Fuel for Thought

Just Like That

I had my plans for wasting through a weekend in Rock Hill, South Carolina, but there was work to do instead. Saturday night at about bedtime I got the call. Hot freight 90 miles away (back roads, no direct route) that needed to go 850 miles to Louisiana. One piece weighing one pound. That sounded so familiar. It was the same load that dispatch woke me for Saturday morning, but the load never materialized. Now it was hot. I arrived at midnight and bounced between two plants and a half hour later I found the piece of equipment, but there was still confusion whether it was the correct part. The supervisor who coordinated the delivery all day from home decided it would be safer if he came in to physically identify the part. He lives a half hour away. Part of the confusion was from the fact that there was no paperwork, and the part was bubble wrapped in an open, unmarked box, and it was left for me to pick up at one of the scale houses where security had no idea how to process freight. I was rolling after 0100. It was a long 850 miles. Laundry is in the dry cycle in Ruston, Louisiana, and I won’t have trouble sleeping tonight.

eb