Wow, have I gotten behind on posts!  Sorry gang…

• Date(s): 3/5 to 3/6
• From/To: Owatonna, MN to Plano, IL
• Mileage: 441
• Cargo:  Pet Food

Yet another live load followed by a live unload, both with appointments.  At least the appointment times were reasonable and could be made without problem, or so I thought.  Owatonna was only a little south of Minneapolis, and I found the shipper and got my load with no problem.

I pulled in to a little stop on I-90 in New Lisbon, WI for the night with only about 3 1/2 hours left to drive for an 11 am appointment tomorrow.  I turned in confident that I’d have an easy day.  When the alarm went off the heater was still churning away and I was nice and toasty.  Problem was the dome light wouldn’t come on, indicating that the LVP had activated.  From what I had been told this should have also shut off the heater.

My first concern was whether the engine would crank, and sure enough the battery was drained far too low to produce anything more than a sad growl when I turned the key.  So much for the mechanics assurances…

I made the now too familiar call to SEM at ~5:30, and after a number of status checks from myself and Adam, one of the STRs on my board, the road service truck arrived ~11:45.  We got the truck running in short order and by 12:30 I was finally on my way to Plano to deliver the load.  Adam had contacted Customer Service for me and got the delivery changed to a drop, and changed the appointment time to ‘as soon as you can get there’.

The delivery was only ~75 miles from the Gary, IN OC, so Adam arranged to have me dispatched there for maintenance as soon as I was done with this load.  After arriving there ~7:30 pm I had a talk with the Estimator and learned that the Webasco heater isn’t included in the LVP circuit, however it does have it’s own low voltage protection and will shut off if the battery it’s connected to drops below a certain level.  Therefore, as the mechanic in Des Moines said, the heater should not drain the batteries to the point of not being able to crank the engine.  In fact, there supposedly is no way I can drain the batteries with any accessories, so there is in fact something wrong with the truck. The Estimator wrote my truck up and said they’d get to it ~9am tomorrow, so I had a nice hot shower and dinner in the OC and turned in for the evening.

The next morning the truck was in the shop by 9 as promised.  I was paged and told it was ready ~3 that afternoon after they replaced all 4 batteries, repaired a cable at the altenator, and (surprise!) put on 8 new drive tires.  I updated my STL and sent in a fresh MAC 18, then settled back to await my next load.

By the way, while I was waiting on the truck I spoke with my STL about running out of gas last Saturday.  Turns out that is counted as an incident and therefore I’m no longer eligible for my bonus this quarter…again.  She said it was automatic and no extenuating circumstances would be considered, so I let it go at that.  Oh, did you notice I said “she”?  The STL on our board was suddenly changed.  There hasn’t been any sort of announcement yet as to what’s going on, but Adam (STR) told me about it last week.

• Date(s): 3/7 to 3/8
• From/To: Gary, IN to Livonia, MI
• Mileage: 224
• Cargo:  Pre-recorded Home Entertainment Products

Picked up a relay at the Gary, IN OC that had a live unload appointment for 5pm on the next day, and since the drive would only take ~4 1/2 hours I ended up spending another night there.  When I checked to see if the trailer had arrived I was told that it had, but was due for a PM and wouldn’t be released until that was done.  This is something that the driver who dropped it should have taken care of but obviously didn’t.

I next stopped in at the Estimators desk to see if they’d get the PM taken care of overnight, and they said they would be happy to. The next morning when I checked in at the Driver Services desk to pick up the trailer it still hadn’t been done, so I got to babysit the thing until they could get to it.

All of the wasted time sitting at the OC the last couple of days netted me a 34 hour restart that I didn’t need (or want).  Guess that’s my punishment for my truck breaking down.

• Date(s): 3/9 to 3/11
• From/To: Troy, MI, Perrysville, OH, and Lancaster, OH to Newnan, GA
• Mileage: 839
• Cargo:  Store Merchandise

This was a first for me; a three stop pickup.  All three were live loads (of course) and all three had appointment times, but the times were actually planned to allow for both travel time and fit within my 14 hour clock (barely).

The first pickup was at 9am in a suburb of Detriot so there was a bit of center-city commuting traffic to deal with, but all went well.  The second was in a small town about half way between Akron and Columbus, and went as smoothly as the first.  The last was a few miles southeast of Columbus and at first went better than the first two; I was loaded and waiting at the shipping office for the Bill of Lading within a half hour of arriving.

Then we looked at the paperwork and discovered that they had put the wrong load on my truck, so it was back to the dock for an unload and reload.  Unfortunately the reloading process took much longer than the original load, so by the time they finished I was out of hours and ended up spending the night in their lot.

On Saturday morning I got an early start and drove as far as the Atlanta OC before stopping for the evening.  On Sunday morning I made the delivery in Newnan, less than an hour’s drive from Atlanta.

• Date(s): 3/11 to 3/12
• From/To: Atlanta, GA to Summerville, SC
• Mileage: 302
• Cargo:  Recycled plastic

After delivering the last load this came in; pick up another relay at the Atlanta OC and deliver it the next day.  The load was nothing special, but the driver(s) who relayed it ignored the fact that there were repairs needed and scheduled maintenance due on the trailer (again).  Therefore, as a few days ago in Gary, I ended up waiting most of the rest of the day for maintenance to finish the trailer.

They got through with the maintenance just before 5pm, but there was an extra problem.  The repairs on the box couldn’t be made until it had been unloaded.  The outcome was that I ended up delivering the load on Monday, then driving the empty trailer to Charlotte for repair.  Strangely the timing worked out just right and I got to spend the night at home.

• Date(s): 3/13
• From/To: Brevard, NC to Charlotte, NC
• Mileage: 240
• Cargo:  Consumer Goods

This was waiting when I got in on Tuesday morning; pick up an empty trailer at a church in Charlotte (?), take it to Brevard for a live load, then bring it back to the Charlotte OC to drop for relay.  I’ve stopped asking…I just did it and was happy to spend another night at home.

• Date(s): 3/14 to 3/15
• From/To: Lexington, NC to Edison, NJ
• Mileage: 568
• Cargo:  Consumer Goods

This is getting old; once again I went to pick up a trailer (this time an empty) and the previous driver had dropped it without reporting that it was unusable.  The first clue was when I tested the brakes and found out it had none.  There was no report on record in maintenance, so I had them write one and went looking for another empty trailer.

The delivery was dated two days out but it would only take a day to drive to Edison.  Fortunately the Load Advance team was able to move it back a day.  It was an otherwise uneventful load.