Tidbits, pt. 3

"What we have here, is a failure to communicate..." from the movie "Cool Hand Luke"

I am a fucking warrior, ok? In my line of work, you really have to be. I mean, I can take anything these a-holes dish out, come out smelling like a rose, and come back asking for more.
I take no prisoners, and I absolutely take no shit off anyone. That includes my bosses! I figure,
if push comes to shove, I can just tell 'em "Kiss my ass" and walk out the door. There is still a nationwide shortage of drivers ( I mean good drivers), so I'm pretty safe in the knowledge that I can find a job quickly if necessary.
Here's an example of what I mean: last week I get to my Rockford store at 3:30 am and there's a guy in there stripping and waxing the floors. I knew there was going to be trouble when I saw his van parked in front, but I went in anyway. He said "Don't come in here! I just put stripper down..." So, despite the fact that I always delivered this store thru the front door, I went around back and tried to get in. The floor guy was nice enough to open the back door for me.
No dice. The door opened about two feet, blocked on one side by a concrete post, and there's this gigantic dumpster right on the other side - no way for me to squeeze the two-wheeler through.
So I called it in - dispatch said bypass it, move on to the next stop, and double-back to get that store later. I'm also having reefer troubles, and it's raining like a son of a bitch, right? So, I get the reefer taken care of, do my other stops, but I have to make it back to base within 14 hours, and in enough time to do my Thurs. route up to WI. So, I'm done in Rock Island, dreading having to go back to Rockford (a 2hour trip), my dispatcher says, "Why don't we just put it on your WI route?" I said "Fine." But that opened up another world of problems. Now on Thurs.,
I gotta go Mundelein, then Rockford, then all the way back to Kenosha, Racine, etc. I managed it fine, it was just a major pain in the ass.
So, the following week, I do the Rockford store on the first day (Tue) and my last stop is Machesney Park, just north of Rockford. I fucked up and forgot to deliver 20 bales of flour and 20 bales of pizza boxes, which the store had added on and I didn't notice on the invoice. So, I thought "No problem, I'm shut down in Rockford, I'll just leave early, go back to Machesney, drop their stuff off, and boom, off to Dubuque," right? Well, I also figured I'd go through the front door there, because they're digging up the back road/alley there and it's a pain to get into the back parking lot these days. So I pull in the front lot (this time about 4:30am) and, guess who's there? You got it, the floor guy! I'm like, "What the fuck?" So, again, I go back around back, deliver the load, and go. But the full moon must really be fucking with me, ya know?
The bigger problem here is not me running out of time - it's the fact that the morons at the stores did not inform us there would be a floor guy at either location, nor did they tell him that we would be there doing deliveries overnight. So we kind of have to get out of each other's way.
Sometimes there will be construction guys working, doing remodeling at one of the stores; those guys are pretty cool, and it's not a huge inconvenience "working around" them. But not being able to walk on the floor, that's a little different... The aggravating thing is, it won't change: there's no real communication between the store level and the distribution system (at least as far as I can tell), so surprises like this will continue to occur, you just have to deal with it, and go with the flow.
Since I started at 4:00 am, I have until 6:00pm ( 14 hrs) before my time runs out, right?
Ok, so I have my 2 Dubuque stores, then I have a "special" up in Bumblefuck, WI at 11:00am
then down to Rock Island, I figure by 1:30 or so, then I have to do a pickup in Bettendorf (some plastic pallets or something) and back to Chicago before 6:00. Question is, can I make it? I've never been to either the special location or the pickup in Bettendorf, but I have maps to both places. And it's 3 hours from the Quad Cities to Chicago, so I have to be out of Bettendorf before 3:00. Well, the key here was the special delivery. Since I normally get done in Dubuque around 9:30am, I just called the guy and asked for directions ("Can I get a semi into your place?" etc)
As a side note, you just say "Oh, by the way, is it ok if I get there a few minutes early?" Nine times out of ten they'll say "Sure, come on over," which is exactly what this guy said. So, I was able to get to his place by 10:25 or so, and out by 10:45. Now I'm a good 45 mins ahead of schedule, which allows me to do the Rock Island delivery (12:45 - 1:30) get to Bettendorf by 2:00, out by 2:30, and on the road back to Chicago. I made it to the base at almost exactly 5:30.
That's what I mean. See, a lesser driver (less organized, etc.) would not have made it, would have been forced to shut down on the side of the road, then wait 10 hrs before finishing the trip.
Our onboard recorders are basically "bypass-proof," so you can't cheat, like you could if you were on paper logs. And there have been times when guys have had to shut down on the side of the road, because they ran out of time. That's the way it is, and they enforce it like a son of a bitch.

More soon,

Steve