Tuesday - evening
It's been a very long day and it's still not over yet.
Typical day of going up and offloading the glue. Oh, which reminds me...
The grumpy dude, after I left the plant yesterday? The one that wanted to start a fist fight with me because ...did I even tell this whole story yet? No I don't think I did.
Let's back up a bit. I went to Lufkin yesterday after getting a washout - which took them 1-1/2 hours because the trailer sat for 4 days and the glue starts setting up.
When I arrived at the plant, got on the scale, left the scale and looked down the alley where the loading bay is, lo and behold. Some driver dude from the company had cut in front of me. I didn't know who this person was (and didn't care), I immediately texted the dispatcher telling her this guy has cut in front of me. She called him and told him to move, lol, they hadn't started loading him yet. So, he pulls out and I back in. I was there an hour and a half before they even started loading me. They were training a person to load trucks and apparently that is an extraordinarily long, involved process.
Anyway, 2-1/2 hours after I arrived, was finally done loading, left the bay and got on the scale. That dude was waiting for me. I pulled on the scale to get the heavy weight and he pulled right up next to me, cussing me out telling me he was going to kick my ass for telling dispatch and forcing him to move. He opened the door of his truck, I immediately opened mine and got out of the truck. There is NO WAY anyone is going to sucker punch me ever again, like what happened when I got into that accident and the dude punched my jaw through the window.
I'm not the biggest man on the planet, but I'm not small, either. He took one look at me, got back in his truck and drove off. I yelled at him I will do it AGAIN if I have to! It turns out this dude has been with the company for 2 decades and does driver training, tho he didn't have a trainee in the truck. I don't care about that or how long he's been there, he's not going to intimidate me.
Fast forward to today, I was half expecting to see this dude sitting at the delivery shack where we hook up the line to unload. He wasn't there. 30 minutes later, the driver trainer who trained me contacted me. He was down in Lufkin getting loaded. He said he treated the operators there so bad, they almost kicked him out of the plant. They flatly told him if he didn't back off they weren't loading him. Anger issues, extreme anger issues. Sorry, but not sorry. I could be with a place for 4 decades, I still wouldn't assume I could just cut in line and do whatever the hell I pleased. That's rude and extremely selfish.
It was probably 5 hours later? He contacted me again. "I just saw that guy driving through my town, he must have got hung up down there for a long time!". 5 hours later? Daaaaaang!! And to think that would have been me if I had been forced to wait on his sorry @$$. I don't live a dull life, lol, no one can accuse me of that, I don't think anyway.
Anyway, I got back from the run, got in the vehicle, went and got the kids out of daycare. It's Easter break - Friday through today - everyone was working, I offered to get them after work since I was going to be the first one done. Off to walmart, dog food and lots of other things, over to the bank, home. Started doing dishes, making dinner and dealing with things. Taylor is 2 towns over doing some sort of outreach for her company at some function somewhere, so I am taking one of the kids to soccer practice, dad is taking the other to baseball practice. Yup, they have practice on the same days at the same time, lol.
Just happened to have a 20 minute interlude here between feeding kids dinner and fixing to go to the soccer fields which are a 15 minute drive away.
I guess you can call it a plus, I have the late load tomorrow and it's another one of those times when I don't mind, at all. I can sleep in a couple hours. See, I will show up at the plant early, 2 hours to be precise, but, that's still 2 hours after the first load. I am not cutting anyone off, I'm just trying to shorten the day a bit. Most other drivers do this as well, it's an acceptable practice. If you get there and have to wait, you wait, oh well. But for me? I will never knowingly try to cut in front of someone else. The only thing I could see doing is if I had some sort of thing that I had to get done and the only way to do it is ask the other driver if we could switch places.
If you don't know by now, truck drivers cutting others in line for appointment times is a huge pet peeve of mine. I can't stand it. There's lots of things new generation truck drivers do that are both annoying and some of it disgusting. Like throwing pee bottles out of their windows. Parking at a truck stop and literally throwing trash out of the driver's side window onto the ground. Making a disgusting mess in plant and public bathrooms and causing the people that own those bathrooms to cut truckers off from using them.
Tho, that is a double edged sword. I have read plenty of posts in trucker forums where if the shipper or receiving doesn't allow them to use the bathroom and they are making them wait many hours, they will just do it - pee or poop - in the parking lot and they don't care. I guess an acceptable middle-ground would be for these companies to have port-a-potties out there.
Anyway, we are leaving in a few minutes for the soccer field and then home and then I can unwind, get into bed, watch some tv, relax and eventually go to sleep.
