Free at last...

The Cursed Load™ is finally in the books.

I finished off the last four hours of driving in to the Milwaukee, Wisconsin area this morning, arriving at 1030. The last mile or so along the highway and the surface streets were a real treat, being ripped up with lots of cones, detours and the like. I knew I had to take the 13th street exit and go due south for a while and just made my way slowly through the maelstrom until I arrived at the large dilapidated Cargil facility.

The gate guard checked my paperwork then had me park the truck nearby and walk over to receiving. The receiving people told me to park it at the far end of the facility and someone will be with me "sometime this afternoon". My dispatcher didn't believe they said that, so I quoted him what I just quoted you.


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Anyway, I found an out-of-the-way place to park it for a while and waited. After a few hours a worker came out and told me to back into their dock. It was at a weird angle and didn't have markings but I didn't think twice before putting it in there. The difference 19 months on the road makes to your perception of what is and isn't a difficult back is amazing, really.

Another hour or so and my trailer was meatless, putting my seventeenth trip with this truck in the books.

Then my dispatcher sends me a doozy of a preplan: run south through the Friday afternoon Chicago rush hour traffic to load in Bradley, Illinois and take it to Topeka, Kansas for a Monday morning delivery. Aside from the traffic, its 500 or so miles over two-and-a-half-days which just doesn't cut it for me. We went back and forth, I called the broker several times and eventually we agreed that I could load the following morning and drop it off at our Kansas City yard on Sunday before picking up another load.