Green River,UT

Well, we made it out of Vegas! A little lighter in the pockets, but who cares. We had fun. We stayed at the Super 8 and went to Bally's to gamble since it was the closest one. Smokey did real good in the hotel other than eating, or more like shredding J's paperback he was reading. But he didn't touch anything else so I consider that a good thing. :)

Our FM called us Tuesday morning saying they had a team broke down in Vegas and needed us to pick their load up and take it to Grantsville,UT (425 miles) and then he had another that loaded last night to go to Fort Worth,TX for a Thursday morning delivery. Cool. But it didn't work out that way. We were available at 1500 local time and we were headed to pick up the load by 1530. Stop first and fuel and that takes forever. Got blocked in and the lady inside was having issues with the printer so it was just a fiasco. Finally make it out of there, go pick up the load, hook up to it and can't leave. The trailer was at a Detroit Diesel shop. As we were trying to pull out, they had one of those huge city buses (that bends in the middle) in the shop, sticking out, and it was blocking our way out. Sat there for probably 45 minutes before they got it moved so we could leave. Hit 5pm traffic and get stuck in traffic for a wreck. Great. By the time we get out of Vegas it is close to 1830 local time which is 2030 our time. So we are supposed to have the first load dropped 425 miles away by midnight and the second one loaded by midnight. Not going to happen. Hell, even if we didn't have problems, we MAY have been able to get the first load dropped, but the second load was 11 miles away and we had to go find an empty trailer. We made it to the first drop at 0330, got out of there about 0400, headed out, stopped to wash the windows off and go to the bathroom, then went to our yard in Salt Lake to get an empty. Couldn't get in because the lady was doing a yard check so by the time I get the trailer hooked up, get fuel and get out of there, it is 0530. Drive from there to Logan and get there around 0730. And they wanted us there last night. Virtually impossible. I just do what I can and go from there. I'm not a miracle worker and I can't pull extra time out of my ass to get a load someplace when there isn't enough time to begin with. Bad planning on the dispatch end. They should have seen the miles and known it wasn't possible to make it on time. Oh well, we got the load and are headed to Fort Worth and that is all that matters. We didn't waste any time getting there so they will just have to deal with the consignee and get a different appointment time for us. I'm not going to stress over it. Nothing we could have done differently.

So that is where we are right now. We switched drivers in Green River and J should be able to get us to Santa Rosa,NM or maybe a little further. Depends on how fast he is able to go. We are taking the shortest route which is a two lane road through UT and NM to cut down to Albuquerque. It goes through the mountains. Not a bad road, just not a great one to drive at night because of all the turns. Hopefully he can get that far and then I can get us in to destination sometime before the end of my shift tomorrow. Somewhere between 1300-1500 hours.