Watkins & Shepard - The Adventure Begins October 8th

My understanding is that you have to live within 125 miles of one of the terminals. I think the closest terminal to you would be Myrtle, Mississippi. You can go to the WS website and look at a map of all the locations.

 

My load out of Santa Fe Springs had stops in Oregon and Washington, so I hooked early in the morning (so as not to be caught in rush hour traffic in L.A.) and drove as far north as I could and then found a Love's to pull into for Saturday night. It was only four hours to my first stop (which I couldn't make until Monday morning anyway), so I had an easy day of driving on Sunday.

My load routing on this trip made no sense at all. It had me making a stop in central Oregan, then backtracking 130 miles to a town I had just driven through to make another, then continuing up to Washington state. I shave six hours and a lot of miles off my trip by just switching around those two stops.

My third stop was our Vancouver, Washington terminal. I didn't get there until late afternoon, so I drove over to our drop yard to spend the night. There was a truck stop about ten miles away, but my back was killing me and I just couldn't drive any more that day. They unloaded me early in the morning and then I spent Tuesday driving to our Spokane terminal. I got there in the afternoon and they had me bump the dock so that they could unload the rolls of carpet, but left the furniture on the trailer and told me to drop it in the drop yard and take one of the empties.

At this point, I was feeling pretty ill. I'm 99% sure I have food poisoning from something I ate yesterday. I couldn't find the drop yard (had turned down the wrong street in the industrial park) and called a driver friend for help. He asked me to look around and tell him if I saw a water tower. I saw it. The drop yard is right next to the water tower. Why the heck didn't someone put that on the terminal map? That was really helpful.

I dropped and hooked and drove to the Love's I knew was about 10 miles away. I parked and made it into the bathroom just in time to be really sick. So I'm taking a day to just hydrate and sleep.

That was probably TMI. Sorry.

 

Thanks. I went for a walk today (needed fresh air) because there's only so much time you can spend cooped up in a truck.

Going to talk to dispatch in the morning to see if I can just drive straight to Missoula to get my bunk heater fixed. It's mighty cold at night in these parts.

 

And I lived to tell the tale.

Spent most of Thursday hanging out at Volvo repair shop in Spokane. They were looking into the bunk heater problem and they also put winter wiper blades back on my truck (when I was in Santa Fe Springs, I asked told them that the blades were fine, but the wiper arms weren't pressing on the windshield hard enough... they just swapped out my winter blades for normal ones.... which would be fine if I were a local driver in southern California... but I'm not). It was after 5pm when they finished and so I drove a few blocks to a truck stop for the night.

My next load was picking up in Lewiston, Idaho and had to be picked up by 5am on Friday. I decided to take a nap and then drive over there really early in the morning. My bunk heater wouldn't come on.... so I tried to sleep for a while and then just gave up. I left at 1am local time and I'm glad I did, because it was icy out and I could take my time. I got lost in the town where I was dropping/hooking. It was dark and there were several huge factory/mill places on the same street along the river with multiple gates. One of the guys (the poor guy who had the on-call cell phone) stayed on the phone with me and gave me directions in. Once you get through the gate and past the guard shack, it's still about a mile until you get to the drop yard. The trailers were so close together that there was no way I was going to be able to drop mine in the empty row (not enough room to maneuver) so I flagged down a hostler and he gave me a different place to park it. Yay!

Hooked and did my pre-trip and was heading out right around 5am. I understood then why that was the latest I could pick up. That's when the early shift starts at the mill and there were tons of personal vehicles coming in. Makes sense.

It was snowing and visibility wasn't great. It was a lot easier to drive loaded than empty (driving an empy trailer in wind and ice is like trying to fly a kite in a wind tunnel, in my opinion). It was the first time I had to contemplate the to chain/ not to chain question (It was suggested, but not mandatory according to the signs). I was sitting in the chain up area (digging out my winter boots) and watching two cops help direct traffic around a truck that had slid/jacknifed off the road about 200 meters further on. Lucky for him, he'd slid into the ditch between the road and the mountainside and not off the cliff. He had passed me earlier going way to fast for the road conditions (in my opinion). It was snowing, but not much was accumulating on the road and it was above freezing, so the road was slushy and not icy. I chose not to chain. It was slow-going for a while, but only bad in the pass. After about half an hour, the road was fine, there was little snow and I could go at pretty much normal speed.

I made it as far as Boise (where I had a fuel stop). I had two hours left on my driving clock, but I was really tired from not having slept well, so I just stayed there for the night.

The next morning, the roads were terrible. There's a weigh station on the east side of Boise and some pick-up truck had slid off the road and flipped. He was actually blocking part of the left lane at the weigh station, so all the trucks had to go on the right.

The road was icy (and I saw three different plows driving around with their blades up. WHY!?) but about 30 miles west of Boise, the roads were fine. Either it was just a concentrated storm or the road maintenance just suddenly got a whole lot better.

I drove all day and made it to North Las Vegas (where I was doing a drop and hook). I had until midnight the following day to deliver (and I was tired), so I pulled into a truck stop for the night (where I had to stop for fuel anyway). I delivered this morning. WS doesn't have any loads out of the Vegas area until tomorrow, so here I am. I wasted a glorious amount of time in Walmart. I'm sitting in a McDonald's enjoying some free wifi. There's a Pilot nearby, but the lot is really small and I spent a good 20 minutes embarrassing myself earlier trying to maneuver into one of the two open spots. I gave up and called the Walmart and asked if they allowed trucks to park. Discretion is the better part of valor. Later, I'll probably drive back to the truckstop where I spent last night. I do so love showers and restrooms readily available.

I finally took the time to organize the cargo/tool compartment in my truck. We'll see how long that lasts. It might just be random truck housekkeeping day. It's not like I have a whole lot else going on.

And so the bunk heater didn't work the first night after the repair, but it's worked for the past two nights. I'm just happy that it seems to be cooperating for now and I'm very warm at night.

 

Yawrp! 95 all the way to I-84.

 

Basically what seems to be happening is that the control panel gets messed up. There's a tiny fuse box on the panel, but all those fuses seem to be fine, so that's not the problem. The bunk-heater has worked fine all but the first night after the truck was in the shop in Spokane. The one other night, it was doing what it had been doing before, which is clicking a few times and then the panel flashes a red light and says "ERR" and then not only does the bunk heater stop trying to come on, it cuts the power to all the interior lights and anything connected to a 12v plug in the entire truck.

Prior to being in the shop in Spokane, it was either doing the above or it was simply blowing freezing cold air.