It's not always the truck

A quick follow up to the previous post.

They got the trailer fixed at about three thirty in the morning. I got it to the first stop on my schedule just before I ran out of hours. While the customer's warehouse people were pulling their share of the load off my rig, I spoke to the manager. As I had feared, there wasn't a place to park the truck on their property.

The driving rules allow you to drive after your hours are up, if you have to look for a safe place to park. But it's not a loophole you want to use too often. Not that I had a choice this time.

Fifteen minutes later, I parked the truck and crashed.

Um, let me rephrase that.

I parked the truck and immediately went to sleep.

Four hours later somebody pounded on the door.

It was a driver from the customer's own transport company. He'd come to take my trailer and make the rest of my stops. He'd been looking for me for about an hour. Seems I'd forgotten to tell anybody WHERE I was stopping to rest.

Not good. If I hadn't been thinking any straighter than that, it was a good thing I HAD shut down when I did.

He left, and I crashed again (see above). Spent most of the day sleeping, eating, or thinking about eating or sleeping. That evening my dispatcher found me another load.

He sent me to pick up an empty trailer around 6:00pm. I found one and returned to the truck stop, a little grumpy. Having a good night's sleep was one thing, but the load didn't pick up until midnight tomorrow!

Muttering, I turned in again.

Around midnight, the night dispatcher called to see if I'd picked up the load yet.

I'd lost track of the date.

There is a reason I try not to drive at night. Daytime sleep just doesn't seem to to do the job for me. But there I was. And I did have hours.

So I got him to make sure the customer would still be there. Learning that they were still open, I got there as quick as I could. Picked up the load around two. By now I couldn't take a break and still get the load to my relief driver in a reasonable time. So I drove all night again.

Got to the terminal. Got my stuff out of the truck. Had a friend pick me up, and we ran a few errands. Errands that didn't require much thought.

Typed this. And I think that's all I'm gonna do today.

G'nite...