Friday, April 24, 2009

Santa Nella,CA

Boy, what a busy last 24 hours we have had! After J took over last night and after we had dinner at the Petro in Kingman, AZ I hit the sack. I woke up momentarily when J got us to receiver in Victorville,CA. From there he headed down to the TA in Ontario and again I didn't feel a thing until he woke me up.

When we got to the TA they were able to get us right in for a PM on the truck and on the APU. Unfortunately they didn't have all the belts and filters for the APU. Lucky for us we had some. But, that meant that J had to wake me up because they were under the bunk where I was sleeping. I got up for a few minutes and then headed back to bed once they had what they needed. Then J had to get me up again because the APU wouldn't start and he had to reset it. Of course the reset button is, you guessed it, under the bunk! Finally they got done and J found a place to park and I was out like a light!

This morning my phone rang at 0800 and it was our FM telling us to head towards Bakersfield and they would load us out of that area. So I get up and head inside to get ready and run into another lady that also drives for Prime with her husband. She has another FM but she got the same call telling her to head towards Bakersfield. After we both got rounded up, we headed out to Bakersfield together with me following her. We took a route that was about 30 miles further, but we completely avoided Los Angeles rush hour traffic and got there about an hour or so faster than we would have if we would have had to deal with the LA mess.

While we were enroute up there, we got our load assignment. We were to head 430 miles north to Pittsburgh,CA to pick up at General Chemical and deliver to Winchester,VA. I didn't really want to drive 400 miles for a load but since it is paying over $4k I decided it was worth it. LOL

We will pick up this load tonight between 1600-1700 local time. We are supposed to be in Winchester,VA at 1100 hrs on Monday but we aren't going to make it. We found out that I-80 is closed nightly through the summer from 1900-0700 hours. We won't make it there before they close it. They do have an alternate route, of which they are taking trucks over in groups of 10-12 where they have a DPS escort. Fleet message today informed us of this, but it is a windy hill with steep grades and they have already had one roll over on it. I have decided that there is no way that we are taking this load over that road since it is a hazmat load. We will pick it up and head over to the 49er Truck Stop in Sacramento and head out in the morning. Our FM said that he thinks we can get the appointmen at the receiver changed from Monday morning to Tuesday morning, so that will be a huge help.

Since we were able to get the PM's done, now we just need to get an alignment done and possibly a new shock on the right front. The right steer tire is cupping pretty bad and I'm pretty sure that is from a bad shock. We will see if we can get through Springfield this week to get it done after we deliver this load. We need to be in Dallas on the 2nd for Jessica's prom so we will see how the schedule works out. But we definitely need to have it fixed and sooner rather than later!

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