Part of this post is a repeat from the last one, but it gives you an idea what an over the road truck driver faces every day. But those things are, for me, what keeps the job interesting and enjoyable - solving the problems that seem to rise up everyday.
I love a challenge, and with truck driving everyday brings new and unusual chances to prove yourself and get things accomplished. Last week on Friday I was unloading at a steel plant in Baltimore Maryland at around 1330 when I get a pre-planned load across the Qualcomm that picks up in York PA at noon and the notes say they quit loading at 1400. So I call dispatch and tell them the obvious "there's no way I can make that time frame", and I ask if they load on Saturdays. Dispatcher doesn't know, but tells me to just get up there as fast as I can and hopefully they will load me because this load has to be in New Orleans first thing Monday morning. I arrive about 1545 and find out from a lone shipping clerk who has stayed there late that everyone is gone and my load has to be loaded with the overhead crane and there is no one at the plant right now that is crane certified. He tells me I'm out of luck until Monday morning. I very kindly explain my predicament and ask him if their might be someone willing to come in on Saturday to load me. Well after he made a phone call to his boss we found out that the bosses daughter was coming in at 0200 Saturday morning to catch up on some paperwork, and she is certified on the overhead crane. That gave me just enough time to throw myself on the sleeper berth line to be able to start a fresh set of hours at 0200!
I got my truck loaded, secured the equipment, tarped it, and headed south to Cajun Country. Got there Sunday night with time enough to get the required 10 hour break so I can get started on a fresh set of hours Monday morning. The receiver is completely caught off guard that I'm there Monday morning because, unknown to me, some of the folks that had left that day I was late called and told them that we had missed our pick-up time so they would reschedule. Well, after discussing it with the receiver, and realizing they had to line up a crane service to unload me, there was nothing to do but wait until Wednesday morning to get unloaded. Hey, I'm in New Orleans, so I just rented a car and acted like a tourist for a couple of days. Who can complain about solving a problem like that?
Now this was the most challenging part about this whole job: the equipment I was delivering was going to a hospital in downtown New Orleans. Since I had a rent car I drove through several different scenarios just to try and figure out the best way to get both in and out from the location. It was going to be really tough, but I found what I thought to be the best route and went for it on Wednesday morning. My last turn to get into the location was a left hand turn onto Freret St. from Lasalle St. I cleared the turn with one adjustment and had about an inch and a half between my tractor and the parked cars on the right side of the street and the same amount of clearance on the left side between the 53 foot trailer and the corner of a building - my split axles were all over the sidewalks. Just as I cleared the turn I heard someone whom I hadn't noticed that was watching the whole ordeal holler out "You are either really good or really lucky!" Yeah I'm thinking I was very lucky.
After all that, the equipment was too big to fit in the door of the building that we delivered it too. Sorry, not my problem, I've solved enough problems this week. They'll have to figure that one out. It's off my truck, I've got to go pick up another load of problems to solve.
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