Best Laid Plans...

July 18, 2007

Today was a shining example of a bad day in trucking. I got underway about 9am this morning to make a two hour drive to my first stop. Today’s load was a little complicated, I stopped at a warehouse in one town to pick up half my load, then at another warehouse in another town to pick up the other half.

I’m southeast of Philly for the first stop, a location I don’t have very good maps for, and of course I get lost, and late for my pickup. I was only 15 minutes late, that’s an easy mistake to make up for. In all honesty, just finding a place to turn this thing around can take that long!

So I get loaded, and head to my next pickup location a few towns over, again I get lost but a little worse this time. I call the customer, get directions and get there 15 minutes ahead of my pickup time, or so I think…

It’s quarter till three, I am behind two other trucks loading, and the parking lot is a nightmare, gotta back down the whole lot, through employee parking, and two loading zones for two other companies that share this lot. I get backed up to the door at 3:10, and the pimply faced loading “dude” says he is done for the day, the loading crew goes home at three. He doesn’t have a drivers license, so he has to catch a ride with one of his buddies. I can feel that deer in the headlights feeling coming over me. I’m backed up to the dock, the four pallets I’m picking up are ten feet from the door, and this kid won’t load them, he walks away… I am quite capable of loading these things myself, but it would be useless to do without any paperwork.

Long story short, I’m now stuck at this loading dock till 6am for the morning crew to finish loading me. Calling my dispatcher, I find that I needed to be there no later than 3pm, which I was, and I had talked to the shipping manager before 3pm when I got there, and I did exactly as I was told…

The “Hotel Freightliner” will be at a local mall parking lot for the night.


Some days just don’t work right no matter how hard you try. This is my sixth day in a row of not having things go right. Can’t quite get the mojo in sync with the rest of the world. I’ve only run about 1,000 miles this week. I usually run around 3,000. When you get paid by the mile, this is obviously a slow week.

I’m looking on the bright side though, I’m headed to Ohio, where there is good freight to move long distances, my tractor has had all it’s maintenance done, and I’m ready to rumble. We shall see how Ohio treats me.