New Jersey Madness - Take Two

So this morning I woke up all bright eyed and bushy tailed... then I remembered I was still in Jersey. ha! But I sucked it up and made a promise not to let anything get in the way of a good mood. I all but skipped into the Petro to freshen up and do my morning duties before hitting the road back to the shipper to have my load re-distributed in my trailer so I could get it legal to take to Georgia.

I arrived at the shipper at 7:15 am.

I went to the maintenance folks that I dealt with to get my load paperwork the day before to ask what we needed to do about getting the load rearranged in my trailer. They told me to drop the trailer on the yard and the jockey would bring it around back to have it taken care of. So, I dropped my trailer in the yard and went to a section I could park out of the way of other traffic.

At about 8:00 am the jockey took off with my trailer and I sat waiting, patiently. I filed my nails and listened to the radio. So far... so good.

Nearly 20 minutes later the jockey arrives with my trailer in tow. He informs me that he will drop it and that they took off 5 pieces. He then drops the trailer and I circle around to position myself to back up to it. During my positioning, I noticed that there was a lot of trash and rotten veggies in the back of the trailer. So before he could skedaddle off, I asked him to have someone come with a shovel/broom and a garbage bag and clean it out. He kinda laughed and asked me to follow him around to the front of the building.

So I hooked up to the trailer, leaving the doors open and followed him around to the front. Here he had me park and he personally cleaned out my trailer. He was VERY nice to me... again, so far so good.

When he was done cleaning it out, I thanked him for his kindness and said good-bye. I had to go back to the Petro to rescale the load to make sure it was legal, so off I went.

I got to the Petro around 9:15 am. I scaled and parked and went inside to pay for and receive my scale ticket.

Guess what?

Yep! Still overweight on the drives. CRAP. I was starting to feel my wall of happiness crumble around me. I didn't let it get too far, though. Instead I put on my biggest smile and thanked the clerk and wished her a nice day.

I then went to the payphone to call in to my manager. I explained to her that I was still overweight on my drive axles and that I couldn't slide my tandems any further forward legally. So, she directed me to go BACK to the shipper again and this time have them rework the freight in a different way. She also informed me that she was going to make some calls to the shipper while I was en route to hopefully clear up any confusion as to what needed to be accomplished upon my return.

So off I went again... back to the shipper. I will never forget the way to this place, if I ever have to come back! I could probably drive it now in my sleep. I arrived back at the shipper at approx. 9:45am. The guard at the gate then asked me to lunch since it appeared I was taking up residence in New Jersey for another day. I laughed and politely declined the invite.

I then proceeded to the maintenance dock to get them to try again. Once more I dropped the trailer and parked my tractor in an out of the way place. This time, however, instead of primping myself in my truck, I asked to be allowed to hang out on the docks and "supervise" the rearrangement of the load.

I was granted permission and given a hair net to wear. *The facility was a food processing plant so hair nets were required indoors at all times. Which is funny because men with facial hair had to wear a facial hair net also, which makes them all look very silly.

The deal on the docks was hot and smelly and sweaty work, supervising the guys taking care of my trailer. Nearly two hours it took for them to unload and reload. They ended up taking unloading the trailer entirely then reloading it in a different manner so that not all the weight was in the nose of the trailer. They also left off an additional piece, making a total of 6 pieces removed from the load. Which honestly, didn't matter since they had no piece count or weight count on the actual load paperwork.

So, once they had accomplished their job of rearranging, I again said my farewells and headed back to the Petro to rescale. I was nervous... I really didn't want to have to go back to the shipper again to have it redone for a third time. I arrived at the Petro at noon. I scaled and parked and went in one more time to pay for and receive my scale ticket.

I nearly jumped for joy when I saw my weights! Finally legal! I was ecstatic! I hurried to the phone to call in to my manager to let her know I was legal and hitting the road. She was as relieved as I was but let me know that there would be a problem now with the delivery of the load.

Seeing that it took nearly one whole day to get the load situated it put me very behind schedule for making on time delivery. I had told them earlier that I wouldn't make the scheduled appointment and they had been working with the customer to get a new appointment scheduled. But as it turns out, they couldn't get the load on the appointment books until next week.

So, now I have a load that was a lot of trouble and I'm not even going to get to deliver it. I will be taking it to our Charlotte, NC operations point. There I will drop the load for someone else to tend to next week. I'm not complaining really... I still need to find time to get run through my house so I can take care of my financial woes and this gives me a better opportunity to take care of that business than I had before.

So really, it all works out in the end.

Right now I'm sitting at another Petro, this time in Virginia and grateful for the fact that I'm finally out of New Jersey. I just had a delicious meal and am ready to relax and read a bit before I hit the hay. I will be taking my time getting to Charlotte tomorrow so I am gonna probably sleep in and enjoy myself. Of course... sleeping in for me is waking up at 7am instead of 6am. But that extra hour will be bliss!

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Foto's for the Sharing:

Just wanted to include a few foto's I took recently.



This is what happens when retards don't drop trailers on the concrete pads in drop yards. The hole was at least 8 inches deep. I imagine the trailer that created this hole was near max. allowable gross weight and sat for many days in the hot sun.



I took this foto as I was about to cross the Ambassador Bridge from Detroit, MI into Windsor, Ontario. I liked this bridge much better than the Blue Water Bridge .



I took this one in one of our facilities. And I took it because I just thought it was an interesting perspective type foto.



And finally, another perspective shot which I think makes my rig look much longer than just 65'. I snapped this as I was coming out of a rest area facility in the Adiarondak Mountains in NY State.