Three near disasters, a burnt hand and trailer damage

After conferring with the folks at HQ I ended up taking the trip to Mesquite, Texas (the one near Dallas -- there are at least two in Texas). We don't have many loads that pick up over the weekends so it is a bit farther than a trip up to Denver and a lot less hill climbing along the way.

Finding the right building proved a challenge. The address I was given was for the receiving side only. The shipping side was across the street and down a long alley. The third place I checked was the right one.

Phoenix was broiling with temps in the 110-115 range. After pulling away from the dock and sliding my trailer tandems forward a bit I saw one of the spring hangers holding the air lines up off the ground had broke and they were on the pavement. Out come the trusty zip ties and I got to work putting my ghetto mechanic skills into action. I made the mistake of planting my right hand on the ground as I was getting up from under the trailer for no more than 6-8 seconds and got first-degree burns from the pavement! I held it up against the AC vent for a few hours to make the redness and swelling subside.

Leaving Phoenix a truck driver took a right turn to an off ramp too quickly and almost tipped his trailer over. Several hours later past Tucson, a FedEx driver pulling doubles that had just passed me blew his left steer tire and ran off the road into the wide median, leaving a huge cloud of dust. I thought he had rolled it at first, but luckily for him he managed to keep the greasy side down and stopped in the median.

Finally, 30 minutes from Las Cruces, New Mexico there were a bunch of fire trucks and cop cars on the right shoulder and some sort of bus or trailer tipped over on its side and a lot of kids involved. My plan was to get the trailer fixed in Las Cruces anyway, but with all the excitement out there I and my toasty hand stopped there for the night as well.