El Paso Stew

I like Texas. I usually look forward to coming here. It's truck friendly. Big roads, plenty of parking. But today makes a full week of being in El Paso. Four days that we have actually been on the board and available for a load. I am ready to go. I have my paperwork all caught up. We have visited with the boys. All truck repairs are done. It's time to make some money. I got a phone call this morning at 2:30 AM. A dispatcher calling wanting to know if we would help with a recovery load. Another driver broke down in Amarillo on his way to El Paso. Would we help? Sure. I gave him a flat rate that we would do the load for. It included all miles there and back and another $100 for the hand transfer we would have to do. He said there was no one in the office who could approve that offer so he would have to wait until 9AM to call a supervisor at home and see if they would allow it. No need to wake them up. Hmmm. Guess it's okay to wake us up, but god forbid we should wake up a dispatch supervisor. Needless to say, they never called back, so here we sit. They are really just pushing me into making a decision on switching carriers. Once the idea gets in your head, every negative interaction you have with your company just seems that much more intolerable. Our company that we are with is known to be one of the hardest to deal with. They hire drivers who have no experience, which is why we started with them. They gave us our chance and we appreciate that. But I think we are at the point that we have outgrown them. We do not want or need to have our hand held. The dispatch games have grown old and we have progressed to the point that we can manage our time well enough that we can certainly do more loads than they seem to be able to give us. If I am going to be sitting for a week, it better be my choice. Not because they have young inexperienced people trying to do a grown up job and not a clue what they are doing. So, here I sit in El Paso, stewing. Too much time on my hands. Dreaming of our next load. Looking ahead to the future and what it might bring us. One positive thing that I should note. I did not have to go to Best Buy and exchange my tablet. Luckily my techie son is stuck here in El Paso with us and he was able to get it rebooted for me. It lost all my user data, but that's okay since I was smart enough to upload my important information to dropbox. Dropbox is a free online storage for your data. I was able to recover everything I needed. Just took a little while to reload all my apps and download all the data, but all is well now.

Quality Time With The Boys

We seem to be stuck here in El Paso. The nightmare just will not end. The only bright spot is that our two sons who drive for the same carrier are now stuck here with us. We have been getting in some quality time. Its not all our carriers fault that we are still here. They had loads for us but we couldnt take them due to truck repairs. Now that we are ready to go, its a holiday weekend and no freight.

We were offered a couple of loads but nothing worth taking. Lately I have been considering switching carriers. Our current one just doesnt seem to be keeping us running with good loads.  They have tons of crap loads but we arent working for free or for cheap. We have two more truck payments and once those are paid we are going to determine if we are staying or moving on. Its a pain to switch but if we are going to do it, I think that will be the best time.

As soon as John wakes up I need to head over to Best Buy and exchange my Asus Transformer Prime tablet. Got it out today to do paperwork and its locked up on the bootup screen. Thank goodness I bought extended warranty. At this point Im not suprised it quit working. Everything else is so why not?

Day 3 of AC Repair

Left the shop last night and made it about 5 miles and the ac quit. Took it back and raised cane with them.  We just spent $1100 on what? Two more hours and we are told its fixed now. We leave and get 2 miles down the road and it stops again. I call the shop and they say come back in the morning. We got here first thing this morning and still waiting.

Patience is not one of my virtues!

 Update: They said it was fixed and they went out on a roadtest. Brought it back and said no, still not fixed....Couple hours later the service manager brought an estimate sheet in for another $1100. Said we needed a new ac compressor. Wanted our permission to move forward. I look at the estimate and it says ac compressor and drier. Excuse me, didnt I just pay for a new drier yesterday? I told him his price was too high. He went away and came back with a price of $800. The first estimate included the drier which we had already paid for. I said fine, do it. About 3 hours later it was done. So far it is still working. I have doubts as to how long it will continue.

Trip from Hell!!!

To recap, first we had the bumper ordeal in Joplin. Then the wild hog incident. Then the ac quit working. Next I get a bladder infection. The apu acted up. We were told the ac was fixed, drove two miles and it quit. On our third day of trying to get it fixed now. The gps we just bought malfunctioned and had to be exchanged.
Hopefully all the bad stuff is over for awhile. Seriously, three days for an ac?

