An old man's career goes flat, Snackbar moves to open deck

I think, because they have a mix of Canadian and US carriers, with dry van, ltl and flatbed (and a few months ago they bought a small Canadian tanker company), they have spread out their freight base ownership so it's not over the Feds monopoly threshold... that's just my opinion.

 

Somewhat, but it's still a different atmosphere from the pre-Wylie times, especially now that they are forcing everyone they can into the bullpen. I bet when things get busy, it gets loud in that wide open arena without any sound deadening in the mostly open ceiling.

 

The grocery store world has come full circle. When I was a kid, it was brown paper bags (that used to double as book covers for our school books - and no, my schools had more than one room). Then it went to a choice of paper or plastic. Then paper bags went away for the most part. Then plastic bags have become the green people's arch nemesis, especially out west in the commie states. Then it went to those soft, reusable bags...now, I am seeing more and more stores with only paper bags again.

 

They unloaded me without any issues Monday. Then Arlington ran me back to Park City, KS from Colorado Springs. Picking up a 5 stop Tuesday...St. Charles, MO, Wood Dale, IL (Chicagoland), W. Wyoming, PA (Wilkes Barre), Edison and Newark NJ. They want all 5 stops off by 14:30 Friday...which probably won't happen, mainly because I tarp slow as molasses in January, and I probably won't get very far after loading today. If it were on a conestoga, not a problem, but I have used up all my conestoga points for a while.

I got the short end of the supply stick when I swapped gear with that other driver. Since I didn't untarp the whole load at the yard, I counted straps sticking out from under the bottom of the tarp and gave him that many straps in return...problem is, some of his straps on the load were way shorter than the standard 30' straps I gave up. So I had to grab straps from Wichita. Plus, I think I gave him more bungies than were on the load, and about 20 of his bungies were so rotten, I won't trust them again, so I hope Wichita has boxes of bungies or else I am using rope.

 

Wish I could afford the good rope we used to use at Moore. I have checked around. A 500' spool is $1.05/ft. I think a $500+ cash receipt for rope wouldn't get approved. I bought 2 50' pieces of abrasion resistant bungie cord. 2nd load the rusted D-rings on our crappy antiquated tarps wore thru the outer cover on one of them, so I said F-it, I won't buy any more.

I have been to Wood Dale and Newark, the other 2 I haven't been to. Wood Dale is another location of the exporter that's in Rancho Dominguez, CA.

I arrived a little ahead of my load info's start time and they were still pulling it. So I had a little wait to get loaded. Then, since it's 5 stops, it's a friggin' jigsaw puzzle of a load. 2 of the first 3 stops have some larger pieces so I will have to almost completely untarp the whole load for each one...not sure how I will spend all that retarp pay ($10/retarp). Didn't get out of Park City until after 13:00, already told dispatch that since I was delayed this morning it will be Monday before I drop the last 2 stops. I saw 3 SPD conestogas loading today, so somebody got lucky. If they would have let me have one, I would have made it to all 5 stops on time, but...at this point, my Give A #### has been out for so long, the Give A #### delivery service has dropped me from their route.

Wichita had bungies, so I now have all my gear back.