Taking a break

Well I'm here in the Big D. Dallas, TX for those of you who aren't sure where that is. It's some decent weather outside. The sun is shining, not very many clouds in the sky.  My only complaint would be the fact that it's a bit chilly still. Yes TX gets cold.  As a matter of fact it snows in the Dallas area.  Look at the Super Bowl last year, it was almost fubar because of the ice/snow storm.

I have had a very rough week.  From weather delays in Wyoming to equipment problems in California I almost thought I might not make it to Dallas on time.  Thankfully, I'm a professional at what I do and I got the load here safely and on time.  It was a rough go getting it here, specially considering the personal problems I've been dealing with, but I got it here.

Let's start with how things went in California.  I made it up and over Donner's Pass without any issues, which was good.  I had heard that they might have Chain Control in effect.  This driver has chains on his truck because the law requires him to but that jewelry is for display purposes only.  I don't put chains on my equipment to get onto a slick or icy mountain.  If I get surprised while I'm already on it, I'll chain it up to get off the mountain but if Chain Control is in effect my rig stops at the closest truck stop at the base.

When I got to my delivery, I had just enough time to pull into a K-mart parking lot outside my customers gate.  I had found, however, a bad marker light during my post-trip walk around.   I called to have Schneider Emergency Maintenance fix it but they wanted me to wait until daylight hours to drive it 60 miles to the French Camp terminal or at least wait until regular business hours to fix the light so they didn't get charged the after-hours.  In a rare form, I figured I'd be o.k. with waiting until business hours.  Turns out there was a vendor about 5 miles down the street, so I took it down there.  They initially wanted me to drive it to their terminal in the morning but I explained to them that I don't roll with bad equipment, especially not passed a DOT scale.  That's like walking into the lion's den with raw meat strapped to your chest.

So I headed over to the vendor to get my lights fixed, and this is where my shitty day started.  It took them three hours or more to replace two marker lights.  I'd have done it myself but they were top rail lights.  One had corroded the plug off and the other was about to do the same.  Apparently after the Tech came out and told them what was wrong with it, they never bothered to call SEM to get approval to fix it.  I think tried to save SEM some money and offered to fix them myself, because the vendor was telling me it was going to take another hour before the tech would even start the repairs.  Turns out, SEM doesn't want you climbing up to the top of the trailer to make repairs on their equipment and would rather spend the $143 for one hour's labor.  Thankfully the vendor had the tech repair it immediately. Then it was off to Stockton, CA to pickup my load, that by my trip-plan was supposed to have been picked up in the morning, not the afternoon.

I pull into my customer in Stockton and the guard there is a jokester.  He was nice but he was all about joking around and cutting up.  He got the point after about the third time of telling me to smile that I was not interested in his shenanigans and I was there for business.  Unfortunately for me, he was still more interested in being a comedian and failed to realize that my paperwork was sitting in his little shack.  He told me my load wasn't ready and directed me over to the bobtail holding area after telling me where to park my empty. Well anticipating that I was going to have to drive much later than I intended I figured I'd grab a nap which didn't work out too well because of the fighting I was doing in my personal life. Which is a whole separate blog that I'm not even sure will ever get written and if it does not sure it'll ever be published.  Well about two hours later the new guard comes up to my truck after shift change and confirms my pickup information.  Walks back over to his shack and comes back and apologizes to me because my load had, in fact, actually been ready the entire time I was sitting there waiting.  Awesome, I get screwed over because someone isn't professional enough to know when to work and when to joke. So there's another two hours wasted, totaling five hours of lost time on the day. While I was doing my pre-trip on the trailer I was picking up I found that the tire was extremely low on tread and would not pass a DOT inspection.  Thanks to which ever driver doesn't know how to check tread depth or that you're required to get it changed at a certain level. Thankfully for me, so I thought, our French Camp yard was about 5-8 miles away.  I typically will only drive defective equipment no more than 15 miles unless there is a DOT scale. So I head over to the terminal, stopping first to scale the load at the truck stop on the way.  When I get there I'm told it'll be about an hour or so wait before they get me in the shop.  Really? The express bays at all of our terminals are usually capable of cranking out tires and express repairs in minutes.  At least every time I've ever been to one.  It's never taken me more than 30 minutes to get into the shop and a tire almost always only takes 10-15 minutes.

