It’s a cold morning in upstate New York. The air isn’t the only thing that’s frozen. Our projected deliveries for Celadon this week are now on hold, through no fault of the hardworking driver who was doing his best to navigate the snowy highways.
Speaking of snow, when one event causes a schedule delay it creates a snowball effect that impacts everything down the line. Thursday’s delivery in Atlanta that made us wait 3 hours while the shipper’s clerical error was resolved resulted in a late pickup at our next stop in Lebanon, TN.
We spent the night Friday at a truck stop in Pennsylvania. Mike started driving at 1:30am as we began to see the first edge of the snowfall moving up from the south. As the morning progessed and the snow got heavier Mike had to keep stopping to clean off the wiper blades. About 6:00am at a rest stop where he had pulled over to get out and clean the wipers he came back in the truck with the news that one of his tires was flat.
Since it was so early in the morning and we weren’t close to a big city it took awhile for Celadon to get a repair truck out to us. We lost 4 hours with that incident. Once we were back on the road it was slow going as the snowfall continued through most of the day.
By noon we arrived at the delivery site in Johnstown NY. This delivery was a drop and hook which means we didn’t have to be scheduled for unloading. We could just unhook the trailer in a designated spot, find an empty Celadon trailer in the lot (amongst the many empties that belong to numerous other companies that deliver to this Walmart warehouse), hook up to the empty and be on our way.
Meanwhile Mike was coordinating with Celadon and the shipper in Syracuse where we needed to pick up the next load. Unfortunately, this one was a live load and we would be late for the originally scheduled time. Because of the holiday weekend they couldn’t reschedule us until Tuesday and Celadon couldn’t find a different delivery for us either.
We hauled the empty trailer towards Syracuse, getting to a service plaza on the toll road just east of Utica, NY, before Mike ran out of driving hours. There’s no reason to hit the road early today so we are enjoying a leisurely start to the morning. We’ve got an exciting weekend planned for our “frozen” driving adventure.
Happy New Year!
Living Wonderously 