Dinner at Outback

I drove over to the nearest Outback Steakhouse for dinner and noticed a Conway truck parked in back, so I parked next to them. When I walked up to the building just before opening, I met Larry and Nancy who drive team for Conway and we had a pleasant dinner together.

Many of the things particular to CFI haven't been explained well to our new Conway folks... for instance, getting home for Christmas, the Christmas bonus, firing a fleet manager, who to talk to if you are having problems with someone, etc. Also, the way our satellite communications works (with many individual messages) is quite alien to their experience and somewhat exasperating.

They haven't heard of CFIDrivers.com so I pointed them in that direction to get more information about the company than I could provide. They have a cat that looks a lot like my cat Mala:

Mala was the most people-friendly cat I've ever known... slept under the covers with me almost every night and loved to be around people. She died in 2000 and I miss her still.

UPDATE: I also met up with my finisher, Rich, while I was here at the terminal earlier. He's been getting great miles and it sounds like he is going to be teaming with a friend soon for some coast-to-coast dedicated runs. Lucky bum! Apparently I was his last student, so it is true I broke that mold :)

Off to Joplin

I am commanded to turn south and take a load from our Lancaster, Texas terminal up to Joplin for my home time. Due to the delay between getting unloaded and being dispatched I would have just enough time to rush to Joplin before my 14 hour clock expired, assuming no delays.

However, the load has been here for a while and doesn't need to deliver until Monday, November 5th, up in Ohio so local dispatch will let me run it tomorrow. This has the salutary effect of giving me time to do laundry, take a nice long shower, go grab a steak and relax then head out first thing in the morning. Oh, it also means my home time won't "officially" start until Friday which saves me a day... not like I need an extra one though.

This time I will take the "official" CFI back route along highways 69 and 75, just for kicks, like this:


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Made in China

This morning over 1,300 packages were offloaded between the two stops I made. I watched most of the second unload and out of the 770 or so they got, less than 10% didn't have "Made in China" stamped on the box. This isn't unique to Linens & Things: it was the same when I did those Michael's stores a few months ago.

I'm not a huge rah-rah "buy American or else" type guy but it is a bit unsettling to see the gigantic flows of products from outside our borders, through local stores then into homes across our nation.

Anyway, I'm empty now and waiting for my next dispatch. I couldn't stand running my truck all last night so I took a chance and went five hours off, then started around 0100 for an hour, then left it off until my first unload. I can't wait until they fix my battery issue and, eventually, I get an APU on the truck that I drive.

The path less taken (because it isn't a truck route)

Consider, gentle reader, the following two paths from the same start and end points:


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And:


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The first map shows the simple drive up a designated state route (highway 289) between my first and second stops. No toll roads, no deviations, no problem.

The second map, which we will call the "legal route" involves the north Dallas toll road, a couple deviations from the most efficient path and lots more traffic.

Plano, Texas is quite possibly douchebag central

So I have to make a tight left turn from a busy street on to a side street running behind my consignee and there is a lone male in one of the many sports cars in the area waiting to cross the street from my left. Because of the tightness of my turn, he is forced to adjust his schedule by at least 15 but no more than 20 seconds and back up about a car's length so I don't run him over, as I wait patiently in said busy intersection.

He manages to accomplish this driving feat on the second try and as I'm carefully watching my trailer swing to ensure his car, and life, remain intact he rolls down his window and gives me the universal signal that I am #1 to him. If I was half my age and one-third my IQ I would have set my brakes and kicked him up a notch.

Then, I make it into the parking lot behind my designated Linens and Things store and here is another punk in a grey mustang (not the classic, the lame new one they came up with) who is unhappy my backing maneuver is costing him precious seconds. He revs up his obviously-unmuffled beater engine over and over to show me who's boss. With that many distractions so quickly, he's lucky I didn't inadvertently slip into the wrong gear and put a ding in his hood.

Anyway, I made it, I'm backed to their dock and the store manager tells me it is no problem for me to spend the night where I am. Better, this strip mall place I'm at has a couple restaurants so I may just have a real, honest-to-goodness sit down meal tonight. Yum.

Good dispatch

The folks offloading the huge (4,000 lbs each) rolls of paper were very efficient and I was heading out about 30 minutes after I touched the dock. I went back to the interstate then north one exit to a T/A truck stop I knew was there, only to find they have a Popeye's chicken there and it was open! I got some early morning fried chicken... for some reason I've been craving Popeye's chicken recently.

