First Load After Vacation Started Out Challengingly

It’s Friday night. Here are my recollections of Tuesday night. As we commenced to depart home, I noticed that we badly needed fuel. We went to our favorite truck stop on the north side of Springfield, Missouri. My fuel card was declined. I tried it repeatedly before starting my series of phone calls. As time progressed, our window of time was shrinking to pick up our load on time. So, we spent some of our cash to get just enough fuel to get us to where we needed to be in Joplin, Missouri. 

  Next, we had to pick up an empty trailer. We were sent to a guarded yard in Joplin. Upon arrival, we had to wait at the gate for 20 minutes- as the guard was busy with other tasks. Once we were finally let in, we discovered that there were no empty trailers. I had to repeatedly assure the staff at Schneider that the trailers they were sending us for were unavailable. That took precious time also. So, we were sent to a place 20 miles away - where we successfully got an empty trailer. 

  All of the delays made us 5 minutes late for pick up, but our shipper didn’t make an issue of it. We were pleasantly surprised that they had already loaded a trailer for us. All we had to do was drop off the empty trailer and connect to the loaded one. 

   Things went better from there. We spent the night at a nearby truck stop & got fuel the following morning, using my reactivated card. 

  I drove as far as I could on Wednesday. We slept in London Ohio. 

  On Thursday, I drove to maximum limits again. We slept on our customer’s property, on Long Island, New York. We ordered pizza for dinner.