Loving the Cooler Temps of Fall

We delivered our load in San Diego. Afterwards we drove down to a Pilot truckstop very near the Mexican border. We aren't familiar with that area so we were blindly following along with our trusty gps to get us there. Sometimes, that's not such a good idea. I swear, one day that gps is gonna send us over a cliff! They were doing road construction in that area, so I am assuming that is the reason for the error in the gps. She didn't tell us to take the exit when we should have and next thing we know we see a sign saying last US exit, all trucks must exit. One of these days I just know we're going to accidently end up  in Mexico. Luckily, we avoided it this time and managed to find our way to the truckstop.

We were both really worn out from the long drive and frustrated from the chaos of the delivery. The place we had to deliver to was in the middle of an area that had road construction all around and we couldn't get there the way we planned on. We had to detour and the detour included crossing railroad tracks. Not a big deal, normally, but at this crossing, the rr arms that come down to prevent you from crossing when a train is coming got stuck in the down position and we couldn't get across. We sat and waited for a while and nobody came to fix it. There was no other way out, we were trapped there. Finally, in desperation, I got out and manually raised the arms one at a time and John drove through. It was perfectly safe, there was no train coming, and the arms were spring loaded so as soon as you start raising them, they go right up. Probably could have gotten in trouble for doing it, but we needed to get out of there and we had waited long enough.

After that, we had to figure out how to get to the delivery with the detour and construction messing up everything. It took us awhile but we finally found it. This place had really tight security protocols and they wouldn't let our dog go in, so I ended up having to sit outside the gate with the dog while John went in and completed the delivery. Needless to say, we will not be delivering there again. What a bunch of crap. Our dog is a Maltese/Poodle mix and weighs 13 pounds.  I don't understand what harm he is going to do as long as he stays inside our truck. I'm sure they have their reasons but we're not going back there because I don't like sitting outside with a dog, waiting. There are plenty of other loads that we can do.

After getting to the truckstop, we filled up the tanks and found a parking space. Went inside and ate at the Wendy's. Came back out to the truck and got some much needed rest. We had ourselves off the board till the next morning. We went in and had a shower in the morning and then went back in service. We got a couple of crappy load offers that we turned down and then finally on Wednesday evening we got an offer that we accepted. It was picking up in Carson, Ca going to El Paso, Tx. I drove the deadhead up and got checked in with the shipper. John went inside to find out if the freight was ready and while he was inside, dispatch called and said the shipper just called and said it wouldn't be ready till sometime the next day, so we got dry run pay. We headed out and went to the TA truckstop in Ontario, Ca.

We usually go to that one when we're in the area because they have a special parking area just for expediters and it's free to park there. A lot of places in Ca charge for truck parking. The drive up from San Diego was nice and easy. It was about 3 AM when we got there and I was starving. We went in and ate at the restaurant there and then back out to the truck to sleep and wait for another load. When I got up later that morning, I turned the key in the ignition to the on position so our qualcomm would come back to life. When I turned the key, the windshield wipers started running and a check electrical system light came on the dash along with a buzzer sound. After about 30 seconds it all finally stopped. Me and John looked at each other and said what now? We looked at fuses and he checked the wiring in the battery box, but all seemed to be okay. We turned the truck on and let it idle for a while and everything seemed okay. I lost my appetite because I knew that there was a problem somewhere, but we were going to find out what it was the hard way.

While we were looking around at things on the truck, dispatch called with a load offer. He started out by telling me that he had the best weekend load offer I would ever get. He was right about that. It picked up the next day on Friday up at Beale Air Force Base, a little north of Sacramento. Then it went almost 2900 miles to McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey. The weird thing was that our sons had just gotten a load to deliver at the same place, but we wouldn't be seeing them because we had to deliver on Sunday night and they weren't delivering until Monday morning.

We accepted the load, even though we were worried about what might or might not be going on with the truck. The deadhead on this load was 450 miles so we figured that would be enough time for any problems to show up. John did the first half of the deadhead and the drive was pretty sucky heading north through California on I5. That road is a joke. So bumpy it's awful. Add in the congestion, the mountains, the heat, and it doesn't make a pleasant drive. He made it about 70 miles or so when I noticed that our battery gauge was dropping. This was in the daytime, no headlights were on so there was no way our batteries should have been that low. Suddenly we realized our alternator must have stopped working. Fortunately, we have our generator so we turned it on and it kept the batteries charged up. I started making phone calls to different places along our route and found an International dealer in Turlock, up by Stockton who said they would take us in and change out our alternator.

