Snackbar is chillin'....at Shaffer

Wow...knowing Walmart, I bet they have them preloaded and secured so the drivers don't have to get their pretty white shirts dirty.

 

Another one of those days that test's your patience. Got to Wally in Gas City, dropped and hooked and thought...not a bad day (other than the godawful crosswinds that made me feel like I was in Wyoming). Picked up a nice, nearly new trailer and headed to my shipper. They have me on a Nestle load going to PA, then picking up a FL bound 2 stopper for Thursday. Get to shipper, sit in a 45 min line to check in only to find that my PU number has issues. And it took Shaffer another 45 min to answer me back about 'checking'...Lord knows I am trying to be patient, but there are days that make you want to wait tables or mop floors, as far away from trucking as possible.

 

Turns out, I interpreted the cryptic directions to the shipper wrong. (Plus the wrong name in the load info). These lead me to the plant, when I was suppose to be at the cold storage around the corner. Load instructions said Nestle, but I was suppose to be at Interstate Cold Storage (that warehouses Nestle). Once I found the location I was suppose to be at, it was a drop and hook. Then of course, the temps on the bills didn't match the temps on the load info, so there was yet another delay getting that straightened out so my load call would go thru. After 20 or 30 min of back and forth with dispatch, I just said 'fix it, I am out of here' and just started heading towards my destination. Several messages later (that I couldn't hear on the Peoplenet because the "Play" still doesn't work) I finally stopped at the Knightstown Love's to scale out and see what they wanted. Finally sent in my load call that the system would accept. Then tried to scan in the encyclopedia size pack of bills from my Gas City delivery...only to have the #### T'flow scanner jam...not once, but 4 times. I gave up on that. I normally use the sluggish Crete app which has Transflow built in, but anything over 10 pages, I use a truckstop. This one had 25 pages. Then, I hit a long construction backup on 70 between Knightstown and Richmond. I made it to the Love's in Richmond, backed into a spot, and called it a day. God do I miss open deck.

 

The loads out of the warehouse in Atlanta all have individual B/L from the place the freight originated (usually the west coast and NW Canada), then all grouped together under one master B/L from the cold storage. You have to sign each individual B/L, and the master, along with the cover sheet that has the temperature requirement on it. That way, each of the various shippers gets paid for their portion of the delivery (plus pays their portion of the shipping costs). In orientation, they say you can scan in the master and the pages that the receiver signed (or stickered if it's Walmart), then stick the rest of the bills in a trip envelope and mail them in, but I don't trust the USPS that much. With my luck, they'd get lost and then I would get this payroll deduction because I didn't return the paperwork. So I just scan it in. I am sure I'll hear about it though. The last time I scanned in that type of load, I got a message days later about how expensive truckstop scanning is...yada yada...they will claim it costs a bunch, but funny, they don't have a problem with data charges when sending you 50 or so unnecessary Peoplenet nag messages every friggin week