Double Inversion

This morning I was up at my usual early hour, made even earlier by the time zone difference in California. I needed to get in to the LA area and across to the other side before the traffic became murderous and I'm happy to report that there were no traffic issues.

On the way into the LA basin area the temperature was around 77 degrees. Once I dropped down into the basin itself along the foothills highway (210) it dropped to 63 degrees. In meteorology this is referred to as an inversion: a layer of warmer air above colder. This is one of the reasons LA has smog problems, as the air below is trapped underneath the inversion and can't circulate.

I was reflecting on this when I arrived in Carson, California at the UPS facility near the Port of Long Beach. Basically, this facility takes the 40 foot containers that come in from overseas and break down and repalletize the product for shipment within the US. 18,000 pounds of athletic equipment in the load I was to pick up, for instance.

Here is where the second inversion took place. Only, this was a common Cranial-Rectal inversion, better known as having ones head up ones ass. The gate guards filled out a bunch of paperwork checking my truck and trailer in, but they couldn't find the load. So I eventually sweet-talked them into letting me go inside and talk with someone in the warehouse, and behold! There was my load all ready to go behind dock door 15. Only, my appointment wasn't until 1000 and this was about 0400.

No problem, drop the trailer in back in the yard (not at the door) and take your tractor off of the lot, rather than park it next to the other half-dozen bobtails back there. Find someplace to park on the street and come back in roughly five hours... and we'll do it all again.

I spent my time productively, putting finishing touches on my generic warehouse worker voodoo doll and catching some extra snooze time. I arrive back at the gate around 0830 and the same routine begins again. They still can't find the order, they still have to log my truck in, check my ID, you name it.

Someone is scared up to order the yard jockey to take my empty trailer from the back lot, bring it up front and push it into door 15. Now that they are loading me, I'm sent to the bobtail area in the back lot to wait. At least until they knock on my door and tell me I need to witness the loading. March back up front, witness the loading, march back to truck for stupid form they didn't ask for, march back to dock to sign various paperwork in blood, march back to truck with paperwork and a neato aluminum seal thingee, and wait. Wait for yard dog guy to go grab my trailer from the dock and bring it out back.

I could go on, but why? Eventually I was freed from the asylum and made my way east along the first leg of my trip back to Omaha. I stopped tonight in Kingman, Arizona and plan on driving to Tucumcari, New Mexico tomorrow.

Carson, California to Sioux Falls, South Dakota

I'm here near Victorville, California taking a 34-hour break to reset my logbook and the next load information has popped up. Tomorrow morning I take some UPS freight from Carson, California back to the midwest. Its about 1,900 miles and I have five days to do it in.

Well... actually I'll be dropping it at the Omaha yard on Friday afternoon or Saturday morning and get something else to run over the weekend.

I learned my lesson in the past few days... I'm taking the southern route this time:


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The computer tells me that I'll be able to fuel in Winslow, Arizona for under $3.00 a gallon. It will be nice not putting in 800-1000 bucks into the tanks at one swoop for a change.

Unloaded in Victorville, California

I got up early this morning to get fuel and get my truck washed before I left Vegas. Fueling was quick at 0400 local time but I had to wait behind several trucks at truck wash. I had them do the engine as well this time as there was a lot of gunk that came up off the road and splattered everything.

Victorville was about four hours away and when I pull up to the Americold facility I note with more than a little amusement that their guard shack is optimistically labeled "Welcome Center". I should have taken a photo.

It turns out that no one at HQ bothered to call them to reschedule the appointment so we had to fork over a ransom payment of $100 for the right to unload those frozen dinners. If you wonder why the price of food is so high...

At least this place has those cool dock doors that you don't even open up the trailer at. Back it into a door and they handle everything inside. Just under two hours later I was done and headed to a nearby truck stop.

Its c-c-cold! (pt 2)

Wyoming DOT eventually lifted the chain restrictions on westbound I-80 so I and about half of the parking lot at the Flying J departed. There was a FedEx truck pulling doubles ("wiggle wagons" in trucker parlance) that had wiped out a mile or so east on the eastbound side of I-80 so there was quite a backup going that direction.

