Slow weekend

Las Cruces, New Mexico is about 660 miles away from my delivery in Mesquite, Texas and I could have driven it on Saturday then squeezed in a 34 on Sunday and the morning hours of Monday. After looking over my log for last week there didn't seem to be a reason to hurry, as I'm left with almost 20 hours anyway and start picking them up again Monday night (commercial drivers in the US work on an 8-day schedule for some arcane reason).

Oh, and I tend towards the lazy side of things.

I stopped in Big Spring, Texas on Saturday then on Sunday fueled up in Weatherford. Got the truck washed there, too. I'm spending Sunday night a few miles down the road from my consignee and I'll finish up early tomorrow morning.

Look Ma! I'm getting a tow!

Several weeks ago I was broke down on the side of the road with a clogged fuel filter. The mechanic who was sent out to assist managed to screw it up even better when he neglected to correctly install the replacement filter which led to my truck being towed back to Dallas. Here we are just before moving out:



After arriving at the Dallas Volvo dealership we're getting the truck unhooked and find out that the front of the trailer has put a nice divot in my catwalk:

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.

It was a dark and stormy night...

I was in South Dakota recently in the middle of a set of storm cells. Off to the left side of my truck a short distance away was what I guess was a thunderstorm super cell with an amazing quantity of lightning going off. I only started shooting video after a few minutes so you can see how long this activity went on for.

Learning to bake in Phoenix

Today's drive from Moriarty, New Mexico to Phoenix, Arizona was routine. I started long before sunrise and arrived at the PetSmart distribution center at 1400 Arizona time. There wasn't a preplan on me so I simply dropped the trailer and bobtailed over to the nearby Flying J to roast along with the rest of the truckers.

And roast we have. It was about 104 degrees when I showed up and the parking lot of the J was at about 120 when I arrived. Thank goodness both the truck AC and my TriPac are recently-serviced and working properly.

When I was in Omaha a few days ago I had our tire shop look at my right rear tire. The other five tires on my tractor have performed like champs so far, needing to be aired once or twice each in just over a year's time. That last one though drops from 105 to 80 overnight sometimes and had already been looked at by folks from TA and Bosselman and they couldn't fix it. I explained all of this to Will in our tire shop and he performed his magic on it.

Result: one small, thin nail that went through, which he patched. New valve stem, new core, new double-tip valve stem cover dealie that keeps the stem clear but lets you check the air pressure just as fast. Heck, I would have settled for some chicken bones tossed into a sack and a magic spell, but he seems to think this will work at least as well.

Got a weird brokered preplan late in the afternoon for a load leaving Phoenix tomorrow and heading to Mesquite, Texas that can't deliver until Monday. Something like 1,000 miles and three full days to loaf along. I declined the laod so we'll see what pops up tomorrow morning. I might need those chicken bones and spell after all.

A bit (of a) behind

I've been busy with that "real life" thing and haven't been updating here as frequently as I like. I'm back from the long 4th of July weekend with the usual dreaded Buske load up to Omaha, followed by a load from Crete, Nebraska to Phoenix, Arizona.


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More info and news in a day or two.

670 miles

The past couple days saw me make my way down to Atlanta to drop off that load of frozen dinners then pick up a load of paper heading to Wichita, Kansas for Thursday morning. I made it as far as Mississippi last night and today I knocked out just over 670 miles to a block away from the consignee at the very end of my driving hours.

I was in the middle of Mississippi last night and didn't have to use my APU to cool my truck! That has to be some kind of record for June. After I cool my truck interior down tonight I'll probably be able to get by without the A/C here in Kansas as well.

The dispatcher tried assigning me a load that wouldn't get me home until late Friday. I kind of insisted I be home late tomorrow so that got changed around and a new load assigned. We'll see how that all works out tomorrow.