So here we are, march 25th, 2012, sunday evening around 7:45 pm. I am currently in lebanon, Indiana. The weekend has been very busy after a very slow week. I was in south texas I beleieve the last time that I posted. From south texas, I got a load going to PA, but it was supposed to pick up on monday. Well, the load didnt arrive from mexico until wednesday, so I got the load, I took off with it, and then about 300 miles in, I got a message that they were swapping my load with a team because it was already going to be late and they wanted a team to get it there on time. I can honestly say, I hate swapping. Basically i went from a load that had 1800 miles, to a load that had 800 miles. I finished off the small amount of the 1800 mile trip that I was able to do, which was 300 miles, so basically between that trip, and running the next load out to where it needed to go, I got roughly about 1,000 miles total. Instead of going to pa, I went to houston to swap this load with the team. I hate big cities especially driving a 60 foot truck because there are so many possibilities of hitting something, or running something over, etc. Too many small tight turns. In a car, no problem. In this truck, it sucks. So the location they wanted me to meet this guy at, was this grocery warehouse in the middle of houston, where the directions were completely wrong, and the turns were too small for me to maneuver around in. So after driving around the city till i could turn around, and then I went back to the highway, found the nearest loves travel stop truck stop, found a space, parked, and messaged customer service saying "look, I don't want to have an accident, and I can not find my way to where this guy is waiting at. Here is the address for the truck stop I am at. Tell him he should come over here to meet me and we will switch trailers because I'm not willing to risk myself anymore tonight." I was under the impression that out of the two drops, the one coming to houston, and the one going to georgia that I was taking over for him, that he was delivering the one to the grocery place in houston. Well when he woke me up a few hours later by banging on the side of my truck, he told me that I still had to deliver the one to houston. I was not happy about that at all, but I figured whatever, oh well. So we disconnected from our current loads, and connected to our new loads, he took off, I went back to sleep, and in the morning I took off to head back to houston. It still took me over an hour to find where I needed to get to, and finally after taking lots of small ass streets and being surprised I managed to avoid hitting anything, but managed to get honked at dozens of times because with a truck this size, to make a tighter turn you end up having to take half of the next lane just so you don't clip the pole or curb or whatever. The guy i swapped with told me the guards told him he couldn't stay on the lot. So my plan was to get there, get unloaded *i would still have half a trailer full because this was a 2 drop load, and i was only dropping off the first load*, but then leaving right away to head to georgia. this was thursday by this point. I arrived at the shipper around 10AM, and I went over to the security shack and they told me that because my appointment was originally at 4 am, they moved it to the following day at 4 am. She was like "the other guy was here, where'd he go?" I was like "well, we swapped loads and I didnt have hours to bring it this way until this morning. you're saying he should have just stayed?" She was like "yeah, they would have gotten him in today, but now they wont take you till 4am tomorrow."
So I went back to the truck saying "ok, i will make some calls." I was thinking "shit shit shit...... i dont want to drive back to the truck stop and have to make my way back here again. this sucks.." Eventually the guard walked over to the truck. here i was bracing myself thinking they were going to tell me i can't stay where I was parked. I mentioned to her that i was hesitant to head to the truck stop because getting to that business was such a pain in the ass that I didn't want to do it again. She was like "why would you have to go to the truck stop? to get food or something?" I was like "no, the other driver said you told him he couldn't stay parked here like th is." She was like "oh no no no, he tried to unhook his trailer and we told him he couldn't leave his trailer here alone, but as long as you are parked here like you are with your trailer attached, you can sleep here if you want." I was like "awesome! that makes me so happy because I really did not want to make that drive again." So I put the curtains over all the windows, and idled my engine to keep the ac going for most the day because it was 90+ degrees, and I watched several episodes of doctor who. I went to sleep and woke up around 3:30 to make sure I was ready for when the guard would come at 4 am and tell me what door to dock at, and literally 4:05, she came over and said "door 7!" i was like "yes maam!" So I found the door, got docked, and within an hour or so I felt them in my trailer unloading stuff. Then several hours went by. by the time I went in or called the last time, it was noon by that point. I kept getting told "someone will come get you when your paperwork is ready." So Finally at noon i called and they were like "yeah, your paperwork has been here for a few hours now." I grumbled and thought "mother-frakers............................." because I was going to have to leave and try to get as close to 500 miles driven towards georgia that night. I prefer to leave early in the day and be done by 4 or 5 because usually it's a lot easier to find a truck stop parking space available that I don't have to do a fancy backing into. When I'm tired, I refuse to back between two trucks in a tight space because it's too risky.