Anyway, after an hour or so the word came down that I was to head southwest to Shepherdsville and pick up a two-drop load for the Linens & Things chain. I had dropped an empty at that particular DC before so I knew where it was. My new trailer was preloaded, which is great, and also in the middle of a large puddle of water, which isn't so great. I managed to hook up to it and get some air to release its brakes then carefully drag it with the gear still down to solid land. It is the little things that really make driving an adventure, I say.

So I spent the rest of my driving day cruising over to our terminal in West Memphis, Arkansas where I am calling it a night. The load can't deliver until Wednesday morning at 0600 at the first stop, so I have an easy 450 miles tomorrow to get into position. Between the deadhead and today's trip miles, it will be a 1,000 mile trip done in about two days which isn't bad at all.


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Small pilot

Last night I shut down at the smallest Pilot with parking that I've yet seen... it had about a dozen straight parking spots in the back and that was it. Luckily, I was there early and had my pick.

Overnight I tried nursing my batteries by shutting off the truck for three hours then running it for one, then shutting down for another three. It was easily cool enough to shut down (I awoke to 38 degrees outside) but with the problems I've been having with starting my truck I didn't want to take chances.

It turns out, waking up every few hours for an hour then trying to get back to sleep doesn't give me a good night's sleep, so the truck will be running until I get back to Joplin later this week. Yes, I'm highlighted for the first time in over a month.

I'm at the consignee for this load, haven been given the easiest dock they have to back in to... they have 12 docks side-by-side and a lonely 13th dock off to the side, perpendicular to the rest, where I'm parked at with an easy straight back. Yay for me, for a change. High speed internet here too... yum.

Turns out the load consists of ten huge rolls of paper product for boxes and such; each is roughly ten feet tall and six feet wide, stacked on their sides.

Nice sunday drive to the Big Bone Lick park

I kid you not, I'm parked near Kentucky's famous "Big Bone Lick" park, a few miles away from my drop tomorrow morning:

The drive up today was gorgeous, with fall definitely in the air and the leaves turning all manner of colors other than dark green along the way. I covered the 595 remaining miles in 9.25 driving hours starting around 0530 local (east coast) time.

Time for a nice Sunday drive

Tomorrow I will have a nice Sunday drive through the southeast, from where I parked tonight in Cordele, Georgia, up to the consignee in Florence, Kentucky. I was supposed to pick up my drop and hook load in Palatka, Florida at 1600 hours but I arrived seven hours before that and wouldn't you know it, the trailer was already there and good to go. I got a lot of mud on my shoes while doing all my checks, sliding the tandems and the like.

Anyway, this is the trip up to my consignee for Monday morning:


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Pimps and Hos

I try to avoid posting when I'm good and steamed, and yesterday was a good example of this principle in action.

My truck wouldn't start (again) after less than seven hours off so I got my early-morning service call and jump start. A quick trip to the fuel island filled the tanks, followed by a short trip across the greater Birmingham area to the Conway terminal where I dropped my empty.

After about 90 minutes waiting, my trailer was ready and I got the paperwork. Turns out it was another of those skirt-side Conway trailers with the electric landing gear. Slow as molasses getting those things raised up.

I motored over to Atlanta where the traffic was moving just fine at 9 AM on a Friday! I had a couple slowdowns but that was it, and soon enough I was shooting out the south side on I-75 with a clear path down to Orlando, where I arrived about six hours later. I get the paperwork signed off on and time stamped and a door assigned, and soon enough the trailer is off my truck and I head over to the sandy empty trailer lot and hook up to one of our empties and park it for my 10 hour break.

Not.

A short while after I'm parked a guy driving around one of the yard dogs comes over and beeps at me and I give him the scare of his young life, appearing from the back dressed only in my tidy whities. When he has his breath back, he informs me that our corporate masters (hereinafter referred to as "Pimps") have decreed that OTR drivers can't park on any of OUR property here in lovely Orlando. So I (hereinafter referred to as a "Ho") get to take my unwanted self outside the fence and park along the street.

This is complete bunk. They have plenty of room in the back lot where, I might add, they park a dozen or more of their local bobtails. I could see possibly not allowing OTR drivers from other companies the right to park on the Pimp's property, but we are the same freaking company! Conway owns CFI now!

I briefly considered telling Conway to shove off and if they cared so much about it they could get a wrecker in to tow me off of their our lot, but in the end I moved.

Pimps and hos.

Scary video... from NASA

I haven't linked to any videos before, but this one deserves your attention. Witness the change this past year to the arctic:

Back and forth...

