DG:  Delivered a load of meat last night that was picked up in Kansas at one of our favorite spots, Cargill.  If you’ve been following the blog you know that’s not true. 

Anyway, while I appreciate KLLM’s efforts to keep us moving I don’t like being mislead and/or given wrong information either on purpose or accidentally that makes my job more difficult or more complicated.  Allow me to explain.  After dropping out initial load at an affiliate of Kraft we were informed there were no empty trailers at that facility.  We wait for instructions. Go to the Morrow, GA yard and get an empty. This is only a few miles away and I can get my truck washed as that is a requirement for anyone taking out a trailer from a KLLM terminal that has a truck wash. As we are reminded the company spent nearly one million Dollars on these big automatic truck washers we dang well better use them. Okay by me. It’s free and who doesn’t appreciate a clean ride. 

So sometime during our drive to the yard, or it may have been a sour of the moment thought, the local dispatcher tells me she has a full trailer that needs to be delivered about 30 miles from there and it’s due at midnight.  As my clock had only a few hours on it I was delighted to hear that this receiver had overnight parking. That will work out just fine as I can get over there around 8:00 pm, they won’t start unloading me until midnight and that will probably take two hours at least so that will be six hours of my ten needed for a reset and I will wait out the four hours on site and leave about 6:30 towards my other pick up. Sounds great don’t it?  Ah, but things aren’t always as they seem. I should have known something was up when I showed up at 8;00 and the guard told me to come back around 11:00 that there was no place for me to park. When I explained I did not have enough time on my clock to leave and come back In three hours he relented and said I could park in one of the two spots by the guard shack that looked like they were used by the construction crew during the day.  So I did. Around 10:00 pm someone knocked on the door. It was the guard telling me to pull in door three. Okay, I can wait there as well as where I was so I moved the fifty feet or so, nestled Chebby into the dock and went back to bed. In about 29 minutes another knock on the door. This time it was one of the lumpers asking for my papers.  Gave her my papers and she said some were missing and I said that was all I had and she said she would have to check and see if they need to get the missing papers faxed over befor they could start unloading.  No problem, I here all night. Well, wouldn’t you know it, they started unloading right away.  And it only took them about twenty minutes to do so. Then the same lumper lady came out and told me to pull over into a spot beside these other trailers as they were still checking on the need for more papers. Okay, I have a parking space so it looks like my plan is going to work. Thirty minutes later she comes out and gives me my copy of the bills and says all is good.  

So now I ponder. Sit still and hope no one notices me until morning or go ask permission to pull into the first spot I was in and wait for my clock to reset. When am I going to learn it is better to ask forgiveness than permission?  New guard on duty tells me I can’t park on the premises. I asked where could I go?  She says there is a Wal Mart about a half a mile away. I think I can get there without my drive clock starting. So off we go at a snails pace with flashers flashing.  Almost there. Then I hear my Qualcomm, “You are in violation of your driving time”. Dang it. I either went too fast or this thing has a distance limit. Either way this was going to necessitate a call to dispatch and logs. So I call dispatch and explain the situation stressing the point that I was told by the Atlanta dispatcher that there was overnight parking there. They told me what message to send and to call logs when they got in. So much for leaving at six in the morning. 

Now that my clock started anew with my HOS violation I lost the five hours of off duty time I had accumulated and so a six o’clock departure was now eleven. However, when I got a hold of logs around 9:00, that’s eastern time as the Jackson headquarters is in the central time zone and they don’t come in till 8:00, I was told that they had already made the adjustment and I just needed to update my logs. So when I did I see that they restored my original off duty time and changed everything to reflect that I had been off duty the whole time since arriving at the receiver and if I had know that was going to happen I could have left at six after all. 

So I haven’t been in the best of moods today. I feel like time was stolen from me. And you can’t get back time.  And with that my whole day has been screwed up. 

Annie – I’m going to bed.   Hopefully after a good nights sleep things will be better in the am.