Crack

Spent most of Friday doing local work out of the Mississippi terminal (always wary about doing local work, because sometimes the company doesn't pay you like they promised: the hourly wage for local work instead of your per mile pay) and then I got a load going to Colorado and Utah. Kansas, Colorado and Utah were the only states west of the Mississippi River that I hadn't been dispatched through yet. It was nice to go somewhere different. There was a bad snow storm coming across Colorado and through Kansas. I made it to just outside of Denver on Sunday afternoon (the roads were bad, lots of snow and very windy), so I just hung out at a truck stop and managed to miss driving in the worst part of the storm (which was moving east). The interstate going into Denver was really slick.... not very well-plowed and lots of icy patches underneath the snow. The terminal yard hadn't been plowed and I very nearly had to chain up just to get out of there. They had me drop my trailer (they had a fully-chained up yard truck that they were using to move things around so that drivers wouldn't get stuck). After they finished unloading their freight, I rehooked and headed north so that I could catch I-80 across southern Wyoming. My next/last stop was Salt Lake City. I ran out of hours when I was about an hour away, so I pulled into a rest area for the night.

I got up early and drove to Salt Lake City (stopping for a quick and much-needed shower). At first, they had me pull into a bay to unload freight (assuming I'd be taking my empty trailer for my next trip). Before they were finished unloading, I got my next assignment. It was an LTL furniture load and the trailer was at the terminal and pre-loaded. I hooked and did my pre-trip and headed out. There were five stops in Utah and Nevada and then the rest of the freight went to the L.A. terminal. I ran out of hours (again!) about two hours from the L.A. terminal, so I stopped in Barstow for the night and then got up at 4am so that I could make it to the terminal and miss rush-hour traffic. I did not manage to miss traffic.

I dropped my trailer and turned the paperwork in at the terminal and headed over to the shop. My windshield had started to crack when I was in that storm in Denver. The crack was small until this morning. On my trip from Barstow to L.A., it went from being about ten inches to being several feet (thanks to being jarred by the poorly maintained roads in California) I had called the main office when the crack first started and they'd told me to keep an eye on it and have it looked at when I got to a shop. Apparently once it's longer than 15 inches, it's a DOT violation. So I'm sitting at the shop/driver's lounge at the L.A. terminal. They replaced my windshield this afternoon and also replaced the cruise control lever (my cruise control stopped working about a week ago and trying to stay around 55mph in California is a pain in the ass without it). I'm going to be here until tomorrow because I clearly need to do a reset.

Hoping to get a load going back east, but we'll see.

I got a call from the Safety Department this week telling me that they'd done a DOT audit of my logbooks for January and I had zero violations, so that's something. Nice to know at least I'm doing something right.  Strange that I'm now being commended for ignoring the advice of all the people in the company (other drivers, terminal managers, people in the main office) who have been telling me to falsify my logbook to get more driving hours.  Honesty prevails!

Tupelo

I had a week of hometime scheduled in March, but I'm going to cancel it to make up for the week I had to spend at home earlier this month (I broke a molar and had to have several dentist visits and lots of pain meds so I couldn't drive that whole week). Which stinks because the week I would have been home in March was when my sister had spring break. I didn't get to see her much when I was home this time.

I got a load out of Indiana on Monday morning and it delivered on Tuesday in South Carolina. Picked up another load bound for southern Mississippi and I delivered there last night. It was supposed to be a live unload at 5:30am the next morning, but they very nicely changed it to a drop/hook (I didn't even know they did live unloads there. Every other load I've taken to that distribution enter has been a drop and hook) so that I didn't have to wait until the next day. Both were uneventful trips, which is nice. Dispatch told me to drive up to the terminal in northern Mississippi when I was done. I got there late this morning. I dropped my trailer and then went into the office to talk to the dispatcher. They didn't have any loads out because there's some kind of massive local thing going on in the next day or two where they have to move a bunch of loads from a few different shippers in a short time-frame. Not enough local drivers to do it, so a few OTR people are sticking around to help out. I rehooked to my empty and drove to Tupelo. I have a live load here first thing in the morning and then heading straight back to the terminal.

Hoping to get a load going to the southwest after this local thing is done.

Fun With Redneck Teenagers

I'm in southern Tennessee for the moment, delivering in Alabama tomorrow morning. My last two trips have been such that I have more than enough time to get there and squeeze in a reset because of how the delivery schedule falls. So I'm starting tomorrow morning with a fresh 70 hours.

Nothing much to report. Something funny did happen yesterday. I was in Illinois and walking from the truck stop to a nearby restaurant... when I got catcalled by a group of teenage boys wearing cowboy hats (and driving around in a Chevy sedan). When I got to the restaurant, they walked in just ahead of me.... and were mortified that I just stood right in front of them. I stared right at them (or the tops of their heads.... I was at least six inches taller than any of them and they were all very intently staring at their boots).