Could I have a show of hands from those of you who know the routine by now? You remember it? The old song and dance of not being able to drive when you're awake, and legally driving when you want to sleep? Yes, the governments hand in the "hours of service" regulations have once again played a role in we can and can not get rest to drive, which in turn, disrupts our bodies natural body clocks.Our swap of trailers occurred around 5pm Tuesday evening, when the other driver showed up at the Pilot truck stop in Rice Hills, OR. Even though we were wide awake, we were forced to sit around until 10pm before being able cover the 300 miles to our delivery Wednesday morning. Just by luck, we were able to grab about 2 good hours of sleep before hand. It also helped that we had recently been given John Grisham's audio book "The King of Torts", which actually made the drive go by very quickly.
Arriving at the Fred Meyer DC in Puyallup, WA thirty minutes early for our 5am appointment, we were surprised that by 5:30am we were unloaded and putting in our empty call. By using the split sleeper berth option on Craig's driving hours, his 14 hour clock would run out at 7:30am which didn't leave any wiggle room for doing anything but drop our empty and stay put at Fred Meyers for a load later that evening, or drive over to the drop yard in Pacific, WA and enjoy our 10 hour break. Let's roll the dice and see what happened shall we?
Craps it is, and we remain at the Fred Meyer DC and drop our trailer. Trying to get sleep with the yard goats moving trailers all around us, and the constant beep when they back up, can be a bit difficult at times. We managed about 4 hours of sleep on and off, when the beep of the QualComm let us know that we would be picking up a loaded trailer at 8pm, for a wonderful overnight drive into Spokane for a 6am delivery.Can't really complain, it's an easy drive, it gets us into the yard where we can do some long overdue laundry, and we have access to our pickup if we have any energy left over to go anywhere. With any luck we'll have a load of meat or french fries waiting for us either Thursday evening or Friday morning to hopefully get us back into a more normal driving pattern.......that is if there is such a thing.
3 comments:
that sounds about how it usually goes with us too! as for the john grisham book, have you read any of his others?? i love his writing, always get the unabridged version coz he can develope characters so that you feel like you know them & i think i've read everything he's ever written, most of them multiple times!!! lol i think "the last juror" is my fav!!
Im in that same cycle as you. I HATE driving overnight, but it seems that is what they give me lately!
Stop following me! I swear we have probably past each other a dozen times on i5. Well, you probably did the passing, i got one of those slow trucks. We have a yard in Pacific too.
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