A preplan with an unwelcome twist

The following load started in Russellville and ended at a food warehouse in Kansas City, Kansas, though they let us drop trailers there. Thank goodness.

On my way back up north the satellite unit beeped and I had an honest-to-goodness preplan. Pick up a load in Marshall, Missouri the following day then run it up to Rochelle, Illinois for the day after. Not big miles but my logbook is a bit short at the moment so I'm not complaining.

Later, the kicker comes. One of the load planners messaged me to see if I would do a local run between the time I dropped off the load I was carrying and picking up the next. It was a relay from our Kansas City, Missouri yard heading up to Trenton, Missouri. Not exactly a direct route to the next dispatch, but not too bad.

The thing is, the drop time for it was 0600 and I wasn't going to be done with my current load to have enough of a gap in time to fit in my break. The trailer itself wasn't at the yard when this was set up, as another driver was bringing it down.

The unwelcome part of this is that I made about twenty-two extra dollars doing this favor for this planner (as compared to what I would have been paid to just deadhead to my next load) and in exchange I had to switch trailers, do extra paperwork and ended up spending four hours on the dock at the consignee. All of this turned what would have been a nice, slower day into a pain in the butt.


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Adding to the misery, my locking fuel caps were frozen shut again this morning when I went to get some fuel before leaving town. I was in such a hurry to make the deadline at the consignee (which, as it turns out, doesn't have appointments anyway so I could have strolled in any time) I may have inadvertently put 50 gallons of fuel into my truck tanks and had it counted as reefer fuel. The difference being reefer fuel isn't taxed like road fuel, and I don't pay for it. I spoke with several people at HQ to find out if I made a boo boo and it is being looked into.