Good night from...

Well, I had set my home time to 7/31.
Here it is nearly a week later, and I'm delivering 8/5 in SoCal when I need to be in the Sacramento area.
And I started refusing loads around 7/27 trying to get there.

I have my daughter on board, and she needs to be back by 8/7 for a school appointment.

 

Wait until you go to Troutdale ...

 

Good luck moose

Sitting attached to a trailer waiting to get to a ramp to haul what? Elephants lol yes I get to haul elephants, will see if I can get a pic while they load

 

wolfy... that should be fun lol

 

It's so hard to guess L.A. traffic.

There basically wasn't any.
So I'm sitting on the street less than a quarter mile from delivery with an hour to wait.
At least I'm not going to be late.

 

Fun??? Talk about a top heavy load. It's going to be nerve wracking. You can't be tossing elephants around in the trailer. It's going to be slow, slow acceleration, very long and slow deceleration and lots of space, absolutely no sudden stops or getting in a position where it's even remotely possible for one.

 

the elephant run was a short one, they sent me like 2 miles to a rail yard to get them on a train, got police escort and went 15 mph. Also got yelled at and flipped off by some protesters of the circus lol. After unloaded went back and dropped that trailer and then waited for the next trailer to be ready, I ended up hauling a split axle low boy type trailer that had animals and trainers in it to San Diego, I heard the driver leader talk about being short on drivers and had 7 extra trailers that needed hauled so I volunteered to go back and do a 2nd load which he got excited and got on the phone quickly to get me a pre plan and dispatched, so I bobtailed back to Anaheim and got another trailer which was a normal one so probably just supplies and stuff and just dropped it. If I had enough hours I would of volunteered for a 3rd load since these short loads pay better, 95/95 loaded/MT plus I get a bonus pay they said for hauling the elephants. I was supposed to help haul tigers too but when we got back after the elephants another driver leader stuck some other drivers on them and sent them off. They wanted me on one of the tiger trailers since I handled the elephants well.

Oh well, it was a cool experience at least, there were a couple Swift drivers there who are part of the tour circuit, I didnt even know they had one of those. One of the guys asked what I thought about everything and I said its pretty cool and then asked the home time. He said sometimes they are out 4 months and even longer before home time. I said well one night is cool lol
I guess they normally try to stick with the tour drivers for this kind of stuff but something happened where they needed drivers and thats where I came in and there were a couple others who showed up later too. Was a good networking experience too, met and helped the DL who does the disney on ice tours and met the DL's who do the circus tours, the wife of the DL for the circus took down my phone number and stuff so who knows maybe some other opportunities might come later.

I took a few pics but they arent great in the dark, wasnt allowed flash, the wife of the DL is supposed to send me some good pics though. I will try to upload some later since the forum says they are too large to upload.

Oh and the first load to San Diego I got a cute young russian girl who rode with me, was awkward silence the whole way though since she hardly spoke any english at all, she wasnt bad to look at though, probably early 20's

 

ok heres 3 pics so far, the driver leader of the tour is supposed to send me some better pics, I couldnt use flash and was dark so these are not the best.


View attachment 52214 View attachment 52215 View attachment 52216

 

Here's my technique for delivering in a busy urban area.

Most places will take you an hour early, so I leave at a time that will get me there an hour early. If traffic is nasty then I'll get there closer to the set delivery time.
I got to one place 45 minutes early only to find 10 trucks in line ahead of me. By the time I as #1 it was my appointment time.

 

Yay round 2 of elephants!
They started blowing up my phone and qualcomm asking if I would help them tomorrow morning move the elephants from the train to the new arena since I was so good with hauling them smoothly last time and will pay me a minimum of $75 and should take less than 2 hours work, I said sure to the planner and then said now help me in return, find me a load to Bakersfield or Lancaster area in the next 2 days, 5 minutes later she had me a load delivering in Shafter tomorrow night, looks like im going home for my 34 reset!
[FONT=lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif]Helping the circus has really paid off for this week, the extra money makes up for those bad days and I got the planners to do me a favor in return.[/FONT]
[FONT=lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif]$25 to haul the elephants 2 miles, 2 loads at premium pay, $75 min to help tomorrow, I feel its probably more of $75 max lol then got the load going near home already committed This week has worked out much better than I thought it was going to.
Doing my 34 saves my home time for the end of the month for my anniversary so awesome turn out for me[/FONT]