Birmingham
Around 2 PM yesterday, Mr. H wrapped up his workday at Pilot Travel Center in Birmingham. It was our designated fuel stop and chosen driver swap location.
The fuel lines were congested and the line of trucks waiting for fuel snaked around the parking lot. While Mr. H waited in line, I went inside the convenience store to do my usual freshening up and to acquire my all-important mug of coffee. After 15 minutes of my absence, he still hadn't acquired a fuel island. What was up with this? I went ahead and logged myself on-duty, for pretrip inspection. As I was outside, eyeballing the important components of our truck, a visibly armed female security guard came up to me to inform us that their diesel tanks were depleted. No fuel would be available for the foreseeable future. Nice. After I completed my pretrip inspection, I had to struggle to maneuver our truck out of the still-congested truckstop.
Via Workflow structure, I sent a message requesting an alternate fueling locations. The automated response instructed me to continue on to my delivery location. 600 miles on less than a quarter tank of fuel. Yeah, right. I stopped at the next truckstop chain that we commonly use. In an effort to minimize the negative ding to my performance record, I sent in a free-form message To my DBL (supervisor) explaining what I was doing and why. For the new drivers who follow my blog, you'll observe that my first priority was to avoid running out of fuel. My next concern is making sure I keep high points on my bonus scorecard by simply communicating the situation to my DBL. Even if you don't communicate this specific type of issue, a driver is allowed in certain amount of flexibility in regards to designated fuel stops within each quarter There's no need to stress yourself out about it.
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