Lot Lizards and Other Riff-Raff

Here's where discipline and precise trip planning comes into play. If I know I'm going to be delivering in Crackville, I stop well away from my destination to take my 8 hour break'sometimes as far as 300 miles away. I leave enough driving time to make my next pickup and get away from Crackville.

I like to get in and get out'I plan my available hours to make that happen. I arrive at my appointments no more than 45 minutes early. I certainly don't want to be waiting out in the street like the NFI driver who got killed sitting outside Clorox in Tampa.

 

Only one problem with that thinking. You might del to crackville and not get a load just yet. You find close parking as you want to keep your OOR low. You find your next load does not pick up till morning. You going to drive 100 miles out to park? Just to drive 100 back and be OOR 200 miles? It is not always poor planning that puts you in a bad spot. The best of preplanning can leave you hanging.

 

True enough... I was basing some of that on the fact that I DON'T sit waiting for a load. I have only ever had to wait overnight to get a load one time—when our load planner was off for bereavement. Things were kind of up in the air that week.

BUT... if I were to work for a company that didn't have the awesome load planner we have (the guy is worth his weight in gold), I would NOT wait overnight in crackville (Miami, south Dallas, New Orleans proper, etc.). My personal safety trumps OOR.

I remember one particular time in the City of Industry, waking up to crime scene tape where two cops had been shot to death in the intersection, not more than a few hundred feet from where I was parked. That changed my whole way of thinking on parking overnight in bad areas.

 

That' one of the problems... best trip planing can leave you in a bad spot...Don't get me wrong, trip planning s a good thing, but as I say you can not plan for everything. OOR miles sometimes have to go by the way side for safety, personal and truck wise. All we can do is what we can do and use our better judgment. I don't like to be bothered by the scum but some times it is easier to deal with than driving so far OOR...

 

All the stories everyone has told is the precise reason I sleep at some pullout on the side of the road instead of at a truckstop.

 

and - truth to tell, you don't have to spend the night in West Armpit to have your whole life go right down the swirly...

case in point: today in.. NY, I think, to members of rival gangs decided to have a gunfight. Not on the street. Not at a Bar...

In a Frelling TOYS R US.

Your life can turn to used dog food while you are stopped at one of them octagonal red signs...

 

That was in good 'ole California.

 

I believe that everyone has the right to make a living in this world. Because credit is so tight right now, Just explain to the Lot Lizard that you would glady pay them Tuesday for a hand job today.

 

...which is precisely why all known members of said gangs should be rounded up and tossed into a woodchipper while being broadcast live on Ooo-na-veesie-own.

 

never been approached sleepingin a porno store parking lot. guess they think I already took care of it.