Meteorology and Thunderstorm Cells

Early last week on my way to Nogales I had chance to take some pictures of a fantastic cloud formation in New Mexico and Arizona.

I'm not a trained meteorologist but I am a licensed, instrument-rated pilot and also a licensed aircraft dispatcher. Training for both licenses includes a lot of weather-related information.

WARNING! METEOROLOGY CONTENT! WARNING!

Thunderstorm activity has three phases: developing, mature and dissipating.

The developing phase is characterized by warm air near the ground being sucked up into a cloud mass. As the warm air rises it cools, releasing any water vapor into the cloud. As you watch a cloud in this phase you will see it billowing upward rapidly, almost boiling with activity.

The next phase is called mature, and it is characterized simply as the point at which water starts falling out of the bottom of the storm cell. The water droplets have been drawn up and down repeatedly inside the cloud, gaining more mass as they collide together, until eventually the rising air is unable to prevent them from dropping down to the ground.

The final phase is dissipation, when the bulk of the water vapor in the cloud is expended and the top forms a characteristic "blown anvil" look as the remaining water particles aren't dense enough to remain together and the cloud top blows apart.

Here are the first two pictures I took of the storm cell as I noticed it start to billow up:





I noticed how uniformly flat the bottom of the cloud was... a possible sign of a temperature inversion. An inversion simply means warmer air above colder air; as a general rule, air gets cooler as the altitude increases. It was this warmer air that fed this cloud, I think. If you click the second picture you can see that there is water dropping out the bottom, so we're in the mature phase at this point.



Here we can see an absolute textbook picture of the third stage, dissipating. In fact, this was better than the pictures in the textbooks I used during my training! As you can see, there is still rain dropping from the cloud even as it is starting to fall apart.

Further on down the road I stopped again (for those of you interested, my Nikon is way too heavy to use one handed so all pictures I take using it are when I am stopped) and you can see the top is really starting to blow over now.



Finally, all things must come to an end and this thunderstorm cell has burned out and is now blown apart:



In total I shot 99 photos of this cloud which you can see together here. I'm not yet skilled enough with my camera to maximize the contrast in the sky (the ground in some of these shots causes the camera to emphasize those colors too much, basically) but if you have any interest in this topic you may find them interesting.

END OF METEOROLOGY CONTENT

Working for Pay. And no pay.

This afternoon I also had chance to speak in person with my fleet manager about the three aforementioned driver assist loads about a month ago. The bottom line is that I was authorized to assist with the unloads (Authorized being CFI's terminology. I use the term ordered myself.) but because I didn't phone or Mobile Max in the time spent assisting CFI has no way to bill the customer in each case and if CFI doesn't get paid, neither do I.

I still did the work though.

An Accounting in Joplin

I arrived in Joplin early in the afternoon on Friday, July 20th. A bozo in the inspection bay determined the tire pressure of one of my new super single tires was a mere 30 PSI and directed me to the tire shop to have it inspected and repaired. After no more than 15 seconds of looking it over it was determined said bozo doesn't understand how to use a tire gauge and I was rolled out and into the regular maintenance area for some other items to be taken care of.

The incident in Nogales required that I speak with the folks in Safety and I made my way to the headquarters building and found the right person to talk to. After a long wait I was brought into a conference room with the safety person and my fleet manager and the safety person presented me with a form to sign. Apparently, the folks in safety used my single spotty cell phone conversation to conclude this was a preventable accident. Had I known then what I know now, that would have been a much longer and more detailed phone call. I was under the mistaken impression I would be meeting with safety to go over the events in detail.

Another issue reared its head as a download of the engine computer on my truck revealed several anomalous numbers... among them a high speed at some (unknown) point in the past of 87 MPH at an engine RPM of over 2050! I've never approached either of these numbers, and for some reason when the last driver of this truck quit and it was reassigned the shop failed to reset the computer, as is policy. Since company trucks are governed at 67 MPH on cruise controll and 70 MPH with the accelerator floored this means 17 MPH over the governor and apparently still in gear.

