Dyslexic Paperwork Blues

It is Sunday afternoon and I have parked my truck in the empty parking lot of an abandoned shopping center to spend the night here in Baker, Louisiana. Baker is a small community on the outskirts of Baton Rouge. I have on my truck some material called Flex-a-mat which is used for erosion control. This is what I picked up at the place where the grumpy old guy, who was going to be late for his date, berated me with his sour attitude and bitter tongue.

Yesterday and today were very pleasant days, just as weekends often are for me, since I am usually not dealing with shippers or receivers. They were days where all you have to do is drive. My plan was to get in here during the middle of the day so that I would have daylight hours to find a place to park, and so I could locate the place I will be delivering to on Monday morning. Parking for Big Trucks is really limited down in the New Orleans and Baton Rouge areas. My little truck stop guide book showed there to be a truck stop in Baker, but I discovered it to be out of business when I arrived with signs all around warning you not to park there unless you want to get towed.

It turned out to be a good plan to get in here early like I did because the information on my paperwork was totally useless. The numbers in both the address and the phone number were transposed so that I could not find the “job site”, which is the only information I had for the location – no company name or contractor name was provided. And the phone number which was supposed to be my contact named Aaron, went to someone named Pierre who was just some individual who didn't have a clue what I was even talking about. After several hours of fruitless phone calls to various personnel who might could help, I finally managed to figure out that it was going to an Exxon refinery, so I got on the internet and discovered there were only six Exxon refineries in this area!

I will say that good fortune smiled on my efforts though, as the first refinery I went to, so that I could inquire for a little more information, was the proper location, and the guard even helped me get the proper numbers together so that I could make contact with the contractor. Driving a truck is easy, it is all the other stuff that goes along with the job that can make it a frustrating job for the naive souls who think all they've got to do is hold that steering wheel and point it in the right direction.

Here's what the Flex-a-mat looks like on the back of my trailer. You can't see it well because the material is rolled up, but the other side of it has little concrete waffle looking squares on it to give it some weight to hold it in place while it is doing it's job of controlling the soil erosion.

As you can see, I am pulling gone of those "Connestoga Wagon" trailers.  They are very nice in that they eliminate the need for dealing with those heavy tarps.  Almost all the loads that I pull for Sapa must be tarped.  This is a back haul load that didn't require tarping, but it got protected any way due to the equipment I had with me at the time I got dispatched on the load.