Team starting out with US Xpress

Hey, congratulations to you. Make sure you get your hazmat endorsement at the same time you get your CDL. You have to have the hard copy to start orientation.

 

OK, it has been a bit since I updated here. It is Friday afternoon and we are about an hour out of Chicago where we will drop this trailer at a rail yard and bobtail up to Wisconson for my nieces high school graduation. One of the many perks of this job is that if we want to go anywhere, not only will the company pay to get us there, they will pay us to get there. Pretty sweet and looking forward to spending time with family this weekend.
We had a bit of an off week for mileage. Lots of shorter runs and a number of times we sat for 12+ hours waiting on a load. Last weekend was not good. Even with that we had 4300 miles. If that is the worst it gets we are going to do just fine. We average about 5500 miles. We would like a bit more but the money is pretty dang good.
The good side is we dropped a load in Loveland (home) and picked up at the Budweiser plant in Fort Collins 6 hours later. That gave us time to have breakfast with one of our daughters (other one was working) and grab a few things from home. Since we are not sure when we will take our next home time at home, it was a nice little break.

 

OK, you guys are making me blush

 

New blog post up. Seems silly to put it here and there.

 

Fine.... I hope you are happy
Dang It!

Posted on June 21, 2011 by Craig
Well, we broke down again!
But first let me bring you up to date. Our load to California got cancelled. We were at the shipper and they took our trailer to load it at 6 AM and we waited. At 8 we went in to ask and they told us our load got cancelled but they had another to Atlanta that they had already loaded on our trailer. We grabbed it and got moving South. We spent the night in the Ellenwood Terminal 5 miles from our 8:00 AM delivery. We made the delivery and got a load picking up in Tunnel Hill and heading to Northern California. 2400 miles we really wanted. We got to TH and dropped our empty and went to pick up our loaded trailer but could not find it. Went back to the gate and asked and it was pulled into the shop for it’s annual DOT inspection. The shop told us it would not be ready for a couple of hours so I called Jason and asked if we could have lunch. It was fathers day so Jason, Anna, Jackson and Blythe came to pick us up and we went for Mexican! What a great 90 minutes.
Fathers Day with the Grandkids (and their awesome parents)

So we got the trailer and got moving and then……..
As Anne was driving through Nebraska (yes…THAT Nebraska) we started to lose power. We were still able to do 55 mph on the flats so we kept going since we were 76 miles from the Wyoming border and we were NOT willing to breakdown in Nebraska again. Called breakdown and told them we were going to try and make it to Cheyenne. We limped in to the TA on the East side of town and they changed the fuel filter. That is what breakdown thought it would be since we were 6000 miles past our PM (planned maintenance) So as we pulled back onto the freeway the red stop engine light came on and our top speed was about 45 mph now. Called breakdown and they had us limp two exits to the Freightliner dealer. Got here about 5 PM last night and we are still waiting to get an eta. They said it is the after treatment system but we are waiting to see if they have the part. If we have to wait, we will run home tonight and see the kids. (and take showers)