Monday - 8:00 am

I don't have to leave here until 11 am.  

The dog got up in the middle of the night, started wretching and puking all over the floor. Out with him fo the rest of the night, cleaned up the mess and went back to bed.

I thought maybe sitting on the situation (not the dog) overnight would help after writing a pretty anger-filled post last night and not posting it, and it has to some extent.  

The problem - the inside door latch quit working yesterday.  I have to roll the window down, lean out the window and reach down about 3 feet to open the door from the outside.  I complained about this door in Oregon and I said something to the mechanic in Arkansas and then I said something to the manager in Arkansas. It's not like I didn't say anything to anyone.

That and the AC only working half the time? I don't want to drive this truck again until they fix it. I'll take this load on there up today, but after that, I intend on forcing them to fix this damned thing.  It isn't so much that the door handle broke as it is I reported this several times over to the people that could do anything about fixing it.  And it's been warm so the inside of that truck gets nice and sticky with humidity and feeling icky in there with the AC not working.  

Last night? I was ready to quit.  I have had this feeling a couple of times with this company, most of it was over in Oregon going through that hellish orientation trying to sleep in that A frame office with that laundromat going on all hours of the night underneath me- and several other things that I have written in this blog for memory's sake. 

I need a job, but do I need this job? My senses told me before I even left for Oregon that I should just dump this idea and move on.  Move on to what? I don't know, there's go to be something out there local that will work for me.  I think what set me off initially was this idea that you have to bring a sleeping bag for the bed, the don't provide sheets.  When I got there, the whole situation escalated greatly.  I made sacrifices, to put it mildly, to work with this company.  

I think I should just start looking again and seeing what's out there.  I have to make a promise to myself that I will never knowingly go into something like this ordeal ever again.  In fact, I just now decided that yes, I'm just going to start looking for another place to work.  The only thing that might stop me is that I am getting experience on tankers that I have never done before and these types of tankers are all over the place. They use them for milk/dairy, gas/diesel/jet fuel, the resins I am hauling, caustic materials, all kinds of stuff.  Stick with it long enough and I can call myself experienced with it and open up a very broad field of opportunity.  

Cryo is ok, but local jobs are very limited.  I imagine they haul it from the Longview plant to plants in Dallas and Houston, I haven't found those jobs, yet.  Gasoline I could easily learn now, but you have to still find a place that will train you.  

Just calming myself down and letting some time pass was good. 

I'll just think about all of this for while and find out what their decision is on fixing the truck.  I shouldn't have to keep asking. I don't care how much of an inconvenience it is for them, it will certainly be an inconvenience for me if I have to take it to their shop in Arkansas and sit there and wait for who knows how long to fix the thing.  If more than a day, I expect them to do something other than put me in some horrific "bunkhouse" type of situation. There's hotels in El Dorado, amazingly, didn't think it was a big enough town for that.  

Anyway, just sent them a text now that it's Monday morning and they are all in that office up there.  We'll see how this goes......

And now they are asking me to bring the truck up there, of course.  I replied I need to deliver the load today.....

They aren't replying to that so I assume they want the load delivered and then, back to their yard, where they leave early so ......

well nix that. They want me to bring the truck up there, drop the trailer, get into another truck, take it up to deliver the load and then come back to the yard.  The mechanic will "work" on the truck while I'm gone, lmao.  Okkkkkkkkkk........

I'm leaving much earlier than I originally thought.  Give him as much time to see if he can deal with this today as possible. 

G'day