Thursday, December 9th The alarm clock didn't wake me. In fact, my phone (the alarm clock) apparently didn't go off (why I'm not sure; if there's no signal, the alarm feature seems to fail). Great. I'm an hour and one-half late; I'll miss the first appointment time and may not make the second appointment time. Not to worry though, after hours dispatch informs me I have a window of time on both drops. I breath a sigh of relief. I automatically disregard "windows" and concentrate only on the first time given. That's what I record in my brain. I need to start writing down these windows so that I don't look foolish when I call dispatch and find out I won't be late after all.
The first stop is at a nuclear facility in South Carolina. I found it strange that I (not the truck) was not inspected for any weapons of mass destruction and the like. I actually expected some sort of search process. There was none. I guess they felt that the delivery area was far enough away from the heart of the facility to worry about something bad happening. I think they should have some sort of protocol for every delivery vehicle coming within the premises of a nuclear facility. That would make me feel a bit more secure when I'm around such facilities.
Oh, if you're ever in South Carolina and there's road construction, don't expect the workers to put temporary road signs up if they tore down the original road signs. I made a wrong turn (hmm, should I take the road to the right or to the left?) and it cost me 30-minutes of finding a place to turn the truck around safely.
My next stop was Penske Racing's new facility. They are bringing all their teams under one roof (instead of being located in various locations). They are renovating a Panasonic headquarters that I assume was recently sold to Penske racing (In fact, I couldn't initially find the place because last week they changed the name of the road from "One Panasonic Way" to "Penske Way"). They still have a ways to go on the renovation, but you can tell it is going to be one state-of-the-art facility for drivers and their teams. I got hung up here since the contractors receiving the industrial equipment decided to hoist if from the truck via a crane to the roof of the building--all 22 pieces of it.
After unloading there, my next trip would take me home. When I arrived in South Carolina where I would pick the load up, they couldn't find the trailer I was supposed to have. Mr. K didn't include the trailer number that I was supposed to be picking up so I had no way of knowing if this was the right trailer or not (after-hours dispatch knew the trailer number I was assigned to which meant that Mr. K knew as well but didn't for some reason include it on my load assignment). After getting all this straightened out, I realized that there was no way I was going to get home tomorrow.
I went back through the Smoky Mountains and got a short ways into Tennessee before shutting down the evening. I'm glad I found a parking spot at a truck stop. They can be hard to come be after 8:00 PM!
miles driven = 473
11:43:02 PM
back to top |
