TIGHT SPACES

Well, what they say about Ralph's in Compton, CA is true. I can attest to no truck driver exaggeration going on there. We actually had the good side to dock on this morning, and with an early morning appointment, the timing couldn't have been better. Even got one of the more spacious (which is stretching it a bit) areas to back into. But as we like to say, "didn't hit anything, didn't get hit, life is good". We were however detained at Ralph's a bit longer than our appointments allowed, so we were 15 minutes late to our second drop. Now the last thing you want to see on the freeway enroute to an appointment you're already late to is CHP doing a traffic break. We never could figure out exactly why, as traffic was moving smoothly, but after 3 or so minutes he took off and so did traffic again. We then saw another CHP unit doing the same thing on the opposite side of the freeway. Go figure....it's LA.....enough said. At the last delivery I was glad that Craig had me along to spot for him. We were given a dock, which when your doors are open, allowed for about 1 inch of clearance, from hitting the stairs. You can see from the picture, just how adept I am with my verbal backing skills to Craig..... you can also see, some other drivers weren't so lucky.

Oh get this, at our last drop, we at first thought there wasn't going to be a need for a lumper to unload the trailer, but after about 30 minutes, there was a knock at the door. I roll down the window and the young man proceeds to tell me his boss says that it will be $90 to unload the trailer, or if we want to do it ourselves, it would be free, and he was dead serious when he said it. After telling him we would be more than happy to have a CommCheck issued for the unload, I had a good laugh about the thought of us unloading it for free.

When we went empty, Craig had all of about 15 minutes left on his driving hours for the day, which made us boogie on over to our not so special parking place in Vernon. You remember it right? How after parking there on and off for over a year, right before Christmas we awoke to a parking ticket? Well, we will be parking there again, but only until Craig generates new driving hours at midnight. Thankfully the Grinch doesn't come around until after 2am to start writing tickets. By then we will be long gone and headed to the company yard in Bloomington where no one cares what hours of the day you park.