You know there is nothing better than waking up in the morning listening to a stupid radio show (The Big Dumb Show) in the back ground of the garage and hearing the occasional loud curses of the mechanic fixing your tire. It just doesn't get any better than that. Of course, waking up to the sounds of the ocean on the beach where you are staying on vacation also ranks very high (grin).
I was able to pull the truck into the garage shortly after waking up without hitting anything (Note: I don't make it a habit of hitting things with the truck. Just the occasional...er...never mind.). OK, I'll be serious (but on the other hand, why start now?)
Anywho, the tire had a nail in it and once it was repaired, off I went towards Chillicothe, OH. The trip went fine until my dispatcher sent a message over the QualComm unit. A portion of it appeared on the instrument display on the dash. What I could read was "Can you please re" (the rest of the message doesn't fit on the display). Since I was almost to Chillicothe, I thought they couldn't possibly want me to relay the load back to the nearest relay drop yard. Since I couldn't tell exactly what the message said, I had to pull off at the nearest exit, stop the truck, and read what the message said. It turned out that the message said that I needed to rescan my logs of last week for some reason. That's odd. I scanned them at a truck stop and got receipts indicating that they went through. I suspect that what is really going on is that the company wants to withhold last week's pay check and combine it with this week's paycheck. Why? If they find anything wrong with the truck, then they can deduct it from my paycheck before giving me what's left over. At any rate, I was irritated that messages like this couldn't be sent at the end of the day, or after you've sent your "arrived at destination" message. Stopping to look at messages could mean the difference between making your ETA and missing it (I made this ETA with 15-minutes to spare).
At Chillicothe, I waited over an hour once I was unloaded to receive my next load assignment. I headed back the way I came to just north of Dayton, OH to pick up a load of canned goods. Once loaded, I relayed that trailer to the drop yard in Cincinnati, OH. There I met a veteran trucker who had just joined my company and was very irritated about the her relay load being late. She had been waiting for the driver of her relay load for about an hour when I showed up and he still had one-hour and one-half to go from Knoxville, KY. She will be letting the appropriate individuals know exactly how she feels first thing in the morning.
My next load assignment had me going back up to Dayton, OH and picking up a trailer there and taking it to North Carolina. However, once there, my trailer release valve on the tractor decided to stop working. So instead of getting down the road a bit, I ended up going to the Freightliner dealership where I ran out of hours for the day. Two days-in-a-row where I experienced an equipment malfunction. My delivery ETA may have to change but I may just make it. Stay tuned!
For what it's worth, I vote for Ohio has having the worst road signage in the Midwest. Today, I spent a total of 35-miles back tracking due to poorly designed/poorly placed road signage. For example, the exit for the Freightliner dealership had a "south" indicator, but no "north" indicator (if it did, I sure couldn't see it). So, I figured that the "north" ramp would be after the interchange. Wrongo. You were supposed to get off on the "south" ramp and then that ramp split into a "north" and "south" exits. So I missed the exit. 11-miles later I finally could turn around and head back to where I needed to be.
miles driven = 471
5:32:42 AM
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