Good Night From II

St Matthew SC. Trailer tire blew, took 5 hours to fix that. Now I really ain't got time to run to huger SC.

But I'll be delivering this coil in the AM and going like a 1/2 mile down the street and picking another one and heading back to Detroit. After that I'm headed west. I hope.

 

Mebane NC. Petro. Got stuck in traffic Apocalypse after a tanker lost it on 40.


Anyway apparently driver development thinks no means yes. After telling them no students anymore, that I'm going dedicated. They put a flipping student on me anyway, without so much as calling me. Poor saps gonna be shocked when no one shows up. I expect driver Development might finally communicate when they realise im 800 miles in the wrong direction.

 

North a bit of Ogden, UT.

I finished up a Walmart 2 stop load this afternoon and then picked up a P&G load with 3 Costco stops.
This load is under 120 miles, 3 stores, and the first delivers at 0600 tomorrow morning.

The planner sent a message to call him when the pplan was sent, also mentioning a $50 bonus for the load.
He called it one of their 'nuisance loads' so it pays a bit extra, and then I got my choice of loads to back that one up.
So from there I'll be picking up in SLC and be headed for an anytime Monday delivery in MN.

I love dealing with planners directly, especially if they are trying to cover a lousy load.

 

I hate when I can't figure out how to eliminate 65 miles of out of route miles from a trip. They screw me for 20 going from Laredo to Pharr, and they got me for 96 on the trip from Alabama to Laredo. At the Longhorn in Toomey, Louisiana. Might as well sleep in since I have until Sunday to get rid of this one.

 

Eloy AZ at the petro doing a 34 unless I can find a 500 mile load. I am getting 10hrs tonight and 1 tomorrow night so figure if I can get a shorter load cool or just do a 34 and relax.

 

I had a surprise when I went to pick up that MN load.
There wasn't one.
The BOL number was for a load going to KS, not MN.
Something got mixed up big time and I sat for 2 hours waiting for the CSR to figure things out.
So now I am going to KS.

A strange set of circumstances happened.
My home time is set for the 20th in Denver to get my daughter home in time for school, but her medication runs out 4 days before that. She had miscounted, and she can only refill it at a certain place here in Denver.
This load going to KS gets us through Denver, where the MN load would not have. She would have been stuck on the truck with no meds for too long.

We are at the TA tonight and she is getting off the truck a week early, because she can't refill them on a Sunday and I leave too early in the morning. Bummer. But at least she won't run out now.
Fate, God or blind luck... take your pick.

 

Another strange day today.

My first pplan was picking up in MN, but I was in KS!
Turned that down explaining where I was.

The next was a repower about 90 miles north at the TA in Oakley, KS.
That was nice since I didn't have an mt.
When I get there the driver is not with the truck. I called my DM to get the drivers phone number.
He was in the motel across the street, and had been for the past 3 days. He had dead batteries and his bunk heater was leaking a lot of coolant.
I called on-road to get a tow truck, or at least a jump start, so that tractor could unhook from 'my' trailer. The other driver told me that Swift was going to tow it to a dealer for repair.

What gets me is that the truck was sitting for 3 days before they arranged to repower the load. And the load was already late when the other driver picked it up. It is scheduled for delivery in the 12th, so 3 days past due now. I won't get it delivered in SoCal until the 17th.

Mind boggling.

 

Das ist Komisch.

I'm lost on that one.


I'm somewhere in southern Illinois at a rest area, headed for Dallas. Got another coil on deck.

We've had three load claims this week due to improper or no tarping. There goes 75k out the window. This only a month after they bumped tarping pay up too something more reasonable.

On the way west to hopefully transition to the new account.

 

Cleburne, TX (as usual), taking a 34 as my student just hit 50 hours last night.

I agree with the previous comments regarding mentors. I picked her up over the weekend. Two previous mentors, two weeks on board, 35 hours, and three backs. After two weeks, she should have double the hours and at least 15 backs. Both were lease ops. (What a surprise!)

The problem with doing all the time on this dedicated account is that the office does macros 1 and 2 at dispatch, and will do 5 and 6 if we don't do it manually first. To combat that, I spend a few days to a week OTR once my student gets up around 150 hours. There's always something that needs to run between DFW and Memphis...

 

Parking reserved for totality ...