Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Eventful couple of days

But hopefully things are getting back to normal. Where did I leave off? Oh, we were on the side of the road. Well, here is what happened next....

Road Side Maintenance showed up from the TA and got us ALMOST all taken care of. He got the trailer air lines fixed, but it had also eaten through the ABS line so we had to take the truck on in to the TA shop about 25 miles up the road so he could get that fixed. So we get there and he gets it fixed. Lucky for us, the TA was 2 exits from where we were picking up so that worked out great. We made it to pick up and were able to get our load and head out. By this time it is after midnight. We head back to the TA so we could scale the load because it was showing almost 45,000 lbs. We were about 160 pounds (I think that was it) over on our drive axles. And at this point they were slid ALL the way back. I mean, if we slid the back tandems any further, they would have came out from under the trailer. Now when we did this, I had woke up at 0200 that morning and had about a 2 hour nap during the day and that was all. AND I was supposed to get up and start driving at 0300. Yeah, that wasn't happening. So we said screw it, parked and got some sleep. I got up at 0500, fueled and we moved the tandems up 6 notches, re-weighed and we were legal. NOTE: If they send you to pick up at Coors in Golden,CO and tell you to come in with a 1/2 tank of gas, try to do it. The reason is because the loads are heavy on the front end and that is what makes the load heavy on the front. With less fuel, you aren't as heavy on the drive axles.

Anywho, so we hit the road. This load was originally supposed to be in Temple,TX at 1500 on the 11th and no later because they close at 1500. Well, we knew the night before that we weren't going to make it on time, even if we drove straight through, because getting the other trailer fixed took too long. The earliest we could get it there would be maybe 1700 or so but that wouldn't work. That is why we decided to go ahead and park for the night at the TA. But I took off and drove us to Amarillo. Got there around 1530 hours. It is 429 miles from that TA in west Denver to Amarillo, for inquiring minds. J took over and drove about an hour and we stopped at a rest area for a bathroom break. Then I went to sleep and he drove ALL the way to Temple,TX from there without stopping. I don't know how men can do it. That was like 6 hours straight. My bladder just can't handle it! :) We pulled into a Flying J about 30 miles from destination and were going to park there for the night. No suck luck. Place was packed and trucks parked 3 deep. Sheesh. So we head down the road 3 more miles to a Pilot. We wanted to stop at the Pilot originally but the Flying J's usually have more parking. The Pilot was packed also, but we actually found a marked spot that was open and we grabbed it.

Our trip planner had moved our delivery time to 0800 today, so I set the alarm for 0630, got up, hit the bathroom and took off. We were only less than 30 miles from destination. I get off the interstate, hit Industrial St and get stuck at a rail road crossing. Looked at my GPS and it showed I was .7 miles from destination. We sat there for 45 minutes! Finally gotthe train moved and I made it to delivery at 0830. I let them know what was going on though so that we didn't get a service failure. I can't control the trains. And I was on track to be about 20 minutes early. Oh well....

So we got unloaded and I headed back to this Pilot that we stayed at last night. Grabbed our shower stuff and headed in. Found out that we had to wait almost an hour because there were 6 people ahead of us. I wasn't counting on that. I was thinking that it was mid-morning, so everyone that spent the night would be up early for a shower and then hitting the road, so we should get a shower right away. That is what I get for thinking huh? LOL Grabbed some lunch at Wendy's and killed some time. We had put that we would be available at 1300 because it said that we would have 3.5 hours sitting there getting unloaded and then we added a little more time to take a shower. We actually were finished and back at the truck at 1210. Now it is 1415 and we still don't have a load. So I am chilling out playing on the computer and J is in the back sleeping.

That is what is going on in my world. What's up in yours?

2 comments:

Silvia said...

Asking me, reading your fab blog, thinking about a Coors and looking out the window, where it just started snowing, 30 miles south of Green Bay.:)

Lour & Grey said...

Gee - what's up in our world? We overslept and instead of rushing to try and catch-up on all the housework I wanted to get squared away before we leave next week... I'm reading your blog and Grey's rolling his cigarettes.

Can't wait though, to find out what else you guys are up to. I think reading your blog has helped us really keep a realistic view of our newly chosen profession ;) Thanks!