Rolling, rolling, rolling

The past three days have mostly been a blur to me. I was assigned a load in our Omaha yard to take down to Phoenix, Arizona and since then I've been driving, sleeping, driving. Ask any truck driver, they'll explain.

I made it in to Phoenix around 1630 today in surprisingly heavy traffic. I considered shunting over to the 101 to try to run around the bulk of it but eventually kept along on I-17 and made it down to I-10 then west a bit to my exit. I was the only occupied truck at the PetSmart DC so I was in and out of there fast. A good thing, as my hours are shot for the rest of the day.

I spent several hours in Gallup, New Mexico with another Hill Bros driver because I may have had to swap loads with him. Turns out going down a steep grade with a sharp curve at the bottom with a heavy load in back takes on a new level of fun and excitement when you find out your power steering has decided to take a dump all on its own. He managed to keep it trucker proper (shiny side up, greasy side down and between the ditches) and get it to a shop.

Eventually that got worked out and I went my own way into Phoenix with my load.

I haven't had too many loads recently sent to me with ridiculously short delivery times. For instance, one I got today for over 900 miles (short miles, of course, the realistic number would be 1,000) that delivers 0300 the following morning. After I turned that down, I got a nice one to Chicago for 1,745 miles (1,800 "real" miles, which isn't too bad) that had to deliver 30 hours after I departed. Even driving ten, sleeping ten, driving ten wouldn't even get me to Illinois legally, not to mention pretrips and fueling.

It was worked out that I would take the second load and run it as far as possible tomorrow then let someone else repower it. If the satellite unit is to be believed, its only 6,000 pounds of produce so it should be pretty zippy going up the hills I just came down between Flagstaff and Phoenix.