This morning I delivered at my consignee a few minutes late when my truck decided it wouldn't start (again, for those reading back a week or two). Thank goodness it was where I parked and not at the consignee or there would have been a hemorrhage or two when I couldn't move.

After a few hours of waiting I was dispatched to our Atlanta yard with my now empty trailer to drop it then bobtail back to Birmingham to pick up a trailer that was just repaired at the local Great Dane shop.


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Then, my satellite unit started beeping and buzzing and making all kinds of interesting sounds and I thought my eyes must be deceiving me:

I received a string of pre-plans. Plural!

I couldn't believe it. The next four days are laid out thusly:

Friday: Run a Conway load from the Birmingham area down to Orlando and drop it off (drop and hook on both ends... yah!)

Saturday and Sunday: Grab a load about 90 miles from Orlando and run it up to Kentucky.

Monday: deliver first thing in the morning.

It isn't the most miles I could have hoped for, but given my relative lack of hours it is more than I was expecting, by a wide margin. It includes an all-too-rare Saturday load, and even the Conway run is a good one for me: starts early in the morning (0530) and is almost 600 miles for the day.

The only real negative is that I'll have to brave the Atlanta morning rush hour traffic:


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Tonight I'm parked at the Birmingham Pilot truck stop, quite possibly the bottom of the rung of Pilot truck stops. The parking is awful, the fuel island impassable, the entrance and exits backed up... the list goes on. The parking is tight enough I almost scraped a mirror tonight; rare for me that I'm ever that close.

665 miles behind me

I stopped this afternoon in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, a short ways from my delivery tomorrow. I was rolling at 0345 on the west side of Houston and made it all the way here, pausing for a fuel stop in Louisiana.

Got accosted by the local truck stop ministry preacher as I parked my truck. I was polite.

Weather was very windy and rainy yesterday, and my MPG sucked. Today there was quite a bit of light rain and not much in the way of wind, thankfully.

Some people wrote in asking why I was squawking over a nearly 1,000 mile run. I like the load just fine, it is the timing vis a vis the hours of service that is lousy.

Shafted, probably

Well, I got called up to the dispatch window around noon to take my pick of the loads available. Which consisted if a small number of in-state (Texas) loads and a solitary longer one to Vance, Alabama where I have delivered before.

The thing is, none of the loads had a long enough lead time for me to finish my 34 hour break so in effect I will be poor on hours at the end of this week which should pretty well screw up this weekend.

I drove the load up to the west side of Houston and will do most of the rest of the run tomorrow, starting early-early as normal to get through the area before traffic gets nasty.

The dispatcher did offer that there was a good chance that I would get a load back to Laredo from the same plant. To which I replied: "Oh goody, so I can get more wonderful loads like this out of here?"


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Playing in the sand

Last week, the consignee in Tampa had a fairly difficult back for me and my rig. A semi driver knows when you see the ground chewed up like this that an exciting time is coming up soon:

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It is even more of a blast when the people who design the building and the people who install the power poles get together, work hand-in-hand as it were, to make my life difficult:

Corporate Policies

I think some companies, Heartland Express in this case, go overboard promoting things like Open Door policies:

Houston a pussycat, the rest of I-10 a tiger!

I got up at my usual early hour to find Houston deserted (thank goodness), with only the very end of a freeway closure westbound on I-10 to worry about on the way through.

An hour or so later my truck was being buffeted by high winds and rain blown so hard from the north that it was almost horizontal. This continued in spurts all the rest of the way to San Antonio then for a short while south of there before the cloud pattern changed (and I finally broke through the frontal barrier that was causing the squalls).

Traffic in Laredo was much worse, and a very high percentage of it semis. It took almost fifteen minutes to make it through one stop light to a turn I had to make. I eventually got to my consignee, got the paperwork signed off and dropped the trailer for them to pick over.

I wasn't planning on getting on the board immediately when I returned but the too-helpful local dispatcher did it for me. No matter: I'm 67th on the list.

Another easy day

Just over 515 more miles behind me as I stop just short of Houston, Texas for the day. Pensacola and Mobile were pussycats yesterday, and tomorrow morning at 0400 I am expecting the same of Houston.

They are flipping in Miami...

Does this have something to do with the Dolphins losing their tenth straight regular-season football game?

610 miles down

Some days, like today, this job is a breeze. I left Pompano Beach this morning at 0400 and drove 610 miles to Pensacola, Florida with a fuel stop in Ocala and a stop for supplies in Marianna.

