DARK FIGURES IN THE NIGHT

In the pre dawn darkness, and from the glow from my laptop, I think I killed the last of the mosquitoes which have been tormenting us this past week. I felt no remorse at what I had done, and casually tossed what remained of the smashed carcass in the paper towel into the trash. That'll teach them to mess with us truck drivers.

An eerie scene played out in front of me as I was sitting in the cab of the truck, waiting for Craig to return from checking in at our receiver in Stockton this morning. It was still dark outside, and I watched as dark figures, illuminated from the street lights, wandered the streets in all directions, all in search of the same thing...... the guard shack. It made me imagine crime ridden big city alley ways and lost souls in search of what ails them, and knew the only substance that would make these roaming figures content would be a dock number.

Happy to see Craig return from his trek, he said he was approached by several of the dark figures wanting to know which way they should go, and like the lone supplier, hidden in the darkness except from the few radiating rays from the street light, he pointed them in the directions they so desperately wanted. Such is life on the industrial streets of America where truck drivers roam.

It wasn't long before we were empty, except for the 22 empty pallets inside the trailer. A short drive away, we would drop them off and be told to head back to the Company yard to drop our empty trailer and pick up a loaded trailer with 45,000 pounds of frozen french fries. These potato icicles will be delivered to Long Beach, CA by Wednesday morning. A mere 379 mile trip, but with the limited amount of driving hours we have left until midnight Tuesday night, it would work perfectly into our schedule, and give us an opportunity to do a 34 hr reset of Craig's driving hours before making the delivery Wednesday, leaving us with a fresh 70 hrs of driving time going into the Labor Day weekend.