Friday, January 13th, 2012
I suppose it didn't even occur to me what day it was today. I caught a bit of something about superstition whilst traversing the drivers' lounge this morning. Deepak Chopra was saying something about humanity being bamboozled by some kind of superstition, and the only thing that really caught my ear was “bamboozled.” How often do you hear that word used in everyday speech? On with the day.
Picking up from yesterday, it turns out that the trailers going to Ohio were finally located, but they were someplace in California. I am happy for whoever is getting those loads out of there. California is always soft for freight this time of year (even more than other times!). I awoke 2 minutes before receiving a text message with new load info. I was rather disappointed, since it was merely 104 miles from Sumner to Longview, WA hauling cardboard to be recycled. Being of the proactive persuasion, I put in a general message on my Qual-comm asking for a back up plan. Lo and Behold I got one going from Portland, OR to Buena Park, CA.
Overall, this is good and bad, but then isn't everything? I get a good 1,000 miles to run by Monday at 0700, and i avoid the storm barreling down the west coast tomorrow. Sweet. I suppose one could consider it bad in that I'll be stuck in Southern California where it is warm and dryish while waiting for a load. The scuttlebutt in the drivers' lounge this morning has reported that they are 270 loads behind, meaning that there are 270 drivers just hanging out waiting for freight. Hmm. I guess we'll see.
Lots of things happened today, starting with picking up a trailer with a bad tire. I had this intuition to inspect the trailer well before starting my day. I've got to start listening to that stuff. So that made me a bit late for my appointment time, which really isn't a big deal at this place, since it is simply more bales of cardboard. No big whoop. So I sit for 45 minutes until they can squeeze me in. Time well spent playing banjo and eating some leftover pizza from last night. Backing into the dock, I consider myself prescient for buying a pair of vice grips to hold the pin on my trailer tandems since it was rather loose and would not fasten properly. I'm ahead of the game as I get unloaded, taking down the notes and directions for my next load. I'm not even finished with that short task when the dock worker is standing there telling me he's done. My trailer was empty in less than 15 minutes!
I am a lucky kind of guy, but part of me thinks that luck is made by how you approach the world. Earlier today I was sitting in the lounge surfing the web and reading my comics. The guy who had the other load to Ohio came and sat next to me. He was a nice enough guy, just not my type. He was rather into the video they had on TV about a high speed chase resulting in a sheriff's deputy being launched into the air by the car he was trying to stop with a tire strip. I went on to tell him how I don't need to hear about that kind of stuff, or see it and how that negativity just gets to us after a while. This is after listening to him go on about his problems with getting paid, and how Swift owes him $1,000 and how he wants to be in the half of the people who get paid well. I figure that I am already there and have always been there. I work hard and do my job the best I can. That said, I felt compassion for this guy.
Then there was the incident in Longview. Just getting to the dock, we have to bring our paperwork to the unloaders. I wished him a happy Friday and thanked him in advance. I let him borrow my notebook to sign my bills on, and he was rather grateful. I then said, “anything I can do to help, I don't get paid without your help. I can't do this alone.” Seems he took well to that then POW!, my trailer was empty as described above. Coming back to sweep all the leftover papers out, I brought my notebook with trip information along with my bills of lading and the scale tickets. I set them down next to the trailer on a pile of scrap paper left over from the process of unloading. Sweeping away, I become focused on this large pile of powdered laundry detergent that someone in Victoria, BC thought was ok to put into the cardboard recycling. If it was you Kimbert, I will be sorely upset with you. I figured I got a good lung or two full of that stuff as I swept, but I was still ... hehe... bamboozled by the speed with which he took 31 bales off my truck.
After the trailer was swept (with slight concern that the perfume from the detergent would cause my trailer to be refused at Nabisco / Kraft Foods) I got back into my truck and started setting things right. I was about to pull away when I remembered to finish writing the directions down, only to find that my notebook was gone. Going back to the dock, I looked around where the pile of scraps paper was, only to find that it was bare, and that those ligths from when I was sweeping was the unloader scraping all that stuff up. The first thing that came to mind was, “OH SHIT.” No bills = no pay, for me or the company. Not so good. I walk a bit down the ramp, wondering where he took all of that stuff he scraped up off the dock. Looking inside the building, I see countless rows stacked 7 bales tall. Bummer. There is so much paper in there that I had no clue where it would go, so I walk back to the dock in hopes my bills were pushed off the dock. As I am rummaging, the guy happens to return so I flag him down, and give a short explanation of the deep doo doo I am in. All the paper looks the same, especially when you work with it for a few years. Fortunately, it was the last area he scraped, and it was close by at the end of the dock. A short rifling through the scrap heap turned up my bills and notebook. High Fives for the both of us. I felt like I dodged a bullet, without the trench coat or cool Matrix music. I'm even more convinced that we make our own luck after this episode.
Now to get some rest and be grateful for another day :)
Wow! That's fantastic. Luck, karma - lots of love. :)
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