Going The Wrong Way - Trucking Backwards

by Hervy
(Kansas City)

Trucking takes more than driving skills, the paperwork is just as important

Trucking in the mind of most people is all about the road and rage of the rebel trucker. While most people could easily be convinced that we aren’t all renegade retards trying to act out our on screen characterizations in real life, they might be surprised still to learn how much of our daily activities involves paperwork. Even more of how that paperwork might affect the rest of our daily activities.

I proved yesterday how a simple piece of paper (and lack of attention to detail) could easily throw a driver off the entire trip.

Yesterday morning I was headed out grinning ear to ear, as I usually do, to my first stop. I hadn’t left with much extra time because I was recovering from a root canal prior to departure. I had more stops on this trip than I have had lately but I didn’t really pay attention to that on purpose.

I got halfway across Missouri en route to Clinton when my self diagnosed (in a non limiting sense) OCC caused me to pull over and take another look at my paperwork just to be sure that I was doing what I really wanted to do. (In other words to be sure I was going to the right first stop). I looked at the bill at the end of the stack which should have been my first stop which didn’t match the manifest list of all the stops. I could not figure out what was going on, maybe they were pick ups and not deliveries I thought at first.
Then I came to senses and realized that couldn’t be it because the bills would have yellow stickers on it.

Finally my brain unfroze and I took another look at the manifest list and discovered that there were two sheets not one. The stop that I was headed to was the first stop on the second sheet. We start the stops from the manifest from the bottom up to the top, not the top of the page to the bottom as you expect.

So I was looking at the beginning stops for that page but that page was not the beginning page. It was the first page but the second page has the end of the list which is where the first stop begins. (I hope I didn’t confuse you)


I was headed to the wrong stop and I had missed the best route to the true first stop. I didn’t have to back tract to St Louis to get on track but it did cost me 2.5 hours to cut down US 54 from I-70 to Springfield. That was just enough time to throw off my stops for the rest of the day.

I didn’t complete what was planned out by yesterday evening and I had an appointment in Kansas City this morning at 7a.m. This meant skipping several other stops to make the appointment and then back tracking to deliver them afterwards. This also means moving all the furniture that was supposed to be delivered prior to this stop to get to the freight that needs to come off at this stop.

This may also mean that I won’t get all the stops done today that were scheduled for today (not all schedules are definite times but still) because of the additional stops that were not completed yesterday, which means tomorrow may also be affected. Tomorrow of course is Friday which means if I can’t get back on track, I will have to pray and hope the companies that are left will take it on Saturday, otherwise I will probably be stuck out here until Monday.

All of this comes from me not paying close enough attention to my paperwork. I was so anxious to go. That I didn’t make sure I was headed in the right direction.

I wonder how many other times in life I have done the same thing. We often are so anxious to get somewhere, anywhere so long as it feels or looks like progress. If we don’t take a good look and make sure we are going where we need to go it may all be in vain. We should all get in the habit of pulling over and making sure we are on track, but for best results take a good look at our plans before we take off.

Lesson learned. Now I think it’s time to go and face my punishment of moving furniture that should have already been delivered.