I, frankly, believe that these readings are spurious. Back in February, I was traveling along I-90 from Seattle to Spokane and the rotation sensor on my drive shaft malfunctioned and it had my instruments going from 0 MPH to pegged repeatedly because it wasn't able to correctly see the rotation of the drive shaft and multiply it by the gear ratio.

The individual from Safety wasn't very understanding of these points, even after I showed him on the report that the total engine hours and the hours since reset were identical (meaning it hadn't been reset since it was installed in the truck).

The form I was asked to sign had several incorrect statements on it and I refused to sign. The guy from Safety and my fleet manager signed as witnesses and we tabled it for the time being.

First thing Monday morning I went to see the next person up the chain of command in Safety and we went over the events in Nogales and the problems I had with the form. He allowed me to type up a statement giving my account of the events and I went so far as to use Google Maps to get a satellite view of the area in question and drew lines and points on it to illustrate what happened. Sometime in the next few weeks three drivers at random will be asked to sit down and go over a number of cases like mine and determine if they were preventable or non-preventable, and the result is binding on CFI and myself.

We eventually came to accommodation on the form as well, so it got signed by both of us and will be held in a file until after the above determination is made. If it is ruled non-preventable it will get ripped up and the matter will be closed.

There are some things about the way that CFI operates I wish were explained better, or explained at all, in the training and orientation phase.

Arizona Sunrise

One of the small pleasures I get most mornings is to see the sun rise, since I'm normally up hours before in the dark getting to where I need to be. I shot nearly two dozen pics of today's light show... it is so easy to do with my Nikon.

View All Arizona Sunrise pics

How To Ruin a Pair of Tires

As you can see, you can very quickly ruin a pair of tires by having the trailer come unhitched and the crossbar between the landing gear impale your rear tires.

View All How To Ruin a Pair of Tires pics

As you can see in this pic, the horizontal bar between the landing gear is bent backwards from when it impacted the tires.

Shaken, not stirred

Well, the load that was supposed to be ready by 9 PM for me to pick up at 3 AM wasn't across the border yet, so I got to wait. And wait. And wait some more. Finally, around 11 AM local time it rolled into the yard and I pre-tripped and hooked up to it, then moved my rig up to where the small office was to pick up the paperwork. After three or four minutes inside I hopped back into the cab of my truck and finished my paperwork and satellite forms then slowly headed out to the gate, then the street.

Midway out the gate, during a 90 degree left-hand turn, I started hearing scraping sounds and could feel the load shifting more than it would normally do in a slow turn. To my horror, a quick scan of my left mirror showed the trailer sliding forward, obviously no longer attached to the fifth wheel. I slowed down and stopped with the fifth wheel still under the apron (the front part of the trailer's nose around the kingpin) and the trailer landing gear buried in the tractor rear wheels. Lots of hissing air to be heard, very dramatic.

To make a long story short, one of three things happened. Either my fifth wheel had a problem and lost the kingpin (unlikely), I managed to screw up not one but three checks (a tug test and two visual checks) or someone pulled the pin on my fifth wheel, releasing it while I was inside getting the paperwork.

The trailer was stuck out on the street for half an hour or so, partially blocking traffic. Eventually, several of the drayage workers and I managed to get my tractor and its ripped-up tires out of the way and another tractor underneath the load and we moved everything back into the yard. I don't have any pictures of the incident out on the street, as I was a bit busy right then, but I do have some of the aftermath I will post soon.

About three hours later I had two new super-single Michelin X-1 tires on the back of my tractor and after an absurd number of fifth wheel tests and checks I took the very same trailer out of the dropyard and drove a whopping six or seven miles to the local truck stop.

It was a long day.

On Friday when I (hopefully) make it in to Joplin I will get to speak to safety in person to go over everything in addition to seeing my fleet manager about the other stuff. Oh joy.

Finally, a load home

After I dropped my trailer yesterday afternoon I moved over to the (only) local truck stop and called it a day. When I got up this morning it was more than 12 hours since I had dropped and no buzzer with a new load. So I took care of a variety of housekeeping -- my upper bunk now actually flips up -- watched some shows, ate, took a nap, snacked some more. Still no load.

