"We don't make that product here"

After the six-hour unload from hell, I was sent from Carroll, Iowa to nearby Denison, Iowa to pick up a load of meat headed to (hallelujah!) Southern California. Better than 1,600 paid miles -- a great weekend run. I drove the thirty minutes or so in a happy place.

When I arrived at the meatpacking plant I got through the gate security and into the dispatching office. Turns out, the load of pork products that I was to get loaded with aren't made at that plant any more. The plant that makes them? Why that is located back in Carroll, Iowa, where I started this morning at. Grrrr.

Denison is way out in the boonies and I don't have cell coverage, so I had to use my satellite unit to contact HQ. Our people yacked with their people, I was sent back to Carroll and after a delay they finally got me the street address so I could find the (small) plant.

Unfortunately, the plant in Denison had looked up the order and that caused the shipping system to not want to let the Carroll plant look at it or fulfill it. More time wasted as they and their people killed the first order and put in a new one, an exact duplicate of the first one except for the plant I loaded at, into the system.

More hours go by as first I waited for another trailer to get loaded and pulled from a dock, then after I backed in and they put on the 30,000 pounds of ham and whatnot.

I've been trying to get back to Omaha to attend a safety meeting all month. My quarterly bonus (about $750) requires that this happen. If I had been loaded anywhere near my original appointment time, I could have made it to Omaha and went to the Friday meeting. Instead, it was too late so I had to T-call the load in the yard and wait until this morning to attend the last one of the quarter. This also meant I had to give up my run out to California.

Sigh.