Vandalia,IL

Well, only 280 more miles to Springfield and it is raining cats and dogs outside. Pulled over at a little truck stop here to let it pass. Checked the weather on my Blackberry and it looked nasty. Got stopped and fired up the computer to double check on a larger screen and yep, sure enough, it is nasty. Heavy rain, hail and strong winds. I guess I will just stay put for the moment and let it pass. Unfortunately, this is going to put us in even later than I had planned.

Yesterday we dropped the load that we had brought from Portland up in Cincinnati and Sidney,OH. While at our last drop in Sidney we got the next load which was going to bring us back to Springfield to get the truck worked on. We ran into issues at both drops because the load was short on product. Luckily the truck was Shipper Load Count so we didn't have to worry about it. However, it took them FOREVER to count and determine what was missing. We finally get finished at our last stop at 1630. Our next load is a live load at 1800 and it is 225 miles away. HELLO?? Anyone see a problem with this? Now, I am guessing that our FM thought we would be in sooner than we were and that we wouldn't have any problems with our drops and that this wouldn't be a problem when he pre-planned it. But here is my deal. We had plenty of time on the first load, so we stop and get a little non moving sleep at night. It would have been nice if he would have sent us a message early on letting us know when the live load was scheduled. We could have planned accordingly and not stopped that last night so we could get in first thing in the morning. All we knew is that we had to deliver by 1600 and that is what we did. Because of this, we had to drive the 225 miles and then park over night because they were closed when we got there and we couldn't get loaded until this morning. I am getting a little frustrated with our FM on some things. I realize that they don't hold your hand at this company, but a little more communication would be nice. I hate when I send in a question and get a one word answer. That really irritates me. But I guess that is a whole other topic.

So, it is roughly 2100 hours and I still have almost 300 miles to go. AND we are supposed to have the ACEII class in the morning. Well, I have a feeling we aren't going to make that. I'm not even going to make it in until close to 0300. Then we have to drop the trailer and get to the hotel. I can't function on just a few hours sleep. Maybe we can get it on Monday or something, or even Sunday if they happen to do it on that day. Probably be better anyway because we will have a few more weeks under our belts and more numbers to look at. Just a pain to get back through here. I guess we just let them know and they will get us back through when we need to.

So I guess I will close for now and check the weather again and see about getting on the road. Stay safe out there tonight!