Thursday.
Long, long day.
Well first, yesterday's load was cancelled. Well before that, my computer situation. The new desktop hasn't arrived, I checked tracking, it's in Fort Worth as of 11:00 yesterday. It may end up on the front porch tomorrow. I had left my laptop - this one I'm using - in the truck. I tried to find the power cord for the older laptop - it still works it's just slow. No luck. So I pulled out the one with the bad keyboard - just amazingly annoying trying to use it so I gave up on it.
Hence, I am on tonight, even if a long day, and am glad to have a functioning computer. I can only do so much on a smart phone, tho James told me they actually sell and actual bluetooth keyboard for them, I may look into that.
Anyway, the day before yesterday, my manager told me that I had a load for yesterday, but no trailers in the yard and she didn't know when to expect one to come rolling in. The load appointment for 10:30 am. Well, I got up yesterday morning, got my stuff done and took the dogs over to the other house. Sat around and chatted with Maria for a while, while texting the driver down at the plant I was going to - Cheniere. He said he was still there, meaning there are problems at the plant and I began to wonder if I was even going. That question was shortly answered: load cancelled.
It's kind of hard to shift gears internally from "I have to work today" to "I have today off, what do I need to get done". My mind is in work mode, not home mode. Work mode was thinking about a 14 hour day and getting within 100 miles of the yard and spending the night at - wherever I end up. The day was already half over anyway. And not much later, I got my assignment for today: Charleston, West Virginia. A much better run, I have only had a day off in between loads, so actually a gain with a 2,000 mile round trip run versus a less than 500 mile round trip run that's a pain in the ass.
Well I got to the yard this morning and found the trailer parked in front of the shop on the concrete. Upon checking the gauges, the thing had 10 inches of product still in it and the pressure was high. Ahh, the cheniere trailer. They didn't even finish emptying the thing. I found out later why: their system was full. They shouldn't have even ordered that load, much more the one I was supposed to take down there. Well, I unloaded the vapors into the clear blue sky until I got it down to a better number. If I take it to the plant with high pressure, I"ll be there forever while their system deals with it..
At the plant, the newest driver had shown up late - big no-no - so I was sitting there for 40 minutes just waiting for his truck to get done loading. Then, I got in there, got into the driver/employee shack and got into a discussion with the manager. He's saying they are loading 27,000 pounds, my manager is texting me that they are loading what was left on my trailer into a rail car and then loading me from scratch. The manager at the plant was like, what? He instantly called her, lol. She was saying it was 37,000 pounds, he got out his sheet and there it was in huge numbers, with yellow marker on it: 27,000 pounds. She then argued about just adding product to the product. Umm, now that should be left to the purview of the plant that actually creates the product.
Wait wait wait. I got done there, got back to the scalehouse - and waited there for almost an hour for paperwork. I finally got out of there and got on down the road. 50 miles worth - when my manager texted me: you have to go back to Eastman. Why? They have to put more Ethylene on your trailer. 50 miles. 100 miles in total wasted. And time - precious clock time. I knew the day was screwed as far as my plan to make this a 3 day trip. I totally gave up on that. Back to the plant, load 10,000 more pounds - the purchasing agent of the company I am going to made an ordering mistake - well they can pay for that by paying me for the extra mileage AND the extra hours. Over 6 hours wasted.
I only made it another 450 miles before I ran out of HOS hours. I was down to 15 minutes, pulled into the TA - and it was full. Except for pay spaces and I ain't paying them $18 to park for the night, that's ridiculous. Across the street, pay parking there. I went in for a drink and to ask them how much? $10. I could have driven down to the rest area down the road, but I had had enough of this day and paid them the $10. If I get up early enough in the morning, I can walk over to the TA and have a keto friendly breakfast. I'm well behind where I would normally try to stop - which is somewhere around 50 miles north of Nashville.
We're still trying to rent that room. 2 nights ago, this dude contacts me on Facebook Messenger off of my Facebook marketplace ad. He'll take the room without seeing it. Uhh, no, I thought. That sets off alarms/red flags/something is wrong signals into my brain. So I politely said, well we like for people to stop by and check the place out first. Meaning: We like to get a chance to meet you and find out if your a slob, nutcase or other kind of undesirable that we don't want living there.
I let Maria know this guy is coming - yesterday it was. This guy shows up. With a wife and a baby. At no point in our conversation did he say there were 3 people. It's just not a good setup for a family. I have 2 mature, single adults living there, they don't want to hear a screaming baby or deal with the congestion in the bathroom with 3 more people living there. And other undesirable things that I can think of, such as bickering and fighting potential with them. This dude was polite, all the way up until, after he left, he texted me saying he wanted the room.
And I replied that we can't have a family in there, if you would have told me that from the start I would have told you sorry, we can't do that. So, sorry, we can't do that. Just too many people in a small house. I was very polite and just trying to let him know why it wouldn't work out. His reply? I'm a racist pig, don't like black people, f*** off, blah blah blah. I am so sick of the race card. It's more than just annoying. I've heard this shit for over 2 years being a Trump supporter and I just won't tolerate that crap. I gave him a reply that then sent him over the deep end, to the point I had to threaten to call the police. I was going to inform him I am armed and so is the "fat lady" - his words - at the house. But he needn't know that until it's in his face. This went on for a while, tho. I wasn't a lily white angel, I can admit that. I was pushing his buttons on purpose at that point.
Whatever. Someone will come along sooner or later that fits in. Just hoping to find a longer term person versus short term. A lady also asked to move in until August. She's pregnant. More alarm signals. This time I flat out asked - is anyone intending to live with you? She said well that depends. I just flatly told her we weren't interested in more than one person in the room and that ended that conversation. Just a tough market to find them in.
Oh, I'm in a town called Denmark, in Tennessee. I see so many odd names for towns. Did they have a fantasy of replicating Denmark? Lol.
OH yes! My newest shipment of Keto ice cream came in - this time I ordered 4 pints of their newest flavor: Peanut butter fudge. Sooo delicious!
Well, Taylor is leaving tomorrow or Saturday - I don't remember which - for an out of state business outing. James parents are coming down to pick up the boys and take them back to Arkansas with them. For week I think. It'll be James and I in the house - when I'm home lol anyway. The problems today extended my trip from Saturday evening to Sunday - who knows what time I'll get back. I wanted to get back Saturday so I would get sent out on Monday. That's not very likely to be given to me. Cheniere is what caused the sudden increase of work flow.
I guess I need to get find another loan. Pay off the Care Credit debt so I don't lose the interest free year. I've got all kinds of offers for loans now at low interest rates. I could get a 50k loan right now if I wanted to without anything more than filling out an application and boom, a few days it's in my bank account. I gave it some thought. Take out that loan, put it up on the land I want, get the land, sell 25 to 30% of the timber, pay off the loan and have - land! But I haven't contacted any lumber operations to find out how much timber minimum acreage they want to make it worth it for them to come in there with all of their equipment.
Well my time is up. I need to get up in time to get out of here as soon as the clock lets me. I'll make to the plant tomorrow - Lord willing - and then maybe make it 100 miles back this way. That will put me at over 200 miles on Sunday left to drive back. So probably somewhere near Little Rock on Saturday when I stop. I try to figure this stuff out in advance so I can figure out where I'm going to stop.
Off to Dreamland.
