Huntsville, AL - 5/20/09

Despite the receiver's attempt this morning and the shipper's attempt this afternoon to ruin my schedule, I have made it to my desired destination for the evening within my desired time frame. So there.

I made my way down I-75 this morning and hit a bit of traffic, but after I got on the bypass, it was pretty smooth all the way down I-85 to the receiver. I checked-in an hour early for my 10am appointment and bumped the dock as instructed, curious to see if they'd start unloading early. I can tell you, no, they did not. The sign in the office said they have a two-hour time frame to unload the trailer, beginning at your appointment time, not your time of arrival. Perfectly logical; I'm okay with that. However, when the big-hand and the little-hand were both on "12" and the unloading process had yet to commence, I decided it was time to make an inquiry. By the time I got back outside to the truck, my dock light had changed from green to red, meaning they were unloading. Once they actually started working, I was empty and out of there in about an hour.

I made my way back through Atlanta and up I-75 to Dalton, arriving at one of our regular shippers with an hour to spare. I'm a pretty familiar sight to the lady at the front desk, so I'm generally spared the spiel of what to do and where to go; I give her the required numbers and she says, "see you in a little bit," i.e., to get my paperwork after being loaded. It's a nice arrangement. The problem with this place generally arises after I leave and go a few miles down the road to scale at the Pilot. And today was one of those days. For a reason I have yet to discern, the forklift guys usually place one last bale of scrap paper at the very end of the trailer, inevitably putting my tandems overweight, as was the case today.

I don't think I've ever driven with my tandems slid all the way back, mostly because it's not very conducive to making turns, but also because there are laws in some states limiting the distance between the trailer king-pin and the tandems. Fortunately, Georgia and Alabama are not among those states. And we'll just pretend that I didn't drive through Tennessee.

So, realizing at 5pm that I'm overweight would generally present more of an issue; however, I was able to balance the weight by sliding the tandems back. And on I went. I'm set to deliver in Cherokee in the morning, and then pick-up a load heading back to Atlanta.