800

Today, my 800th blog post along this journey in trucking.

I was thinking recently how hard it was keeping up daily blog updates when I realized how hard I've been running this week. My average weekly miles hovers around 2,500 and I've run that many miles in the past four days to and from California.

Two days ago I did finish my trip out to California down Donner, which wasn't too bad when there is only 25,000 pounds of freight in the trailer. Yesterday, I swapped my loaded trailer for an empty and ran out to Menlo Park, California to pick up 43,000 pounds of alcoholic beverages from Diageo heading to Aurora, Colorado. The truck struggled up from the coast to Sacramento then up the long, long slog of Donner. Much more difficult with a full load on board.

I ended the night in Winnemucca, Nevada after first trying to fuel in Fernley, Nevada. The Pilot there was out of fuel and half of their pumps were closed for remodeling anyway. Even though I was running very low on fuel I had to head back out to the freeway and keep on going. Several hours later a newish Pilot in Winnemucca presented itself and I spent the night there after filling up.

Yesterday was a bit breezy and today was gale-force gusts up to 50 MPH (mostly) behind me. There are some twists and turns heading east on I-80 and the truck shuddered convincingly whenever the wind hit broadside.


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Tonight I ended up in Rawlins, Wyoming, leaving 240 miles or so for tomorrow. I very rarely miss appointment times on loads but this will be one case where I will show up an hour or two late. I already let my dispatcher and the broker for the load know, and I was told they do accept loads up to noon so I should still be able to get unloaded.

Saw something new today: a train composed entirely of 13 engines, nothing else.

Oh, last week my driver's seat developed an air leak that the shop fixed when I was there. Today, the passenger seat developed a similar leak. Poor design on the manufacturer's part. Some electrical tape made an effective short-term fix.