Can't quite make it home

How did yesterday's late and delayed loading screw me today, you might be wondering.

See, if I had been assigned the load in time to arrive on time at the shipper I would have been loaded in less than two hours or else they would have had to pay detention. Coupled with arriving at least an hour earlier, I would have had three extra hours to run after I was loaded which would have let me avoid the masses escaping Chicago around 5 PM on a Halloween Friday. Those extra three hours down the road would have helped today getting to Omaha, then on down to Carthage, Missouri with my usual Americold load. I would have had just enough time to finish that trip and get home today, Saturday instead of sitting tonight in the last rest area north of Kansas City until the morning.


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In short, I've lost most of a day off because of something that happened yesterday.

On the plus side, I am taking off until Wednesday the 5th of November for some long-overdue home time. I've been through the house occasionally for short 34-hour breaks and a few days here and there but nothing this long since I started my lease this June.

Morris, Illinois to... Morris, Illinois

After the trailer demolition derby yesterday (a wag who emailed me commented, "Tug test complete!") a trailer repair company came out and took the trailer and I bobtailed to a customer of ours in Morris, Illinois that had an empty I could take. There was some confusion and hurried changing of plans, but somehow it worked out that I got a trailer from a driver who had come in from Iowa heading to Elkhart, Indiana for the following morning at 0700.

I departed as soon as I legally could around 0300 and made it to the consignee for the load a smidge after 0700 due to filling up the reefer fuel tank before I headed in. Turns out, they didn't care since it was a live unload instead of a drop and hook, but they didn't care anyway since they are a "FCFS" outfit (First Come First Served).

I waited for three hours after I was unloaded, and that is what really screwed me for the rest of the day. The sat unit eventually beeped and I was ordered to Romeoville, Illinois near Chicago to pick up a load heading to North Platte, Nebraska that I would drop off at our HQ in Omaha then get a different load going to the house. Only, it was around 0930 and the end of the loading window was 1100 and I was something like 130 miles away. I did the best I could, arriving just before noon and was assigned a door.

Now, if I had been assigned the load an hour earlier, I could have made it to the shipper on time. Since I wasn't, it took about 4.5 hours to get loaded. Since I arrived late, our company can't get any detention pay from the shipper ("Hey, we told you when you needed to have a truck there, no money baby!") which leaves beating up on my dispatcher instead.

Because I started so early to get to Elkhart that morning, I had to shut down shortly after I left the shipper which will screw me tomorrow as well. It turns out, the farthest I could go was back to that same truck stop in Morris, Illinois that I started the day at -- a first!

Shag, interrupted

So, how is your morning going? I made my drop in Chicago then was ordered to go shag a load from a nearby business to our drop yard on the south part of town. Here's how that turned out:



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As you can see, my experiment to convert one of our refrigerated trailers into a pop-top was only partially successful. Thanks goes out to the City of Chicago with an unmarked low underpass for the assist.

Yes, I was going slow. My tractor escaped almost entirely unscathed. The trailer... not so much. I tried very hard to break my nose on the overhead console but I wasn't successful at that, either.

Oh. My. God!

If you can't read this blog (http://margaretandhelen.wordpress.com/) written by an 84 year-old granny without cracking up you simply aren't human.

Staging for Chicago

Today was a mostly boring drive north along the length of Illinois. I did notice that the fuel in Missouri before I crossed over seemed to be a good deal less than what I paid in Little Rock yesterday. Another reason to avoid that particular stop I suppose.

Last night was chilly for Memphis, getting down to the mid 30's. Freezing is about the point that I start using my bunk heater at night and it is looking to be right in that area where I stopped near Chicago in preparation for arrival in the morning.

Pittsburg... Texas?

The two Petsmart stops came and went with little trouble and by 0900 I was done and waiting on my next load. A few hours later, I was sent a load that I couldn't run with the hours I had available so I sent it back for something else. The problem was, it had to deliver about 1,250 miles away near Chicago and I only had 15 hours or so over that time period to run it in.

I was told to head in towards Dallas and they would work on something else. I suspected one of our CSRs would call one of their CSRs and say, "Hey, can we deliver that the following morning?" Turns out, White Castle is receiving the load and they thought that was a great idea. So I get the same load picking up in Pittsburg, Texas at the same time as before, but delivering a day later. Nifty.


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The Pilgrim's Pride distribution center was easy enough to find and after a couple hours of waiting I got a fully loaded trailer and a passel of paperwork. They even had a scale there at the plant, though I had to do the axle weights myself. They even have high tech temperature recorders that go in with the load to make sure everything stays chilly enough.

I made the mistake of fueling at the Pilot on the east side of Little Rock, Arkansas. The pumps there are always packed -- I even had to wait ten minutes or so out on the street before I was able to pull into the parking lot!

Afterwards it was a couple hours more to West Memphis, Arkansas for the night and a nice shower. Clean is good.

The Attack of the Lazies

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I swear, my goal today was to travel from Joplin, Missouri all the way to the dock of the Petsmart in Midland, Texas. I steeled myself and passed up a number of truck stops, Dairy Queens and the like along the way until the sweet siren song of Popeye's chicken at the Big Spring, Texas T/A overwhelmed my reserve of willpower. So, that's where I am for the night; up at 0330 to finish the rest of the run into Midland tomorrow morning for an early unload, then off about 90 miles to the southeast to complete the run.