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Happy New Year my friends!


Blackmore

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Yeah happy new year. Mine sucked.

As a liquor delivery dude the last two weeks of the year are always rough. Yesterday I had 28 stops which is only a bit heavy but the real pain came from having to cover half of another dude's route, because he had a 300 case drop to do.

Got in the truck in the morning, and saw the oil pressure was reporting off the gauge, over 100 psi. Reported it to the dispatcher but there wasn't much to do but go out and drive it. Had a mostly uneventful morning, got all of my own large stops off, but then the truck started to crap out. It would go back and forth between 100 psi and 0 psi, with the automatic shutoff kicking in for the latter situation. Again, reported to the dispatcher, warned him that if it stayed at 0 psi I was doomed. Drove off to the other side of town to get more of the large case drops done, said many prayers to any god I could think of to keep my truck moving.

Did one stop, got back in the truck, and it happened. I could go about a block at a time, not sure if I really had no oil pressure or whether it was just the gauge going screwy, but either way the truck was shutting down constantly. Went around the block and found myself a quiet parking lot suitable for whatever needed to happen next. At that point I had 17 stops and 172 cases still waiting to be delivered.

Called the dispatcher at 10:30 AM, let him know I was down. No response. 15 minutes later I call again, to inquire what's up.

"You're totally broken down now?"

The first little chorus of "and a happy new year" runs through my head.

"Yeah I'm broken down, I told you that 15 minutes ago."

Guy proceeds to call our mechanic service, which for some unexplainable reason is called Efficiency. He also says that he has a backup driver in the warehouse, so he'll see about getting him out to me.

An hour goes by, no real updates. I call, and Tony the dispatcher says he's working on it. I find out that the backup driver got sent to help someone other than myself, who was having some "problems". Later find out that said problems were rather minor and that most importantly, said problems didn't involve a truck sitting in a parking lot. Help was sent to a moving truck before a broken down one... brilliant.

Then they find me a mechanic, who calls me at least 4 times for directions. He got lost once because he was in an area with a few one-way roads, and the road sign said "N Armenia", and he assumed that the N meant that it only went north. Brilliant. And a happy new year.

Guy gets to me, starts fiddling with the sensors. The driver with the 300 case drop (Rob) pulls into an alleyway right behind my parking lot to do said drop, so being the nice guy that I am I go back and help him sporadically, with several trips up to watch the gauge while Henry the mechanic unplugged things.

They finally let me know around noon that a different backup driver will be there soon. Billy the backup driver calls me to let me know that he's on the other side of the state and not to expect him till about 2 PM at the earliest. By this point "and a happy new year" is not only running through my head but I'm singing just that little fragment at least once every five minutes.

Then I get the most evil phone call ever, from my friends JP11801 and Agile_one. They're sitting at a bar in New York City, drinking good beers and just had to rub it in. I call them evil something or others and relay most of this story to them.

The mechanic finally called time of death on the truck at 1 PM. I again call the company, and the news is met with some sort of shock. I come up with some line about how they always expect the magical fairy elves of truckland (I.e. Efficiency) to come out and make everything better, when they should assume that the truck is going to be towed and end up pleasantly surprised.

Long story short, I finally get another truck and both backup drivers in vans and we resumed the route at about 2:30. The 17th and final stop got delivered at 5 PM, and put back on the truck when the idiot liquor store owner decided that 5 PM on NYE was too late. And a happy new year.

Came home, passed out by 8 PM, woke up at 7:30 AM feeling hung over and dizzy. Going back to bed now.

At least it was better than last New Year, which I spent in the hospital after discovering my hernia. Not that I was seen by a doctor, I left just after midnight when all the alcohol poisoned people started showing up, not to mention the dude with the blown off hand from fireworks.

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