Long day

Looks like a warm night. I wasn't expecting that.

I should have, I suppose. Yes, it's November. But it's also Florida. Miami, no less. And how long have I been kvetching about the cold?

(“Kvetching?” Now there's a proper Southern word. You've been in the city too long, boy...)

(Well, “complaining” quite cover it—it's more attitude than speeches. And the other common word for it (these days) isn't usable in polite company. Even my wife would have looked at me funny. And she loved dogs.)

(Cut it out, you two. These folks aren't here for a language lesson.)

Don't mind me—or myself. We talk to each other like that all the time. And about half the time it has nothing to do with what I'm thinking about.

Like right now. I'm not complaining about the weather. It's kind of nice. It's the rest of the day that has me in a little bit of a mood.

When I started out this morning, I planned to stop a little after sundown. Up in the wee hours of morning, another quick 200 miles, and then see what my employers had for me to do the rest of the weekend. Nice and simple.

My first hint
that that wasn't gonna happen showed up a little ways north of the Florida border. That was when I finally figured out that “Florida State Route 91” was “Florida's Turnpike.”

I've been spoiled, when it comes to toll roads. My company's good about paying tolls. Every truck I drive has little plastic boxes glued all over the windshield, all ready and eager to talk to tollbooths for me. There's New York's EZ-Pass (which also works in a bunch of other states). And here's Oklahoma's PikePass. And Florida's SunPass, right over--.

Over where?

Oops.

MOST of the trucks I've driven had a SunPass box glued on the windshield. This is one of the exceptions.

Until tonight, I hadn't realized just how much the company was paying when they sent me down a toll road. There goes my pocket money for the week. Granted, they'll reimburse me. Granted again, they actually did it tonight—my dispatcher advanced the money and put it on my fuel card. But I can't get it until the next time I fuel.*

No great hardship. But it led to another odd thing.

Fine print
As I said, I'd planned to stop fairly early. Just as it was getting dark, was the original plan. Which, given where I was, meant spending the night at one of the service plazas on the turnpike. Again, no big deal—I've done that before. But this time, I had already paid cash at the first tollbooth and taken a “we'll skin you when you get off” ticket at the second. When I pulled into the service plaza, I decided to take a look at that ticket.

It included a table of tolls, organized by vehicle size and which exit you cashed out at. That was (as I said above) enlightening enough. But then I looked at the fine print. Especially the part that said that a lost or expired ticket would result in the maximum charge being levied.

Translation (I think): If I stayed on the toll road more than twelve hours, they'd charge me as if I'd gone the whole length of the turnpike. An extra hundred and thirty miles or so.

A legal rest break is ten hours. Doesn't leave a lot of leeway.

Now I don't know for sure how they interpret that little zinger. Could be there are exceptions that would allow breaks. In fact, I think there must be. Enough of us do it, after all. And it might be something that gets taken care of automatically—if you're using a SunPass.

Better safe than sorry, I decided. So I didn't stop at a service plaza for the night. And I'll talk tomorrow about truck stops on I-95. To make a long story short, the place where I got off the Turnpike and onto I-95 was about 50 miles south of the last parking place on the Interstate.

So I kept going. All the way to the customer

Walking. It's not just for exercise anymore.
I've talked about GPS and truckers before. I've heard enough truck-stop gossip to believe my opinion is not unusual, even among those who bought their own. But my route came in from the opposite side of the city from where my directions assumed I would be. Which meant the directions the company had given me were pretty much useless.

So I followed my GPS. With GREAT caution.

About 1/4 mile from the customer, I got too nervous. I'm still not quite sure why. No matter—I was. So I parked, got out, and walked toward where the machine said to turn.

Nerves are sometimes useful. If I'd followed my GPS, I would have ended up driving in circles through the parking lots of a commuter rail station. With a 53-foot trailer. But I could see a building right where the gadget wanted me to go. All I'd have to do was shift into 18-wheel drive, barrel through that fence, and cross two hundred yards of freshly bulldozed earth.

It took me another hour, on foot, to find the actual way into the customer's parking lot—and then go back and get the truck. But I made it. With zero time to spare in driving hours OR on-duty hours.

So why would I complain about the night being comfortably warm? No reason. Better to just sleep.

And I will. So there. G'nite.
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*Well, I could. In theory. My fuel card can double as a Major Credit Card, so I could hit an ATM. But the typical truck stop ATM charges a transaction fee. And when the amount on the card is Just Enough...