Snackbar is chillin'....at Shaffer

It took until almost midnite to get 2/3's of a trailer of palatized potatoes loaded last night. Then I caught some zzz's. Managed to get thru Philly with only a few minor slowdowns. Now it's off to Gas City for a Friday delivery without any problems (unless something goes amiss between now and then).

 

Over the past few tours of duty here, things have cooled off as far as my average length of haul, and my miles per day per load. The 1st 3 or 4 months, I had multiple runs each month that were 1500-2000+ miles, and did at least 1 or 2 34hr restarts during the month. The last tour of duty I had 1 run over 1500, and 0 restarts. And so far this month, the only restart I have had was during my hometime. My daily average miles for my loads have gone from 500+/day to 3-400/day. Yesterday, after getting a few hours sleep after live loading this load, they sent me a preplan of a load I couldn't make the 4 am Saturday del time (I was sitting in dead stopped construction traffic in the middle of nowhere OH - with no bypass route, 5 hours from my del of this load). I told them I would need a few hours because I couldn't be there by the preplan's appointment. My A/M said do my best because I was the only driver available with enough hours to make it there. Then, just at his quitting time, they pulled me off the preplan and put me on another load...but it's a 500 mile load that picks up Friday, delivers MONDAY. Told them 'no', that was unproductive...and that I am not a regional driver and that if they want me to stay out beyond the minimum required days for my division, that these overnight shorties have to stop and the longer runs must return, I went into temp control because they generally have longer, more productive loads. If I wanted daily 1 day loads that burn my logbook up, I would have gone to the dry side...I got no response, and haven't been pulled from the crap weekend load yet.