We made it there and they were awesome! It only took them about half an hour to do the job and the bill was only $289. We had had the alternator changed 15 months ago at a TA in Baltimore and they charged us $480 and it took them almost 3 hours. Hard to believe that a TA charged that much more than a dealership. What a racket!! The good news in all that is that we now know why we had the crazy ck electrical system message that morning. Apparently the truck somehow knows when it has a problem and tries to tell you. If only it had a message on the dash that would say, need to replace alternator instead of a generic check electrical system. Oh well. It's fixed now.

We made our pickup the next morning and began the long long drive to New Jersey. This load was a straight thru drive. We only stopped to fuel up and switch drivers. Our delivery time was set for 11:30 Sunday evening, but we got there two hours early. I was pretty impressed with us! Before we had even left out of the delivery point, dispatch was on the phone with three more load offers. They were all military loads. First one picked up in Connecticut on Monday morning and delivered to Crane, IN on Tuesday morning. Then we reloaded in Crane, In at the same place and delivered to Ft. Campbell, Ky on  Wednesday morning. The third load we are on now, so I won't say anything about it until later. After we make this delivery, we are out of available hours to work so we will have to do a 34 hour reset. We will be happy to do the reset as we are pretty well wore out. Very happy though as we have made quite a bit of money these last two weeks. It's about time!!   

A funny story involving our sons. They drive a truck just like ours and are signed on with the same carrier as us. Our oldest son called me up the other day and said you will not believe what just happened to us. I said what now? He was driving along the interstate and a truck pulled up next to him and was honking his horn so Johnny looked over at him and the guy started waving his cb microphone at him. Johnny just kind of ignored him because he didn't want to talk to the guy.

The guy kept honking and waving and then finally gave up and went ahead of him. Johnny suddenly had the thought that maybe the guy was trying to tell him of a problem so he turned on his cb just in time to hear the guy telling another driver that he tried to tell him but he must not have his radio on. Johnny got on the cb and said I have it on, what's going on? The driver says, man, you got sparks coming out from under your truck! Johnny looks in the drivers mirror and sees nothing so he yells at Steve and Steve looks out the passenger side and sees the sparks. Johnny pulls over on the side and they get out to look and find out that their tail pipe that comes out of the muffler had rusted through and broken and was hanging there dragging along down the road so sparks were flying off it. The pipe is about 4 feet long and they had a load in the trailer with a seal on the door so they had nowhere to put the pipe. They just took it the rest of the way off the truck and had to continue on to the delivery without it.

So So Much to Catch Up On...

Lets see. When I left off, we were heading to Nebraska with the hazmat load. We delivered that load and immediately got a return load that took us to Michigan. We delivered there and then debated on whether we would get a load taking us closer to southern Indiana for our time off or if we should deadhead ourselves there. While we were trying to decide, we received a load offer picking up in the Indy area delivering to New Jersey on Thursday. We declined the load and told dispatch that we had to be in Indiana on Friday for a planned family event. Dispatch begged and pleaded with us to do the load because they had no other trucks that had the qualifications to do it. Finally they offered us some layover pay along with a $550 bonus so that after we delivered, we could turn around and deadhead back to Indiana and be there by Friday for our family event. We gave in and took the load. The load went smoothly and we made good money on it.

On the way back to Indiana, just as we crossed into Pennsylvania, they sent us another load offer that was picking up Friday morning in Ohio and delivering that afternoon in the Indy area. We agreed to take it because we could do it and still get to our familys house by Friday evening. We parked at a truckstop about 20 miles away from the pickup. Set the alarm for 2 AM. We got up, got dressed, had a little snack and John started up the truck and turned the lights on. Problem. No lights on the trailer. They worked perfectly fine when we parked the night before. But now, no lights. We checked the fuses and looked for any obvious problems, but couldn't find any. Finally we had to call in and let dispatch know that unless the customer could wait until daylight, we couldn't take the load. Turns out the customer couldn't wait, so we were taken off the load. We went back to sleep and got up when it was daylight. We drove to a TA in in the Columbus, Oh area and had them fix the problem. They found a broken wire and repaired it. After that we continued on to Mom's house. Finally made it there that evening and got the truck parked out in the back yard. They have almost 2 acres and we were turning it into a campground for the week. We got settled in and visited for a little while and then had a good nights sleep.