Finally I got buzzed around 2 PM with a load to pick up tonight at 9 PM to Pennsylvania that I will take as far as Joplin to get me home. I arranged to pick it up first thing in the morning instead so I can run all tomorrow and roll into Joplin Thursday afternoon at which time I will be sitting down with my fleet manager to discuss some issues.

About five weeks ago I had two runs, back-to-back, which involved me helping unload the product. The first load had two stops with La-Z-Boy furniture in Tucson and Phoenix, followed by a load from Phoenix to West Sacramento, California to the baby Bell SBC. Each of these loads required my help (the SBC folks don't even touch freight... they point you at a pallet jack and tell you to have at it) and when this happens I am due $17.50 an hour with a minimum of two hours, or at least $35.00. For those three drops I should have been paid an extra $105 total ($35 x 3, since none of the unloads took more than two hours) but it is my dispatcher's position that I'm not owed anything more because I didn't have the consignees write the In and Out times on the BOLs (Bills of Lading). My position is that I delivered on time (as I always have) and under direct orders of CFI I assisted with each unload, and since none of them took more than two hours from start to finish the In and Out times are irrelevant. I could see if I was at a consignee for, say, four hours and wanted to document more than two hours of driver assist time then it would matter, but if I spent a single damn minute of my time on company ordered fingerprinting then I'm due my pay. If I assist for one minute or 120 minutes I'm paid the same, and only if it is more than 120 minutes does the assist pay differ.

We'll see what the official line is on Thursday or Friday.

Nogales, AZ

I dropped my trailer in Nogales so close to the border it was next to a tent with a bunch of National Guard guys watching everything going on. The border transfer company was ready and I was in and out in a jiffy.

This morning it was announced that Con-Way will be acquiring CFI. More details can be found here.

In short:

SAN MATEO, Calif. and JOPLIN, Mo., July 16 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Con-way Inc. today announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Contract Freighters, Inc. (CFI), a privately held North American truckload carrier based in Joplin, Mo., in a transaction valued at $750 million.

Scare in Birmingham, AL

As I was making my way west this morning there was a lot of rain in the Birmingham area. A Corvette in front of me managed to spin out of control while merging from one highway to another and looped around at least three times. I was far enough behind him I could slow down and get out of the way.

Slept terrible last night. I made the mistake of not idling and using the air conditioning because it was relatively cool out, but the humidity was bad. Tonight I idle.

9.5, a new personal record

Record for hours spent waiting on a load, that is. I arrived at the plant in Laurens, SC at noon and left at 9:30 PM. My fleet manager and I will be having a friendly chat about this come Monday.

Off to sleep, then drive, then sleep, then drive, then sleep...

Why oh why will the trailer doors not shut?

Why, you ask? It is because the morons dock workers left six inches of tires hanging out the back of the packed-to-the-ceiling trailer I am finally set to carry, so the doors won't swing. Not even close. I'd get pictures but cameras are banned here. I took a pic of another bulging trailer just for informational purposes which I will post later.

This Friday the 13th hasn't been a stellar one for me.

Nogales, maybe

After picking up the empty trailer and waiting around the buzzer went off and I find myself with a trip back to Laurens, SC to the same plant I dropped a trailer at earlier to get a load of tires to take to Nogales, AZ -- a nice 2,000 mile trip with the deadhead. So, I pull up anchor and make my way back up I-20 and I-26 and I-395 to the Michelin plant, drop my new empty trailer and wander inside to talk with shipping.

Turns out their operation is vying with Quick 'n Tasty for "Most Dysfunctional Shipping and Receiving 2007" as the load I was supposed to have received was somehow allowed out of the gate, past a security guard who allegedly checks documents, on another earlier CFI truck. So, pantloads of thanks to the shipping department, the gate guard and the elusive Double Pantload^TM to the driver who took the wrong load and didn't bother checking his paperwork.

Spoke with my dispatcher, our people and their people, be patient let's see, yada yada.

