The joys of Trucking (Patreon)

The week was mostly uneventful, being on the east coast means it’s mainly short hauls, but with my vacations at the end of the month and the company’s inability to plan more than 4 or 5 days in advance, I’m not surprised they are keeping him here until then.

The big, annoying, thing was Saturday.

When I delivered on Friday, I was given a Saturday morning pickup. Those are uncommon, but they happen. Since the information indicated I needed to identify myself as a different company, I knew this was a load we’d bought from a broker. The company does that when they can’t find something on their own and doesn’t want to have me sit for a full weekend. Those loads can be problem because we don’t control how they are setup.

I was told my appointment was for 9am, I was there at 8:30. I checked in, was informed my load wasn’t ready and that they would come tell me when it was my turn. Not an auspicious start.

At 1pm, I sent in to check where we were, because my plan was to get to Montreal where the trailer was to be dropped and do a reset. The shipper was only 5 hours away from there, but that now meant an evening arrival. I found out the load wouldn’t be ready before 3pm.

I wasn’t happy, but other than simmering and bitching online, there isn’t anything I can do. So I let Dispatch know and went back to waiting.

It was 9pm by the time I was finally in the dock. 10:30pm is when they were done. Looking back, I suspect 9pm was always the appointment time and Dispatch simply misread the information when they sent it to me.

Having said that, I’m actually happy they got me there early (Although I still wish it would have been later, like 1 or 2pm) when I left the shipper, the lineup of trucks waiting for their turns was so long that it stretched all the way onto the street. If I’d arrived at 9pm, I doubt I wouldn’t have been in the door before the sun came up.

By then I decided to drive through the night so I could spend all of Sunday parked.

I watched Mary Poppins Returns. It was interesting, the songs were good, but there was something missing. Maybe it’s because I’m older than when I first say the first one, but this one felt shallower. For as good as the songs were they barely felt like the added anything to the story, other than making it a musical.

And that’ll be it, so I’ll see you on the next one.