Colorado Circus – 0912hrs

Made it to Henderson, Colorado yesterday without further incident… delivered our load of packages (Bailey’s Express load).  Got our next load picking up in Center, CO going to Pageland, SC.  The load’s not due in SC until Tuesday morning at 0915, and we have to drive 1700 miles.  We average 500 miles per “shift”, or 1000 miles per day.  You do the math…I think we have some extra time on this load!

Headed down to Center, CO along CO160… what a beautiful and scenic route that is!  Right through some serious rocky mountains!  I’ll have some pics to upload later.

So we roll into the 01 right on time… only to be told that this is only the place we check in!  Wut?!?  Gotta go over to this OTHER shipper to pick up half the load, then over to this OTHER shipper to complete the load, then return to square one to scale out and get the paperwork.

<sigh>Ok

Roll off to the first pick-up… got bad directions, ended up in a residential area… on a dead end street!!  Had to help Knucklehead back all the way back out (about a football length)… at night… on a snow packed / iced road.

Got turned around the right way, and got to the first pickup. Waited about a half hour for another two trucks to get out of the way… then got backed into the dock.  Another 20 minutes later the dock dude comes out and says;

“Um, we don’t have a load for you, they must have messed up at XYZ, go on to your second pick-up”

WFT?!?  Um..ok…

Ten miles down the road, second pick-up… pull in there, Knucklehead goes in and checks in… um… there seems to be a problem!

THEY have no load for us either… in fact it appears that the load has already been picked up and shipped… but they’re not sure!

WTF?!?!  Don’t you KNOW if you’ve shipped something or not?

Dock gal comes back (right after Knucklehead and I scrounge some truck food, good timing!) and says, we found the load…. XYZ shipper gave the wrong truck the load assignment… but the good news is he’s sitting right here in our dock and we’ve got him stopped.  We’ve got the second dock filled with this other truck and he only has two more pallets to go until he’s done.  Once he’s done we’ll cross dock the load and you’ll be all set.  The only thing is the last two pallets are still in production… and it’s break time!

15 minutes pass… here comes dock dude… “we’re gonna pull him out, we pulled your load off and will get you right in and loaded”

Sweet!

This is where I lose track of the story as I’d been up since Midnight that morning and it was not well after 2000hrs… I hit the bunk… I drifted off to the familiar sounds and vibrations of Mario Andretti forklift driver slamming pallets into the truck.

At some point Knucklehead woke me up enough to kick me out of the bottom bunk and up top… we were bedded down at some truck stop for the night!  I vauguely remember climbing up, wrapping myself back into my blankets and dying.

We’re now Eastbound on Colorado route 160… that really scenic route…. going in circles again!  ROFL