Day five

We have enjoyed ourselves just being together for a few days without the demands of a schedule. I did some reading today while my daughter worked on some of her knitting projects. We also took a few walks, did our laundry, took showers, and ate so much food at a nice Chinese restaurant for lunch that we didn't even want any supper in the evening. But, let me tell you that being stuck at a truck stop for a weekend really isn't any fun when you are by yourself, at least I don't personally care for it.

Now sometimes I do sit at a truck stop for a re-set, but that's just because I tend to burn up my time by running extra hard in hopes of accomplishing something early, or just the nature of the loads that I'm getting will take up a lot of time with securement procedures. I'm kind of glad that Daniel is doing his similar thread at the same time because it will probably show how each individual driver may run his loads and manage his time in the way that works best for him, or for the type of freight he's handling. One of the nice things about being a truck driver is that you are in charge of your own time, and as long as you are getting the job done and keeping the customer satisfied you can manage things they way it works best for you.

With that thought in mind I'm going to share one more "tale from the road" with you of an earlier experience I had on a lengthy run across the country. My company is fairly lenient about the routes we take, although recently they have been getting a little more particular about it because of drivers abusing their liberties. We always are given a recommended route, and that is generally what I will follow, but occasionally I will change it up for one reason or another. We haul a lot of "copper loads" from several mines, but one that I get put on fairly often is a run from a mine in Tyrone NM to Norwich CT. It's a nice gig with lots of miles. The only catch to this run is that they like us to run it with another truck for security reasons. This is considered a "high value" load and we are instructed to watch out for anyone that might be following us, and we just have to be on high alert for any suspicious activity when we are parked at a truck stop.

One time when I was on this run I had left the mine with another company driver who was getting loaded at the same time I was and we had gotten ourselves over into Oklahoma on the companies suggested route when I get a message on my qualcomm instructing me to call another driver in the company that they wanted to be running along with us. After calling and making contact with the driver she began asking me where we were and I told her our location in Oklahoma. I can't use the language here that she was using as she told me how stupid I was to have taken that route. She was down in Texas on I-10 somewhere and she was incredulous that we had taken the route we did because, as she told me, we were going to run into snow and not be able to make it on time to Norwich. My only thought was well, she does seem to realize that we are going to Connecticut, but I don't see why in the world she is down in Texas on I-10 knowing we've got to get to the far Northeast parts of the country.

I got tired of hearing her dropping F-bombs just about every other word and finally hung up on her because I just wasn't in the mood for suffering a fool at the moment. I sent dispatch a message that said we were way too far apart for us to meet up with each other and they would just have to find her someone else to run with. We kept running hard and after about three and a half days got there a little early. We got unloaded and drove about seventy miles to a Pilot truck stop so we could shower and take a rest. There's not a whole lot of good choices to park at in Connecticut so we did the best we could.

I hadn't been at the truck stop 30 minutes when my dispatcher calls me and asks me "How would you like to be the savior of the day?" I was a little apprehensive about that, but as it turns out they had a driver who had run out of hours and couldn't deliver their copper load to Norwich. He wanted me to go and re-power the load in for them, and it looked like I had just enough hours to get er done. I was tired, but I told him I'd be glad to do it, so off I go, and lo and behold it's the girl with the foul mouth that I had talked to earlier in the week. It seems her safe but circuitous route had burned up all her hours and she had to shut down without making her destination.

Do you remember that old line that says "it's always best to have a little more than you show". Well, in trucking it's always good if you can be available when they need you. Managing your time is very important in this business, as is evidenced by the big mistake that I made on Friday which caused me to lose two whole days of revenue for both me and the company.

Well, after some interesting discussion I finally managed to get the load from the other driver who did not want to relinquish it to me. Drivers can be some very interesting characters, and she was definitely in that category.

Long story short, I delivered the load and got back to the truck stop while only going about seven or eight minutes over my legal hours of service. I was pleased, dispatch was pleased, and so was the customer. There was only one person unhappy about the situation, but she'll just have to get over it and try a little harder next time.