There and back to Kansas City

Late Friday night I told dispatch I could take a load at 0400 the next morning if they needed it. Before I could even climb into my bunk a message was zapped back asking if I could take one of our nightly Nebraska Furniture Mart runs from Omaha to Kansas City and back. NFM shifts products between their two huge warehouse outlet stores like this every night, and the guy who ordinarily runs that route was out sick.

Unfortunately, I was pooped and told dispatch to call at 0400 if no one had taken the load. It normally delivers around 0400 in KC, so it would be late but that wasn't really my problem.

0400 rolls around and no call. 0415 rolls around, there's that call. Crud.

The trip there and back were a bit unusual -- pick up a loaded trailer in one door at the Omaha warehouse, deliver it to one door at the KC warehouse, then switch trailers to grab a loaded one in yet another door and bring that one up to Omaha and drop it in the final door. Easy, once you know what goes where. Not so much when you don't.

Anyway, I'm done by noon and expecting my load home for a few days off.

The load I'm given goes through the house en route to Tupelo, Mississippi but doesn't load until 2100 that night at the local Tyson plant. I'm a bit frazzled and tell dispatch I'll grab the trailer first thing in the morning.

First thing in the morning rolls around and my alarm gets me up at 0500. I need to fuel so I get that taken care of then head over to grab my preloaded trailer. Yeah, that one, the one that is clearly visible from where I and the gate guard commune for a while as he tells me he has absolutely no paperwork and no authority to do much more than take a dump when he wants to.

Calls go out to Hill Bros dispatch, Tyson and who knows who else. Not that this does much good as many hours later, the conclusion is no one can release the load until about 0600 Monday at which point only a team will be able to deliver it on time that night in Mississippi.

To sum up, after a day and a half in the shop, a short, weird weekend boomerang load down to KC and back, waiting all of Sunday, all I've managed to do is fuel my truck.

Right across the street from the Tyson plant in Council Bluffs is a casino and just for the heck of it I drove over and played poker for a few hours. Ended up making eleven dollars, which isn't bad considering my poker skills.