Where are you

oh what a sweetheart you are....thanks so much for stopping and seeing us....
arent you just a ray of sunshine???

 

I sense a bunch of hate built up inside.

I sentence you to watch every episode of Little House on the Prairie... nonstop!

 

monee ill
picking up miss patty

 

Yeah there seems to be an awful amount of love in Menehune.....

 

I think somebody could use a hug. I think that somebody has been quoted enough without me doing so. Y'all are a smart group, you know who I'm talking about.

Meanwhile, I'm finally caught up with everything at work. It's amazing how much work a soul can get done when it's quiet and nobody is bothering you. Plus, by working today, even with all the snow days, I got in my 80 hours.

 

You would think that the micromanagers would have figured that out by now.

Sipping whiskey in my hotel room in Spokane.

 

I'm sipping a cappicoffeecino at home in my rocking chair

 

I'm here in Freaking Paradise.

I was supposed to deliver at 13:00 but wasn't going to be able to make it so called to bump it an hour. But, the guy I talked said they don't start receiving until 21:00. Then why did you schedule me at 13:00?!?

Which was really going to screw up my 06:00 pick up tomorrow morning. Darn HOS.

But, I showed up and they actually got me in pretty quick. But, their dock is definitely not set up for a reefer deck. I think they are having to jump the fork lift to get it into the truck.

 

Fun and Games eh Zen?

 

Back home for the last half of the weekend. Delivered to Beaver, OK (ODOT) on Thursday. The supervisor told me that the roads to Beaver were closed on Wednesday. They had to call in outside help to get them opened. Also if we delivered on Friday, there would not be anyone there to let us unload, they have no more hours. Yep the government will not pay OT. I let my dispatch know, and he appreciated it because... "The guy would never have called him". WHAT I thought it was dispatch's responsibility to make sure there's someone at the receiving end when we unload, or special instructions if not. We almost had 5 drivers stranded in Beaver, OK until Monday.

We were bounced back from Beaver to Lyons, loaded and delivered to Topeka DOT. Stayed at the Shell in Jct City, KS, then loaded rock from the Hamm Woodbine Quarry, delivered it to APAC's site beside the Florence, KS quarry. That was a whopping 30 mile haul, and it paid accordingly. Oh the Hamm quarry got themselves a brand new CAT loader that morning. Only way to communicate with the operator was with hand-signals. So I told him I wanted 26.5 ton. I held up the appropriate fingers to show 26, then for the half ton, you use a chopping motion to your forearm. He acknowledged. This would have put me around 85k. I drove across the scale..... 88,680. So I had to dump some off, and wound up taking 79k. With some material when you put the bed up, it all of sudden slides, and more comes out than you want. I didn't want to go back and have him overload me again. I think I made a $20 bill on that run.

Went back to Lyons to load for KDOT in Marion, KS, a big 50 mile run. However it took 2.5 hours to get loaded. Some rocket-scientist driving a hopper left the hopper gates open. He strung salt all over the scale, and out the door for a ways until someone could get him stopped. That caused them to shutdown loading until they could get it cleaned up, which was about an hour. In the meantime trucks kept coming in. Looked liked a large trucking terminal, trucks jammed in every way they could.

After delivering to Marion, then headed back to Lyons. This time to load for KDOT in Cimarron, Ks. I kept my fingers crossed that I could get in relatively quick. No such luck. This time, the salt mine, held up everyone else, because 1 driver needed a special type of salt, called Snow-Slicer. They didn't have enough made up, lacking about 1k pounds. This took about 45 mins. So again another 2.5 hours wasted, causing me to not have enough hours to get to Cimarron, heck I barely made it to Great Bend. I stayed at the Great Bend Wal-Mart T/S.

Left for Cimarron this morning, and from Great Bend to just west of Pawnee Rock, the fog was so thick, I could not see 300 ft, and it was a sweltering 16 degs. Luckily no icy spots. Got that delivered, returned once again to Lyons, and now I'm pre-loaded for Atchison.

Not much happened. Had a bozo in a p/u with Commifornia plates mess with me this afternoon on the way back from Lyons. I don't know why he chose me. He would slow way down, 20 below speed limit, then speed up when I wanted to pass. He done this enough times that it did finally get under my skin. I was thinking, "...boy you're real, real stupid to come to Kansas and try and mess with us. You're going P-off the wrong one, and end up in the snow drifted ditch, upside down..." I need to figure out a way to get my dashcam back in my truck.