A few miles down the road brought the first of several trucks pulling doubles off to the side of the road:



Then there was this character pulling a 53 footer who looks like he wanted to convert it on the fly to doubles: (small part of the image, click it to enlarge)



My truck and trailer didn't emerge completely unscathed. You can see the ice, sand, salt and who-knows-what built up on every lower surface:



View the entire album of today's pictures here.

I made it out to the north side of Vegas for the night. I need to fuel and get my truck washed when I get up tomorrow morning and finish my slog in to Victorville, Califfornia. The weather channel had talked up the Santa Anna winds blowing in from California through Vegas but it was peaceful all the way from Salt Lake City, Utah to Vegas.


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Its c-c-cold!

Here is the catwalk area of my truck, between the tractor and trailer:



The front of my truck and the guy on my left (white Swift Freightliner) who parked in the construction area:



You can see that flatbedder down at the end ghetto parked in front of the construction equipment:



View the entire album here.

I screwed up

Okay, there you have it. In big print even.

I was given a short load from Independence, Missouri up to Council Bluffs, Iowa on Friday that let me just squeak into this week's safety meeting before I delivered. There are some changes in the office, it seems: the new recruit trainer Scott has departed and there was a lively discussion from the safety folks about running legal logs, the operations people are evil, safety will be checking logs, drivers must stick together and only run legally so the evil operations people don't run you over, and safety will REALLY REALLY be checking logs. Oh, and if you aren't in safety then you are basically evil.

Good thing I'm a boy scout when it comes to running my truck.

After the meeting I ran across the river to the ConAgra plant in Council Bluffs and dropped off my load and tried to get my next load, heading out to Victorville, California. Alas, it wasn't ready and wouldn't be for another three or four hours so I got to wait. It was then I made my mistake.

See, there are basically three routes from the upper midwest out to southern California. The shortest, and nastiest by far, is to run I-70 through Denver, go up over the Eisenhower summit then take I-15 south. The next shortest, and the best one to run in good weather in my opinion, is to take I-80 through Nebraska and Wyoming, dropping down into Utah to take I-15 south. The longest, and the one that involves considerable state highway driving, is to head south along I-35 towards Emporia, Kansas, then over towards Dodge City, Kansas, then diagonally southwest to Tucumcari, New Mexico, then take I-40 west the rest of the way.

Instead of gathering relevant information about the trip first (read: weather reports) I tossed a coin and chose the Wyoming route along I-80.

As many of you now know, there is a large area of low pressure over the Rockies. Low pressure areas are kind of like vacuum cleaners, they suck in air from around them which brings lots of funky weather. Funky meaning cold-as-hell blasts of air from the north mostly, in this case.

Near the end of my driving day yesterday it was snowing and there was an impressive five-mile stretch of ice on the interstate. Several big rigs jackknifed, along with a number of four-wheelers that spun out into the ditch. No place to pull off (or desire... the ramps were frozen solid) so many of us hugged the right shoulder to use the rumble strip along the edge to (a) rattle any fillings in our mouths and (b) gain a little traction. One good thing about 40,000+ pounds of cargo in the trailer is that my truck had much better traction than most.

Wyoming DOT eventually shut down the eastbound traffic and slapped a number of chain restrictions on the passes near the Utah border along I-80.

I stopped at Rock Springs, Wyoming and got one of the last parking places at the Flying J. Well, it took some ghetto parking (the people paving the lot could argue I moved a cone here or there, I'm sure) but nothing like the guy who came in after and parked next to me, knocking down several cones in the process. Hope that new paving holds up.

My APU kicked out a nice gout of oil on to the ground when I started up the heater (for only the second time; I tested it once when I got the truck). It ran fine the rest of the night, though with a mildly unpleasant odor. Think the smell of singed hair.

How are conditions this morning, you ask?



I may be here a while.

The incomperable Betty White

Setting the record straight on current political events: