Osseo,WI

You know that nap I was thinking of taking on Saturday morning, I never got to take it. Just as I laid down, my phone rings and it is our weekend FM calling with a load. It is 0830 and they need us to pick up the load at 0900. Unfortunately since the shipper is 190 miles away, it isn't going to happen. Not to mention that it is still snowing and the roads are horrible. I tell him I will make it there as soon as I can and I take off.

Boy, I am not kidding when I say the roads were horrible. Most of the time I was managing to go between 35-40 and a few times made it up to 50. I finally pulled into the shipper at about 1345 hours. They were glad to see me because she said they were going home as soon as they were done loading us. About 1515 I am done and pull out. I head over to the Petro, scale and go park then go inside to get my scale ticket. Uh-oh. I am 240 lbs over the 80,000 lb maximum. I call my FM and tell him and he tells me to head back to the shipper. I have to remind him that they left as soon as they were done with me since they were staying late just to get me loaded. Crap, he says. Ok, he tells me to stay put and he will get with sales. A little later he tells me that we will have to figure something out Sunday morning when they are hopefully back in the office.

That sounded good to me since we had planned on parking for a while anyway to let some of the storm pass over. Now, when I weighed I only had 3/8 a tank of fuel and the scale was covered with ice. It got me to wondering how much the ice on the scale weighed. But there was nothing I could do about that.

We got a good nights sleep and woke up this morning with a plan. First, go eat breakfast. Priorities, folks! Ok, next, fill up with fuel because when we scaled again, I wanted the weight with full tanks. Then, while we were in the fuel aisle, we knocked as much ice off the trailer as we could. And believe me, there was a LOT on there. Ok, go scale again and we are still over by 300 lbs. Oh, and we scaled at another place that we found that didn't have as much snow and ice on the scale. Ok, 300 lbs. Now we decide to go and get the trailer de-iced figuring that the ice on there had to weigh at least 300 lbs. The load we picked up was only a little over 43,000 lbs so there was no way we should be overweight. Unless they loaded an extra pallet on there by mistake.

We head down to the Blue Beacon, after making sure there were no DOT scales on the way, and get the trailer de-iced. We then head back to the scale to scale again. Ta-dah! We are now legal. Would you believe that the trailer wash alone washed off 900 lbs of ice!!! It was crazy how much ice we had under there. All of that thanks to the snow J drove in on Friday night and what I drove through Saturday morning! Finally we were able to hit the road!

Funny thing is that this load is a "HOT" load and they wanted it there by Monday at 1100 hours. Now we are about 24 hours behind so it isn't going to get there until sometime on Tuesday morning. But we will do what we can to get it there as soon and as safely as possible. Who would have thought that there was that much ice under the trailer and that it would have weighed that much. I mean, I know ice is heavy, but 900 lbs, not counting what we knocked off with a sledge hammer and chisel, is a crapload of ice!

Now that you know we are under way and where we are headed, I have a random thought for you. Up here in Wisconsin some of the roads are letters. Like County Road F and such. Missouri has the same thing and they even have the letters doubled. Like, you have County Road D and then County Road DD. Now, I know I am not the only one to have ever thought this, but evertime I pass by a road like that I just laugh. Especially if it is a road with the double letters like DD. Does that sound like a bra size to anyone? I mean, are there standards that you have to meet if you live on that road? Pre-requisites that you have to have a certain "build" to have an address there? Maybe it is just me, but I can't help but laught when I see those roads.

There is your update and random thought of the day. If I can get a signal tomorrow in Montana after I am done driving, because that is where we should be, I will get on and give another update. If not, it will be Tuesday afternoon when we get to Portland. Surely I can get a signal there.

Oh, also, wish us good weather crossing through Montana and down across Washington into Oregon. You know how my luck with the weather is. I need all the help I can get!