An old man's career goes flat, Snackbar moves to open deck

Unload went good, Traffic wasn't as bad as you would expect a half hour after sunrise in the greater LA area. Got my next load. A blanket insulation load out of Calexico going to WA.

I spoke to Robert in Rancho, he said the same thing about Ops not being allowed to send the next load's info until the current load's paperwork is in, so it isn't just my dispatcher holding things up.

 

So much for picking up today. The load was supposed to be over the border by 16:00. Until it crosses, I don't find out what trailer to look for in order to transfer the load onto my trailer. 15:45 I asked dispatch if they had any updates. Dispatcher said he was checking his emails, and that was the last thing I heard. It may have never crossed today, but if I find out tomorrow that he had received it, but never passed the info on to me, that will be the last straw for him and I. So we shall see in the morning.

 

Why can't Canadian companies sell blanket insulation to Boeing, it's cooler up there...most of the time

 

Having the J-plate slots in the middle of the trailer are a definite advantage.

Well, my dispatcher didn't let me down yesterday. I messaged Robert 1st thing this morning asking if any updates came thru overnight. Nothing new, but he had already sent off an email requesting an update just before I messaged him. I had stopped at the nearest truckstop last night and was about 10 miles away. I decided to head to the shipper and was about to start my pretrip when Robert made the suggestion that I might want to head to the shipper so when he gets and answer I will be there ready.

I get there and there is 1 loaded trailer...and after checking the paperwork, I find out, it's mine. Now the fun begins. It has 5 PO #'s. 3 go to Everett(to 2 different buildings) and 2 to Renton. I speak to Robert (again) and he tells me that an e-mail he got says that we are only supposed to deliver the freight to the Everett PO to one of the buildings, the freight to the other building stays on the trailer with the Renton freight, and the rest all goes to Arlington. On most of the boxes, there isn't a delivery location on the label, so I have to sort out all 60 boxes by the PO number(and we're not talking little boxes. Most of the 2 bigger PO's boxes are 5ish feet long, 3.5 feet high and 3 feet wide.) The 2 biggest orders, which are 48 of the 60 boxes, I decided to sort and load one at a time and put them in first. When I was down to the last 5 boxes for the 2nd of the 2, I came up with a problem...I needed 6 to complete the order, but on top of them was another box for the 1st group. So, before I called in with a discrepancy, I moved every one of the #### boxes I had just loaded and stacked out of the way and found the missing box where I screwed up, all the way in the very front corner of the trailer...all quantities now match. By this time it was over 100° and Yogi was nipping at my butt (in my part of the country we refer to heat exhaustion as being bear bit). Finally got all the boxes I had to move to solve my screw up put back, and the rest of all the PO's sorted and loaded(after many visits to my air conditioned truck) and got the heck out of there. Of course, by the time I got in the vicinity of the LA area, rush hour was picking up. I decided not to go thru town, instead I intended to go up 15 and then take 58 over to 99 and the state routes over to 5...but the GPS wanted a shortcut, and it only adds 17 miles to the trip rather than who knows how much extra mileage it would've added going up to US 395 to 58 like I was planning...by the time I got thru the traffic where 215 and 15 merge it was bumper to bumper. I finally made it to Tehachapie and called it a night. Even after all this, I can still make the noon delivery on Thursday (a whopping 4 boxes) and then make it to Arlington, so all these snafu's haven't totally screwed up my trip plan.

 

That's at least 1 driver who does a pretrip when nobody is watching, he's an above average driver


That's just a baby...should have caught it himself and kept it as a pet