So I left there, stopped at a flying j truck stop around 1, sent a fax, used the bathroom, and hit Denny's to get a good meal. I hadn't eaten much since the previous day when I parked at the customer's lot. After getting quite full, i left. I got about 9 hours in, with still about 5 hours to go, but it was roughly about midnight by that point and I looked at a few truck stops. The first two were too full, so I kept driving, and i found one that had a set of 3 empty spaces together, and so I backed into the middle one. I hadn't been hungry since my massive meal at dennys, and i had recently fueled and used the bathroom, so literally I backed into the space, did a quick walk around the truck, and then climbed in the back and went right to bed. The next morning I got up, ate my pop tarts for breakfast, used the bathroom and took off. The load I was delivering was delayed till monday, so I asked my dm if i could drop the load anywhere and keep going since i lost half my miles. He was like "yeah, we are going to have you drop the load in the CRE yard in Atlanta and keep you rollling." So by friday night when I had found the place to stop, I already had a new route assignment going from atlanta, ga, to illinois. About an 800 mile trip. So even though my dm and I hoped I would deliver in atlanta by noon, because of how late the houston people got me out of there, I didn't get to atlanta till around 5:30pm saturday, I found my loaded trailer, made up my trip plan for the new trip, and by 7 I was on the road again, with a stop for fuel and sleep at a loves about an hour and a half away. When I pulled in i told myself I would try to grab a spot first and just worry about fueling when I get ready to leave. Thankfully i found a spot. I went in, grabbed some chicken strips from mcdonalds, and used the bathroom and then came out and went to sleep. Didn't get to go to bed as quickly as I wanted because i had to get online to deal with school work. So, the way I planned it, I would stop there, do my 10 hour reset, and then take off by 6:30 or 7 am. I overslept slightly, so it was actually 7:45 when I finally left, and i put in over 500 miles and am stopped currently at a flying j here in lebanon, indiana. It surprised me though, because all flying j's I have stopped at have had a dennys in them. This one has a different restaurant and i found out after I parked, went in and used the shower, bathroom, etc, that the restaurant isnt open. I asked the cashier when I bought other food stuffs, and she was like "yup, it's closed till the end of the year." I was like "damn that sucks. I wish i knew that before I stopped... " But it's all good. Instead for dinner tonight after only having pop tarts, gatorade, and tea today, I grabbed two large slices of pizza. Then i covered all the windows up in the truck, ate my pizza, changed into my windpants without a shirt since it's not horribly hot but it is warmer than when I left georgia with it being 40 degrees this morning, and got online to do my homework, research some other ideas for something, and wanted to come on here and post too.
it's interesting how much more stuff there is to talk about just with driving all over the country. To think thursday I was in houston texas, friday night I was in Alabama, saturday I was in Georgia, today I'm in Indiana, and tomorrow morning I will be in illinois. Since home time is scheduled for the end of the week for me, i'm sure my next load will probably take me back towards the east to get me closer to where I gotta go. I'm hoping something not too large but not too small so that I can get the trip done by wednesday, turn it in, and get paid for it with my other two trips by next tuesday. I anticipate that with me taking the 4 days off, that the next paycheck will be smaller or 0 entirely because of the truck payment, and the following one might by light because of a negative balance, but then I will be on track again. I guess until you have a "home time fund" set aside, when you go home, you lose money because you're not running. but I've been gone from home for 5 weeks now and it's time. Granted its only 4 days, which sucks, but gotta be strong.
on that note, I will talk to you guys more next time!
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