Plaster a smile on

I seem to find myself in a position where I'm not only frustrated with my job, I absolutely detest it.  And that's not a good place to be in if you drive a truck. All the issues that have been going on all year are not getting any better, they're worsening......there's going to be yet another dispatcher change next week and a slight swap in the loads I'm hauling, mostly the same places but parts for one of the other big 3 auto companies.  Shouldn't be a big issue, right?  Yet each change in dispatcher drives home the fact that they don't want the drivers to have a life outside of work and yes, even resent it if you seem to be doing something in that life that's more than what they bother to do with theirs.

This week has been extremely frustrating in that I was sent out to relay a load on Tuesday that involved having to spend the night on a company drop yard in Memphis that's a pain in the ass to get to and has absolutely no facilities.......why did I have to spend the night there? Because of our Big Brotheresque, intrusive EOBR's (electronic on-board recorder). If I drive somewhere to get food or shower it's no longer my personal time, it's considered work time.  I also discovered last night that the eobr is not including on duty-not driving time in the countdown for how many hours you have available to work.......that's an incredibly fucked-up issue and I'm going to have at least 2 days where I've gone over my hours because I didn't realize that.  Yes, it's partially (mostly) user error on my part for not catching it sooner but then again that's extremely flawed.  So now within the next month I'm going to get my ass chewed on by our safety/log department and just have to plaster a smile on and take it.  That load by the way never materialized and I had to bobtail to the Nashville area to find an empty and wait to reload the NEXT day, which then canceled also so had to drive another 1.5 hours south to load that afternoon.

Oh yeah, while I'm on roll with the bitching here, my climate control system in this truck is still screwing up.  The bunk now only blows HOT air no matter what setting you have it on.  The cab is still intermittent on what system is gonna work in what way but I've given up on trying to get this thing repaired properly.......speaking of repairs, last several trailers I've picked up in Tennessee have had major work required which means I can only make it to our Little Rock yard then be there until the next morning because the repairs are running past my 14 hours.  Not a huge deal because I can spend the night at home but it does mean that I can't deliver in Laredo until 10-12 hours later than normal but it pisses the dispatchers off to no end.  Sorry, but I'm pushing it with driving the trailer that far for repairs and we're not talking minor issues here.

I also seem to be suffering some major post-marathon endorphin drop blues.......quite a bit actually.  Yesterday was so bad that I spent the good part of the day crying while bemoaning how much I despise what I'm doing at the moment.  Yes, it's up to me to change things and yes, it's time to adopt the stiff upper lip attitude and get on with it but this is my little part of the web to vent and talk about what's going on with me so I'm taking full advantage of it.  Ok, I think I'm done ranting, lol.  Wait, one more thing, it looks like I'm stuck in Laredo for the weekend as of right now.  Now I'm finished!