I sat for nearly an hour before getting pulled into the bay.  That wasn't as horrible because I decided to make the best of the wait and get some paperwork scanned in, walked Gizmo for a good a little while. Walked around and snapped a few pictures of a few trucks that had some major whoopsies. They're attached. But back to the shop.  While I was in the shop, I'm doing a little bit of trip planning and start to realize it's been awhile since I've been released from the shop so I look in my mirror and much to my surprise the there are three tech at the rear of my trailer, none of which are working on the trailer but are sure having a good ole time cutting it up.  Well I sit there for another twenty minutes or so and finally get tired of the fact that they still have not completed my work.  I walk around and confront them and get told that I just need to wait and if I don't like it don't come there.  Well I blew up at notion and kinda went off.  Thankfully I caught myself walking back towards the trailer and instead turned around but made sure to tell the supervisor who was standing there just letting his tech speak to me disrespectfully that it was uncalled for. Got all their names and the number to the main supervisor of the shop.  That conversation was reassuring that this was not their standard operating procedure and I was assured the problem would be rectified.  I'll see when I go back.

Well with all these delays I had during the day, plus the nearly non-stop personal arguments during my down times I was spent.  I left the yard hoping to get the two hours further down the road that were left on my log but I was still steaming from the utter disrespect and lack of urgency on getting me rolling again that I was noticing my thought processes were becoming very unsafe to be on the road. So I pulled into the next truck stop I found, it had Popeyes, and called it quits after circling the lot about four times to find a spot. Incase you haven't gathered from my other blogs, Popeyes is this fat kids favorite place on the road to eat and always puts him in a better mood. I will often times plan my trips around where I can find a Popeyes. 

The next morning was fairly stress free, my personal stuff was not as prevalent of an issue and I hammered out a good days worth of driving. This brings us up to yesterday, which was also a pretty stress free day and much to my surprise I actually made my delivery on time.  I decided to make the executive decision that I was not going to book a load, nor grab an empty trailer and instead was going to line 5 (driving off-duty, which is not logged) down here to the OC and take a break.

I got up this morning, found a load to start my week after my break and then cleaned and greased my truck.  I found a small oil leak at the bell housing but it seems to not be anything to stress about at the moment.  I'll get it looked at when I'm home or have more downtime. I grabbed some food and a shower and as I'm typing this up I'm completing my laundry.  Then I'll be off to do some business bookkeeping and check on a load out of Denver, hopefully that'll be ready for me to pull back down here to Dallas. If I can make that work it's back up to Denver then to MO, that'll be a nice damned pay period if I can make it work. 

Well my laundry needs folded and I need thawed out because they've got the AC crankin in this laundry room. That catches up on the life of being on the road.  This country is beautiful in the western states so that's helped keep me calm. The stresses of life on the road can be overpowering as is evidenced by the fact that Schneider had one of our drivers go off the deep end and drive his truck into the shop at our Edwardsville terminal, then try setting fire to the building and eventually shooting himself. Sounds like he had quite a bit on his plate from the various different news articles I've read on the subject and I can say I've had some very stressful days myself.  Hopefully we can find out what drove him to these actions.  It might help us identify stresses in our own lives that we might not realize could effect us.  My thoughts go out to his family. 

Drivers are some of the most under-respected people on the planet. A lot of people fail to realize how absolutely vital to the survival of the world truckers are.  Without out us, no one would have the items and materials they need.  We would all be homeless, naked and hungry. 

Think about this the next time you are about to interact with us.  Think about the stresses that we deal with all while having to often times meet impossible delivery schedules and struggle to balance our lives with our work all while constantly on a time schedule.  Everything we do is on a time-schedule and we do not get near the amount of time away from this stress as most professions do from their work. Even when we do have time off, for a lot of us there is still no rest because things at home have gone unattended in our absence. I often times find my time at home with my three kids is more hectic than it is out on the road. I however, would not have it any other way.  I find my hectic home life to oddly be a stress relief.  I love the time I spend with my kids and am thankful that I made it home alive to see them.  Thankfully for me, I find relaxation in some of the simplest tasks in life and do not require much to relieve stress. 

Those of you on the road, keep it rubber side down and shiny side up! Take a day for yourself to relax and let some stress go, make it home alive! Nothing we haul is worth our health or life.