The price that must be paid

The remaining drive to the Walmart DC in Clarksville, Arkansas went off without a hitch. Once I arrived, I was given some extra paperwork and told to drop my trailer in a certain spot, then to pick up my empty at a different spot. No problemo, mission accomplished.

The new trailer is one of the oldest reefers in the fleet, with over 27,000 hours of run time on the unit. It had some error codes when I turned it on and the trailer itself smelled like exhaust or something similar. I left the inspection port open and let the unit run a bit to see if the new air it was pulling through would replace the bad, but the unit decided to seize up instead. Fuel filter, no doubt.

A quick call to our breakdown guy Andy at HQ and the closest ThermoKing dealer is located and notified. It is on the far side of Russellville about 25 miles away, which also happens to be where my next load will be coming out of. A hop, skip and jump down the freeway and the trailer is dropped in their yard and I called it a day at the local Pilot.

The new trip isn't optimal. It is yet another Walmart run, this time up to North Platte, Nebraska. Unfortunately, it can't deliver until Friday afternoon and Walmart never, ever takes loads early. So it will be another slow slog, doing 730 miles in two-and-a-half days. This is the price that must be paid to get me out of the freight graveyard of Texas and back to trucking civilization.

This morning I grabbed this load from AmeriCold in Russellville and headed north. Almost exactly halfway between there and my destination is North Platte, Missouri where there happens to be a rest area (this is just north of Kansas City). So, tomorrow I will be able to say I drove from North Platte to North Platte and it took me 380 miles to do it!