Well today was really special.  I loaded all of my road clothes in the truck, fired it up, and headed out to pick up the machine I was supposed to haul to Iowa.

When I got there I walked in and found the guy I was supposed to see and the first thing he asked me "Where are your riggers?"

My heart dropped into my stomach as the implication of that question sank in.  "I'm a trucker, you're supposed to provide the riggers to load the thing, that's the way it works" I said to him already knowing how he would respond.

"No" says he, "the buyer is responsible for the riggers and loading".

Great. I returned to my truck to start making calls. First I called dispatch to let them know the load was going South at a high rate of speed. Then I called the broker who gave us the load. Naturally she knew nothing about this aspect and said she would make some calls.

After 4 hours of calls back and forth I finally got to the bottom of things. It seems the original buyer had sold the machine to someone else, and that person had already sold it to yet another party who is in Iowa. Somewhere along the way communications got screwed up and the riggers thought the thing had to be dismantled and loaded next week, not this week. Just fucking wonderful.

So I basically wasted the day screwing around with a load I am not even going to haul, closed up my house and in the process tossed out some perfectly good food, and am now back at home again waiting around to see if they can find me another load some time this month.

So much for making any money this month. This disaster combined with a painful shortage of good paying freight pretty well places this entire month in the red. I doubt I'll even be able to cover my bills at the end of the month, never mind spending for anything remotely resembling Christmas gifts.