Millis OTR journal

I'm lucky. My ex-wife still waves the Cleveland flag. My current wife gave up. My daughter and I just giggle and smile when fall rolls around

 

Greetings from Clearfield PA. Today went relatively well. It appears as if the DOT in Indiana is nearing completion on 80. The ramp from 294 to 80 is finally open, and there are a lot less construction zones. It's about time. The problem now is that Indiana has infected Ohio, and 80 is all screwed up there. It figures. If I had a little more time to work with I would have taken 30. So I'm sitting here at Sapp Brothers with only 30 minutes of buffer time with 5 hours to go. Yikes. I found a different route to take that cut a little time off and won't run me through the nasty stretch I was worried about. That'll pay dividends in the morning for sure. I may gain some time from my GPS as well, since I messed with the speed on my profile. I'm hoping for another 15 minutes, that'll make me feel much better. My new path will pull me away from a lot of the major congestion, comparatively speaking. My dad came up with an additional route, but it was pretty much the same arrival time. And mine is less convoluted. So, fingers crossed. Ready, set, blitz. I'm going to ask for a load as soon as I get there, so I have a path out of the city ready to go. There isn't ANYWHERE near there to sit. So, please get me the f outta here after this. I guess I'll see what happens when the dust settles. Alrighty guys, I'm out. Hope you're all doing well. Talk to you tomorrow. Rubber side down, be safe out there.

 

Today, I'm signing in from home. Kind of. I'm close to my home truck stop waiting on wifey. Today is a MUCH more eventful day than my Jersey trip, so I'll skip the details on that. It was pretty much every bit as bad as I thought it would be, and then some. I was mercifully given a load afterwards that was extremely close to my final. I got loaded pretty quick and got away from that area. This one is a broker load as well. And my record with broker loads remains completely unblemished. As in I always have an issue of some sort with them. I got to the shipper, received a dock assignment, and started planning my path to the final. Now...when I checked in, I verified THREE TIMES that my destination was Plano IL. THREE!!! It's going to the Menards DC. I got a call from the broker a couple hours ago. I have the wrong load. You gotta be frigging kidding me. I have a load going to the Menards DC in Eau Claire. Another driver from a different company has my load. So now, I'm bound for Eau Claire. I would have gotten to Plano tomorrow. But now, this load won't get to Eau Claire until Sunday morning because I don't have the hours to cover the distance tomorrow. To make matters worse, I have another load issue. My contact at the broker asked me to check the packing slip in the trailer. So I pulled over, opened the trailer door, and there were boxes EVERYWHERE. The pallet in the back of the trailer was damaged. I'm guessing from the forklift. That allowed the boxes on that pallet to lean, pull through the plastic wrap, and eventually fall over. So when I get back to the truck tomorrow, I may have to go to a terminal to get that pallet restacked. There may be a day where I'll look back at this trip and laugh. But it sure as f isn't today. FML. Hopefully y'all are having a better day than me.