The next day, we had Mom and Dad take us to town to buy some supplies for our week of fun that was coming up. We also bought a new fridge for the truck and John got it swapped out with the old one. Turns out this new one works far better than the old one, even though they are the same exact model. Makes us wonder if there was something wrong with the old one from the beginning. For all we know, it could have been the cause of our electrical problem. We will never know, but anyway, things worked out and now we have a fridge that works great!

Our time in Indiana flew by. We have so many family and friends there that it always seems there's never enough time to visit everybody. All in all this visit was an overall success! Every single member of my family was able to make it with the exception of one nephew who couldn't get any time off from work. We had great food, great company and will have a lifetime of memories. We try to do this once a year, but we had to miss out last year due to issues with the truck. The only negative thing about the week was the extreme heat. We had temps of around 100 degrees every single day. Since we were spending everyday outside, that was a pretty big deal. Happily though, even with the heat and all the alcohol that was consumed, there was not a single argument the entire week. That's pretty good I think!

After that weeks was over, we headed back to work. I don't remember all the details of the loads that we did and I'm too lazy to look them up. I do know that we made several trips to California and Texas and we were extremely busy, which is a good thing!

On July 19th, we made our FINAL truck payment!!!! I can't believe what a huge relief it is to have this truck paid for! We bought it on contract and made payments for 15 months. It was a very stressful 15 months as we had to make payments, and keep the repairs and maintenance done. Their was a lot of catch up work to do on the truck, but we have gotten it to the point that we only have one major job left to do and that is to have the frame of the box sanded and undercoated. After that is done, it will look like a new truck! Since we got the truck paid for, the lady we bought it from mailed us the title, so we headed home at the end of July to deal with getting the title switched over into our names.

Along with that, we had to do a new contract with our carrier which is a lot more complicated than it sounds. You would think that since the truck and both of us were already on with the carrier that it would be a simple process, but unfortunately with all the government regulations involved, it gets complicated and expensive. It took us a full week to get everything squared away. While I worked on the paperwork side of things, John used the time to do some more cosmetic work on the truck. He is such a perfectionist. Even though he is driving a 2006 truck, he expects it to look like a brand new one. Which is fine, except for the fact that it was hotter than heck at home in Florida and he was trying to work outside on the truck in that heat. That and the fact that every afternoon and evening we would get storms with lightning and rain. Very frustrating, but he got almost everything done that he wanted to get done.

Our carrier for some reason required us to get a new DOT inspection done, even though our last one is only 4 months old. There isnt anywhere near us that did them so we had to drive up to Wildwood and go to the TA and have it done. We did that yesterday and finally we were cleared by the safety dept to go back into service. Of course, by that time two other trucks got on the board ahead of  us. They are both gone now, so hopefully we will get a load soon and be back in business. Florida can be very tricky sometimes to get a load out of. At least in the expediting business.

We plan to stay out for about 3 to 4 weeks and then go home again. Right now, our truck only has a paper plate since the title and registration had to be switched over. Our new plate will be waiting for us when we go home.

Did I say how good it feels to have the truck paid for?

Home for the 4th

How ironic that we have decided to stay out on the road and make money to build our savings account back up after the huge repair we had and now we keep getting loads taking us close to home.

After finally getting our truck back we got a load picking up in Kansas City, Missouri and delivering in St. Louis, Missouri. We weren't thrilled with the load because of the short miles   and the fact that it was going to be a hand load and unload. But, dispatch made us a good deal on it and we decided maybe a short load would be a good test run after the major repair.

The truck ran fine and we breathed a little sigh of relief. I kept catching myself looking in the mirror expecting to see smoke coming out of the tailpipe, but fortunately, it never happened.

Next up was a load picking up in Ft. Campbell, Ky delivering in Tobyhanna, Pa. This would be another good test for the truck because it would involve a lot of mountain driving. Again the truck performed well.

Our next load picked up in East Hanover, New Jersey. The shipper manufactures flavors. We were picking up flavoring that was destined for an orange juice plant in Bradenton, Florida. It smelled delicious at the shipper. All those flavors floating around in the air. While we  were sitting and waiting to be loaded, we watched a group of deer who were munching away on the sweet smelling grass. I never associated New Jersey and deer together. In my mind, New Jersey is all concrete and steel, but there are actually trees and grassy areas and quite a few deer.

Bradenton was not too far from our home and we really wanted to go home for awhile but we forced ourselves to stay in service and keep making money. We did drive home and get the mail and check on things while we waited on our next load.

