I just made up my mind to leave U.S. Xpress. I don't think there's any going back this time.

I told Seth, my dispatcher, that I would call him today and let him know what my final decision was. Even after getting that message from Epes, I hadn't decided, although that certainly made me look at it a little differently. I suddenly had options.

Well, I've been trying to get hold of Seth since around noon. I had some questions for him, and figured I would make my decision based on what he told me. For one thing, I wanted to know if USX was moving over toward hauling containers (which I'm not the least bit interested in doing). I never got him on the phone.

A few minutes ago I finally got someone on the phone. The lady I talked to told me that Seth was out today. This kind of irritated me. I suppose he could've been sick, but it made me wonder if he knew he was going to be out today and essentially left me to be someone else's problem.

Anyway, I talked to the lady bit and explained my situation. During the course of the conversation she got rather snippy with me because I told her I couldn't pick up a load until tomorrow, and that I needed something to get me to or near Tunnel Hill. She said she thought that she had something that picked up tonight. I told her I couldn't pick something up tonight, that I wasn't ready to roll, and she said something about USX being a forced dispatch company.

I think my exact question at the point was “Ma'am, did you miss the part about quitting?” Right at tha exact moment was when I made up my mind to leave USX. It was not a good time for someone to try to scary dispatcher routine on me.

I let Mara know after I hung up. I want to get this on the table now. No surprises.

Well, there's one surprise, at least. I got up this morning assuming that I would probably stay with U.S. Xpress. It's a bit of a surprise to me to find myself sitting here having made that final cut.