most people think all truck drivers do is run down the highways of america taking things from one place to another......and that is a good part of our job.....it's the part that usually makes sense and earns us a paycheck......but it surely isn't all that we do.......on some loads, just the paperwork involved, alone, could send the hardiest of pencil pushers into a frenzy.....and then there's the driver's who load and unload their own freight......we try to avoid those kinds of loads.....occasionally we'll get stuck with one and i always argue with them over it since i have a strong aversion to touching freight.....it's not that i'm lazy....well, not entirely that i'm lazy, it's just that while i drove 500 miles thru the nite hauling said freight, i never once looked over and seen a shipper or receiver sittin in the passenger seat telling me funny stories to help keep me awake.......they never fuel, they have never once come out and cleaned my mirrors.....nothin........so i take great offense when they think i should work on their dock......just doesn't happen very often and i can assure you, NEVER without protest!!.....
anyway, the other big part of truck driving is the sitting-and-waiting........the past couple of weeks we've been doing alot of that.....first off because our load got picked up by another truck....then an entire week in a hotel with our truck in the shop.......then another day & a half waiting on a shipper to rework a load that was too heavy on the front....TWICE.....they reworked it and still couldn't get it right.......i mean, jeesh, it's not like they load trailers everyday..(insert sarcastic eye roll here)...........we didn't sit & wait much for the next few days, as we came down from seattle to los angeles, delivered, picked up another load and headed to baltimore......three days comin across the country meant three days that they had to get everything worked out on this load......three days till our 0700 delivery appointment this morning that i got up at 0300 in order to make on time......just to be turned away from the port gates because someone had not bothered to register this truck at the port for the past three days.......hmmmmmm.....can we say "incompetence"???????.......
so now it's 1645 eastern time and i'm still hooked to the same load and still waiting for them to tell us where to take it.......we are supposed to be headed home as soon as we do drop it.......i can assure you i won't be sittin & waiting for them to tell me to go!
