Catlettsburg, Kentucky

From Hampton Roads it was over to Branchville, VA where I was to pick up a load headed to Merrillville, Indiana (which could be said to be in the “Chicagoland” area, a term I find somewhat irritating for reasons probably relating to this girl I knew my freshman year whowas irritating and, when asked where she was from would reply “oh, the chicaaagoleeand eareea” in an irritating chicagoland accent.) I did not get over to Branchville until after dark and it was a challenge finding the place where I was supposed to go for three reasons. A.) no directions were provided. B.) The place was basically a grain elevator and C.) it was closed. (oh yeah and D.) it wasn’t the right location.)
Turns out that this location was the main office (which was somewhat difficult to believe) but that the pick up location was about 12 miles north in the town of Courtland. Three other drivers had shown up in the hour since I first arrived. One of them somehow managed to figure out this actual location and, because I was out of hours, I went there the next morning. This correct location was merely a larger complex of grain elevators.
I was pretty irritated that Werner had given me the wrong pickup address and didn't seem to know what the fuck was going on in general as far as this load was concerned. But here I figured out why.
The Shipper was Meherrin Fertilizer Inc. and their main business was mixing fertilizers and also mixing IceMelt (a mixture of salt, potash and a nonslip texture addititve.) Up to this point Werner had never done any shipping for them but Lowes (the home improvement chain) had called up Meherrin and said they would buy all the icemelt they could sell them or their stores in the upper midwest who were, you might recall, getting slammed by early season ice and snow storms. Virginia had not had any significant ice or snow in the last couple years and so had stores of this stuff. Werner does a lot of the shipping for Lowes and so off they sent us to pick up some ice melt. The other guys were going to locations in Michigan and I to Merillville.
Turns out they didn't even have enough product at this Courtland location to fill all 4 trucks and so I followed a truck load of african american fellows up to Sedley, an even smaller town about 15 miles away over roads that really were not built for semi traffic. Another grain elevator (well let's be accurate, there is no grain, all fertilizer and salt) and I bakced into this "dock" uneven and very much more grassy than your average Wal*Mart dock.
While four young guys stacked bags on pallets two older black guys bickered about how best to load the trailer for proper weight distribution. This resultled in the partial loading and unloading of the trailer at least twice which, at this point, was getting obnoxious. Meanwhile two fat old white men stood around and watched everyone else work and the whole scene felt strangely anachronistic.

Finally I was loaded and off I went through Petersburg and Lynchburg over the rolling hills of the Piedmont and gradually those hills grew taller and became the appalachians and I was in Roanoke. Then into West Virginia to Beckley and Charleston at sunset and as much rush hour as they could muster. then in the darkness into Kentucky, skirting the Ohio River and coming to a rest at a Flying J where I took a shower for the first time in some time.