Rollin' Rookie! - May Trucking

Well, it's sorta official -- I really don't like New Jersey. Had a delivery in Newark today, and yes, I had to call the consignee for directions. Amazingly confusing highway interchange with poor signage + morning rush-hour traffic + me being up all night to get this load in on time = WTF!?!? The signs for Elizabeth Rd did not, in fact, lead me to Elizabeth Rd. Ended up looking at an underpass marked 12' 3"... Was fun turning around with all that traffic.

Heading to Anaheim with this current load; won't be sad when I watch Jersey fade into a bad memory in my mirrors. And it's said New York is 10x worse than this...

 

Dropped in Newark, then picked in Dayton. After leaving the shipper, I got 10 miles down the road in 50 mins; was a wreck on the other side, no physical effect on Southbound side, but the rubber-neckers. Sucked for the Northbound side, probably took a couple-three hours to get through that mess.

The main thing is the giant interchanges with confusing or misleading signage. I'm sure after a few trips out here it won't be that big a deal, but the first time was not fun.

 

Anyone else have a truck that varies its speed by 1-2 mph? Depending on how mine feels, it's either a 59-60mph truck, or a 61-62mph (sometimes almost 63!) truck. It seems to depend on how it gets up to speed; on the flats or down hill, it goes in to "fast" mode. If I start out with a climb first thing, it's slow. I've actually begun stopping at the top of a rise and shutting it down if it starts in slow mode; then firing it back up and getting up to speed on the down hill. Works...

 

Wow! I-5 coming out of LA is so bad (possibly the worst ride I've had so far) that it shook a data cable for my Qualcomm loose and disabled the whole system! After many hours of no connection, and after calling to make sure it wasn't a system-wide disruption, I finally checked the cables... That is some seriously Sh*$tty roadway!!!

On a side note, had a nice requested day off there to meet up with my Mom and hang out for the day. It's nice to be able to say, "Hey, can you show me available tomorrow morning instead of today?" and have your DM take care of it.