By 1330 I was done driving for the day with only 9.25 driving hours used. I could have gone a bit further, but there is a lot of construction going on in Pensacola and Mobile, Alabama isn't terribly pleasant with afternoon traffic. Both will be pussycats tomorrow morning before dawn.

Unloaded, loaded, lazy

I made it to the greater Miami area last night and dropped off my trailer around 0300 then called it a night. After my ten hour break I drove about 8 miles over to the shipper for this load going to Laredo and dropped off the new trailer I picked up at the Fedex facility I went to last night. Then, I got my new, loaded, trailer and headed out of town a short distance to Pompano Beach, Florida where I'm shut down for the night.

The load is due in Laredo at 1222 hours CDT on Monday so I'm going to knock out most of the 1,550 miles over the weekend then cruise in the rest of the way Monday morning.

Feeling kind of lazy and relaxed. Have some more pictures, just too lazy to upload them!

Hither and Yon

My fitful sleep was just interrupted with a change in plans... I'm still taking the overnight run to Hialeah, but now I pick up a load in Miami at 1700 tomorrow and run it to Laredo. It is about 300 more miles, but since I won't pick up until late in the day I may have to run it overnight three nights to Laredo.

The new route:


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Proof postitive CFI Dispatch has a sense of humor

I offer into evidence, exhibit #1:


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Tonight before 2200 hours I need to drive about an hour west over towards Ocala to meet up with another truck and relay their load down to Hialeah, Florida, which is near Miami. It has to be there by tomorrow morning at 0400 which is okay, since I need to be in Clewiston, Florida (about 90 miles away) by 0800 to pick up a load going to New Jersey for delivery on Monday.

If the map looks jacked up, that is because... it is.

That is all.

What's wrong with this picture?

Looks like someone has issues. Or an issue, at least.

Driver Assist

Driver assist is the term used when we help unload a trailer. You may remember from here and here the last time I helped on three unloads but was denied payment for my work because I didn't use the proper procedure. You can bet I documented it very well this time.

This load of office furniture is at the same stop as the very first driver unload I did for CFI. In the almost eleven months I've been driving, I've done a total of five driver assist unloads. None of them were a problem for me, or would be for anyone in decent shape.

In this case, the assist came in the form of moving boxes around in the back of the trailer so the forklift operator could grab them between the pincers on his equipment and drag them out.

After my morning workout I hit the road and departed Tampa towards Orlando. On the way I pulled over at a truck stop to wait for the traffic to die down in front of me, as I'm not due to arrive at the final consignee until 1300 local time.

Cujo at CFI

So last weekend I'm at CFI taking a nap and I wake up to find this character staring at me in my truck:

Fortunately, it had some sort of restraint around its neck.

Ready to deliver

I had an easy trip down from Dalton, Georgia this morning to about 25 miles from the first drop I will make tomorrow morning. I remarked a few days ago how I was hauling a Con-Way trailer with a 15,000 lb load and got about 8.3 MPG. This load is also light, but it is in a CFI trailer and I got 7.8 MPG today over very similar terrain and obstacles (eg cities, construction) than before. I guess those nifty side skirts do help out quite a bit.

Traffic in Atlanta was very light... to be expected at around 4 AM! By the time I had made my way around to the south side of the city the other side of the highway was fairly congested coming towards the city.

660 miles in 10.75 driving hours

Even though I spent most of the morning in the 55 MPH hell of Illinois, I still managed a respectable 660 miles down the road today, leaving me with an easy 530 for tomorrow and the following morning when I deliver.

I wasn't going to push so hard today but as I was mapping out my driving strategy for this run I realized I needed to get as close as possible to Atlanta today so I can be up early-early tomorrow morning and get in and out the south side before the roads congeal with traffic.

I made several pit stops at rest areas today, and at one I got fairly upset. Someone had dropped off abandoned two juvenile cats who were both obviously house trained and unfamiliar with being left outside. They both came over with their tails up when I walked near and it was difficult not stopping for a while to pet them or try to rescue them myself. I thought that maybe I had some old cat treats left over in the truck and searched, but no luck. It also happens that I didn't have any cold cuts or the like with me on this trip, which was a bit upsetting.

If you get a pet, realize they aren't disposable. Spay and neuter them and care for them, and if you can't continue care find someone who will. Abandoning them along a freeway earns you a lot of bad Karma and it will come back around one day.

Better and better

Not only did I get this nice (for me) load, I went by the shipper and it was ready for me a full 14 hours in advance! I quickly dropped my empty, got the paperwork, grabbed the new trailer and got out of town and down the freeway. I'm parked at a rest area almost 100 miles towards my first consignee, with under 1,200 miles to go over the next two days.

