Well, home again.
Uneventful trip to Brownsville. In fact, made it down there in record time, as I was only at the plant to load for maybe 2 hours. That's how Sundays go when the right people are working there. When the wrong people are working there, it can and usually does take significantly longer, especially with a certain individual that works at the scale house that does the final paperwork you have to take with you before you leave the plant. BOL - Bill of Lading is required, especially while hauling hazmat loads.
I waited down there overnight and all the next day -until 9:00 pm actually, when 2 empties finally showed up. There was no good reason to drive all night long, so I just decided to sleep there another night, get up early and get back earlier than normal. OK, so now that that's out of the way, something is going on at the plant where the product goes into Mexico, so return deliveries of empties are going into the days realm instead of overnight.
Meaning that the two trucks that came down the next day full of product? They were told to turn around and bobtail back to the yard instead of waiting for empties. Bummer, I thought, for them anyway. I got ample detention pay, which is a good thing because now I'm hearing that not only is this plant having issues, the other plant that is one of the biggest accounts has been sold and they aren't taking any product until sometime in July. You eliminate those two accounts? There is only sporadic work. A couple of loads per month to West Virginia. Another account has canceled all deliveries to all of their plants.
They cited the fact of the global slowdown and less demand. Another account saying they are taking 1/4th the amount of product they normal use, for the same reason as indicated before. The Brownsville run is really the only thing that saves us, without it they would furlough a lot of us drivers and I would most likely be on that list since I have lessor seniority than a lot of them. Not all of them, but certainly a larger percentage of them have seniority over me.
Several drivers went home. I was informed by another driver it will be next week before I get another load. I asked him how long he had been waiting - he said since Sunday and going out on Thursday. So his dire prediction probably won't come to pass, it's probably going to be a 3 to 4 day stint in between loads and there is nothing anyone can do about that. I have enjoyed some excellent paychecks in the last 3 weeks, this week should be good, then next week with only one trip on it that will be well down.
The point, however, is that I can sustain a bit of lower paychecks. I build my checking account up - and then we go through stuff like this and it goes back down again. About the time I get anywhere near a grand in there is when I will start to wonder what I should do next.
Well whatever. Now I have to figure out what to do with the next 3 or 4 days. The boat isn't fixed yet. A movie might be nice, tho won't take up all that time I haven't been to a theater in quite a while - well I suppose no one has since corona started. They've opened the theater back up in our small town, but they only have showings at evening time during the weekdays.
Uhhh, not sure really lol. I don't think travel is a good idea since most of the world is in some sort of lockdown mode, it's no better anywhere else than here. Lol cruises aren't even available to book until October, at least the site I just tried. No matter, I have no desire to drive clear down to Galveston.
Just another stay at home deal.
With that, I will find something to do in this house!
Editing: Just got off the phone with the boat repair place. They finally got the parts in. I have my suspicions that this fix isn't going to make much of a difference, but we'll see what happens. They are going to install the parts and then have me come and do a test run on the nearest lake.
