I Am Rookie, Hear Me Roar!!

When I was a real fresh solo rookie, this happened to me, and I wrote about it then:

"At the shipper last Friday, a delay caused me to burn up the remainder of my 14 while being loaded. While unfortunate, I wasn't too concerned since I still had till Monday to deliver. Plenty of time.

Once I was finally loaded I rolled over to a corner of the lot next to a couple other trucks and set up to get my 10hr break. Hung out a bit, watched trucks roll in and out, grabbed some chow, and hit the sack.

I got up at 0330 to head out. Imagine my dismay when I saw a locked gate blocking my exit... Uh oh...

Thinking someone will show up at 0700, I didn't sweat it but instead crawled back in the bunk for a little more shut-eye.

By 0800 I was still all alone in this lot. That's when the "duh" moment hit me: It's the weekend, nobody will be coming until Monday morning. This is not good.

So I called the two contact numbers I had. No luck, these were office numbers with a voicemail telling me the hours are mon-fri etc. I even googled the contact names hoping to get a cell number or facebook profile, something. Nada.

Facing the realization of spending the weekend here in this dusty lot, along with the fear of a service failure, I had to make the call of shame to weekend dispatch. He said he'd see what he can do, but he had the same contact numbers as I did, so I didn't expect much success.

At 0930 a pickup rolled up to the gate. Great, I'm getting out! He rolled his window down as I walked up to the gate and asks me "Are you the one who's letting me in?"

Um no I was hoping you'd be letting me out.

Turns out he was a contractor there to do some concrete work over the weekend. Someone was to be letting him in at 10am. WooHoo for me!

So the guy shows up and apologized profusely for not seeing me when he locked up the previous night. I'm not sure how he missed this big red truck of mine but nonetheless I took the blame for assuming I could park there. They do have overnight parking, but it's outside the gate across the road.

That was a valuable lesson, one that could've cost me much more than just the embarrassment."

Turtle, thanks for the post. I enjoy reading these as I pursue my career change. I am sure that would have been me too....glad it seemed to have worked out. As I was reading your post I was expecting the last paragraph to say that after phone calls and hours waiting you found a button to open the gate or something like that....thanks again, reading these will definitely help...

I always carry a stout chain with hooks on both ends and a big set of bolt cutters. You never know when they come in handy in an emergency. But I carry everything of course...