Good Night From II

4 hours later and being told yet another hour since they have not even loaded the trailer, only bringing the last pallet to the staging area, its days like this I want to tell swift to kiss my arse, bobtail out and be done with it, then I wake up to another workday.

I have 4:30 left on my 14 with 165 miles or so to get back plus need to scale this load, might just do a bypass on the castaic scale instead.

 

jv terminal.....did the 2 live load this morning and got to ross dc in perris around 1130. .5 hr after what my first stop appt was. got to both places pretty early due to hardly any traffic. had 7 hrs left on 14, so asked for a local. biaga warehouse in ontario to tcall here. only took them .5 hr to load me. but had to wait at the dock about 4.5 hrs before they started . all good since i got some hours today. just hate watching my clock tick down and dont know whats going on lol. driver who is taking this load was waitting for me, so we switched trailers. his empty for my loaded one lol. parking area is a cluster #%&$@ again here.

 

Back at the T/A in London. Guess that sitting since no plan. Not what needed before start vacation. Time for some serious thinking and decision making.

 

after a little over 5 hours i finally took off with me load, went over to the Petro to scale it and holly crap never seen so many trucks crammed into a truck stop, it was like driving a tight obstacle course just to get to the scale and the fuel pumps with trucks double parked making their own spots etc. Got to Lebec and decided I might just shut down and sleep then get home early tomorrow, wow no parking there either, rest area didnt even have a single spot and there is always parking there so I just kept going. I ended up at the dc with 40min over my 14 but I tried stopping a couple different times.

 

At a Loves somewhere between Kansas City and St Louis on I-70.

Dropped my heavy load of patio pavers from Houston in Topeka KS at lunch today then rolled a short distance down I-70 to Lawrence KS for a D/H going to a customer in Manteno IL. Used mac13 to see if I can drop it at the customers DC tomorrow at 13:00 instead of 23:45 tomorrow night. No response yet..am I surprised??..a resounding NO!! This whole mac13 "thing" seems to be a nonfunctional joke so far.

Planners tossed me a ppln from Costco in Morris down to Columbus OH...then removed it saying I didn't have time. It would've been tight but under HOS rules I could've gotten down there before my 14 ran out and do the delivery anyway. I can be on duty as long as I'm not driving. Losing it didn't bother me too much since I get nervous going to Columbus as I always seem to get pushed to PA and further east. I'd rather stay in the Midwest if possible. Stacked on THAT load was a hop down to a little town outside of NE Atlanta but the miles were WAY off and they wanted me to babysit the load for 3 days..no tcall in Decatur. I outright refused that load.

No problem, I adjusted my PTA and will start fishing on Mac30 when my window opens. There's gotta be something better out of Chicago Land.

Sure seems to be a lot of unhappy drivers here tonight!! I may be another one as of tomorrow too. This past weekend I made a LOT of trailer moves in Houston for Swift. Too many OTR trailers at a DC across town and they wanted them brought to the terminal..56 mile round trip in horrible traffic. I said ok after being told I'd receive local pay ($25) plus hourly for each trip. Moved 7 trailers at 11+ hours on Saturday and Sunday. When I turned in a list of trailers, times etc THEN I'm told I would get paid miles plus hourly (under HHG swift rates each trip as ONE MILE!!). Mileage pay was $2.59 TOTAL FOR ALL TRIPS plus about $12/hr. I had to step outside before all my fuses blew!! I'm really tired of "helping out" just to get bent over and reamed!! I was so pissed off I came real close to turning in the keys but I already had a load to do. My DM said she'd look into fixing the miles. I sure hope so because I lost a lot of money doing those trailers vs being on the road.

 

Our helping the planners seems to be more the planners helping themselves at our expense.
I've been on the back end of those deals too often.

 

One of the reasons when I got a message and there was planners special comments most of the time I refused them because I knew something was just going to go wrong.

Now here in Sunbury, OH. The lake effect snow that was being predicted for yesterday finally arrived this morning. Made 3rd and 4th stop interesting. Today got to talk to a Rocky River local LEO. Was tuning onto a street that I have used many times to get on the I-90. Well they put up a 3 tons weight restriction sign not too long ago. Not a very large one. Well I made the turn and then there is the sign. Committed so down the road I go and there is Rocky River sitting in a apt complex. I watch him come out behind me and I knew what was about to happen. Cross over into Lakewood and right there at the ramp to get on 90 lights flash. I pull over and he comes up and introduces him self and talks to me a minute and then asks for License and Ins. Right then I knew no ticket in my future. Well he runs my license and comes back to my truck and asks me where my town is actually located. I tell him and next thing I know he is on my steps wanting to know more about where I live so we talk for a few minutes. As he was leaving he says that he might just have to visit some time so I give him my number and tell him to call me and if in town I will gladly show him around. It really pays to be nice to the locals. Rocky River LEO can get very nasty if they detect a attitude.

 

I lived in Fairview Park from 89 - 90, my aunt and uncle lived In North Olmsted until their retirement ten years ago, cousin still lives in Lakewood. Fairview Park police can be a pain if they're not respected as well.

 

At ta in hurricane va. Seems the employees of ta and petro get more and more rude. 150 miles to delivery tomorrow then drop am empty about 50 miles away then home for a few days. Anyone notice been fueling at Love's a lot lately? I have at least. Not complaining, especially with how ta/petro have been treating me lately...

 

Near Cleveland, OH at a Pilot.

Internet sucks here, I barely get a signal from Verizon.
I connect at 4G but only have 1 bar.

A fairly uneventful day with 2 live unloads at a couple Sears outlet stores.
I was late to the first by 20 minutes because 29 miles from the stop traffic stopped because of the road conditions in MI.
Well, almost stopped. We crept along at 5-10 for over an hour.
I wasn't able to send a Mac22 because the speed stayed just high enough to disable the QC and there was no place to pull over, so I called a DM in Fontana to relay a message to CSR that I would be late. He told me twice to send a Mac 22, and I told him twice that I COULDN'T because there was nowhere to pull over. He finally said he would contact CSR. (sigh!)
I'm really hoping I don't get a service failure for it.

My next load doesn't pick up until 1500 tomorrow, about 85 miles from here.
Such a late pick up means I will be up most of the day already, and I'm not planning on an all-nighter. The delivery window starts the next morning at 0700, so I couldn't do it in a 14 hour shift anyway. It's around 570 miles to the delivery in NC.
So I pushed out the delivery until 1700 as I have a window until 2200.

600 miles over 2 days is not getting a very good start to this week.