Earth City, Missouri

Sunday, September 28, 2008

Earth City, Missouri

We are in Missouri waiting for a Monday morning delivery. We had gone home for a few days from Miami. We relayed a load to Wildwood, Florida that was going to Laredo because we had hi lighted for home. We picked up a Michaels load in Jacksonville from the seasonal warehouse that went to four stops in Nashville. This was another screwed up load. First we had a 06:00 drop and hook in Jacksonville. The streets were flooded with cars and people wading water up to their waist. I found the warehouse only to find that no one was there. I called operations to inform them of the situation. The information that she said that she had was that they open between 06:00 – 07:00. The one warehouse came in at 08:15 and took about 30 minutes before he was ready to do the paper work to do the drop and hook. That only took a few minutes so I was ready to go at 09:00 but I hadn’t had a break. I had driven all night and had to do my 10 hour break. We had plenty of time because this was Saturday morning and our delivery was for Tuesday.

The deliveries: We had 4 stops on our delivery and they started bad. I was early for the first one. It was very difficult to get into the dock but I had plenty of time so that wasn’t a real issue. The unloading sucked. They Michael employees took two hours to unload and I had two hours between each stop. The truck was loaded with small boxes that had to be individually handled. My second stop was already late and it was going down hill from here. I get to the second stop at 100 Oaks Mall and the complete is under construction. They had just resurfaced the parking lot in front of Michaels so they had be back through a construction area half the length of the mall covered with equipment, materials, and vehicles. They had to take down and move about a dozen cranes, move materials and fences for me to get backed up to the dock. It took more that an hours to get to the dock. It was about impossible to get there and then another 2 hour unloads. The construction was totally pissed. I had tied up about 2 dozen men for over three hours to make the delivery. One of the constructions Forman parked his ATV where I couldn’t get out and left it. I again had to call operations to get then to call the store to get it moved. The last two stops went well but they were also 2 hour unloads so my 05:00, 07:00, 09:00, 11:00 stops became 05:00, 10:00, 13:00, 15:00 stops.

We picked up on Friday after being home for a few days for this Monday delivery. This was only a 450 miles total dispatch. We get to the pickup and there was a ConWay Freight truck at the dock that they have just loaded with my load. Oops! They had not only loaded it but had unloaded what was on the truck so they could put this load on the front and reloaded his other freight. They didn’t want to unload and call ConWay to see if they wouldn’t take it to Nashville and have me drive back 100 miles to Nashville and get it there. They didn’t go for that so they unloaded the ConWay Freight and loaded me.

I will have a 34 hour restart and I hope that I can get some miles.