Day seven

Just another day in Paradise!

I'm naturally an early riser, so I do my trip planning, writing myself notes in a notebook for the day, and any necessary paperwork in the mornings when my mind is fresh and alert. So that's how this day started. I looked over my route to Syracuse, and made notes to myself about it. I noticed Daniel refers to a notebook in his journal. I don't know if we are doing the same thing or not, but I write everything down like my route, my load number, city of origin and destination, fuel stop, etc. Not only does writing it down help me to remember it, but it is also an easily accessible source of that information if I were to need it while driving because my Qualcomm doesn't allow you to read the massages unless you're stopped.

Woke up around 5:00 am and then we finally could log on duty at about 6:45. After pre-tripping the truck we set out for Syracuse NY. If you remember we had to be there by 1600 and we didn't have a whole lot of room for delays. We stopped once briefly for a bathroom break at a rest stop, and then rolled on through some heavy snow in Ohio, fairly decent weather in Pennsylvania, and some light snow in upstate New York.

One of the things about this job is that things can change so quickly on you while you're out here, and you've just got to be prepared to play the game with the hand your dealt. Take for example the weather. Yesterday I couldn't have asked for anything nicer, the temp was mild and we were looking at scenes like this:

And Now today we woke up in a truck stop covered in snow and our view on the road looked like this.

We made it through the weather safely, and arrived at our destination at 1500 which just made me proud! And I guess my DM was thrilled also since he quickly sent us another load to be picked up tonight in Oakfield, NY. Oakfield is about three hours away on a good weather day, and I've got about five hours left on my clock. After about one and a half hours I have my load untarped and unloaded and we make a quick stop at a Walmart for some groceries. Oh, by the way here's what a flat-bedder goes through in the winter months while doing his job.

Now we have just enough time to get to Oakfield if we don't hit a snag. We are still having heavy snow in Syracuse and some frozen overpasses that haven't been salted yet, but we make this leg of the journey without a hitch and arrive at our shipper (a USG Plant) with five minutes left on our clock.

Here's how we are going to manage our clock now in this situation. I went ahead and logged fifteen minutes for my post-trip which I will do later while I'm waiting to be unloaded, and then I got the clock on sleeper berth so that I can get going as soon as possible in the morning, because I will never make my delivery appointment in Bridgeport Alabama if I don't get started as soon as possible. This will give you a good idea about how some days are long ones. We started at about five this morning reviewing our options and making a plan on how to accomplish all this today and now this load here didn't get completed being loaded, secured and tarped until about one a.m. Since we were out of hours and already on the sleeper berth line we bedded down in the shippers parking lot so as not to set our clock on the drive line.

Here's a few photos of me securing, and tarping this late night 47,000 pound load of large paper rolls bound for a Sheetrock plant in Bridgeport Alabama.

While we were backed up to the dock and waiting to be loaded we couldn't help but feel that someone was staring at us the whole time, because every time we glanced across the parking lot there was this funny little forklift sitting over there across the way that looked like it had two eyes a nose and a mouth forming a sort of face on it. Can you see it in this photo?

I'll be back to let you know if we make a tough delivery time on this one. I think we can make it, but if we have a traffic delay or something like that it will make it even tougher. I hope you're getting a feel for what it's like out here on the road, because that was my purpose in doing this little journal. I've enjoyed sharing these things with you and hope I haven't scared too many of you away from the joys of flat-bedding.