After delivering the load of truck engines to the port of Baltimore, I booked an Amazon load to Greenwood, Indiana. Though not technically a 3rd party load, this load required me to bring a trailer from Baltimore to the Royce Too warehouse in Martinsburg, WV.
If you’re never been here before, the warehouse can be difficult to find, and there’s no one to call to get directions.
Once I arrived, there were a handful of Amazon drivers there – wish there was a way for us to collaborate and share info about shippers and directions.
Don’t blindly follow the directions from the Amazon GPS. Use Google Maps instead. Upon pulling into the yard, you have to follow the signs that take you left, right, left.
You pull into this large enclosed building that resembles a cave with several docks inside. Because you have to alley dock inside the building, space is severely limited. Once I was docked, it took only about 20 minutes for Royce Too to load up 21 pallets of socks, and I was off to the races.
With a light load, I was able to navigate the hills of West Virginia at a good rate of speed.
The driving was good until I hit Indiana where there was major construction for stretches at a time – apparently Indiana is taking advantage of roads having less traffic during the pandemic. But it didn’t seem that way at all – it was bumper-to-bumper for over 20 miles. Would I run out of hours before I got there?
With a late sunset (most of Indiana is surprisingly in Eastern Timezone). I drove into the city with the sun shining into my face.
When I arrived, after waiting 45 mins to get through the long line, the gate guard told me I was 8 hours early, and I had to exit and return first thing in the morning.
“C’mon,” I insisted. “I just went over my hours. If I leave now and find parking. It’ll be 10 hours later before I can return.”
It’s drop and hook and there’s space in the yard, certainly Amazon could let me drop the trailer early so I can catch some Z’s and get ready for the next load. Wish these guys knew exactly what truck drives had to go through.