Finally finished

After about five hours and a short drive to a second warehouse, my truck was unloaded and I headed a few miles away to the nearest truck stop. It happened to be a Pilot and the restaurant was a McDonalds.

I mention this because I haven't eaten anything but a yearly McMuffin at Micky Dees in probably at least twenty years. I steeled my bowels and tried one of their Premium Chicken Sandwiches. I think I can wait for a couple more decades now before the urge will strike again.

Late in the afternoon I got dispatched for a very early morning dropoff of my empty trailer at a Michelin plant in Laurens, SC then a bobtail south about 100 miles to a Bridgestone plant to pick up an empty. I did as I was told, but when I showed up at the Bridgestone plant they wouldn't let me in because they said they have no empties. Our dispatch shows a dozen trailers of ours inside. Our people are talking with their people, yada yada. Wouldn't even let me park there while it gets straigtened out, either.

UPDATE: After a while they had me return to the Bridgestone plant and pick up an empty. Later, as I was on the phone to my dispatcher, I asked her what the Liar Liar Pants on Fire code for my satellite unit was, as there were at least a half dozen empty CFI trailers there.

The Quick 'n Tasty folks are morons

I arrive here at 0600 to deliver my load of water, and join a line of about six other trucks waiting to get into the same facility. Within the hour another six or eight trucks pull up behind me and we wait. And wait. Eventually a few truckers walk inside to find out what the delay is and about half of the line is sent to another warehouse to get unloaded. I, however, am now at the back of the line of those that were told to stay.

Instead of unloading trucks in the order they arrived this plant seems to do it in the order you walk up (to the other side of the plant; the least driver-friendly location, naturally) so we have trucks cutting in and out of line and just a general mess of a situation. This happens when you have 12 or 14 trucks loaded with the same bunch of water scheduled for 0700 at the same warehouse. Morons.

To Lee, FL then Pendegrass, GA

Like the title says. It took about 5 hours to get unloaded yesterday and a few hours after that I got beeped for a trip up to Georgia. This morning I arrived early, in vain, to see if I could get loaded early at a Nestle water plant but they weren't having any part of that. Eventually I got loaded and drove from northern Florida to just south of Atlanta. I will drop at 0700 local time tomorrow morning to the northeast of Atlanta, about 90 miles away.

Orlando

I got up an hour earlier than I planned this morning and motored down to Orlando, arriving at 8:15 AM local. There are a half-dozen trucks waiting to be unloaded already so it will not be a short wait. By the time they are finished unloading me my work time for today will most likely be up so I'll look to get a load out of here tomorrow.

Childress, TX and its Wal-Mart

For the first time ever, I spent the night in a Wal-Mart parking lot. I was on state highway 287 in Texas between Amarillo and the DFW metroplex and I was out of supplies when I saw this Wal-Mart pop up on the right side of the road. They even had directions to the proper entry for big rigs and RVs!

When I got into the parking lot I was amazed to find even more signs pointing to Big Rig and RV overnight parking!! Needless to say, I scooted over to the appropriate spot in record time and did my shopping then holed up for the night.

At the moment I'm at our terminal in Lancaster, TX fueling and doing laundry. I will be driving into the wilds of Louisiana this afternoon, perhaps all the way to Lafayette. Lots of hot, humid, rainy weather ahead and a light load in the box.

50 degrees

As I made my way across northern Arizona on I-40 the temperatures climbed to 105. Near Flagstaff clouds gathered and lightning flashed, and the temperature dropped to 55 degrees. A 50 degree drop in less than an hour's travel.

I'm stopped in Holbrook, AZ after having driven 625 miles today. A very good driving day given that half of that time was in California. Speaking of California, I found one of my trailer tires almost flat with a nail in it this morning. The friendly folks at the tire shop next door to the Pilot in Lost Hills fixed that in about 30 minutes, but it seems the upper trailer marker lights were not wanting to work that early in the morning either. A short trip down to the T/A in Buttonwillow and I got that fixed. On the way there I was almost hit by not one but two vehicles running the same red light from different directions! Ah, California.

