My, what big green eyes you have!

Some of my friends have been asking me when I would get a new cat. My last cat, Blaze, spent 17 years with me until I had to put her down a year-and-a-half ago.

When I have delivered at PetSmart stores I spent some time in their adoption centers looking over the cats there. I wanted just the right pet to succeed Blaze and I found her at a store in Colorado Springs, Colorado a month or more ago. It took some work but eventually I found the contact information for the organization in charge of the adoptions and my dispatcher helped hook me up with a trip that got me through there a few weeks ago so I could pick her up.

As you can see, she has had a tough time adjusting to the truck:





I have dubbed her Snow White, as her fur is entirely white. She was born in the fall of 2007 and I'm told she had a run-in with some dogs, which made her timid. I have discovered over the past few weeks that she isn't timid at all, and she enjoys romping around the cab of my truck and helping me "play" on my computer. It must be a cat thing, as she is utterly fascinated by my onscreen mouse cursor (get it?) and likes to pounce on it when she can. I've also discovered various switches on my dash clicked on or off some mornings, like the one that drops the rear suspension or unlocks the fifth wheel slider. This helps keep me on my toes.

Ghetto Fixes

I was planned on a PetSmart load of fish last night, from the Ottawa, Illinois distribution center down to Memphis, then Little Rock. They wanted the pickup by 0500 which was no problem, and I checked in my empty then hooked up to the new trailer with the fish.

The previous driver was probably an owner-op, and was most certainly inconsiderate. The reason I believe he (or she) was an O-O is that the landing gear was cranked so high I had to lower it about 3 inches before I could get under the trailer, which is normally how people using 24" tires leave them. Since our regular fleet uses 22.5" tires like mine, I suspect this was someone with their own truck.

The inconsiderate part has to do with the trailer lights. When I hooked up my electrical pigtail and pulled the trailer out of its spot all was fine. Then I made a right turn towards the gate and the trailer lights went out. Straightened out, the lights flickered on and off a bit, then went back off. The electrical junction box felt a bit loose when I plugged in, and the previous driver had to have recognized this problem if he was using his mirrors.

So now I get to wait for repairs at the T/A in Bloomington, Illinois.



I tried a ghetto fix with some zip ties, but the connections are poor enough that it doesn't keep contact well.

More Awesome Sunsets

View the entire album here.

The 14-hour rule

So I'm sitting in Rochelle, Illinois yesterday afternoon after being unloaded at a nearby consignee. Ten minutes before my 14-hour clock is about to wrap up I get a phone call from our afternoon / evening dispatcher asking if I can drive about 120 miles to Oak Grove, Wisconsin and pick up a load that was sitting on their dock because another truck of ours had a breakdown.

This is the same joint that screwed me out of over 20 hours of detention pay that I mentioned in passing in the Garlic and the Bong post a few months ago. So it was not with a heavy heart that I had to gently tell him they could stuff their garlic bread.

Congrats to Craig and Diane

Today they posted the 500th post on their blog, Heads Carolina / Tails California. If you haven't read it yet and you have an interest in trucking then you're missing out.

This is my 727th blog post so I'm almost 50% betterer than they are! :)

(Congrats Craig and Diane!)

A preplan with an unwelcome twist

The following load started in Russellville and ended at a food warehouse in Kansas City, Kansas, though they let us drop trailers there. Thank goodness.

On my way back up north the satellite unit beeped and I had an honest-to-goodness preplan. Pick up a load in Marshall, Missouri the following day then run it up to Rochelle, Illinois for the day after. Not big miles but my logbook is a bit short at the moment so I'm not complaining.

Later, the kicker comes. One of the load planners messaged me to see if I would do a local run between the time I dropped off the load I was carrying and picking up the next. It was a relay from our Kansas City, Missouri yard heading up to Trenton, Missouri. Not exactly a direct route to the next dispatch, but not too bad.

The thing is, the drop time for it was 0600 and I wasn't going to be done with my current load to have enough of a gap in time to fit in my break. The trailer itself wasn't at the yard when this was set up, as another driver was bringing it down.

The unwelcome part of this is that I made about twenty-two extra dollars doing this favor for this planner (as compared to what I would have been paid to just deadhead to my next load) and in exchange I had to switch trailers, do extra paperwork and ended up spending four hours on the dock at the consignee. All of this turned what would have been a nice, slower day into a pain in the butt.


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Adding to the misery, my locking fuel caps were frozen shut again this morning when I went to get some fuel before leaving town. I was in such a hurry to make the deadline at the consignee (which, as it turns out, doesn't have appointments anyway so I could have strolled in any time) I may have inadvertently put 50 gallons of fuel into my truck tanks and had it counted as reefer fuel. The difference being reefer fuel isn't taxed like road fuel, and I don't pay for it. I spoke with several people at HQ to find out if I made a boo boo and it is being looked into.

North, then south

Today I ran that load from Omaha down to Russellville, Arkansas. I didn't look closely at the mileage, only realizing after I accepted the trip that it was a full day's drive to pick up the load then deliver it.

While I was at the yard a company truck pulled up and a driver walked over and asked if I was the driver with the blog. Turns out that two drivers have used me as a reference since I began with Hill Bros, and now Ken B. and I have met in person. I told him when we meet up next I owe him a nice dinner for the referral bonus!

The trip down to Russellville was uneventful and the traffic light. I wasn't rooting for either team in the Superbowl and didn't even have the game on.