the number of the trailer we were supposed to pick up and the load's pickup number, she told us that someone else had picked up the load the day before. AAAAAAAAARGH! (And so it continued). So we sent in a message to Dispatch to let them know and began to wait some more.

After a while we gave up on that wait, grabbed the empty trailer we had brought in, and headed to the small truck stop a mile or so down the road so we could have access to a rest room, food, and caffeinated beverages. Shortly thereafter we got a message back telling us to try another pickup number at the shipper. Now, the Shipping Office there had signs stating that we needed at least 2 of the following 3 bits of info: trailer number, Bill of Lading (BOL) number, and pickup number. So I sent back a message to that effect and we headed back to the shipper. By the time we got there, we had our reply: the same BOL and trailer numbers we were originally sent to get. And so it continued.

There was a line of trucks waiting to get into the facility when we re-arrived, so at least we had a few minutes to get things straightened out with Dispatch before we were at the front of the line. My Fleet manager called to get the story straight (he hadn't yet gotten to work yet when the whole thing started), and we eventually got proper data. We dropped our empty again--this time we started out in the correct drop yard, but the yard jockey (OK, "spotter" is the term most places use for that job) asked us to put it in a dock for him. Which we did with no trouble. This time everything went smoothly in the Shipping Office and we went over and hooked up our assigned trailer.

Now, this facility is one of many that require drivers to slide the trailer's tandem axles all the way back before dropping the trailer there. So the one we picked up had the tandems back and we needed to move them forward. (That's so the load's weight will be evenly distributed among the trailer's and tractor's axles and not exceeding weight limits on any axle pair.) I still don't know how or why it happened, because the trailer was absolutely locked in place in the tractor's coupling, but in trying to slide the tandems in the lot, the "Kingpin" somehow jumped out of the 5th wheel (coupling device) and the trailer fell off the back of the tractor. I've never seen that before. Just more "excitement" in that ever more wonderful day.

Anyway, it was "easy" enough to crank the trailer back up to a sufficient height (using its "landing gear" legs) to slide the yard jockey's rig under it, and then we cranked the legs the rest of the way so we could get our truck back under it.

After all that it was smooth sailing, albeit a LONG day. Well, we did have lots of rain, and especially heavy when we stopped to weigh the truck in Fort Wayne and had to get out and walk into the building. I did the driving from our 2:45 a.m. start 'til we made the scale stop. Since our goal was to get to the Van Buren, AR terminal so I could drop John off (since he'd met his requirements for Phase 1 training with me and was ready to move on to his Phase 2 trainer), we could get that far by "team driving".

I started my 10-hour required break after weighing the truck and John took over at the wheel. (By the way, the load was headed to Houston, TX, so Van Buren was on the way via one possible route from Indiana.) Early en route, before we even got to Indianapolis, I got a message to give the training coordinator a call. She let me know that I could drop John off at our West Memphis, AR terminal instead of VB, so we headed that way instead. But it still made for a long day. John actually made it all the way to West Memphis within his allotted 11 driving hours (it took him 10-1/2), so I was theoretically well-rested and ready to get a load assignment to get me back home.

When I started this tour of duty on January 21, I put in February 19 as the date I wanted to get home next. My younger daughter's 18th birthday is the 21st (today as I write this), so by asking to get home on the 19th, Dispatch would have an extra day in case they missed the target. So getting a load out of West Memphis late Wednesday night would give me a chance to get home by the weekend. However, I didn't get an assignment until around 9:00 Thursday morning. That was to grab a loaded trailer from the West Memphis yard and take it to its destination in Louisville, KY (about 1/2-way between West Memphis and home) for a 7:00 Friday morning delivery. Well, OK, that's still going according to my plan. I drove up to a Pilot just south of Louisville on Thursday. No problems to speak of.

Friday (yesterday) morning all went OK with the delivery (a drop-and-hook), except that I had to wiggle my new empty trailer out of a very tight (front-to-back, not side-to-side) spot. (That's one good thing about my new truck; it has a much tighter turning radius than my previous one...I never would have been able to squeeze out of that spot with the old one. But I digress.) Next came a little bit of a wait for my next assignment. But it was for a pickup at a company in Dry Ridge, KY (35-ish miles south of Cincinnati along I-75) that I'd been to a few times before. The load was headed for Detroit. However, the pickup time was 4:00 p.m. that afternoon. If the load wouldn't be ready early, such as when I could get there before noon, I wouldn't be able to get home or deliver the load within HOS reg's. (I don't know why the rocket scientist load coordinators can't figure these things out.) Anyway, I made the 2-hour drive up from L'ville, only to find out that the load indeed would not be ready 'til 4:00. ARRRRRRRGH!

After protesting, I got taken off that load and assigned another--back to Louisville for the pickup. Well, home for the weekend was now completely out of the picture. I'm the victim of the company's policy of "maximizing equipment utilization", i.e, making sure that some customer is paying for the miles that the trucks run. Heaven forbid that driver needs enter the picture and they allow us to drive a couple hundred miles home if no loads that way can be found. Since the yard where I park my truck while at home closes over the weekend, I gave in and re-set my requested home date 'til next Wednesday so I'll get an extra day at home. (I get 1 day--24 hours, not necessarily calendar days--for every week I'm on the road.)

But back to this load. Pickup time in Louisville was 6:00 p.m., but I arrived there at about 3:30. Yada yada, long story short, they didn't finish up loading 'til about 7:30. (And it was only 8 pallets! Far from a full load!) That left me 45 minutes of my 14 hours for the day to get to a place to park for the night. But that worked out perfectly as I got to a Pilot in Pendleton, KY.

This load is (was) set for delivery at 11:00 this morning in Lima, OH. So I dutifully got up and was on the road before 7:00 for the drive north. En route I ran into some heavy snowfall, so I had the added stress of driving through that. I reached the delivery site at 10:30, then went in to check in with Security. There the guard told me that they weren't accepting trucks today--nobody was there to unload 'em. Despite the delivery appointment on my load assignment. And so it continues.

So now I'm stuck here in Beaverdam. (At the Pilot for now; I may move over to the Flying J across the street tomorrow to do a little laundry. The washing machines and dryers at the Pilot cost $2.00 per load each! So I'll at least check out the FJ to see if they're any cheaper. And at least they have a TV lounge by the laundry machines.) Word has come down from above that I just sit here and deliver the load on Monday. So I'm getting an unplanned restart. For THIS I volunteered to stay out on the road for an extra few days? Sheesh!

So that's my latest batch of stories. Anybody wanna join the ranks of America's Truck Driving Professionals? Sorry to have been so long to add a new entry to this blog. But thanks for sticking with me and checking today. Please do send me some comments and questions, and keep on truckin'.