The good and the bad

I hightailed it down the road 80 miles into the San Francisco area to pick up the load; it turns out it was a "live load", meaning I pulled up to the dock and they started putting stuff in my trailer. This process took five hours and forty-five minutes to complete. I asked several times about the wait and was lied to twice. Such fun.

Eventually they let me depart and I made my way to the nearest freeway. It turns out that I-580 in some spots doesn't allow trucks heavier than four tons and they make you take an offramp at one point. Then about a half mile later, there is an on ramp to the same freeway with no "no truck" sign. I took this and noticed there weren't any other trucks in traffic with me and made my way out to I-5 then south. I passed one flatbed truck pulled over by the local police folks taking a ticket for something.

I wanted to get further but only managed 320 miles today, ending at Lost Hills, CA. I will be up first thing in order to put as much as California behind me as possible before the left coasters awaken and swarm out to their jobs, clogging the roads.

The Mother of All Loads

This morning the satellite beeper goes off as I'm resting in central California... I'm instructed to head in towards San Francisco to pick up a trailer then take it to Orlando, FL. About 2,900 miles all told. Dirty job, but someone has to do it.

Another day, another Conway

I was dispatched to the Santa Fe Springs, CA Conway yard yesterday to take a load out at 10 AM local time this morning up to Dunnigan, CA which is just north of Sacramento. They wanted it there (441 miles north) in just eight hours, in a state that limits my legal speed to 55 MPH. Do the math on a scratch piece of paper then keep reading.

Anyway, they managed to load the trailer by 5 AM and I grabbed it then and boogied without stopping for anything. I made it to Dunnigan this afternoon at 1:10 PM local time, or eight hours and ten minutes later. This was with light traffic, no accidents along the way, good weather, etc. The timing on certain Conway loads sucks and CFI needs to adjust the deliveries if they originate or are bound for 55 MPH states, in my opinion.

Deja view

I got up bright and early this morning from my 10-hour break and waited. And waited. Then, for a change, waited some more. Finally, around 12:45 PM I got a plan summary for some crazy thing with two pickups in Utah and a drop in Illinois on Friday (five days for a thousand mile trip, yikes!). Moments later it got taken off me and I got a new plan. Deadheading back to Ontario, California with an empty trailer.

Except I didn't have an empty as the Conway folks were out of them yesterday. So my fleet manager had me check back over there and I found one and asked if I could take it. They let me make off with it, but while I was doing my pretrip I found the box on the trailer where the electrical line plugs in dangling by the electical connections themselves. Whoever dropped the trailer off certainly realized this as they were detaching power so whoever had trailer 26983 prior to today... THANKS A PANTLOAD!

Utilizing my ghetto mechanical skills, I took some duct tape and mashed it back together and plugged everything in. At least the lights worked. Between Salt Lake City and Las Vegas there is exactly one place that does repairs that I could find, and we don't have an account there so I pressed on to Vegas and a helpful mechanic at the Petro found the right bolts to set everything right again. I even did the work myself.

Today was the hottest I've yet experienced while on the road driving... 112 degrees while in motion in Nevada.

Saw an interesting sign for an eatery in Utah. Clever restaurant name: "Chinese Food". Now if they served Italian, THAT would be something very clever indeed.

I had several opportunities to take some really nice photos as the day wore on but I couldn't bring myself to pull over. I really need to work on that more.

Arizona and Utah pics

Lots of landscapes and some foliage for those interested:

View all Virgin River Gorge pics

View all Southwest Utah pics

For Mom

Mom wanted a pic of my truck parked near her house. There you go Mom.

Trailers... first you see them, then you don't

I arrived 12 hours early this afternoon at the Conway lot in Salt Lake City, Utah and dropped my full trailer, only to find that none of the CFI trailers there is empty. I called dispatch and they put me on the board in bobtail (sans trailer) mode and put me on my break until 0400 tomorrow morning.

On the way up there was some spectacular scenery in the northwest Arizona / southwest Utah area that I got some pics of. I'm having some difficulties retrieving and processing images from my new camera but will have them up shortly.