Zig zagging in Iowa

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That was my day today. I got up around 0300 to grab the (now empty) trailer at Sam's Club only to find myself faced with sheets of rain and winds with near hurricane force. A storm front was blowing through just then so I sat it out for 30-40 minutes then went about my business.

Finding the shipper wasn't difficult but when I backed in I needed to do a lot of sweeping up in the trailer. It was the filthiest one I've run across in more than 18 months on the road. That taken care of, the dock worker pushed in 50 feet worth of pallets of empty plastic soda bottles in one go and I was loaded. 77,000+ bottles weighing under 10,000 pounds.

Ordinarily, a light load is a blessing but in heavy winds I prefer to haul something closer to my maximum. Fortunately, the winds died down around sunrise though there was quite a lot of lightning going off in the skies around me. Some was ground-to-cloud and some was cloud-to-cloud which was fascinating to watch. At one point I saw five or six almost simultaneous lightning strikes in a 120 degree arc in front of me which was very impressive.

My dispatcher needed a scorecard to figure out my route yesterday so I tried to explain it to him. Hopefully I will be paid for the joyride.

The next trip came in late in the morning: I'm to take a load of pet supplies to -- keep this a secret -- a PetCo pet store in Jolliet, Illinois. We do a lot of PetSmart loads so this seems a bit sacrilegious.

I was ordered to pick up a dry van instead of a reefer and feared this load would be extremely heavy. Not to worry: its only 12,000 or so.

The fuel tanks were nearly dry so I fueled at the yard at $4.39. Later in the day a message came across my satellite unit that we get each week telling me that fuel tomorrow will be $4.00 a gallon, which I hope is a typo. That or I just spent an extra seventy or eighty dollars on fuel today, which I couldn't really avoid.