Long day. 11 hours is long enough, anyway. I got over to the property this morning thinking I'd have to run up to NAPA auto parts, but I found the pin laying in a bin on the top. There was no cotter key, so I got a nail and did a temporary fix. When you're trying to do a pressure off unload, that dome lid needs to be sealed tight up there. One of those lugs loose will cause it to leak pressure and it will just take that much longer to get the job done.
That was a sigh of relief because by the time I got that and everything else done, it was time to leave. I would have been late if I would have had to run up to the auto parts store. I got on the road, only stopping once and that only a few minutes at a rest area in Arkansas off of I-30 to get rid of the coffee I had consumed earlier.
Up to the plant, they didn't bother to tell me I had to go in through gate 4 to weigh in. In fact, there were 4 gates and I guess which one I would take. It turns out that gate 1, the one I went through, was the correct gate for offloading, it was not the correct gate for weighing. Anyway, I turned around, back to the road, over to gate 4, weighed back to gate 1 and then I parked the rig and went over to see what he was doing.
He being the other driver. Well, he wasn't anywhere near being done offloading the tanker. We went through all the steps of his version of offloading. One thing that was sealed in my mind today: there is no consistency on the differing versions of how different drivers offload these tankers. There are various ways they do it and I guess it all ends out well enough, but it's strange that there are so many different ways to do it that leads to the same conclusion. It gets confusing.
You remember one way one driver did it, another way another did it and you get all of it mixed up in your mind. Remember, today was the 5th driver that I have had training me. I just decided to do it his way. He was far more methodical in his procedure and had it down to a science. His way of doing it allegedly reduces the amount of time it takes to get a washout. Which was of great interest to me, anything to speed up the process is a good thing.
Well, he finished and said goodbye, lmao. You're leaving? Yes. Well can you at least stay long enough to watch me do the initial setup? So he stuck around another 10 minutes and then he left. I figured I had it down anyway, so I bid him ado. I can't be babysat forever, at some point I have to be able to do all of this on my own without supervision and make myself worth something to the company.
It was two full hours before the truck was empty. The other driver figured it would take me as long as it took him to offload and so it was. I went through the ending procedures to clean out the tank and then clean out the fill hose, shut everything off, put up the hoses, got everything good and was about to take off - when - a dude that works at the plant came out. I don't know if there is a camera out there somewhere or what, but he showed up right when I was about to get into the truck and leave, go to the scale, scale out and drive .. home actually.
Hi there, he said, I'm Ed and I was sent out to check to make sure you have everything right. My pride wasn't hurt, I'm new, I understand that, so I showed him everything I did and asked him if it all looked ok to him? Ok Ed, well I'll see y'all again soon! He then asked if I was going to be doing more of this? Yes, it's a dedicated run for this and another plant I haven't been to yet.
Was all of this stress and worrying over this worth it? Maybe. It helps force me to pay attention. There was a lot to learn. It may not sound like there is a lot to learn, but when you are engaging in a process that you have never done before and having have it have potential severe consequences if done wrong, you want to learn correctly. The other driver was not following company procedure on a few things, but then again, he wasn't really trained on it either. One thing that stuck out was he wasn't using velcro straps around the cam lock arms. I think this is an important step that shouldn't be ignored. It isn't likely those arms will just pop off of there without being manipulated to do so, but what if they did?
Well, the hose would pop off and you would have this resin going all over the ground, that's what and that's why the company wants everyone to use them.
Most of these plants have really nice people working at them, good natured, not loud, boisterous or over-bearing. So, after that I went to the scale, the man handed me a fresh scale ticket before I could say anything, i was out of there. I didn't get back to my park until 6:15 and out of there around 6:30.
Home, I had 5 pounds of hamburger meat about to go bad, I cooked all of it. A huge meatloaf and a large pot of taco meat. Lol, that "huge" meatloaf shrunk to a normal meatloaf size after that 73% lean ground beef shed all of that fat and left a huge amount of liquid in the pan. It turned out good, tho.
I've got tomorrow off, amazingly enough. I don't know why, they didn't tell me, they originally had me working 9 days in a row. No worries, I don't have the weekend off, lol. Or Monday and Tuesday so far. I don't know what I'm going to do tomorrow, but what I should do is trim back some trees, backfill a ditch and get the area behind my shed ready for rainy season to turn that truck around.
I should also go get at least 200 pounds of rye grass seed and have that available to put down before the rains next week. The forecast has changed again, so I dunno if I'll do that or not.
It is unfortunate that I barely slept last night and right now, at almost 10:00 pm? I'm not tired at all. I don't need a repeat of last night....
