NO REST ON SUNDAY

Some plans do come together, like when we left LaPine, OR and made our way past Mount Shasta into Corning, CA to take showers. Then onto the Company yard in French Camp, CA by Saturday night setting us up for a nice day off on Sunday relaxing and maybe having my Mom come out for a visit and a trip into the new Target store right down the street. It seemed to be going nicely, after getting a great night's sleep, having a nice fresh cup of coffee with our breakfast, and then sending in our daily hours, we set back and fired up the laptops. That's when it all went awry.

Craig's telephone rang. That was odd as it was only 8am and hardly anyone calls him on his phone. He answers it. I hear a lot of "uh huh's", and "okays", and then he hangs up. Seems there was a load that started at the same place we started from, in Wallula, WA, but somehow got extremely behind schedule. It had already been handed off from the original driver to a second driver, who had left too early during the night from Weed, CA to make it to the first delivery in Sacramento, CA and not have any time left to make it to the other two deliveries that were scheduled on Sunday.

We were told that the driver should be leaving Sacramento after the 9:00am delivery and would then come into the yard to swap trailers with us. By 11:30am we had our new trailer and paperwork in hand and were trying to get to the next scheduled appointment by 12pm which was 35 miles away in Riverbank, CA. Thankfully, we know the area, and beat feet over there, only as it seems to be the case when you are on a time crunch, run into a road closure and detour. No problem. We zip around and come in from the opposite direction only to be confronted with 3 other trucks lined up to be unloaded. OH VEY! So much for making the next appointment at 2:30pm in Daly City, CA just south of San Francisco!

After a 4 hour wait we finally get the 65 boxes of meat off loaded and place a phone call to the next delivery location. If they didn't need the meat we had to deliver to them, we would have been in a world of hurt. The employee said he would meet us when we could get there and take the delivery whatever time it might be. We again take off knowing all too well what kind of traffic we would run into going into the San Francisco Bay area on a Sunday evening, but we made it to Daly City by 7pm. That was the easy part. The hard part was trying to back into the tiny dock area tucked within a residential area with cars lined up and down a very small street.

Without the help of the employee, who had prior knowledge of the best approach to make the back, we would have been there much longer trying to get backed in. Within an hour we were done and desperately trying to get the heck out of South San Francisco and headed towards Las Vegas, which would be our last drop. Unfortunately, the 12:30pm Monday delivery would not be made. This load was just doomed from the beginning! We made it as far as a rest area near Coalinga, CA before our 14 hour clock ran out. We are waiting for our 10 hour mandatory break to be over before we head into Las Vegas, while we wait to hear what the new delivery time will be.

Yes, no rest for us this Sunday, but we did enjoy the challenge. It may have not gone as planned, but for being the third driver to be handed this load, I think we did pretty well considering all the obstacles that were put in our way. Now bring on Las Vegas!