Good night from...

Just got off the phone with the BMV where I live, and she told me, right from the letter, that we have 180 days from the date of the letter to submit the new card, and that I will be okay to get it done when I get back home on the 4th. Already updated the physical. I think that Swift does not know what they are doing.

 

hit a nice storm for 100mi or so this morning rolling into atlanta. nothing major tho, i did get a nice free truck wash from it, got all that salt off her from when i was up in pa..

 

Looks like stuck in Bozeman for another evening. They say that there is no freight, while I watch 3 company trucks pull in here to scale their loads, and look on 2 different load boards and find about 18 loads within 100 miles of here. This is what happens when your DM is on vacation and someone else is watching their board. Also, was told that I should take this load that was outta Portland because the fr8 was bad there. What they did not tell me, fr8 is worse here. I can not see anything happening now until probably Sunday. Maybe lucky and Saturday, but doubt it.

 

@ the J in Temple, GA.. my first delivery decided it was time to go on lunch 1/2 way unloading me and took their sweet ### time getting back.. i did get 3hrs detention tho.. but screwed me on my 2nd load.

Ok, what a day it was in Atlanta picking up my last load. wow.. company directions were waaay off, my gps was freaking out as I was on a no-truck route, and I was... yes im man enough to admit it..... LOST!
2 gps's going off to turn here, no there, the streets they wanted me to turn on was no larger than a golf cart path.. omg..Company directions routed me thru a ghetto, which I now know the price of crack, weed and some ghetto-rat named lakeesha..Finally I said #### you #### gps's and drove 7mi down this road that was getting narrower, and the traffic signals were getting lower.. son of a...I then found a street large enough to make a left on and all of a sudden my gps said "in 1 mile take a right" lol, yea right.. well ill be ####, it was large enought of a street where I could swing a right turn, then boom my truck gps says, look for your destination on the left in .5mi.. holy crap batman, im here..
Once doc'd and checked in I asked a local daycab Schneider how to get back to the interstate, as I got lost in here.. he looks at me shakes his head and closes his door.. ok, me being kinda frazzled from just getting here, and the sensation of relief coursing thru my body now, I ignore him, che k in and the lady gives me the 411 on what I need to do to get out of here..I then jump in the truck, pull her up a bit to close n lock, seal the dooors, now schneider is trying to get out and guess whos blocking him in....HAHA
Yea I sat there while I did my loaded call, set the gps to my final, took off my jacket.. hoooonk, light a smoke... honk... adjust my seat and do the once over in my mirror, yup still ugly... I then see this guy walking up to my truck, I wait till he gets to the front of my trailer, and then I pull out into the street and get rolling....Yup fun day to be had..

 

I got a load out of Los Angeles going to the Gulf Coast, nice 2000 miler. First problem was Swift had dispatched 2 trucks on the same load. Fixed.
Got my loaded call done and start booking eastwards. About an hour later the qualcomm blew up with 4 messages and my phone was ringing. I figured somebody got hurt or died back home, but there was no real safe place to pull over.Kept going for a ways but finally just pulled over at one of those emergency call boxes and checked the messages. They were requesting that I turn around and go to another shipper to put more 25,000 pounds of product on my trailer (18,000 pounds). Well, beings that 3 of the messages were Please please please and the last one was 'if you wish' to go back, I did not go back. I like my load, nice and light, rocking 10 miles per gallon right now. Plus they snoozed. I thought about agreeing to it for $600 bucks cash but naw. Called it in after I got a message now that it was "assigned" (as in forced on me), the person I talked to said there were no other pickups on my screen, cool. Then just a little while ago they sent directions to the shipper and be there by 1500 or be late. I feel a service failure set up coming on.

 

At the TA in Wheeler Ridge (just n of the Grapevine), CA. Got the truck washed, lubed, and the element in the big fuel filter (the clear one that fills up with fuel) changed.

I unload in Oakland this morning (30 mins start to finish..gotta love THAT) then head to the shipper in Santa Clara. My pickup time was "02/23 0000-0000", so I figured that since I knew that this shipper would let me park on the property that I'd wait til it was ready. Guy at the shipping window hands me the paperwork (@ 11:00 am on the 22nd) and says "It's ready". So I send my Mac 1 and start my drop-n-hook. 2 minutes later I get 2 messages, the normal "nanny" reply to any arrival call and a message with an appointment time of 0800 for delivery. Problem was the delivery date was wrong....and I didn't catch it. Of course when I send my loaded call I get no reply (what am I forced to rent a system for $20 a week that doesn't work 1/2 the time???) so I call it in and nobody catches the wrong date. I finially caught it when I sent a Mac 34 (to set my PTA) and it came back with the wrong time/date message.

If I catch any CRAP about this from anybody I'm gonna park the loaded trailer in the Phoenix yard and go on hometime. CRACKHEADS!

 

picked up load in el paso tx yesterday and was loaded pretty quick. leeft around 3 pm and made it to pilot on !-40 ex 3v in new mexico. startwd to snow and was in mid 20 so didn't think i make it to casino i was going on nm-149. had some crazy skateboarder try and take my hood off. had his trailer tandems even with my door when he started over. i quickly moved over into half of emergency lane while flashing my brites at him.####### kept on coming over. lucky me i got it slowed down enough.anywaysa got going again at 8:30 this morning and now sitting at flying j on i-84 ex 7 in utah. snowing pretty good last 25 miles but roads were clear and had nowhere else to stop except here lol.

 

on a side note..glad i stopped last nite when i did cause i was able to drive most of daylight today and what a beautiful route that the us 491 and us191 was between i-40 and !-70. i couldn't go slow enough to see everything. days like this is what i love about this job. stopped at a rest stop for a sec and was getting ready to leave when a steven truck sitting next to me blew one of his drive tires. what a bang that made lol. driver said this is his third tire the last couple of weeks.

 

Just delivered to the Wal-Mart in Tomah, WI.
My next load is going to Sioux Falls, SD, and then hopefully back to MN for some home time.

 

snowing pretty good now. 1/4 mile visibilty. sitting at pilot off i-84 ex 7 in utah. heading to salem or. think i'm gonna sit this out for now. don't feel comfortable driving in this. weather band is forecasting this to last all day. not sure what to do.