Sweet Jesus, I got a pre-plan!

Be still, my heart.

I'm waiting for them to finish the unloading and I have a pre-planned load come in for me over the Mobile Max. After I'm done here, I will sashay over to nearby Muscatine, Iowa (home of HoN furniture, for whom I'm sure I'm going to go see) and get a load tomorrow morning at 0430 hours heading to Tampa, with an extra stop about a hundred miles from there.

This is just about the perfect load for me. I get it nice and early, it delivers in two days and 1,280 miles (640 per day, bay-bee!), I have the hours to run it... The only way it could be better is if someone else would run it and I would get paid! I'll settle for this though.


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Olay!

It turns out the load I'm carrying consists of over twenty tons of Olay bath products. I made it to Iowa City, Iowa, two hours ahead of schedule and got assigned a dock door quickly. No telling how long the unload will take.

In Joplin, truck in shop, trailer in shop

I'm taking the day off, so nyaaaaah.

Iowa City, Iowa the slow way

I'm off to Iowa with a heavy load for Proctor & Gamble that is due to deliver Monday at 2 PM. This is a long time for just 1,250 miles so I'm going to head to Joplin and take a day off on the way.


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Trouble getting it up

... and running.

"It" being the truck, naturally.

Last night I shut down at a rest area just south of Fort Worth, Texas along I-35W. When I got up this morning, I did my pre-trip then tried to start the engine. It gave a couple wimpy coughs then decided it didn't want to play any more and stayed off.

I tried a few things but it didn't resolve the problem so Road Service was called and a truck was sent out to give me a jump start. It took a while for the batteries to get enough charge to turn over the engine, even with the cables still in place from the batteries on the repair truck.

Eventually everything sorted itself out and I moseyed down the road. I averaged an impressive 8.3 MPG with this Conway trailer and about 15,000 lbs of cargo... more than I can remember getting with a CFI trailer and any kind of load.

The trailer itself had a curious tire malady... one of the tires was completely bald with a lot of scuff marks and two others were marginal. Our shop replaced all three before I left, but I don't understand how the thing got through the inspection bay in the first place... the bald tire was very obvious.

Diagnosis: Terminal

My truck made it out of the shop this morning with a new engine coolant sensor and they even gave my driver's side door some TLC! It seems to work better than before; we'll see if it stays shut any better.

At about 11:45 I got called up to the dispatch window for my choice of destination. The choices turned out to be Laredo... and Laredo. So, off I go to deliver tomorrow afternoon.


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Back to Joplin, via Neosho, Missouri

After a lengthy wait it was decided that I would serve the Collective best by returning to Joplin and get my truck into the shop. Along the way I stopped by Crowder College and chatted with some up-and-coming drivers. Yes, that means you Roadaholic and friend :)


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A Storm Gathers...

I'm parked to the east of Little Rock tonight and the skies have an unusually dark and sinister look to them. A storm gathers to the west and will likely roam through this area in an hour or so.

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Nashville to Lonoke

Lonoke is a small town in Arkansas, for those not familiar.


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My first drop this morning was at a pool supply company that offloaded about half of the copper in my load. Here are some before and after pics:

I was immediately dispatched to the second drop in Lonoke, to arrive no later than 1330. I made it there by noon and was unloaded and on my way an hour later.

The second drop was at the Remington arms manufacturing plant where projectiles are born. Apparently, the copper I had for them was in the form of "cups"... for shotgun shells I guess.

Meanwhile, in the "Hello, Captain Obvious" department:

Damn straight, Skippy!

Music city

I departed northern Ohio this morning and had an uneventful drive down to Nashville, Tennessee. I'm parked at a truck stop about six miles from tomorrow's morning delivery, after which I will run west towards Little Rock, Arkansas to make my second drop.

Chicken!?! Did it have to be Chicken?

Several months ago I saw a truck with my family name across the freeway but before I could bring a camera to bear it was gone. A few days ago I stopped in Terre Haute, Indiana at the Pilot to fuel and shower and saw another truck from this company. I vowed it would not escape as easily and before anything I whipped out my best camera and wandered over.

The horror.

It turns out our plan for global domination springs from something foul... or should I say, f-o-w-l. Yes, you got it right, the Townsend clan is apparently in the chicken business. Worse, if that is possible, it would appear our operations are centered around Arkansas.

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Oh well, at least we have "Pristine Cuisine":

To be announced...

