Rolling Down The Highway Again

I'm back on the job today after a nice lengthy stay at my comfortable little house. It is January the 7^th, and I've been home since Dec. 23^rd. I so enjoyed this nice break with my dear family, and getting to see many of my close friends at church was a nice reward also. It really is unheard of for an over the road truck driver to have this kind of a break at home. When I arrived at the SAPA plant today I asked my dispatcher if this sort of thing takes place every year at Christmas, and he said yes. Apparently they close the plant for a week for maintenance and re-tooling of the equipment. So once they get the plant back up and running there is still a lag in time until they are pumping out their product at the rate we are accustomed to. Consequently it is really slow this time of year for the drivers like me who are dedicated to keeping this account's freight moving across the country.

Even though they asked me to come back today it turned out that they didn't have a load for me to get after all, so they found me a regular flat-bed load that I can haul that picks up in Richton, MS and delivers to Aurora, IL. I've been to Aurora many times, it is a suburb of Chicago. The weather ought to be really tough up there this time of year. I'm parked tonight at a truck stop about thirty miles outside of Richton, and I will be starting my day tomorrow around 4:30 in the morning. I'm picking up at a place called American Wood, and delivering it to a Caterpillar plant in Aurora. I don't know yet what I'm getting, but I'm assuming it is some lumber or wood of some sort. It could be the lumber that the Caterpillar plant uses to make crates with – I don't know, but I'll let you know what I've got with my next post.

I'm pulling a “Connestoga” trailer that had some tears in the fabric. My dispatcher asked me if I could repair it and I said yes, so I took some PVC glue that I had on my truck and some old scrap pieces of tarp that I keep on board for this very purpose and made an extra 45 dollars today in about an hours worth of work. He said he would put it on my pay listed as a local delivery. Not bad for doing my dispatcher a favor!

It's about 8:00 p.m. And I'm getting ready to go to bed – I want to be well rested for my early start tomorrow. I will drive as much as I legally can tomorrow, then shut down for ten hours and start early again on Friday so that I can get up to Chicago and get unloaded on Friday with hopefully enough time left to catch a load for the weekend. The last thing I want to do is sit up in Chicago for the weekend. I'll let you know how those best laid plans of mice and men turn out.