Home time

Cats know a clean litter box. That's the big key, a cleaned box daily. Otherwise it will refuse to use it and find a deep corner under your sleeper berth. We don't like clean bathrooms do we? ANYhow...

We had two truck cats in our time. The first one was already a truck cat we were in a KW T2000 and it loved the sun on our dash by day. At night it would ride in the exact center of the bunk where one of us are. It's amazing how that thing would pick places that are least taking shocks from the airride. It developed a taste for that sunshine and a warm lap under that steering wheel which isnt that bad provided shes at cruise and not fighting mountains with thunder and roar in that horrible engine (To that cat.. not to us.. it's a song of my people so to speak..)

One day it learned how to wind down the window on the driver side of that KW with a paw.

It unleashed a monster hanging out at 70. It had to go. So it did. The next cat did similar, but with the additional problem once we went home for two blessed weeks. The first night it was sooo quiet. It cried all night. The second day it cried some more. We stuck it in the tractor out front, fired the engine up and the crying quit.

We have a problem. Back in the house, it back to crying. Cats should not cry like that. We put it down because our time together was ending in a couple of months that year and Vet had developed a careful opinion that it needs either to be in another truck or has mental issues somewhere not in a truck. And that's that.

It's another thing when you are out west and the eagles are crying. That cat is lunch to them. And so it goes. It's nice. But we had to not do that anymore. It's not really good for that cat. Good for us, but not for the cat. No way. It did fine in the truck but in a quiet house? erg...

 

A 5 gallon bucket and a couple feet of foam pipe insulation will do the same job for $5. The bucket can be used to hold/carry stuff too unlike that Wal-Mart chair thing.

I park at a truck stop on home time. Cost is $20 per day but they charge that for anyone parking there, not just for longer terms. You are going to struggle finding truck stops in Orlando, your best bet will be to find a storage facility that caters to RVs etc.

 

This home time parking thing has been something I have always been careful about giving advice about. There is no one size fits all solution. Load security, truck security and local zoning laws all have to be taken into account. Are you pulling a reefer that's running? Happened to me once. I was assigned to a General Mills load going to the Walmart DC in Winder Georgia and had to wait for almost 3 days. I thought about parking near my home then but could not think of any place to park with that running reefer. I finally gave up and parked across the street from the DC and toughed it out. I have noticed over the last 6 months over in Newport News there is a Swift driver that pulls his rig right against a curb behind a car dealership off Jefferson Ave. I guess the driver lives in the apartment complex across the street. I could never have parked a running reefer there. $20 a day for 3 or 4 days is a good bit of money just to go home. I actually turned down a good job offer from a company headquartered almost 500 miles away because they had no terminal close to me because I had no place to securely park when home. When you new drivers accept jobs you had better take this parking issue into account and not blow it off. I touched on this a bit in the other thread about small v large company's in regard to pay.

 

There's a big truck stop on Orange Blossom Trail (I think). I'm pretty sure they give discounted weekly rates.

 

You talking about Davies off of 495?

 

Ok. Deny a working driver a place to park while you are at home.

 

tell the flying j in pecos

 

Some HOAs forbid it. I have read stories from these forums drivers getting their tractors egged.

My company is going to be in Dallas and will ask if I can just leave my corolla there while I am out and then get home that way to Austin. A 4 hour drive once a month or even less doesn’t bother me.

I am similar my parents have a spare bed room I can use and it’s an upper middle class area. My truck will not be welcome there. Of course I live in apartments and if I kept it my tractor wouldn’t be welcome there either I am sure.

We will see how it goes.