Swift - Starting the New Year training with Swift 1/7/13 - A long read...

haha...Yeah the Prostar does drop RPM's pretty quickly. I've still been messing with it lately but when she is being an obstinate B she really grinds.

 

I finally finished up this load from Iowa taking me out here to Washington. It was a live unload, two stops, this morning and man was that second stop tough.

I'm pretty sure this is one of the first times this particular consignee has ever had a truck this big, a sleeper cab and not a day cab, dock at this location. It was in a small, tight industrial park definitely not set up for trucks this large. There wasn't enough room to fit my trailer and cab in front of the dock. There was just room for the trailer to hit the dock and the cab had to point left. Problem was the cars that were parked around the dock and a fire hydrant unfortunately located directly in front of the dock. It took me GOAL'ng about 3 times and some back and forth for a while before I could get it in. Even then it still wasn't lined up flush with the dock. And my passenger steer tire was up on the curb parked inches away from the fire hydrant. It wasn't pretty but it worked. I sent a freeform message to my terminal stating that this particular consignee would be better suited to get deliveries from a day cab. I'm not the most seasoned driver but I couldn't imagine a new driver getting a trailer docked there. Best part was about 2 hours into the unloading the guy approached me and asked if I could pull away from the dock and down the "road" a little so that they could get one of their little delivery trucks out. About 2-3 more goals and a lot more back and forth and I was re-docked again.

Both my first stop and the final took 3 hours + each to unload me. My day basically started at 0430 at the Sumner terminal where I had arrived last night. Pretrip and other morning things and I was rolling by 0545 for a 0700 live unload at stop 1 less than 20 miles away. I wasn't heading the 25 miles back to the terminal until after 1400.

My hometime is today. I don't remember when I scheduled it, I think for yesterday, but it was really to get me back out west. I set my PTA for tomorrow morning after I meet with my DM about an action plan to get me to platinum status. We talked about my goal to be platinum on the phone a while ago. I've been all over them about it. Unlike last year (and the year before) I'm going to push this more actively. I'll do whatever it takes to get there but I need to get there as that was my goal originally from the start. No excuses this time. As I understand it, the status is based on a rolling system. I don't remember what the yearly mileage is (I think around 105,000?) but the weekly average to be maintained is close to 2,000 miles. I've been over that for almost the entire time I have been back out. Tomorrow I have to find out an approximation of when I will reach platinum status. I look forward to the meeting.

My PTA is set for 0900 tomorrow.

 

Despite all of the sitting at these deliveries this morning I was already in home time head so I wasn't really stressing anything. It gave me a chance to catch up on some reading.

I recently downloaded a few more books. It's odd how things can connect us sometimes and how things that we have forgotten can be brought to light once again. I had heard about a book out there called Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation. It was just released last year and since I grew up in Toms River, NJ I thought it would make an interesting read. I really didn't know anything about the book other than it had something to do with Ciba-Geigy, a chemical plant there, and the number of cancer cases in Toms River. The book discusses the correlation between a large corporation that polluted the water in Toms River for years and the impact of this pollution on the residents and the environment. One of the first lines in the book talks about a boy Michael Gillick and his fight with cancer. He ultimately lost the fight but not before challenging the system that poisoned him.

I remember Michael Gillick from when I was young. I went to a small Catholic church in Toms River with my family every week and that is where I remember seeing Michael. He was young back then and I remember him being carried in by his parents. There was no avoiding the attention his entrance would cause. His face was bubbled with what looked like cysts and it was swollen. Most distinctly I remember his eyes. They were nearly shut and squinty due to the swelling and puffiness in his face. My other significant memory as it related to this book I am reading was that as I grew up in Toms River, our tap water smelled odd and tasted funky. We drank it, washed our hands in it and used it as anyone uses tap water. However the odd smell and strange taste were unforgettable. At the time I remember thinking nothing of it, everyone's water must taste and smell this way. That's what happens when you are young. You assume your reality is everyone else's reality until you get older and realize that reality is subjective and not necessarily shared. Years later, being too young to understand the complexity of it all, I remember my mom telling us we could no longer drink the water. We had our water delivered by the bottle and drank from a water cooler in our kitchen such as they do in an office. I'm curious where this book is going to go from here. I read criticism of the book that states that this "cancer cluster" in Toms River didn't really exist, that the cancer rates were no higher than those of other places. I don't agree with this sentiment. I'm anxious to read the rest of this book.

The other book I got was based on a memory. When I met Rosio down in Guatemala she had told me that she planned on opening a restaurant on the island of Flores, the place where we spent most of a week together getting to know each other. She would call her restaurant "Macondo". When I asked her about the name she told me about a book she loved, a book she read over and over. In the book there is a fictional town called Macondo. The book is One Hundred Years of Solitude. So I downloaded this book and started to read it as well. Interesting so far and a suitable escape from reality.

 

Thanks Kindle, I hope I get it too.

This dock was tough but more time consuming and questionable. I've come to the point where I like a challenge. But this place was definitely not set up with larger trucks in mind. I guess as long as nothing is damaged then all is good.

 

And I never listen to anyone that comments on how long it takes me to dock, especially not someone that doesn't drive a truck.

I did kind of get lucky today. Lucky that I thought things out enough not to lead myself into a bad mistake. When I pulled up to my final I saw a sign with the address and an arrow pointing up a very tight driveway lined with cars. It wasn't the best place to stop in the middle of the street but something was telling me not to make that right hand turn up the driveway. It was a pretty good hill too in addition to being very tight. The more I looked at the driveway the more I was thinking that this didn't look right for a truck like this. I contemplated just going up there anyway as traffic was now going around me as I sat there with my 4 ways on. I pulled the brakes and walked up the driveway to check with the customer (tried to call but the phone number was no good).

I walked up the hill, went inside and asked if that was where I was supposed to be. It wasn't! I was slightly off on my address and the actual driveway was one I had just passed. As I was up the hill looking at this parking lot, I realized it would have been a HUGE mistake if I had turned up there with my truck. Not only was it super narrow. Not only was it lined with cars parked on the side. Not only would my trailer not have made the turn. But, worst of all, there was nowhere to turn around up there or park a semi. So had I not followed my instincts and just made that right turn, where the GPS was indicating and where I had taken note of the wrong address, I would have been in a boatload of trouble. I would have had to back down this steep driveway blindly into traffic. Even with some help, it would have been a tremendous mess. I had looked up the location on Google Earth and also did my Mac 23 but for some reason I thought the that delivery was up that hill. Just goes to show, when you have any doubt whatsoever always verify and double check. With that being said, I'm going to let out a big sigh of relief as that mistake would have made this day miserable.