Dirty side and six, six, six...

Trucker's call the East coast the "dirty" side and the West coast the "shakey" side. for the first time since I've been with Hill Bros, I have a load that is taking me up to the Northeast, Pennsylvania to be precise.

The load originated at the same ConAgra plant I delivered my full trailer at yesterday. The new trailer was preloaded (always nice) but the load details relayed to me via satellite didn't look promising. A live unload on Thursday morning at 0200. Seeing as this is Monday, its about 1,150 miles in three days and a middle-of-the-night unload to boot.

I chat up my dispatcher to see if the unload time can be moved up a day, and he looks into it. The trailer is easy to get to and is in proper order, so I'm hooked up and rolling shortly thereafter. Shortly thereafter, I learn that the appointment is set and there is nothing earlier to be had. Oh goody.

There are a number of ways to run this load. I could wait until tomorrow to leave and take a 34 to reset my hours, then run hard the next two days to deliver. I could run hard for a couple days then take Wednesday off near the consignee, then have a short drive in to the end. Or I could drive roughly 400 miles per day for three days and treat those short days as regular days, which is what I decided on.


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Finding parking dirty side is a real pain, particularly after nightfall. The way I'm running this trip I will arrive at a truck stop in the mid afternoon each day giving me choice of parking, and I won't end up with a blank day in my book next week that I would have if I ran two days hard then waited a day. Not optimal by any stretch of the imagination, but it looks like six driving hours then a break, then six more, then a break, then six more.