Delivery Delays

The past few days have been a regular old swap fest. What's a swap fest you ask? Out of the past five loads I've had I didn't take one from shipper to receiver. The way it usually works. Instead I would pick up a load, get a message that another driver was running low on hours, and they needed me to rendezvous with the other driver.

Swapping or re-powering a load every once and a while is problematic enough but, five in a row makes it real hard to manage the log book.

When I receive a load it has a pickup date and time and a delivery date and time with approximate miles from shipper to receiver. I calculate how many miles I need to run each day to arrive at the receiver a few hours before the scheduled appointment time. I plan where I'm going to stop for the night, where I'll fuel, etc. etc.

When I receive a request to swap (usually from the other driver's dispatcher) I'm expected to do most if not all if the driving to the swap point (because the other driver is out of hours) and then, somehow, still make that delivery time on time. Making all that meticulous planning worthless.

The best one was they send me over 200 miles out of route to meet another driver to do yet another swap. I drove four hours longer than I intended to that day in order to get to the swap point at the predetermined time. I arrive there around midnight unable to locate the other driver. When I inquire where he is, they send a message that the swap was canceled. The other driver wasn't going to have enough hours to make delivery on time. Well now thanks to this little sideways jaunt out of my route, I won't have enough hours either.

I eventually made to the destination. Late, but I made it. I rather dislike walking in to check in at the receiver late. They don't know all the behind the scenes stuff that caused you to be late. All they know is you're late. They've heard all the excuses too so, I don't offer any. I simply apologize and wait my turn to get worked into the rotation. Fortunately this receiver was a 24 hour facility and I didn't have to wait too long... This time.

I finally got to take one all the way. It was tight getting there on time because all the swapping had my log book just about shot. Well I thought I arrived on time.

From time to time we'll receive a dispatch with an open ended appointment time. They'll put an appointment time of 08:01 which generally means one of two things: My company could not confirm an appointment time because the receiver's office staff had left for the day ( in this case the weekend ) or they operate on a first come first served basis.

I was gambling on the latter. I arrived last night, went to check in only to find out, no appointment, no unload. I notified my dispatch this morning that I needed an appointment time.
They called the receiver and set up a time . Noon tomorrow.

Kind of disappointing to have to wait that long after I hauled butt to make it there on time but, the up side is, I'll get a 34 hour restart and have plenty of hours available when I head home for home time later this week.

Oh by the way for those of you that always want to know what I'm hauling and where I'm going...
This load is Birdseye frozen vegetables from Macon, Ga to Fort Worth, Tx