Fort Smith,AR

We made good time on this current trip and were very lucky with the weather as we drove out of the northwest. The pears that we picked up in Yakima were headed to Fort Smith,AR to the Gerber plant where they were destined to be mushed up and packaged for baby food.

After stopping yesterday afternoon on I-35 on the north end of Oklahoma, J and I switched places. We grabbed a shower and some BBQ and hit the road with him only having about 250 miles to go. Our appointment wasn't until today at 1100 but we called and they said that they could take us the evening before. We ended up and got there around 2100, after passing the entrance gate the first time. It wasn't wel lit at ALL and luckily on the second pass, J saw a Tyson truck back in there so we figured this was the place that we needed to be.

It was interesting the way that they unloaded us. The pears were in the floor, loose, just piled in there, not in bags on pallets. We were thinking that they would have us unhook the trailer and raise it up on a lift to dump them out. Turns out, they just had us back up, open one door and then they flooded the trailer and put a conveyor ramp next to the door and they just flooded out onto the conveyer belt. It was really pretty cool.

After that J headed out and we went back to a Pilot a few miles down the road where we parked for the night. I woke up this morning around 0900 and we didn't have our next load yet. Boy it sure felt nice to sleep in! I passed the morning playing on the computer and finally around 1330 we got our next load. The bad thing is that we have to deadhead almost 500 miles up to Crete,NE to pick the load up. The good thing is that it delivers in the Los Angeles area on Monday. That means it goes on this paycheck AND it puts us back in a good freight lane. So hopefully we will get something from there back to the east coast that will give us a good start for next paycheck.

We have hit some storms as we have been heading north to get to Nebraska. At the moment we are in Joplin,MO where we are getting a trailer washout and we have decided to stop and have some lunch and see if some of this storm will pass over us. The rain has been really heavy and we have already passed one accident due to the wet roads. I have sent a message to our FM asking if the shipper is open 24/7 to load us because we probably won't make it on time with this weather. And, as it should be, our lives are worth more than this meat load we are scheduled to pick up!