Most days I can arrange my schedule so I can keep the total number of hours from when I start to when I finish work to 7-10 or so. On long driving days I normally drive for 10 or 11 hours, and another hour is eaten up with the pretrip, fueling, post trip, etc.
Every once in a while, though, a driver has to run hell-bent-for-leather to get his job done, and today was such a day for me.
My day started at 0245 in Gary, Indiana with a quick jump on the freeway to the next exit and filling up at the local Pilot. Just after I left it started raining fairly hard and that kept up through Illinois as I made my way to Wisconsin, then to the west side of Wisconsin where I made my morning delivery at a beer packaging plant in La Crosse. I was an hour early and there were a bunch of other trucks and trailers parked around but I was given a door after only 15 minutes and thirty minutes after that I was unloaded and moving out.
My fleet manager had me preplanned to move to the east side of Wisconsin and pick up a load then head south towards Joplin with my remaining hours. After a bit of wrangling, the original relay point for this load was changed from Atoka, Oklahoma to Joplin so I can end my day there tomorrow, take some home time and even get to attend the big CFI driver safety meeting this Saturday.
Dy-no-mite!
I'm parked at the end of a row of trucks at the very entrance of a (typically screwed up) Pilot lot so I'm hoping I don't get hit in the night be someone taking the turn too sharp. I should be moving again by 0300 or 0400.
