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

Today was one of those fuster cluck days. My travel agent calls about 10:30 (my time) verifying I have my TWIC card, which I do. He said to head to the Galveston port, he will send the load info once it gets entered in the system. He calls back a little later and asks if I have a printer in my truck, which I don't carry since I gave up OD loads. But I can hit a Love's and have stuff printed out. He sends me what the broker sent him to pick up the load. I spend the last of my pocket cash getting it printed and hit the port. The guy tells me that the paperwork I have is the wrong paperwork, and the office next door will print out the right paperwork from an email, but they only take cash. I call dispatch, they finally send other paperwork, and I dig into my laundry money. Have it printed out...wrong paperwork again. It was within 15 minutes of their closing time, so I tell dispatch that I am out of there, will have to come back in the morning and that I am headed to the closest Love's (which was 40 miles away). The broker emails me something, and it's the same exact paperwork my dispatcher sent the 2nd time. Now the broker has to wait until the shipper comes in to find out what paperwork they need (I told them what the shipper told me, but who knows where the communication breakdown happened). So now I told dispatch that I am not moving until the broker gets their head out of their ### and gets me the right paperwork sometime tomorrow. Of the 3 port loads I have done (2 deliveries and 1 pickup) on 2 of the 3 I wasn't given the right info to get in and out without a hassle.

Oh, and it's a "track me" load to which I told dispatch that they're not putting on my phone.(The broker sent me a txt with a link). He said the salesman sends them the Sam-crappa tracking info so they can track it directly. But he had to resend the broker the link to track me because I got a 2nd message later on. I told dispatch that if they call me in the middle of the night, we might not be doing business with them after that because I will come unglued on anyone calling me in the middle of the night.

 

This load was supposed to be in San Diego by 14:30 Friday...and since I am still waiting on the broker to get us the proper paperwork, I will never make it by then. So that means I waste an entire weekend waiting to deliver Monday. And depending on the customer's holiday schedule for my next load (whatever that will be), there is a chance I won't be able to deliver until the following Monday if they're closed for the 2 day Thanksgiving holiday. So what started out as a potential stellar month has the possibility of being a below average month. Many complain that pulling reefer freight to grocery warehouses sucks because of all the sitting waiting to unload, I can say that I sit more doing open deck due to screwups and no weekend deliveries than I ever did pulling a reefer. It simply isn't worth it pulling open deck.