Truck Load Rates Halt 8 Week Slide 2.0

Series 60 Detroit. It has minor leaks that drive me crazy. They wash off and it looks good for a while but I learned it ain't for nothing drivers sometimes call them driptroits. That's the only thing I miss about my C15 it didn't leak at all.

 

Looks like a pretty light week miles wise. Glad you’re doing well though!

 

Tuesday pick up in Rochelle IL to Berwick PA from there to Lock Havens, PA to Beloit Wi. 2 nights in the truck. Home on Thursday before noon but Friday delivery. I could do this every week until an old age, as long as I can clear 4 grand after fuel and tolls per 4 days and only two nights in the sleeper. I could gladly do it as a company driver for 2.5 grand too.
I wanted to go to the beach in Michigan today but we all overslept and it was too late. I started playing with Convoy and they awarded me the water load which will take me the rest of the day. They have had some more water for tomorrow, and I have plenty hours available but I want to go to the beach. I don't really treat it as a business....

 

For whatever reasons water loads have been paying really well here in the west for the last 4 months. Probably because we're in a drought and people are buying bottled water like crazy. One of my contract clients asked me if I could get to Denver to bring a load back to NorCal for him, and after some schedule rearranging I could. Hopped on Convoy to find a load to Denver, and sure enough there was a water load delivering on the same day I needed to pick up the other load paying $4.71 per mile on 1242 miles. Next week will be a good one.

 

It is strange that they need water from California and not the other way around. I would think that they have more water than they need in Colorado but I remember a conversation with a local guy from Laramie, WY - not too far from Denver, CO, quite some time ago, over 10 years maybe, when he told me that they had problems with water over there too.

BTW: I got stiffed on the yesterday's water load, they did not have the product available and they thought that they could me keep there in a limbo mode forever. I left unloaded after close to 4 hours of waiting and my numerous attempts to communicate the issue to the broker and the plant and when it was clear that my appointment to Walmart DC was not going to be met, I told them to unhook me, I was not going to risk delivery complications and potential rescheduling. It was a business decision.

 

Dang it Joe, you beat me by .04 cpm. I was at 3.41 Sad thing is I only ran one RT last week, 2 days and only 835 miles.

 

No. I did not beat you. Yesterday's water load does not count anymore. I run 120 miles for nothing....
So now I am down to 3.07...

 

Joe, I think the biggest problem we have with water in the western states is too many water users and not enough water storage. By the time the Colorado river empties into the ocean in Mexico, it's a trickle and has been for decades. People aren't the big water users, but rather it's the huge commercial growers who use the most. The single largest user of water from the Colorado river is the Imperial Valley Irrigation District in southern California. They use more water than the cities of Las Vegas, Los Angeles and San Diego combined with millions of people.

They call my home the nation's bread basket because so much food is grown here, but at what cost? Every river has been dammed and diverted, and we grow not just food for the US but for the world. When we have dry years such as this one, the people who use the water in their homes pay the price while most of the big growers keep on taking their usual amount with little change because they pay off the politicians. We humans are such simple minded creatures. To us everything is in terms of our short life spans. So we look at one or two dry years as a disaster because it's never happened in the last 100 years. There have been prehistoric droughts in the western US that lasted 100 to 200 years. I wonder how we would handle that?

 

I must say that the water management is more complex than I thought. For instance, not until long ago, I had no idea that Central California depends heavily on snow falls in Sierra Nevada regions or that Arizona farmers were in conflict with plans of running water pumps to Las Vegas. The mentioned by me Laramie farmer also said that the more snow the better ?! I was convinced that the amount of snow they get every year is more of a curse than blessing.
I think that Chicago area has undepletable water supply but there are still some regulatory ordinances that limit water usage for things like lawn and gardening.