Springfield,MO

Well, now I can tell you where we are at! Stuck in Springfield,MO for the moment. When we picked up the load we talked to our FM about getting us an appointment for a PM which we HAD to get done asap. He set us up with an appointment this morning at 0700 at the TA in Strafford,MO. Our shop here at Prime is backed up so that is why they set us up somewhere else. We have had work done here before when the shop has been busy. Anyway, J got in around 0245 and dropped our trailer at the yard and then headed over to the TA to wait for the appointment.

This morning I woke up at 0600 at the TA and I was surprised that I has slept through J going through the yard. So after I got up and ran into the bathroom and then to grab a coffee, I headed back to the truck just in time for them to pull us into the bay to get started. Unfortunately they found a few things wrong that we needed to get taken care of asap. Our oil pan is leaking from the top, we are using more coolant than we should be, our front left steer wheel seal is leaking and there is something wrong with the air compressor. Yesterday it got to where it kept coming on abut every 30 seconds which is definitely not right. Regretably we had to give the load away so that we could get an appointment with Freightliner to have the truck looked at. And the bad part is that it is now Saturday afternoon and we can't get in the shop until Monday at 0100 so we are stuck here for 2 nights. We thought about continuing on and and getting an appointment when we got to our destination but the service tech advised against it. And since I'm not a mechanic, I'm not going to argue with him. He knows what he is talking about.

Being a little bummed about losing this load, because it was a good paying load, we headed back to the yard to break the news to drivers lineup. I asked Paul who was working the desk how many trucks were waiting for a load to which he replied, "a lot". I told him I was about to make someones day because I had a load I had to drop off. When he looked up our load and saw that it was high value and hazmat, he said, "I doubt it" and we laughed. From there we headed over to get our padlocks off of the trailer and go grab some breakfast. Then it was off to the hotel to get a room. We lucked out when we got to the hotel and got one of the FOUR rooms that they had left. And it was only about 1000 hrs. I guess quite a few trucks waiting on a load had decided to get a room. Hopefully Monday morning when we are done over at Freightliner, the trucks that are waiting on loads will be gone and we won't have a very long wait.

So, since we are here, we called up the friends we have that live here and we are going to go out to dinner tonight. So that will be fun! Lambert Cafe is here and we are debating between that place or the BBQ joint down on the corner which we have heard is really good. So either way, we are here for two nights and will try both places, it is just a matter of which place we will try tonight and which place we will try tomorrow.

For the next 36 hours at least we will be chilling here in Springfield. I figure we will get the laundry done and do a whole lot of nothing. :) We have had a good week so far so even though we lost this load, we will still have a pretty darn good check. And since we should head back out on Monday, that will be a good start to the next week since I doubt whatever load we get on Monday will deliver before payroll cutoff on Tuesday. So we are sitting pretty!