The rookie

As if getting woken up at 2am for maintenance that you called at 8pm isn’t delightful today is more sun for the sunflowers. Make it to Gary, put my truck in the shop. I have an assignment that I’m actively trying to do as of now it it is1406 and the place closes at 1600 I have a 15 min drive to pick up the loaded hazmat trailer assuming there’s nothing wrong with it. Make the hazmat call and my Qualcomm says 33 mile drive so really about a 45 mile drive..Mind you this is going to be in Chicago traffic so that intensifies the fun. Oh and btw the loaner truck I was reassigned to has a work order on it so I can’t leave the gate to Gary until it gets looked at. Is there any possibility that I deliver today??

 

Been a while but today was just one of them days.. had to put my truck in the shop cause I had a nasty leak that was going on for far to long as maintenance kept telling me to check back in a week to see if they had the part. But today I’m in a loaner truck had to transfer all my tools and sleep stuff as they said my truck wouldn’t be done til sat. And I’m supposed to be going home fri. So I wake up to an assignment things are looking good brush my teeth head to the trailer in the Oc and there’s no wash out slip... Had to wait for them to get me one which caused me a slight delay . And the assignment read as a heat in transit but not a temp control. For temp control load they nag the hell out of you asking for temp updates but I guess not an all for heat in transit. Normally the commodity..give a temp range. So I walk on the office the guy asks can you maintain the products temp with heat in transit.. the one thing I didn’t grab for the truck was coolant. So , “No but I have to drive past our terminal I can have it hooked up in less than an hour.” Ok we can’t load you until you have coolant...original appointment was at 12 made it a 1300(wash out ticket) drove back to Schneider and was told I couldn’t get loaded until 20:00... almost bedtime but alright.. got loaded had the lines already hooked up was fully expecting and ready to dump 6 bottles of coolant in the truck... so I lined my bottles up and had them ready.. the freakin trailer was already charged apparently this is a trailer they use often cause the security guy knew more about the trailer than I did when he checked me the first time I arrived. Pretty much losta whole day to a rookie mistake and a truck swap but I’m still kickin

 

To make that assignment even better it was hazmat and it was going to the Cleveland area...The only approved route is non hazmat but I was still skeptical... made it around the time I said I would with about 6 hours on my clock. Was told to stage for an hour then head back to the scale ..they was having a shift change. Sat on the scale for about another 45 before they started showing up. Driver from another company came in and said they loaded him halfway then went on shift change and he’d been waiting for 2 hours for them to comeback so after about 3 and a half hours I’m finally set to to get unloaded .. it only took about an hour to get finished. Pulled up to the scale house to check out and get paper work signed. The guy says you might wanna hurry up cause csx is here.. I’m thinking I have a few minutes.. soon as I walk out the scale house I see the guy closing the outbound gate to block for rail cars. At this point I still had 2 hours and plenty of time to make it to i80 to get to a rest stop.. the little rest stop on i90 was already full before I even arrived so that was out of the question plus I didn’t want to park hazmat on a non hazmat route even if it’s approved. So I knew I had about an 1hour 20 min trip to the service plaza.. problem is I only had and hour 10 left when csx was finished. Made it to the plaza with negative 5 on my clock took 5 hours and 50 mins for a hour unload. So that day was awesome considering I was supposed to be home earlier that night

 

Wow mine wasn’t that bad but speaking of fun loads they had a local guy out and gave me the assignment... it’s one of those where two companies are in the same building and one is buying out the other but they still function as 2 companies type deals. Sounds fun right, so at the corner it specifically says turn right for company A(company I’m delivering too) keep straight for company B.. nothing mentioned about company in remarks/bol and gps says arrived right before the corner... so I make the right head in Guy tells me to he didn’t know they had a truck coming... goes and gets other people and they start getting totes ready.. then somebody else said tanker? He has to go through the back.. problem is there was no turn arounds on that street except for in another companies yard.. so I get to the other entrance and the guard is like idk where to send ya.. ask those guys unloading up there...unloaders were from company b they were just like yea drive around youll see it..... in my big tanker ok... drove around and it was a loading dock for vans. Parked in the middle of the lot(figured it’ll get someone angry and point me in the right direction) went inside to a ghost town. Found someone and he told me my guy will be out in a sec sit tight...30 mins later..my guy shows up points me to the Spotify parked guy says you can’t climb up top we’ll do it and we need a lab sample. The back in was a blindside back too (pita).

Then today arrived at the place and was greeted with “this the product from yesterday?” Nah this (shows bol) Sh-*** give me a minute didn’t know your were coming lol... and it was multi compartment...used all 100 feet of hoses.. had to stop twice for them to dump some of the second compartment into totes cause the actual tank was too small. On top of that they asked for a rear unloader cause of the sloped driveway so I had about 20 gallons of heel.

 

Thanks man I appreciate It just wanted to share my experience for the next person looking to get into tankers