What Does It Take To Be The Best?

Man life is a yo-yo! Haven't been here to see this in a few weeks. Flexibility and patience at play lately. There's changes a brewing! Forgiveness is another one we forget. Mistakes happen.

Last week I had a sweet deal coming back to Oregon from near Morris, Illinois. I made my delivery early, and arrived at the shipper 5 hours early. They were more than happy to load me that early, but I had hauled onions 2 loads ago and the could still smell them. I had spent a night with the doors open and spread coffee to kill it. I am unable to smell it when it is that faint because I'm hauling onions every time I go East. So, I just let them do their thing and when they said they smelled garlic, I knew it was there.

I went down and got a washout and returned, they had me sit about 4 feet off the dock with the reefer running and the doors open for 2 more hours. They tried, but the manager could still smell it so after a few calls and more sniffing they finally just rejected it. In total I was there for 8 hours. I.was.HOT!

My DM found another load for the next morning out of Indianapolis and gave me the choice to try again with the next shift at the place I was or take Indy, so I boogied on Indy. Turns out they rejected 6 more trailers. Everything worked out fine for me though.

Because of the whole debacle I got a phone call from someone and got to learn more about how our freight actually moves for our company, and a few more bits about what's going on behind the scenes. It was good for me to get that info. It helped me be able to forgive the situation and leave it behind, be fair in asking for detention, and get on with it. All in all, I ended up gaining an extra 100 miles, and had that bummer day to talk to a realtor and my loan officer. Looks like I'll be buying a house real soon 😬🏜

I've had similar experiences with leftover odors. I pulled a load of frozen crab from the Oregon coast to a place in Sacramento a couple years ago. Even frozen solid, as soon as I opened the door the stank of fish hit me so hard I dry heaved. My next load was coming out of a bakery in Lodi, so I ran through the Blue Beacon there to get the box hosed out in the hopes that the smell would be gone. I ended up an hour late to my pickup because of the line at the truck wash, and they started to give me grief about it...until I pointed out that I didn't think they wanted their frozen rolls to smell like crab cakes when they got to their destination. Oddly enough, their attitude did a complete 180. Funny, that.