Since my last trip went so well, Karma had to balance itself out. And it didn’t waste any time either! This last trip was…well…interesting. I’ll try to describe everything that happened without confusing the heck out of you, but there’s no guarantees.
Our last delivery was just outside of Boston, Massachusetts. My company doesn’t have a whole lot of freight that leaves this area, so we had to sit around for a while. To make matters worse, there are very few good truck stops to speak of around Boston. Most of them even require you to pay to park there, to the tune of $20 per day. We got ourselves to the closest truck stop, if you can call it a truck stop. It basically consisted of a gas station with a gravel lot across the street to park in. Yup, $20 per day to park in a gravel lot. What a rip! My trainer will get reimbursed for the expense, but out of principle I think it’s a sham. We sat for nearly 24 hours, then we were told to “deadhead” (empty trailer) all the way to Murfreesboro, TN. The only problem with that is my trainer was already supposed to be home for his scheduled home time. So he wasn’t too happy. He didn’t take it out on me or anything, but it’s not a whole lot of fun sharing a truck with somebody who is in a bad mood.
Upon arrival to Murfreesboro, the shipper said they weren’t going to have our load available for about 12 hours. Wonderful. So, we sat and waited. While we waited, dispatch called us to run a favor for them. They wanted us to take a trailer to a repair shop. Some bright individual did a very good job at tearing off the driver’s side trailer door and it had to be fixed. So we grabbed the trailer and took it over to the repair shop, which was about 30 miles further away than dispatch told us. Now we were going to be late for our original pickup, which in turn would make us late for our delivery! This didn’t make my trainer any happier. Not to mention all the stares we were getting from other drivers thinking we were the ones who tore the trailer door off!
Since we simply dropped the trailer off at the repair shop, we had to “bobtail” (no trailer) back to the original shipper, who was supposed to have a loaded trailer available for us. Now, before I continue on, those of you who don’t know much about truck driving, understand that driving a tractor without a trailer is not very safe in adverse conditions.
You may have read about Murfreesboro in the news. There were some very severe thunderstorms just as we were getting back into town. Rain began flooding the roads, and that was followed by hail. Cars were pulling off the road and flat out stopping in the middle of the expressway, causing dangerous heavy braking and sudden traffic jams. Thankfully, my instructor was driving and handled it well. But as we continued, the tornado sirens began to sound. Then, off in the distance, I see a funnel cloud extending towards the ground. We were right near a truck stop, so we pulled in. The tornado touched down about 4 miles from our location, and unfortunately a mother and her young child died in the tornado.
Due to the severe weather and expressway shutdowns, everything turned into a mess. Our original load was cancelled and we were told to pick up a load in Nashville (dubbed “crashville” by truck drivers, since they have the highest accident rate of any other city in the US). But first, we had to go pick up a loaded trailer from a shipper that another driver wouldn’t make it to in time, due to the traffic jams after the recent storm. So, we go to the shipper, hook up to the trailer, and bring it back to Murfreesboro where the other driver would meet us. We were not allowed to drop the trailer, we had to stay with it until the other driver showed up. We ended up waiting 2 hours for this driver to finally show, which in turn, was going to make us late for the pickup in Nashville! To top it off, instead of that driver bringing us an empty trailer like we were told would happen, his trailer was loaded and being dropped off at the place we met him at. So we had to go on a goose hunt for an empty trailer we could use to bring to our new shipper. All these little things started adding up, and my trainer was getting real upset. Again, not taking it out on me, but still, it’s not fun to sit in a truck when your co-driver is in a bad mood. continue to page 2 –>
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See, THAT’s why drivers get reeeeeally mad when dispatch says “I just need you to do a quick favor”. What happened to you guys happens 95% of the time – it’s never what they tell you it is, and you wind up exhausted, frustrated, and behind schedule, and for what? They pay you $20 to do it. Wow, thanks. And then the dispatchers all sit around in the breakroom going, “Drivers are such babies. I just asked them to drop a trailer off at a repair shop. It’s like a 10 minute job.” That’s because most dispatchers have never been on the road and think that driving their Ford Taurus to the grocery store in town is no different than what they just asked you to do.
You’re totally right – drivers all seem to become one of two types of people – they either develop the patience of a monk, or become miserable and full of anxiety. You really do have to have the patience and attitude of a monk, but I’ll guarantee you there’s nobody out there that’s so patient they won’t find themselves wanting to choke somebody at least a couple times a week.
You can probably see why after 15 years of it I’m happily living alone on a hill in the middle of nowhere! LoL!
And then when you do all of the above in Brett’s comment, your story, everyone is mad at YOU because you now have lost your time to deliver the load on time. Everyone is mad at YOU for things that are not your fault.
Temper/patience is tested daily and you will have a time where you have had enough and let everyone have it if you have not done it yet. It will happen. Been there,done it–mostly over the phone which was a lifesaver to the idiot I was yelling at. You have got to speak up or get walked on. I did not have to have many “let someone have it” days but again it does happen.
It may even be something like you are not going to wait 3 hours for someone to get to work to tell you what empty trailer to take, so you take it from a customer who has some of your empty trailers (St Cloud MN) and get a NEW trailers of course and NOT send it in on the qualcomm until you are miles down the road (Twin Cities and farther east) or the office contacts you as they can’t find your trailer # in the qualcomm for what you are doing NOW. Yup, they want you to keep moving, I will get a trailer if its not assigned to me when the office is closed. You might be told that trailer was assigned to Mike when he arrives at 8. Too bad, Mike can get another empty at that place. Now I only remember doing this 1 time as all got the point to give me my COMPLETE assignment of load/pick up/delivery/and TRAILER NUMBER.