Hurry Up And Wait!

That title for this post is a game that is played by just about all truck drivers. There are many frustrations that can manifest themselves in this job and that is probably the one that kills many a new truck driver's career the quickest. Oh, it's not the fact that they have to hurry up and wait (although many of them would differ with my opinion on this) it is the fact that they came into this business unawares, and unprepared, to deal with the issues like this that hinder their chance at making a decent income.

I woke this morning in Pearl Mississippi with the first morning light of the sunrise trying to weasel it's way around my curtains, and into my cab, in a crowded Flying J truck stop parking lot. I am on my way back to Delhi, Louisiana from Massachusetts, but I was dispatched a stop in Cressona, Pennsylvania to pick up a load of aluminum for the Utility Trailer manufacturing plant in Atkins, Virginia – this was my back haul load to help pay my expenses on the way back to Delhi. If you remember my dispatcher was very pleased with my strategy of taking a 34 hour break there at Cressona because of the unknown wait time I would be enduring at that plant. Well, it was a wise decision, but my thirty four hour rest would end at 5 am, and I fully expected to have my load ready and hooked to my truck by then so that I could roll.

You know what they say about those “best laid plans”... It just so happened that they had a brand new security guard on duty that night who just didn't have a clue yet as to how things worked over there. At midnight, five hours before my thirty four hour break would have been completed, I went to see him about getting permission to go in and get my load secured and tarped. I was told by dispatch that the people at the plant said my load would be ready at 11 pm. I waited till midnight because my experience at this plant is that they are almost always a little later than they tell you. He tells me that my load is not ready, and I should just keep checking back in with him every hour, and hopefully they will send him an e-mail indicating when it is ready. Finally after several futile attempts, I gave up, went back to sleep and set my alarm for seven so that I could check with the next guard after the shift change. I was very suspicious that I was getting bad information, but there was nothing I could do. You can't get in the gate without the guard's permission, and I was clearly getting nowhere with this poor fellow who's looks of consternation, which were designed to elicit sympathy from me for his poor plight of unpreparedness by his trainers, were not helping me gain access to my loaded trailer at all.

Fast forward to seven am... I get up, make one final trudge through the bitterly cold weather up here to see the new security guard who is apologizing profusely to me as she informs me that my load had been ready all night! Now the plant is bottle necked with truck drivers who are trying to get their trailers ready to go just like I am. They have strict safety procedures you must obey here, and one of those is that you must back your trailer in between these safety platforms that are designed to catch you if you fall off your trailer while putting your tarps on the load. Well... there are only three of those safety bays, and about ten angry (I wasn't angry) truck drivers jockeying around to try and get in position to get their trailers backed in ahead of the next guy. Bottom line is... I was finally ready to go at 10:30 am.

Fortunately the plant that I'm delivering to in Atkins keeps receiving freight up until midnight, but you must have an appointment. So as soon as I can get rolling I calculate how long it will take me to get there and then I call to see if I can get an appointment for later that night. The helpful gentleman on the phone tells me that they are booked up for the night, and I will have to wait until the following morning to deliver. That will just have to be okay, even though I was hoping to get unloaded that night. Before we ended the phone call he asks me if my paper work shows me which purchase order of theirs was used for this load. As I'm flipping through about six pages of papers that they gave me, I come across his purchase order number and repeat it back to him, which elicits a quickening in his voice wherein he explains that this is some product that they need right away. “Can you be here by seven tonight?”, he inquires, but I have to tell him that it will be more like eight if I really push it. He then says okay, I'm putting you down for seven o'clock, if you have any trouble when you arrive with getting unloaded call me at this cell number and I will make sure they unload you tonight. I replied again, “Sir, I can't be there at seven,” but he simply said he had to put me in at seven because that was the only spot the computer would allow him to schedule me due to the other bookings already in place. I somehow managed to roll in their gate at seven thirty and was directed by a fork lift operator where to park, and by 10:30 with all my tarps and straps folded up and put away I pulled my empty trailer down the road about thirty miles to a truck stop to stop for a well deserved nights repose.

The next day I drove about six hundred miles to my present location (Pearl Mississippi) where I am once again playing the waiting game. My load at Delhi is not ready yet, so if I get started from here and drive over there it will start my fourteen hour clock which cannot be stopped once I log on duty. But, if I wait patiently here until I know they have got me ready to go, it will conserve my available working hours so that I can start moving that load as far as possible today, or tonight, whichever it turns out to be. Want to take a guess where my destination is? Well, I'm supposed to arrive there on Monday, which is going to be a real challenge in itself, and which is the reason I'm playing this waiting game so that I can hopefully and legally outsmart these crazy regulatory guidelines that are tied to us like a ball and chain.

I'm heading right back up to Connecticut! I'll do my best, but I told my dispatcher that there is only so much I can do and still be legal and safe about it. He knows that they are pressing this one almost to the point of being impossible to accomplish, but according to him it is also the unfortunate (my word, not his) reason they have asked me to do it. He gave it a very positive spin as to why I was honored with this load, but I tried to cool him down as best I could, because there really is only so much that you can do. I appreciate their confidence, and I have willingly done everything I could to gain it, but miracles are not commonplace everyday happenings in this business, and when they are you are usually operating in an unsafe manner. I made it clear and firm that I would do my best, just as I always do, but I was not going to break the law or my neck just to get this done in an unrealistic time frame.

If they can get their end done so that I'm not waiting too long it just might all work out, but in the mean time I'm playing the waiting game, and as far as I can I will play it to win, but I'm not going to cheat. This waiting here this morning did give me a chance to get a nice hot shower, and the showers here at Pearl have got enough water pressure to almost make it painful – but it is the kind of pain that makes you want to say “stop it some more!” It was very refreshing, and I smell really good while I'm sitting here on hold.