Let's Get Physical pt 1

After sitting around in Foxboro, MA the weekend before last I made some miles for the week and found myself pulling into the yard late Saturday night.

Monday morning I am awakened with a phone call. It was my boss telling me I had a Macon, GA load and it was ready NOW. In 30 minutes I managed to get showered, pack my things, and drive across town. I was pretty damn impressed with myself.

Problem 1. I can't find my truck in the yard. That means one thing. Yup it's in the shop. I just had it serviced so I was confused. As I walked in the shop, the foreman had that look on his face. He told me that the APU was being serviced now. "Do you have 10 minutes?" He asked. Sure. He was curious about how long I knew I had this load I was on and I told him 30 minutes. He was mad at my dispatch because they didn't tell him that my truck needed to be ready to go. So I go tell my dispatcher. His eyes literally rolled up into his head. I put my belongings in my truck and parked my fourwheeler. Now comes the good part.

Problem 2. Truck will not start. It said NO! I am beginning to think that my truck feels so violated by the shop workers that it refuses to cooperate. It runs well with nothing done to it for weeks, but the minute it LEAVES the shop something is wrong. A little backwards if you ask me. What's the problem? It needed the batteries replaced. They didn't even last a year?!

I tell my dispatcher the situation. His reply was just the load there when you can...no big deal. Cool. These Macon loads are drop but usually we are only allowed 26 hours to get there.

An hour later I pulled out of the yard I stop at the truckstop down the street for a quick cup of coffee and some food for later. I was in and out within 15 minutes. My phone was LIT up with missed calls and a qualcomm message telling me to call. Dang! Before I could call back the big boss called me. This was my boss's boss. The only ones he can't boss around is the owners. Pretty high up. He says,"Steve here's the deal. That load HAS to be there in Macon by 9AM. No ifs, ands, or buts. If you fell you can't, pleas bring it back to the yard."

Problem 3. This trip is 750 miles. I have a 65 mph truck. One could legally log on paper 714 miles at 65 miles per hour in 11 hours driving time. But we aren't on paper. The highest one can get on elogs with a 65 mph truck is maybe 670. So I told the big boss ok I can do it. I made an immediate call to dispatch, "What's better? Logging out of the truck (then keep a paper log) or just taking the violation when I go over my hours?" My plan was to just go all the way there in one shot so I didn't have to worry about it. I was told to take the violation and it could be remedied.

So I drove over 750 miles straight only stopping for fuel and two bathroom/coffee refills. There was only one scale to cross while I was out of hours but they were closed and I had a story about how I am looking for safe parking but none could be had in Atlanta (which is where my hours ran out.)ready to use if pulled over.

Why was my boss like this for this load? My guess is that a much larger, cheaper trucking company is moving in on this customer so we are doing everything we can to make this customer happy so we can keep them. But it looks like the larger company might be winning anyways because they are cheaper. Quantity over quality can bite you in the behind. Oh well.