Dodge City,KS

Just the name of this town has me conjuring up visions of the old west and the long cattle drives when they would bring their cattle to market. Camp fire coffee and beans for dinner. Yummy! Just thinking of that is making me hungry! Although I am sure the cowboys of yesteryear would agree that the boffee, beans and day old bisquits got might old after weeks on the trail. As I sit here, it is a beautiful morning. It isn't very hot outside as it is only about 10 am and there is a nice breeze. Unfortunately, that breeze is blowing around a very unpleasant smell. Cow shit! But what can I expect when I am here to pick up freshly slaughtered cows that will soon be on supermarket shelves or in fine dining establishments?

Yesterday morning J woke me up at the last rest area in Kansas. With an appointment at 2100 last night in Denver, my plan was to head to our yard for the day. I figured while killing time until our appointment that we could get some shopping done for Vegas. We could also grab a shower and do some laundry. When I was about 100 miles out, I got a message that they could unload me whenever I got there. Figuring we can do all that other stuff later, I headed on in. The sooner we get unloaded, the sooner we will have our next load.

I drove straight to Frito Lay and they actually let me drop the trailer instead of getting unloaded. Awesome! Only problem is that they didn't have any empty trailers. I sent in a message and my FM had me to over to USF and grab a trailer from them. When I got there, I found the trailer but there was another Prime driver snatching it. Shoot! I started looking for other empty trailers but there were none to be had. About that time, the other driver walked up and asked if I was a team or solo. I told him I was a team and he said I could have the empty that he had. He was going to go sack out for his 10 hour break and he knew that as a team we would get a load before he did since he was going on break. I thanked him and waved as he headed out.

I hooked up to the trailer and found out that the reefer unit wasn't working. Not a good sign when you are in the refridgerated business. I sent in a message to Road Assist and they had me take it down to the TA to see if they could fix it. The TA was swamped and said that it would be several hours before they could get to it so they just put us in line. J and I headed in to grab some breakfast and then he was heading back to bed. While we were eating, our FM called and was wondering when we would be ready to go. I explained the situation about the trailer and he said that wasn't going to work. He told us to forget about that trailer. Take it back to the yard and he would find us another one. He was needing us to head to Dodge City where we would pick up a load but they were needing empty trailers to get our loads on. I headed back to the yard and dropped the broken one and found an empty there and headed out around 1415 hours.

It is about 380 miles or so to Dodge City. I drove until about 1730 and then woke J up and he drove the last 160 miles. We made it in and dropped the trailer and found out that our load wasn't ready. We weren't really surprised as these meat loads are never ready until the VERY last minute. Our load info said that is was to be shipped any time yesterday with a final departure time of 0600 today. Meaning that is was supposed to be ready no later than 0600 for us to pick up. We spent the night at the Flying J here. I went to bed around 2300, WAY to late for me, and J stayed up calling about every hour to see if it was ready. At 0530 it still wasn't ready so we went in and grabbed a shower and are now back over here at Cargill waiting for the load. If you noticed the time on this post, it is now 1000 hours and still not ready. I messaged in to dispatch and they said what they have been hearing from sales, who is talking to the customer, is that they may not even start loading it until 2nd shift. I'm not sure if their second shift here is the afternoon shift or the night shift. I am guessing probably the afternoon shift. So that means I will be sitting her all day playing on the computer and watching movies. On the bright side, J will have a nice day of good sleep since I will be parked!

Once we do get under way, this load has two stops. The first in the Los Angeles area and the last up in Tracy,CA. We are probably going to deliver the one in the LA area and then have someone else take it up to Tracy for the final delivery. If we take it to Tracy, we won't make it to Vegas when we are wanting. We could, but that would also be about a 500 mile deadhead to get there. So we will probably leave from the LA area. I am hoping that they may find us a load out of there delivering up to Henderson,NV. That would be ideal. It would get us to Vegas and we would get paid to drive up there as opposed to driving nearly 200 miles for nothing. I will keep yall posted!