Township Road 30

This week freight picked up a bit after the post-holiday dead season and the post-North-Georgia-blizzard-of-late-January-that-shut-down-carpet-manufacturing-and-distribution-for-a-week dead period, so I was back on local delivery. Thursday I had several deliveries in Columbus and one an hour-and-a-half northwest of Columbus near Bellefontaine with an address on "Township Road 30". Things can get interesting when you're making deliveries in a 70-foot truck to roads without names in towns that are not found in your map software.

I got to the terminal at 8:15 to find that my trailer hadn't been loaded yet because the warehouse ran out of propane for the forklifts the afternoon before. By then the afternoon guys were 17 hours into their shift and not looking so good. But they quickly loaded my trailer. They're the best.

I left at 9:15 and enjoyed a beautiful drive across Central Ohio flooded with the first sunshine I'd seen in weeks. 4 hours later I arrived at Township Road 30. I checked out the parking lot from both entrances, started to swing in as wide as possible from the township road, saw my trailer wheels headed right for the snowbank, realized there was just no way, backed it up onto the road, and called inside instead. (Call me lazy but it's more efficient than trying to find your way into a building you've never been to before, especially when the sloped driveway is sheer ice, especially when your truck is stopped on a narrow country road with its flashers on blocking traffic in both directions.) They said they'd send somebody right out. Somebody came right out, waddling down the icy driveway. I met him halfway up. I asked him how trucks usually pull in there. He took a long look at my truck, said he thought they were usually shorter than mine, but told me not to bother trying because they weren't going to accept the roll of carpet I was there to deliver, because the manufacturer had double-shipped it and they had decided they were going to refuse this one when it arrived.

So, they know they're located in the middle of the middle of nowhere, they got a call from my dispatcher the previous day to schedule the delivery, they knew we were bringing them one item, and they knew they were going to refuse it; and they couldn't have told that to the dispatcher when he was on the phone and saved me 3 hours of driving time, and our company 150 miles of diesel fuel and driver pay, just for that one stop?

I didn't know what to say to this guy, but I didn't want to say anything I'd regret because I knew the only way I was going to get my truck out of there was to back blind across the busy national highway a few yards behind my trailer and I knew I needed his help. So I said "all right" and "how would you feel about watching for traffic and signaling me when it's safe to back across the highway?" He agreed and a few minutes later I was on my way.