Battle Creek,MI

Oh my goodness it is COLD! Truck is reading 21 degrees outside but the wind is blowing. It just cuts you to the bone. It was cold in Springfield while we were there and I don't feel like I have been warm in over a week. A nice hot shower helped earlier but as soon as I stepped back outside, there comes the cold again.

When J woke me up this morning, we were at a rest area 14 miles from our delivery. I got rounded up and headed in and got there about 45 minutes early. There were 2 trucks in front of us that also had 0600 appointments but there were only 2 docks. I finally make it in to a door around 0730 or so and by around 0900 I am done. I messaged our FM and he didn't have a load yet so I headed up the road to a small truck stop to wait.

Turns out I didn't have to wait for long. Once I got there I went inside and grabbed some breakfast from the McDonald's and when I got back to the truck we had our next load. We are picking up in Kalamazoo,MI and delivering to Carson,CA. Finally we are back to the coast where we can get in a good freight lane. When they first sent the load assigment we had a delivery time of Monday at 0600. That was a lot of time on that load and I knew we would make it in sometime Saturday evening so we would have a whole day to kill. I decided to go ahead and take off and head towards Kalamazoo and as I was driving I got another message with a new appointment time of Saturday at 1900 hrs. Well, so much for taking our time on the load. With the new appointment time, we will have to book it to make it there. They have us routed across I-80, to I-76 to I-70 and then down I-15 into the Los Angeles area. We have decided we are going to take the southern route and cut down to I-40 over to I-15. It is right at 100 miles further but we will make about the same time by not having to cross all the mountains in Colorado and Utah. Not to mention that there is always the possibility of snow when you cross I-70 in Colorado because the altitide is so high.

I made it to Battle Creek,MI which is a short 34 miles to the shipper and that is where I called it a day. J got up around 1400 and we headed in for a shower and lunch. After that J walked Smokey while I figured out the route and how far each of us will need to go each shift in order to make it there on time. Now that we have that all figured out we are a short 15 miles from the shipper and we are ready to roll!