Here's what a moderately bad week looks like...

A few days ago I delivered a load to Hattiesburg, MS. After that, I got two preloads. The first preload was to deadhead 1100 miles to Grand Island, Nebraska. The second was a 1300 mile load from Grand Island, Nebraska to Brea, Commieforna. 2400 miles planned, and planned tight. I was looking at a possible 3500 mile week, potentially as much as 4000 if I picked up the right load.

I had plenty of time before I needed to be in Nebraska, and my 70 was short, and the next couple days also had short hours, so I did a 34.

This is where the bad week starts:

On my way to Nebraska, on I-55 northbound, at the border between Arkansas and Missouri, the weather shifted dramatically from light wind and snow to light wind, sleet and freezing rain, and the road went from slush to crunchy ice.

I slowed down to 35, turned on the flashers, and headed for the rest area a few miles ahead. I #### near didn't make it. That crunchy ice rapidly turned into black ice. A gust of wind caught me good, and I fishtailed down the middle of the interstate for about 300 yards, back and forth across the road until I finally regained traction at about 15 miles per hour.

Pulled into the rest stop a little before dawn, took a 2 hour break, then went out to look at the road again. The wind had died down, and the sleet and freezing rain was snow flurries again. A plow had clearly been through recently

I went back on the road and finished my day running between 45 and 55, stopping near St. Loius.

When I stopped driving I looked at my Qualcomm. I'd been taken off the nice 1300 mile run to Cali, and dropped into a 800 mile, three day, three-stop load in Texas, with the first two stops in the Dallas / Fort Worth metro area, two hours apart.

If you are new enough, you might not realize just how much multi-stop loads suck. You will learn.

The trailer I was hauling had been picked up with the wrong registration and a cardboard tag. On my way to Mississippi, I got the right registration, and when I found out I was going to Nebraska with a 34 from two days driving time out, I arranged for the license tag to be sent to Lincoln yard.

I got to the yard with three hours to drive, and 100 miles to where I needed to be.

No license. The same storm that had shut me down for 2 hours apparently caused havoc at FedEx.

No empty trailers on the lot.

No empty reefer trailers at any nearby customers. They sent me to Kawasaki just to check if there might be a reefer trailer there (every now and then a reefer is used for a dry van load.) No luck.

No option to Bobtail to shipper. Shipper NEEDED trailers to load.

I got two phone calls, but no Qualcomm messages trying to get me to connect to that illegal trailer and haul it to the shipper.

Problem was that I had a bunch of messages in my Qualcomm all saying that I was actively working to get the license for the trailer. If I had been stopped by DOT on my way to the Yard where the license was supposed to be waiting, I could have shown them those messages, and probably gotten a slap on the wrist.

If I had chosen to take that trailer away from the yard, those same messages would have almost guaranteed that I would get hammered by DOT, since I chose to continue hauling a trailer without official tags, LONG beyond any allowance for temporary tags.

So I took a 10 at the yard, and when I woke up, I found an empty someone had brought in. Snagged it, ran to York, washed it, then to Grand Island.

The shipper, of course, was one I'd never been to, with a hidden entrance. And it was starting to snow again, making it even more fun to find the truck lot.

Finally got into shipper, about 9 hours later than they wanted me there. Grabbed the load and ran with it.

Back to York, then south on 81. At 35-45 miles per hour until I hit I-35 in Kansas, and the weather/roads let me get to 55-65.

Shut down about 200 miles short of my first stop, at about 8 AM.

In order to hit both my first two stops on time, I started rolling at 0200, arrived at my first stop 2.5 hours early, and to my second stop an hour early.

When I picked up the JBS paperwork I had noted the odd format of the receiver data. Allt here stops had the same named consignee and the same address. The differentiation was in the details section. I figured it was a JBS thing, and didn't think anything more about it. MISTAKE.

When I got my paperwork back from Stop #1, I saw what I needed, and didn't look twice. MISTAKE.

I got to stop #2, and noticed that stop #1 had taken one copy of stop 2 AND stop 3 short form BOLs.

No problem. I still had what I needed. Advised the stop 2 receiver that I was giving them stop 2 and stop 3 papers, but needed stop 3 back. (I normally give all copies of bills to all receivers in case the loads were mixed, somehow, or not well marked.)

As I left Stop 2, I noticed they hadn't given me stop 3s' papers. Went back in. They insisted I'd never given them to them. maybe they were in my truck? I remembered exactly what I had done when I gave them the paperwork, because I already knew at that point that I was missing one copy of stop 2 and stop 3 short form BOLs.

I humored them, went, checked my truck. No stop 3 papers.

Went back in. Site could not find the stop 3 documents they had lost.

I didn't have time to stay, if I wanted to get to stop #3 (on-site parking) on today's clock, and my sunny disposition was definitely turning to cloudy, with a strong chance of lightning storms.

I left. Made it to stop #3. Office people were still in at Stop 3. Got their fax #

Called stop #1. Explained what happened. Offered to send them their short form BOL if they would fax stop #3's to the provided fax number. They said that they did not need the short form, since they had the long form. They nicely agreed to fax the stop #3 paperwork to stop #3.

I described how to tell the BOLs apart, and they sent the fax.

Checked with stop #3. They had gotten the wrong short form BOL.

Called Stop 1 back, and asked them to send their other wrong BOL to the same fax #.

Finally, stop 3 has the short form BOL I needed.

Then I look at my preload...

Two days ago I ran overnight, from about 7P to 8A. I flipped my sleep schedule so I could start today at 0200, and ended a while ago a bit before 1600.

My preload is for tomorrow at 1400. Two about-faces on my sleep schedule in three days. I can flip sleep schedules reasonably well, but two days back-to-back flip will give me problems.

Sent message to driver manager, who will check in the AM for AM loads that I might grab instead. I am not very optimistic, as there really isn't much freight coming from nearby.

Oh, and I still have several days left in the week for even more to go wrong.

 

I like your sig. Reminds me of a fortune cookie I got once:

"The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese."

 

Most of us agree. Most companies and customers would want to have words with you.