We didn't have long to wait, (of course) and we next picked up in Orlando, Florida and headed back up the east coast to Nashua, NH. I like the drive up I95 until you get up into all the congestion around Richmond, Virginia. From that point on up it's too much traffic and then when you get up to New York, the roads are horrible. I think it's criminal that you have to pay so much money to cross the George Washington Bridge and then on the other side the roads are so bad that you would swear your truck is going to be destroyed by the time you get to Connecticut.

The truck held together, and our next pickup was Ashland, Ma. This one was taking us back south to Tarboro, Nc. From there we picked up in Rural Hall, Nc and delivered it to Jacksonville, Florida. This is Friday and Monday is the 4th of July so we decided it would be okay for us to go home for the long holiday weekend. We really need a break!

Northeast but finally Laredo

Yet another weekend off. I could get used to this! We had a pickup in Dahlgren, Va on Monday with a same day delivery in Dover, De. Next up was a pickup in Edison,Nj taking us to Laredo, Tx. Finally! Out of the northeast.

We had a nice drive down to Laredo. Traffic is so much better away from the congestion in the northeast. You really notice it when you get away from there.

We delivered on Wednesday in  Laredo and had a pickup next day nearby. This time we had to go back up to the dreaded Canada. Kitchner, Ontario. At least the weather is nice.

Full Circle

Following our usual weekend off, we next picked up in Exeter, Nh. This load took us to Dover, De. It was followed by a load picking up in Baltimore, Md with a delivery in Sterling Heights, Mi. Next was a pickup in Haymarket, Va with a delivery in Trenton, Nj. Notice that we were in Michigan and our next pickup was in Virginia. That is a ridiculous amount of deadhead, but when our carrier needs a load covered, they will pay what it takes to get it done. So we got paid for all the miles to the pickup. I wonder how some companies stay in business doing things like that!

After delivering in New Jersey we went to the truckstop in Bordentown, New Jersey and finally go the batteries replaced. That is a relief! Next we picked up in Carlisle, Pa and delivered in Granby, Ct so we came full circle this week. Back almost to where we started from.

New Brunswick & Bangor

We made the beautiful drive up to St. John, New Brunswick. I had no idea where this was even at when dispatch called us about the load. I had to get the map out and look it up. I wondered about the possibility of getting another load out of that area, but it was someplace we hadn't been to before and I wanted to see it. So of course, we took it.

The drive was pretty hectic going up through the northeast until we got into Maine, and then traffic died down and the landscape became more and more remote. It was really incredibly beautiful. Along the way, we got a phone call from our carrier who informed us that we needed a permit to go to New Brunswick. She had already taken care of it and was wondering how to get it to us. We have internet service in our truck along with a laptop and a printer. I signed up for efax service so she was able to fax it to us and I printed it out. Technology is great!

We crossed over into Canada with no problems. The scenery got better and better the farther north we went. We eventually made our way to the consignee and had a little bit of a headache getting into the place. It was in a tricky area with a lot of traffic congestion but thanks to the drivers being courteous and stopping to allow us in and out, we made it.

After delivery, we decided to head back to the US. The nearest large city was Bangor, Maine, so that's where we headed. We got there and made our way to a truckstop called Dysart's. I pulled into the fuel lane and was going to get out and fill up. A worker came up to the door and told me that he would take care of it. He also washed my windows. You don't get that kind of service just anywhere!

We got parked and went inside for showers and food. I talked to the cashier a little bit and asked her about my favorite author, Stephen King. I know from reading his books that this is his hometown. She did indeed know him and she knew exactly where he lived. For some reason, I thought it was awesome to be there in his town!

John had to buy a tshirt that read Dysart's and then under that it said Bangor, Maine. In his twisted dirty mind, the Bangor part gives him the giggles. Do men ever really grow up?

The lady who owns the truck we drive had told us we were crazy for taking this load because we could end up sitting a very long time waiting on the next load. At the time, we didn't care because we were again exhausted. We were okay with sitting a few days. Who knew? Maybe if we sat long enough, I could go look up Stephen King?

As usual, it didn't work out that way and we got a load the very next day picking up just a short ways away in Waterville, Maine. We got there and found out we were picking up a load of paper plates. We do expedited freight so paper plates seemed pretty ridiculous to us. Not that it matters moneywise, we got paid our regular rate. We were taking the plates to a Costco distribution center in Monroe Township, New Jersey. Only thing I can figure is that they desperately needed those plates to pay the rate we got.