Snackbar is chillin'....at Shaffer

I think I know why it takes so long to get a reply to Peoplenet messages sometimes. My next load's fuel solution was way off again (they have me backtracking the opposite direction again). I called Lincoln to get it changed to a Pilot less than a mile from my shipper. When the guy answered, it sounded like I had just woke him up...and this was 2ish hours before shift change. I thought about being a smart ### and say 'this is the front desk with your wake-up call'...but I didn't

 

It has been one of those patience trying weekends we all have to endure from time to time. After dropping that load in Joliet, the next morning I went on a trailer hunt. They ended up having me meet with another driver 30 miles away that had an empty, but was waiting to go do a drop/hook (at one of the customers I was just at looking for an empty). Then I headed up to Bensenville to pick up. I was suppose to be at the pu (according to the Peoplenet) between 13:00-15:00. On the way up there, I get my next preplan, ice cream from MO to North Platte (almost 900 mile run with deadhead) I get to the shipper just before 14:00. Go to check in and they tell me that they don't have me on the schedule, but it doesn't matter, the people who load the loads go home at noon on Saturday, so it'll have to wait until Monday...great...just got screwed out of 12-1300 miles. It took Lincoln until after 16:00 to decide on what to do. Pu a Mars ice cream load 20 miles away and take it to the Nashville drop yard. (The load was delivering 20 min from my home, but didn't have an appointment). Then, I had to do something I haven't done since I started here...I had to wait for a load. Finally, they sent me a short load that picks up Monday morning out of Murfreesboro going to New Albany, MS for any time the same day. But I got a bonus on the load. When I went to pick the preloaded trailer up I noticed this




(Notice anything unusual?)


Turns out, this trailer had a full set of brakes replaced, along with a new brake can and my bonus





Not only did the parts changer fail to realize that he(or she - I'm not sexist) left their vice grips on the trailer, neither did the seat warmer who pulled it to from whatever shop to here (and anywhere in between). And the reason I call them a seat warmer, had they even walked down the side of the trailer to kick the tires and check the lights, you could see the handles of the vice grips hanging down without crawling under the trailer.

 

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I may have falsely thrown a driver under the bus on here. Where the vise grips held the stroke rod, it held the brakes applied so the mechanic could cage the chamber and do a 3/4 chamber replacement. The customer may have had to call Shaffer to get road service to replace the can after it blew on their property. It didn't look like the brakes got hot because the sticker was still on the shoes, and the tires weren't flat spotted like they pulled around with the one brake applied.

 

At Poly they had a trailer damaged by an internal fire started by a back-haul of waste adult diaper material. We would pick it up in partial rolls, and they didn't load it correctly and a couple rolls rubbed together until it started burning. The fire department had to cut the roof open to put it out.