Another day, another work week beginning.

We're about to leave. We're trying to get out of here a little earlier. We didn't actually leave until about noon last week, and we were behind all week. Between that and snow, we didn't get home yesterday until about 08:00. We don't like that, because it feels like we haven't been home at all. We're like to get home around 22:00 on Sunday night. Hopefully we can set a good pace this week and maintain it.

I sent Ray a refined e-mail about our problems at our customer in Chicago Heights, Illinois; details about how our drive tires don't touch the ground when we're in their dock. The only real solution to that is to be assigned a Volvo 780. Especially since we found out that there's a minimum height requirement of 5'3" to drive a Peterbilt (Mara is 5' even). We could beg for a low mileage Volvo 770 (if there are any low-mileage 770s left in the fleet), but that represents a weight problem because the 770s are heavier.

In short, our problem comes from the fact that the Freightliner Columbias that U.S.X. uses don't have a power divider/inter-axle differential or an air bag dump valve. If we had either one of those, we wouldn't have a problem in this dock.

Well, I should run. We're trying to get out of here. And it's best if we go. I've stepped in it with Mama 4 or 5 times already this morning. She says that I've been talking mean to her, and I don't know what she's talking about. All I know is that nearly everything I've said gotten me into trouble. I suspect that Mama is just upset because Ray wants us to delay our week off from next week to the week following that. We were all looking forward to that week off, but I think Mama was especially looking forward to it. Mara was surprised that I got so angry over that, but it was mostly because of Mama. Our time-off is everything for us, and we don't like it to be fucked with.