My alarm went off at 1 AM and I cursed the fool that set it that early until I realized that I needed to be moving that early in order to make my appointment in Depew, New York on time. Soon, I was rolling again and I made it to the consignee with an hour to spare, despite the glacial 55 MPH speed limit in Ohio and generous amounts of road construction in Pennsylvania.

I had a weird load pickup waiting as soon as I punched in the empty code; it looked like I was going about 10 miles away to pick up and deliver at the same facility! It actually means there is a load there but they have not yet told CFI the destination, or in this case, destinations. In the office parlance, it is a "TBA" or "To Be Announced" load.

As it turns out, I'm taking a heavy load of various types of copper to Nashville, Tennessee, then on to Lonoke, Arkansas.


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The copper itself is fairly compact and the warehouse guys used a ginormous amount of 2x6 boards nailed into the floor to keep everything in place. It is all loaded down the centerline of the trailer which, I discovered, makes for a trailer that really wants to tip over during turns.

En route

On my way to Depew, New York, as I had thought earlier. I'm about 230 miles out and stopped for the night I need to get up extra early tomorrow morning in order to make it there on time so g'nite everyone.

UPDATE: Turns out the warehouse folks at the plant were eating their Wheaties yesterday morning... got me loaded in about 2.5 hours.

Fine Missouri sunrise

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New York, New York

After I was unloaded this morning, instructions were sent to grab a load in Carthage, Missouri bound for Depew, New York, a suburb of Buffalo. Unfortunately, the source for this load is the dreaded Leggett and Platt warehouse that I have been to twice before, with an average wait time of five hours to be loaded.

I don't have many hours in my log book today and I won't be able to get very far if I get out of here this afternoon, anyway, because my Hours of Service clock has been ticking since I got unloaded this morning in Springfield. Plus, my truck needs to be sent over to the local Kenworth dealer in nearby Joplin to have an engine sensor problem fixed and, with any luck, my driver's door re-aligned so it is easier to shut and keep shut.

Anyway, this is the route if I end up running it:


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Spelunking

Yesterday I loaded in a giant underground cave system in Independence, Missouri. The caves were produced by salt mining and have since been altered to suit the warehousing industry, with roads, buildings and all sorts of other things inside.

After arriving on site, outside, I was given a phone number to call for a loading dock number and directions. The directions were somewhat cryptic but I wrote them down as best I could then made my way inside.

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Many of these photos are jerky, possibly from my truck moving and possibly from my hands shaking.

The dock I had was tight and the columns of salt that remain to hold up the roof also do a good job of limiting visibility when you are trying to back up a big rig. It took me about 10 minutes of jockeying around to get my trailer lined up properly at the designated door.

Here you can see the nose of the tractor next to mine, beyond the next salt pillar, with his nose sticking out into the "street", same as mine.

A rather grandiose name for this distributor:

Hop, skip and a jump

I dropped my trailer at the Wal-Mart DC in Ottawa then very quickly got a new load. Only 65 miles deadhead then another 160 or so, first to Independence, Missouri then to Springfield, Missouri to deliver first thing in the morning.

Only thing is, the shipper is underground in warehouses set up in old salt mines! Tight quarters, very odd directions and lots and lots of sweat to get in and out without hitting anything. Pics to follow later, as I don't have broadband where I'm at tonight.


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Night in Davenport, Iowa

I posted these pics on my Picassa site last week but forgot to link to them... this is from my first unload of the morning at the Dick's store in Davenport, Iowa.

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I'm still experimenting with my camera, taking different kinds of shots like this one:

What the heck were they thinking?

Swift is the largest truckload carrier in the US. Why they would have this heap rumbling around is beyond me.

New Orders

I'm going to Ottawa. Ottawa, Kansas, that is. I haven't got all the load details yet but I'm sure it is a Wal-Mart load heading into their DC there, judging by the load summary. It picks up this afternoon in Columbus, Indiana.

Only problem is this Z Gallery place didn't want any of the 15 or so pallets that their product came in on so they are still sitting in my trailer. Will sell for cheap.


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Why, it is zee gallerie!

Or Z Gallery, to be more precise. I overnighted at a small, kind of upscale outdoors mall in Carmel, IN that is decidedly truck-unfriendly. Narrow streets, tight corners, no loading docks.

My trailer is packed front-to-rear with pictures in frames, vases and other stuff people purchase to decorate their houses with. The handful of unfortunates from the store are out back unloading it piece-by-piece from the trailer on to hand carts then moving them inside.

Sucks to be them.