Sigh of relief

As of Friday afternoon after cleaning my truck out completely (company policy if you take more than 2 weeks off) I am on VACATION!!!!!!!!!!!!  You cannot imagine how light and free I felt after turning in my work shop write up and got in the car heading back to my apartment......I knew the job had been weighing my mood and entire outlook on everything down but just didn't realize how far into the depths of ennui I'd fallen until then.  I felt physically lighter even (I'm not, actually at my heaviest that I've been for the past 3 years but that's another post).

Speaking of the job, it's not a good sign when one of your regular customers tells you that you might want to find a different route for a while.  Apparently the car maker that these parts are for have gotten a burr up their ass about some of the oxidization on the unpolished aluminum parts and while the supplier is getting their butts chewed on they are going to start refusing to load trailers with any damage, repaired or not.........the not is perfectly understandable but they would not even allow me to patch some pinholes with the metal tape I keep in the truck for that purpose--the same metal tape that the shops use by the way. What is not acceptable is that they refused my trailer because of a welded and riveted patch on the roof, one that showed absolutely no signs of water leakage whatsoever.  As they said, it's not my fault, the damage on these trailers are from the inside, I pick them up preloaded and sealed so no way for me to inspect until I'm empty at the dock.  Auto plant forklift & yard drivers are notoriously blase about causing damage to outside companies trailers so any trailer that's been on these routes for more than 6 months are going to have some damages.......Ended up not getting loaded until 4 hours after I already should have been rolling AND the shop where I went for repairs was shoddy with the caulk ($94 for that!!!!)  so I had to use the metal tape anyways.

Side rail damage on inside of trailer

Other work-related news.....the new dispatcher has been replaced finally.  As I've mentioned before, she's extremely nice but just isn't cut out to be a dispatcher especially on these dedicated routes.  I've only spoken to the NEW new dispatcher once on the phone but from what I've seen via the qualcomm communications he seems to be much more switched on.. 

Back to the trailers........since I was going to be t-calling whatever I pulled out of Laredo at my home terminal, I was set up with an OTR load.  Always an interesting prospect because most of the trailers that aren't on the dedicated routes don't go through shops near as often.  This trailer was no exception, a glance at the inspection sticker showed it to be a year since it had last went through a company shop and let's just leave it at the condition was less than optimal.......once I got back to the NLR terminal it was verified that the last time was 13 months ago, yikes.

Ok, enough of the work grumbles other than when I was turning in my writeup slips at the shop a driver was in the office who told me it just wasn't fair that I was taking 2 weeks off for vacation and a proper one at that.  Not teasing, he was serious. Ummm, yeah.  I more than deserve this time off and really it's not my problem that he isn't/doesn't/can't take his own vacations so a huge raspberry to him, lol.

Always prepared!!

The glad hand seal stash!! If you constantly drop/hook to different trailers then this is a must