Manassas,VA

Wow! It has been 5 days since I have posted. I am sorry for neglecting yall, but we have been BUSY!! Last Friday morning we dropped our Top Secret load of pharmaceuticals in Sparks,NV. It's ok, I can tell you now and not have to kill you since we are finished with that load. :) From there we get a new assignment to drive 180 miles into Pittsburg,CA and pick up a load going back to the east cost with four drops. The drops are in PA, VA, MA and ME. I checked our hours and knew we could do it but it was going to be really tight. See, our first delivery was this morning in Youngwood,PA and then our second was before 1400 in Manassas,VA. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but I am out of hours and could only work an hour and forty-five minutes today. EEK! So, we bust ass to get this load here. I picked up in Pittsburg,CA and drove us to Sacramento where we grabbed something to eat at the 49'er Truck Stop and J took over from there. To conserve on his hours also, because he was getting short on them, he just drove us to Fernley,NV where I took over at 0700 on Saturday morning. So, from the time I left on Saturday to when we made our second stop today, Monday, at 1345 hours, we had to cover 2550 miles. That is a LOT of miles to cover. And it is a Hazmat load so we have FOUR placards on each side of the trailer. Two of which say Dangerous and Toxic. LOL! But we decided to push it and get here because this is a REALLY good paying load. The total load is paying $7233.20 including the fuel surcharge. Linehaul alone, which is what we get minus the fuel over and above the FSC, is $4046.32. So we will probably see about $3500 of that. And this is the second load of the week. The other load that will go on this paycheck paid a total of $4048.19 including FSC. So even with our fuel and truck payment and other misc stuff coming out, we should have a paycheck close to$2500-$4000. And that is for a WEEK ladies and gentlemen. See why we needed to haul ass and get this load in for this week?? I know I don't normally talk about pay, but we are finally getting in a groove of being able to stay out 4-5 weeks at a time and that is when this business turns really profitable. If we take a week off, we still have to cover our truck payment and fixed expenses which are a little over $1000 so the longer we stay out working, the better our checks are because we aren't in the hole from owing a truck payment by taking a week off. We had a good paycheck last week, not as good as this one will be, but it was only a few hundred less. So you could say I am VERY happy we made the switch to Prime. AND I have even paid my taxes so I don't have to worry about that biting me in the ass at some point.

That is what we have been doing this past week. This week we will make these other two drops on our Hazmat load and then robably get a load into Springfield so we can take the ACEII business class. After that, we will run about a week and then go home for the 25th thru the 28th. My birthday is the 25th so we will be getting together with our friends back home. I sure do miss them! I love what we do and wouldn't trade it for anything, but I have found there are two things that I really miss about having a normal job. One is the friends and being able to hang out and the other is cooking. I really REALLY miss cooking! And damn it, I am a freaking good cook!!

In other Smokey related news, our little dog is getting so big. Yesterday, he actually lifted his leg to pee on a tree. I am such a proud Momma!! And when we stopped last night at a Service Plaza in Indiana, there was another guy walking his dog which was a Black Lab who happened to only be a year old. So they sniffed each other and I guess realized they were both basically still pups, so they sat there and ran around and wrestled for probably 30 minutes. That is really the first time he has gotten to "play" with another dog. Our other dog Bandit that my mom has right now, is seven years old and set in her ways and didn't want anything to do with Smokey because she is such a loner. He tried to play with her and she bit him. It was more of a dominance thing because she is older, and it wasn't an aggressive thing, but she just isn't into the whole "playing" thing. So it was really enjoyable watching him and the other dog, whose name was Jake, play together. He was worn out when they were done. Got into the truck, got a drink, and was OUT!

So there you have it, the T-Net update. I promise I won't neglect you guys for a week again. :)