Alive, Frustrated but headed home

Monday turned out to be a disaster, not really just time wise. We arrived at the CN (consignee) about 1130 est, backed into the dock rather quickly and could tell they were working on it. There were 34 pallets that had to be separated into 64. This is one of those places where you have to hire a lumper. They won't let a driver use an powered jack. So if you want to do it yourself (and get paid for it) it's a lot of work. So you don't. With approval from Schneider I paid $80 for the lumper to unload and separate the load. Everything seemed to be going fine until the lumper left without letting anyone know she had not finished the paperwork. I heard other drivers complaining to the receiving department about how long it was taking and I didn't want to go there. You know, make the chef mad and you never know what they're going to do with your food. So we waited. While there we got our next w/a; head up to Eden, NC to the Miller plant and pick up a load of beer headed for Knoxville, TN. The w/a indicated the load would be ready by 2200, but I didn't have that much time on my 14 hour clock. I think we got out of there about 1800. I thought if we headed right out and didn't stop we could grab the load and be ready to head for Knoxville the next morning.

We were at the CN for about 6 1/2 hours. That's rough.

We made it to the Miller plant 15 minutes before my 14 hour clock ran out. Nope the load wasn't ready. No big deal really, we figured we could pick it up in the morning and still be headed west.
Not to be... every hour or so I check with the guard shack to see if it was ready till about 2000 last night. Finally we decided to pack it in and relax and make our plan for the next day. I had indicated we would deliver at in Knoxville at 1530 Wednesday. We THOUGHT; hmm if I get rolling at 0500 and pick up the load, head for Knoxville. We could stop at the same place we were at on Sunday and take a raft trip at 1100, be done by 1300 and still deliver by 1530. Nope, enroute we got a message that they needed the beer by 1300. Well, that blew our raft trip. We were wondering, what would they have done if we hadn't planned to hit the road at 0500.

Anyway we arrived at 1230 and were out of there by 1330. We got our next w/a after delivering; pick up a load of scrap paper about 7 miles away and take it to Muskogee, OK on Friday. Hoooray, we're headed home, right on schedule.

Some things work and some things don't, you've got to go with the flow !!!

We dropped the trailer at the shipper hoping to pick up the load this afternoon, but it won't be ready till the am. No problem, we'll probably run about 550 miles tomorrow which will leave about 180 miles. We'll finish in the am on Friday then head for OKC and pick up the bug and head for Ponca City.

Sewing, golfing and wave runners are on the schedule so far.