Ice, Ice Baby

I awoke this morning near Chicago to rain and temps just under freezing. First I had to head south a short distance to Ottawa, Illinois to drop off my empty trailer for one loaded with Petsmart stuff bound for Colorado.


View Larger Map

By the time I arrived my truck and trailer were iced over, the rain having frozen to my rig. It was bad enough I couldn't get the landing gear on the trailer cranked down for a while as the gears were frozen badly and the teeth wouldn't connect. Eventually I applied a few light taps with my hammer and got things seated and the gear down.

The new trailer has about 38,000 pounds of pet stuff which is a good thing in bad weather. Plenty of traction for all my tires. The warehouse even had a digital scale so I got everything set up properly before I left.

My cell phone rang as I was nearing Des Moines, Iowa and my dispatcher wanted to know if I wouldn't mind dropping this trailer there for someone else and making a pickup nearby headed to Pennsylvania. My hours are kind of slim at the moment so I told him I would have to park my rig for a few minutes and look it up on my computer. By the time I pulled over, cranked up the laptop and worked out where I could be and by when he was on the phone telling me someone else was able to cover it. I thought I might if the weather was good the whole way, but anyone living near the great lakes can tell you today is a bear.

The further west I ran the stronger the wind blew and the higher the temps got. By the time I reached Omaha it was almost 50 degrees and rather windy. I stopped off at our HQ for the day and will run this load out to its first stop in Colorado first thing in the morning.