Monday, December 6th The roads weren't too bad going into Minneapolis early this morning. I arrived at the receiver at 2:45 AM and then caught some more sleep as my appointment wasn't until 7:30 AM. Even thought I had the first appointment of the day, the guy after me got to back his truck into the dock adjacent to where I would be backing in first--otherwise he wouldn't be able to maneuver his truck around mine to back in. The docks are very old. You back into a narrow garage-like space that's just big enough to fit the frame of your trailer. Even so, your tractor and part of your trailer sticks out into the street. He took about 20-minutes to get his rig where it needed to be. It took me close to 12-minutes. It certainly is one of those backing maneuvers that you marvel at how you actually did it once it's backed in.
This was one of those "infrequent" times where you helped the company receiving the product unload the truck (Hmm...I've had two of these in one week). After the trailer was unloaded, I was looking forward to what my next big trip would be since I had a brand new slate of hours. There was none. No preplan--nothing. Only a note from my dispatcher (Mr. K) that asked me why I was late for the appointment. I about "hit the roof." I took a deep breath and typed a message back on the QualComm that he should double-check the message I had sent when I arrived at 2:45 AM this morning. He wrote back that he received it shortly after 8:00 AM this morning. I wrote back saying that perhaps the tall buildings in downtown Minneapolis interfered with the sending of the message. In any event, there should be a date stamp when I sent the message (at least there was on my end). I then said basically that this was unacceptable for me not to have some sort of pre-plan since he knew I was--even if he received my message shortly after 8:00 AM (I was not happy if you couldn't tell by now!) The end result was that I had to wait another one-half hour for him to find a load for me.
My "long trip" turned was not to be. I was to take my empty trailer up to St. Cloud, MN and picked up another empty trailer that had something wrong with it and bring it back to our home terminal in Marshfield, WI. So much for a big mileage day. (dare I say week?) At St. Cloud, I had an unpleasant experience with a Guard Shack Nazi (Similar to the Soup Nazi in Seinfeld) in picking up the empty trailer (I'll skip the details for now--I'm starting to yawn rather heavily!)
Then it was back through Minneapolis and on to Marshfield. On the way I stopped and bought a new hammer. My old hammer shattered as I was trying to remove a nail in the trailer I left at St. Cloud (and no--the company won't reimburse me for the cost of a new hammer).
It misted the whole time to Marshfield but I avoided the freezing rain that was forecast for areas I traveled through. At Marshfield I fueled, dropped the trailer, washed (rinsed) the truck off, called my wife, ate supper, wrote this little bit, and then crashed. (Goodnight!)
miles driven = 411
10:13:56 PM
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