Life before and after the fire
Monday the fifth is my last training day and I need to be back in Lancaster to wrap this up but instead I am sitting in a truck stop in Battle Creek, MI. We have run a lot of miles this week and brought a load of Almond Delight from Salt Lake City to Grand [...]
Going from Columbus, OH to Salt Lake City. Night time rolls around and guess whose turn it is to drive? I took over in West Branch, IA and needed to drive about 550 miles. We were 250 miles from Omaha so I asked what is 300 miles further on. Even with map in hand he [...]
Who the hell is in charge of highway design? What moron decided that not once, not twice, but at least three times I-70 east in Kansas City, Kansas (KCK) has to narrow to a single lane and slow to 35 MPH? Pretty sure this happens to IH-35 north as well. Then there is getting from [...]
So the powers that be decided we should indeed take the paper products to Missouri instead of Oklahoma. As it was a very heavy load we went to a scale to make sure we were legal. Not even close. We did the maximum adjustment of the trailer tandems we could and were still 1,500 lbs. [...]
We got to Georgia-Pacific on time and found our load. After we hooked up I was preparing the message to let HQ know we were heading out when I realized the address on the documents didn’t match were we had been told to take it. I seriously think my mentor was willing to say “screw [...]
So it is the weekend and here we sit. We went from Texas to Chicago, back to Texas and back to Chicago in three days but when they wanted to send us to Maryland the mentor said no and that was it. Tomorrow morning we pick up something from Georgia-Pacific and take it to a [...]
Headed from Dallas to Chicago for the second time in three days. I was supposed to drive 625 miles but ran out of energy way before that. I got us just over half way (464 miles) and my mentor is legal to start driving now. Hopefully he got some sleep. I MUST sleep for several [...]
Well I had to pull in to my first weigh station and of course it happened at 2:15AM while my mentor is trying to sleep. Fortunately he woke up enough to hear what was going on. They said the weight was fine but I needed to pull around back and bring my paperwork in. Apparently [...]
The load we had wasn’t scheduled for delivery in Colorado until Thursday so he arranged to drop it in Dallas so we could get something rolling sooner. The problem is there is no freight here and a lot of drivers so we are stuck here instead of rolling to Colorado. Tried to back up this [...]
Four days off. Days that because I went home, instead of staying in a motel in the valley, I won’t be paid for and extend my training time. I did get some things done around the house and saw the grandkids so that was nice. I came down to San Antonio last night to see [...]
I am 53 years old, married, with three grown kids. Two of them have families of their own and one still lives at home. That in fact works out well because it allowed the truck driving part of this new adventure to happen as he was be able to take care of the pets while we were gone. I have five beautiful grandchildren four of which live close by and the other is half way across the world in Guam.
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October 4, 2009
SmokeTX
