New Jersey Madness

The last few passings I've made through Jersey weren't bad. I was actually starting to retract many of my previous thoughts of anger/hatred/loathing for the Garden State.

Until.

Today.

I swear... it's been one of the longest, hottest, rudest, most stressful days I've had in a long time. Maybe it's the coming of the full moon? Maybe it's just that today was a bad day for more folks than just myself? Who knows.

It started off with me sitting for hours in Sterling, PA at a truck stop waiting for a load assignment. I had made myself available for 7am, but I didn't actually get a load assignment 'til after 11am. I was frustrated, but that's managable.

The load I was finally assigned was to be picked up in a pre-loaded trailer in Florence, NJ. I was just over two hours away. It took me three and a half hours to get there thanks to 3 huge tie ups in traffic on the way. Once I got there I found the place pretty easily and checked in at the guard shack.

The guard would be the only person to treat me like an acutal human for the time I spent at the facility. He informed me where to drop my empty trailer and I proceeded to that area and backed into an open spot. Only to be asked to move it to the back lot by the yard jockey who talked to me like I was a two year old.

So I pulled the trailer back out and headed around back. There were no obvious places to drop the trailer so I went to the receiving dock to inquire as to where they wanted me to drop it. This is when the real trouble began.

I entered the building and a lady was mopping the floor and cleaning in the general area. I stepped into what looked to be the receiving office and she was all snippy in saying, "No one in here right now."

So I asked, "Any idea when they will be back?" politely.

She ignored me and kept mopping. I stood there patiently for about 3 minutes and a gentleman entered the office from a door to the warehouse. I asked him if he could help me... he too ignored me, turning and leaving the way he came.

I was starting to lose patience.

I asked the cleaning lady again when someone would be back and she just stared at me like I had a third arm growing out of my forehead. I huffed and said, "Fine, I'll go find someone somewhere else."

At that she started towards the warehouse door and jerked it open screaming out a name I couldn't understand. The unknown person replied loudly, "Can't you see I'm busy right now."

She responded, "Yeah, but you have a lady here waiting."

He, "So what, tell her I'm busy."

She shouted something in spanish at that moment and slammed the door behind her, going back to her mop and bucket.

I was just reaching the door to exit when a man appeared and asked me... and I quote...

"What the f*ck can I do for YOU today?"

I took a huge deep breath and turned towards him and said, "First, you can NOT take that tone with me as it's truly unnecessary."

He then looked at me like I had a third and possibly fourth arm growing out of my forehead.
"I am simply looking for someone to tell me where I can drop my empty trailer and sign the paperwork for the load I am picking up." I stated matter of factly, breaking the silence and staring contest.

"I don't care, just drop it out on the yard somewhere. Go to maintenance for your load." He snapped out as he turned and left the office.

F*cktard.

I was pissed at this point and did something I probably should've have done... I found an out of the way place to drop the trailer. I should've just dropped it where I had parked and left at that moment. But no... I'm too nice for that.

So I dropped the trailer and headed over to what I assumed was the maintenance area to inquire about my load & paperwork. The guy I dealt with there was nicer, but it was obviously still an inconvenience for him to have to deal with me. He made a phone call on his cell phone while he was taking care of me and my paperwork. It was very rude.

But, I got the paperwork and I was done with the personnel at the facility! I went and hooked up to the loaded trailer. Then I started to send in my macro messages about the load on the Qualcomm when I noticed that the paperwork didn't list a weight for the freight.

Great.

(that rhymed!)

So I just dealt with that really quickly with a freeform message explaining as such and started to get outta dodge. I had to scale the load since there was no weight listing for the freight inside so I headed up to my most dreaded place in New Jersey, the Bordentown truck stops.

There is a Pilot and a Petro side by side here in Bordentown. Being that I can use my ComData fueling card to pay for scales at Pilots I decided to go there to do the deed. Big mistake. I sat in the entrance to the station for nearly an hour and a half before I even got close enough to turn into the scale. I was pissy, really pissy at this point. So I scale the load, go in to pay and see that I'm way over weight on my drive tires.

Just great.

I also realize that I'm probably not gonna be able to get the load legal without sliding my tandems all the way to the front hole. Which by the way is illegal in a lot of states.

So, instead of trying to sit in the Pilot truck stop traffic for another hour and a half, I decide to hop over to the Petro to slide and rescale there. I slid my tandems all the way up to the 3rd hole... mostly for shits and giggles and got on the scale. When I went in to get the ticket I was not really all that surprised to see that I was still over weight on my drives. By like 2000 lbs.
I called into my manager and explained the situation. Her advice was to go back to the shipper in the morning to have them reload the trailer properly.

Yeah... THAT should be fun. Rudeness two days in a row. But being the good girl that I am, I'll go prepared to kill them with kindness. And I'll do my job as expected.

Now, I'm sitting at the Petro truck stop, which does at least have IdleAire, trying to relax and forget all the madness of today. Once I wrap up this blog, I'm going to put in a funny movie and laugh the last of my stress away.

I'm sure I'll be just peachy tomorrow.