It took several more hours for everything to sort itself out and a trailer released to me so I could run with it. I had started work at 2:30 AM this morning so by 10:30 more than half of my work day was shot just with waiting around.
Apparently there were seven trailer loads going from this plant down to Mexico with CFI and the broker that we got the loads from had some screwed up load numbering system that neither CFI or the shipper normally used. They really, really, really wanted load 1234xz-bob-666-A4 to be on trailer 12345, towed by truck 54321 and nothing else would do. Everyone concluded this was nuts and eventually we convinced the folks in the rear with the gear to let us take loaded trailers as they were made ready and just call in which trailer and load number we happened to have aboard.
I did something I've never done before in a big rig today. I passed an exit ramp near where I was planning on shutting down for the night and went to the next exit and made a U-turn, eating up four extra miles. Man has to do something when he's suddenly craving a DQ Blizzard, after all.
I have a TON of pics I shot this morning; perhaps 80 or 100 images in all. I'll try uploading them in Laredo as that many will require some serious bandwidth that isn't available here.
