Scaling

Yesterday I departed Milwaukee, Wisconsin just before the worst part of the afternoon rush started and it turns out there wasn't a truck stop with a scale between there and where I ended up last night. No big deal, there isn't a weigh station until you get into Illinois anyway, and right at the Wisconsin / Illinois border are a Pilot, Flying J and independent truck stop, each with a scale.

I first went to the Flying J and scaled my load, but the printout that resulted was ridiculous. It showed my total weight at around 56,000 pounds which was (as it turns out) almost 24,000 pounds light. I complained when I got the printout and they had me go back around to scale again after they reset the mechanism.

Second time through it shows me at about 80,400 pounds which is a much more believable number, given that I have (apparently) over 20 tons of beef in back. Still, I was a bit hesitant to use the results from their scale so I went across the street to the independent truck stop and use the CAT scale there.

That scale reported my gross weight as 80,460. Unfortunately, I'm allowed only 80,000 total, with no more than 34,000 on my set of four drive tires and another 34,000 on my trailer tandems. I realized I would have to adjust my sliding fifth wheel to move a thousand pounds or so forward on to my steer tires and also slide the tandems back to shift about 2,000 pounds forward on to my drives.

The result?

Steers: 12,100
Drives: 34,320
Tandems: 34,040

Basically, a perfect adjustment. The feds allow APU-equipped trucks a 400 pound weight increase so long as it ends up on your drives, so I'm clear there. My steers are rated at 12,300 and I'm only carrying 40 extra pounds on my tandems. Given the hundreds of pounds of adjustment that happens with any sliding of my tandems there just isn't a better weight distribution. Plus, as I burn fuel (approximately one pound of fuel per mile as I drive) the weight will come mostly from the drives, and a bit from the steers.

Still, I was a bit concerned heading into Illinois. Not every state agrees with the APU weight increase and I don't recall if this is one of those states. Believe it or not, I get green lights on my Prepass for both open scales I ran across so I never even had to pull in!


View Larger Map

The drive out to Marshall, MO was tedious, with lots of back roads and state highways in Missouri. Those three "bonus" miles I got in yesterday's report were used up when I had to take a detour around a closed bridge over the Missouri river. I was hoping they would last, too.

For some reason, I keep getting preplans that I'm not legally able to run. Today's first illegal preplan involved me taking a load from the same town I'm delivering and running it down to Russellville, Arkansas for 0300 tomorrow morning. Since I've only got an hour or two left to drive today and that trip was over 300 miles (across some of the shittiest roads I've ever been across) it wasn't difficult to decline. The second proposed load had me picking up in Kansas City then running up to Omaha by 0500 tomorrow, which I couldn't make legally for the same reason. Finally, a third junky load showed up that I could actually run legally, going from the caves in Independence, Missouri up to the ConAgra plant in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Picks up tomorrow morning and doesn't deliver until the following day, but that's fluff since we drop trailers there 24/7.

Fuel at our yard was $3.34 today and is going down to $3.32 tomorrow. Fuel prices are crashing as our economy slows way down and people do now what they should have been doing all along: conserving energy.

Simple day

View Larger Map

Got up early, cruised on in to the Milwaukee, Wisconsin area and dropped that trailer at a Cargil plant. Picked up an empty there and drove about eight miles away to yet another Cargil plant where I picked up 20 tons of beef patties heading to Marshall, Missouri for tomorrow afternoon.

For the first time ever at Hill Bros, my GPS distance from start to finish on this trip is less than the paid miles. They are paying me 511 miles and its really only going to take 508. I'm putting those puppies in the bank, bet on it.

I watched meat being "processed" by a large machine at the first Cargil plant for about ten minutes while they were figuring out the paperwork. Processed meaning chunks were entering this machine from a large hopper overhead into some sort of processing apparatus, and an operator looked on as they fell down on to a high speed conveyor belt thing that moved them over to a storage bin. Strange to watch... I'm pretty sure they were working on beef but it wasn't recognizable as such. Just "meat".

That didn't stop me from getting a burger (well, a Wisconsin Swiss melt) at the Culver's in Delavan, Wisconsin where I stopped for the night.

Moo.

Kansas City, Waukee and Milwaukee

... or, said another way, the past, present and future.

This morning it was Kansas City, Kansas. The shipper didn't mind me spending the night in their parking lot "so long as you're gone before first shift gets in tomorrow." I blew out of town at 0400 with no first shift in evidence.

Three hours later I was in Omaha at my first drop. Turns out, my instructions and the way the trailer was loaded were reversed. I took matters into my own hands and went to the second consignee first whereupon I find a ridiculous backing situation. It is hard to describe in words, and I had no time to take a photo, but basically it was a business at the corner of a curved street with a small parking lot with no way to back in to the dock they wanted without going over the curb. Over the curb it was.

The second consignee was an easy drop and as soon as I was done there I took my truck over to the local Volvo Truck dealership to have them look at my air suspension. When I started up this morning it was like someone had used a needle on a balloon overnight -- I had no air pressure at all. My rear air suspension was flat, the trailer brakes were set, the works.