Needing a Dr on the Road

Ive been having pain for a couple of days but was hoping if I drank a lot of liquids it would go away. It did not and last night the pain kept me up all night. This morning was unbearable so we headed over to a walk in clinic here in El Paso and I got two prescriptions for a bladder infection. Ive had this before and it has always been the most painful experience Ive ever had. Including childbirth. Thankfully the medicine works quickly so I wont have to suffer anymore.

Now we have to head back over to Border International to get the ac repair completed that they started yesterday. They had an outside shop make a hose for the truck and turns out they made it wrong. Hopefully they will get it done today so we can get back to work.

Wild hogs and no AC

This poor piggy didn't stand a chance!

What an eventful drive! John started his drive from Oklahoma City. He was only driving 260 miles for the night. The route took him from I44 to US 277 thru Texas. With 50 miles left to go I was sound asleep in the back when I was awoken by him carrying on about something in the road. I came up front to see what was going on and he was pulled over on the shoulder looking in his mirror behind us. I said whats wrong? He said he hit something in the road, he didnt know what it was, maybe a bear. I dont know if they have bears in Texas or not and I never felt or heard anything so I told him he was crazy, he didnt hit anything. He insisted he did. This was at 2:30 in the morning, pitch black outside, not a town around for 30 miles, no houses, nothing. Just us. He starts backing the truck up and goes probably a tenth of a mile and stops. There! See it!

I looked in his mirror and sure enough, there was something laying there. He backed up again till we were right next to it and we were both staring down at it trying to figure out what it was. It really did look like a bear. Finally we noticed the long snout and decided it was a wild boar. We have them in Florida also.

We sat there a bit trying to decide what to do next. We were looking around the area and realized how isolated it was there. It was a very creepy feeling and I was imagining all kinds of craziness. He got the flashlight and said he was going to have to check the truck and make sure it was okay to drive. I kept a close watch out the windows and mirrors in case someone or something tried to sneak up on him. After checking the truck out he put on gloves and grabbed a leg of the hog and drug it off the road so no one else would hit it.

He got back in and said the only damage he could see in the dark was the bumper was bashed in. We both looked at each other and cracked up laughing. Wow, how lucky were we? Thank goodness we didnt get the bumper in Joplin it would have been a complete waste of money! He took off driving and it was 50 miles before we found a lighted truck parking area.

After checking the truck in the lights we only found the dent in the bumper. The oilpan has a small dent in it but shouldnt be a problem. There are pig guts and gore all under the truck. Really nasty. Going to need a major truck wash. We are going to sleep a few hours and head out in the daylight.

Bummer...no Bumper

We made it to Joplin today and visited the Chrome Shop Mafia for the first time. They had our bumper waiting on us, we paid for it and they loaded it into our truck. Their shop is closed on the weekends so we were going across the street to the Petro to have it installed.

We had to wait 3 hours to get called into a service bay and I told John that before they removed the old one, hold the new one up in front of it and make sure all the bolt holes lined up. Just as I feared, it wasnt a match. We had to rebox it, and get it back across the street before they closed. Luckily we got there five minutes before closing time and got our money refunded. We were so bummed out. This bumper thing has become like a treasure hunt. We keep following all the clues and thinking we got it, but it always turns out that we dont.

After we left there, I drove 200 miles to Oklahoma City, stopped and fueled up. Grabbed a mini pizza and a boston creme donut at the Loves and then John took over driving. He's planning to drive about 230 miles tonight and stop somewhere in Texas. We will finish our drive to El Paso tomorrow. Delivery isn't until Monday morning. I love these weekend loads where we make good money but have plenty of time to get the load there.

A couple of new things we have discovered recently. Podcasts and audio books. John has been making use of the Podcasts. We both downloaded a Podcast App onto our android phones. I found Motor Trend Podcast for John and loaded up his player. We plug the phone into the truck stereo so the sound comes through the truck speakers. He can listen to that car talk for hours!

 I download library books to my smartphone. I've only done the regular books until this week. I finally got an audiobook downloaded and play it while I'm driving. I didn't think I would be able to focus on it, but suprisingly I can. It's a little strange having someone read you a story, but after awhile, you get used to it. It helps to pass the time while driving. I can only listen for a couple of hours, then I have to switch to Sirius Radio. I have a few channels that I listen to pretty regularly. Road Dawg Trucking, 70,s  Highway Country, Tiffany Granath on Playboy and Howard Stern. Oh yeah and HLN news. Sometimes I don't listen to anything, just enjoy the peace and quiet!