Watkins Shepard, Here I Come

Did our drop in Ohio, grabbed a load of steel tubing, and headed straight out to Wisconsin. Joe decided to test how well the driver's side rolling window held his slipping weight (it didn't), so we spent some quality time at a TS getting a fix.

Now we're in Wisconsin, flying (legally, of course) toward our drop so we can pick up John Deere in Iowa tomorrow and power out to California over the weekend. In order to feel at-one with Wisconsin, we have cheese curds, meat sticks, and crackers for dinner. To make me pay for mentioing the window, Joe is having me feed him. (To get ahead, rather than even, I am not telling him about the opportunity to visit his internet girlfriend in North Carolina before I delete the Qualcomm message).

Life is good on the road...

 

We made the run from John Deere to California by Monday, but now we're stuck at the shop again, getting our super singles changed out to duals and our lights repaired. Hopefully we'll get running again tomorrow and get in another few thousand miles.

My entire orientation class has come through since I've been here. James was here last night; Adam, Rick and Luke are all sitting up in the driver's lounge as I type this. I've done laundry (lots and lots of laundry), washed all the dishes from the truck (who knows when they were washed last), and done some organizing, but I can't do any real organizing until I get paid so that I can get bins and such.

Off to try to catch up on the rest of the boards.

Hey, JimDriv3r, you should be here, too!

 

Joe is teaching me more and more as time goes by. I'm absolutely paranoid about turns and seem to do them well... but I'm not going to get complacent about them. On the other hand, I still have problems backing. So much for the "flatbedders don't back", too. We have backed for every load except our first one (only because Tim was in the truck, I'm sure).

I've now dealt with both shippers and receivers without Joe's help and talked to David the dispatcher on the phone. I really liked our shipper in SLC; she wanted the load to get to the Denver area on a Saturday (the next day) and kept trying to bribe us. Mind you, we wanted to deliver everything on Saturday anyway, so we'd planned on running hard Friday, but the 2 chocolate chip cookies and 2 brownies were still nice.

I've now been on top of a load for tarping (Joe says it was 8 or 9 feet up), but Joe doesn't let me tarp alone (which is fine, for now). I have to tell you those bungies and straps are a great workout... I've been sore for two weeks now, between the unaccustomed driving for hours and the outside work. I'm not getting enough of a cardio workout, so I'll have to work on that.

We've made a menu and grocery list and plan to go shopping tomorrow after we hit church or chapel (the T/A here has a chapel). We took care of bills, had dinner in the truck, and did some tidying.

We haven't figured out yet how to manage really long drives with the way our days work. For example, on Friday we dropped near SLC, Utah, which took about two hours, between the waiting and the unchaining/unloading. Then we went by the terminal to drop our trip envelopes and immediately went to a shipper for our current load (sealant). We were there for another 90 minutes, strapping, tarping, and setting up our appointment times for the deliveries. Then we finally drove, a whopping ~600 miles, stopping fairly early last night (before midnight-- Joe was driving). I got up at 5 am and we drove in, stopping at Johnson's Corner for one of their cinnamon rolls (I was not as impressed as Joe is), then got to the receiver by 11:30 (noon appointment). And now we sit 'til Monday. We'd love to run hard sometimes, but it doesn't seem to work as well with flatbed operations. On the other hand, we both really enjoy flatbedding, so we're not sure we want to change just to drive more. Something to think about, I guess.

JimDriv3r, glad to hear you're keeping busy... I hated driving in California, too, even if that is "home".

 

*grumps* I had a very long, very awesome post all typed up and hit enter... right as Verizon lost its 4G network and Joe's Thunderbolt (which I was running off of) went down...

We delivered at Fort Carson Army Base on Monday at 7:30 am. We then went grocery shopping, tidied up, and basically spent the day doing "household" stuff. No load. We finally got started loading at 11 am on Tuesday... a bunch of steel beams that were oversized. We didn't get permits and everything until just shy of 3 pm... and Denver apparently has an oversized curfew between 3pm and 6pm every night. ARGH. We hung out, got a shower, watched a show, and finally got on the road right at 6. We thought we had to stop at 6:49pm, but it turned out that we could drive an extra hour due to Daylight Savings Time and an extra half hour due to reading the restrictions properly (you have until 1/2 hour after sunset). We stopped just on the other side of the Wyoming border at 8:10 pm but didn't go to bed until late. I don't do as well about going to bed when I should when Joe isn't driving.

Wednesday I got up early (5am local/ 4am log time) so I could be on the road at 5:30... then second-guessed myself and thought I couldn't start until 6:30. Re-read again and finally started at 6am. We made two drops practically next door to each other, then drove until we were near our third drop and had to stop. Another too-late night, then we were off to bed.

Today we got in both of our final stops and got deadheaded up to Missoula. We got here around 7pm local and have been doing dishes, dinner, laundry and showers ever since.

The flatbed side is definitely turning out to be a problem running as a team. We just can't get hours. From the time we finished our drop at 8:30am Monday until we finished our final drop at 1:00pm today we drove a whopping 840-ish miles. We both love flatbed and hate to switch, but may have to just to pay the bills.

We're headed toward California for our first shared hometime. We'll hit Sacramento first for Joe's family, then hopefully get a load to La Mirada for mine.