Monte Vista,CO

With us being on a FedEx kick, we made it into Denver about two hours before our deadline. J had taken off from Memphis and got me over 600 miles closer than when he left. He dealt with a LOT of rain and storms through Oklahoma, and managed to get me into Wichita,KS where I took over. I had quite a bit of rain also but once I got up onto I-70 and west of Salina,KS the clouds disappeared and the blue skies appeared. It was a beautiful drive on into Denver. I had a minor mishap with directions, meaning the directions we had were COMPLETELY wrong, but a phone call to the receiver got me to where I needed to be.

A few hours before I made it to Denver, I had sent in a message asking if they knew if we were going to get another FedEx load out. I was on my last page of my logbook and needed to go by our yard there in Denver and pick some up. They said they didn't know yet. Since I was running ahead of schedule, I thought I would go by the yard first, just in case we got to FedEx and got another load and had to head right out.

About an hour after that exchange on the Qualcomm, I get a message saying to get an empty trailer from there and deadhead to Salt Lake City,UT. Hmmm That is about 500 miles. So I send in a message and ask if we have a load there waiting for us. I get an answer of no, there isn't, but there isn't any freight currently in Denver. (This is on a Sunday.) So I have a choice of going 500 miles empty, and hoping for a load once I get there, or staying in Denver overnight and seeing if there is something on Monday. We decide to stay in Denver. It just made more sense financially to not waste that fuel, when we wouldn't get there until today (Monday) anyway and I knew we could get something today that would be closer. Even if we had to go to Kansas for a meat load. After we dropped the FedEx load, we headed over to a motel we had stayed in before and checked in. There were no empties at FedEx so we just bobtailed out and figured we would check the company yard this morning.

This morning around 0700, I get a call from our FM that he has a local delivery for us. It doesn't pay but $50 however there is no empties to be had. By delivering this load, we would get ourselves an empty. I was going to head over there by myself and make the delivery and then come back to the hotel to get Joe, but then thought better of it. Knowing my luck, I would be stuck there until after check-out time and J would be stuck at the hotel sitting outside. I hated to do it, but I woke him up and we packed up and both got in the truck and headed out.

We made it to the yard, picked up the load and some logbooks and headed over to Pepsi where we made our local delivery. Talked with another Prime driver for a while named George. But he could be Willie Nelson's twin, and that is no lie. He could seriously be a stand in for Willie. He got a dock and then about 20 minutes lated I got a dock right next to him. J was asleep and George aka "Willie" got out and helped guide me in. I had to back into a dock that was inside the warehouse from off the street. These are tough backs because you are backing INTO a building, not a dock on the outside, and it is very hard to see because it is dark inside. And they are usually very tight spaces. Imaging a normal size two car garage and you want to park two full size SUV's inside, like Suburbans or Expeditions. Wider than normal vehicles. You could do it, but if you have a two car garage at home, you know you wouldn't have much room to open the doors. That is how these docks are, but for semis. I hate the inside docks like these! Anyway, got it done and headed back to the company yard to wait for a load.

Luck was with me because not 10 minutes after I arrived back at the yard, I had our next load. I needed to be down in Monte Vista,CO by 1500 to pick up a load of potatoes going to Scranton,PA. Since it was about 250 miles, I told him we couldn't make it by 1500, but I could make it between 1600-1630. I bumped up our speed and pulled in at 1630. Whew! Because they closed at 1700! But, it gets worse. Their production line had broken down and they were waiting for a part. AND there were at least 7 other trucks in front of us. We checked in at the office and came up with another game plan. They decided that we could come back in the morning and they would get our load then. They were already going to be working till probably midnight, 7 hours past closing time, just to get the other trucks loaded. We have plenty of time to deliver this load even if we left tomorrow, so by loading us tomorrow morning, it helped them out by not having to stay so late, and we can chill here tonight. We aren't in a rush. Besides, they couldn't even guarantee they would get the other trucks out tonight because of the problems they were having. No biggie!

The ony part that really sucks, is that we are a short 75 miles from Pagosa Springs,CO where we both grew up. We were so tempted to drive over there and come back in the morning. And we could get a green chile cheeseburger that we love from there! But, we made a business decision to stay here. After all, it isn't like this semi gets 35 mpg! It would cost us fuel getting over there and back, so we decided to stay here. But we are going to stare that direction at the mountains and just whine all night....