Turns out there was a connection in the rear of my tractor that had developed a leak and it was put right suspiciously quickly. They even installed new front curtains for the truck to replace the original ones that came with busted tabs.


View Larger Map

As for the present, tonight I'm stopped in a rest area in Waukee, Iowa just west of Des Moines. A load was presented heading up to Wisconsin for delivery tomorrow and I spent most of the afternoon at a meatpacking plant in Omaha having my trailer loaded. Some of these plants are so small it is basically steers going in one end of the building and WHAP! burgers out the other a short time later. If you remember that chicken load I had the other day from Chattanooga with the large cardboard containers and plastic liners, it was the same thing here. Worse, when I came to a hard stop just before reaching the freeway there was a disconcerting liquid motion that rocked my entire truck forward and back a few times as it settled.

Tomorrow is an easy ride from Waukee to Milwaukee to complete the trip.

By the house, in passing

View Larger Map

Around 0800 this morning I was beeped. Take a load of refrigerated stuff from the Russellville, Arkansas Americold plant up to Kansas City, Kansas. The load was ready last night and I would have loved to have been rolling early but it wasn't to be.

On the way up to KC I stopped in Joplin and my brother drove by and dropped off my mail and some packages. Now a new, large screen Garmin GPS graces my dash. Slightly different interface from the old 660 but the screen itself is nice. I need to see about getting the truck stop Points Of Interest database loaded up on it so I can zip to them easily, as I can on the 660.

A preplan found its way to me. Loading in nearby Lenexa, Kansas this evening and due up in Omaha with two drops in the morning. I would have liked to pick it up early and run up to Omaha tonight, but the product isn't ready and the consignees probably aren't expecting a big empty trailer to greet them tomorrow morning.

A relaxing weekend

It turns out the dispatcher dude was off by 24 hours - I didn't get a new load until Monday morning. Meantime, I was sent deadhead over to Russellville, Arkansas to await said load.

South of Atlanta, Georgia

I delivered my load of Hungry Man frozen dinners yesterday afternoon to the distribution center in McDonough, Georgia but the appointment wasn't until 0100 this morning and they didn't take it early. While I snoozed they were offloading the product and once complete I started my new day's run up to Chattanooga, Tennessee, then over to Batesville, Arkansas.

For some reason, night dispatch decided to come to life around 0200 this morning and ask why I wasn't running already. Seems they had received a phone call from the plant in Chattanooga and they needed trailers up there ASAP. Why said night dispatcher didn't read the messages I had exchanged with my dispatcher the day before that covered the situation is beyond me. Since I had my alarm set to go off shortly anyway, I didn't scream too loudly at him.

The run up to Atlanta is very smooth around 0300 I find. By sunrise, I've been shown to a door at the plant in Chattanooga and twenty pallets with "combos" have been shoved aboard. Think cardboard crates with the top open, industrial-strength garbage pail liners and a ton of chicken parts sitting inside. Better yet, they are marinating in some sort of clear goop which burbles up and over the top and on to the floor of the trailer then out the back vent holes as I go down the street. That vaguely chicken smell your nose comes across while on your way to work? Could have been me.

A quick scale and I'm off to Memphis then the wilds of Arkansas. I'm right at the end of my legal hours when I arrive, get offloaded, then find a place to park it for the night.

My dispatcher and his offer of a Saturday trip over to lovely Green Forest, Arkansas via state highways was turned down. He sounded almost apologetic when he told me that there wasn't anything else available on Saturday. I sounded almost apologetic when I said it sounds like a great time for a 34-hour reset.

The only thing worse than a broke GPS...

... is a broke GPS that works for about 90 seconds.

See, my Garmin 660 turns on and acts normal for about a minute and a half, then for some reason it can't find the satellites any more and stops giving directions. This isn't an issue with my truck or other devices inside, as I've taken it outside at a rest area and it happens there as well.

So, now when I'm near someplace I have to go I try to time it, so when I'm a few miles away I power up the unit then let it steer me in the last few turns. This tactic worked when I was trying to find the trailer washout place this morning, but didn't work at all when I headed over to the shipper.

Amazon has my new unit being delivered to the house tomorrow morning. Hopefully I can run through there sometime this weekend to pick up my mail and this very important gadget.

Today's load is heading to Georgia and consists of 35,000 pounds of Hungry Man dinners. I tried a few years ago and when I was through, I wasn't hungry any more so they must work.

The loading took forever (5 hours). I have to chat with the person in charge of detention at HQ to go over quite a list of loads in the past month where I have spent more than the allotted two hours being loaded or unloaded.

The cheapest fuel along my route was at the Pilot in Little Rock, Arkansas. Utterly ridiculous parking situation and a 30-minute wait just to reach the pumps. I should have gone on to West Memphis and paid a few more cents.

My next load is already planned, for a change: I'm going to deadhead up to Chattanooga, Tennessee to the non-regurgitated chicken ass factory (long story; use the search function if you're really interested in the back story) to take a load back out to Arkansas. Picks up and delivers day after tomorrow at my convenience, which is, well, convenient.