Another Catch-Up Report

DATELINE: COMMERCE, GA, 8:30 p.m. EST

Another short note tonight, friends. Since I got my student with me in the truck on Saturday, it's kinda' tight in here with the upper bunk lowered, so there's no comfy place to sit & work a laptop computer. Plus we've been running hard with long days, so when we've finished up working for the day we need to head to our respective bunks soon after in order to get somewhere near enough sleep for the next day.

Anyway, a quick rundown on the last 3 days:

SATURDAY
Picked up my first student driver. His name is John, too, and he's an older gent (7 years older than I). But he's a great guy and we're getting along famously. He's also already a pretty good truck driver, but just needs some practice backing these beasts into docks, parking spaces, and wherever else we may need to back 'em. I get him for 7-10 days in Phase 1, or "Right Seat" training before OK-ing him for Phase 2, which is driving with another trainer as a team. I think he's gonna do just fine.

As for work on Saturday, after I picked John up we drove up to Napoleon, OH, picked up our load (no time now to tell the story about the slowdown there) and made our way to Sterling, IL to deliver it. Afterwards, as we were running out of available work hours for the day, we found a small truck stop in Hillsdale, IL with some open parking spaces and took one.

SUNDAY
We had to get up early, just after finishing the required 10 hours of break, to drive the 200-ish miles down to Shelbyville, IL to pick up our next load. That all went smoothly, and we were soon on our way to the load's destination in Atlanta, GA. We finished up for the night at a Pilot Travel Center in Oak Grove, KY, and again soon retreated to the bunks for the night's shut-eye.

TODAY
This morning we got up at 3:15 (CST) to continue the drive to Atlanta. Our load was never assigned a delivery time, so en route we checked with Dispatch about that. My Fleet Manager told us that we still didn't have a set delivery appointment and he was checking on the possibility of having us drop the load at a drop yard just south of ATL. We had to wait over 2 hours at another Pilot just 40 miles north of Hotlanta before we got word to go drop it at the drop yard instead of delivering it to the customer.

Once done with that, we waited another 2 hours for our next assignment. And it's to pick up a load at 8:00 tomorrow (Tuesday) morning in Piedmont, SC. Easy enough. The load's (and we, too, of course, are) going to Temperance, MI, with delivery scheduled for noon on Wednesday. Also easy enough. With two of us with hours for driving, we ought to be able to make it to the Vandalia, OH terminal Tuesday night. That's the plan, at least. Tonight, though, we stopped at the TA here in Commerce (I've stayed here a few times before). It's about 75 miles from our morning pickup site, so we'll get a chance to sleep in relatively late. ;-)

Well, time to wrap up and hit the sack. Thanks for looking in today. Please let me hear from y'all, and keep on truckin'.