The continuing tale of DocFrank

It's me again! Waitin' to roll out to go take a truck from SA terminal to wherever Texas. I have to say, I like being able to be home and help the missus. She seems to like it to, silly woman!
Working for Brown Brothers is O.K. but often frustrating. You see we are a third party provider which means we move another companies equipment from site to site for them. That means that we have to rely on them to keep their equipment up to snuff and to have it ready when they call us to pick it up. HAH!! Like that ever happens!
It also means that we don't have our own tractors so we are always getting different rides with different performances. At least they're all Peterbuilts... for what that's worth. I much prefer Volvos or KWs. Thank God they aren't Freightshakers! My least favorite truck.
I know a lot of drivers like them but I have always found them temperamental in their shifting and not as roomy of a cab. I realize they are cheaper to repair than the others but as I'm not an O/O so what.
Well, gotta boogety-boogety. Take care and Don't let the Minahunees get ya'.

 

Happy Halloween to everybody out there!!Hope you don't get spooked tonight. And remember, tomorrow is El Dia del Muerto , the day of the dead. Anyone who's a Texican, a Mexican, or of the Latino persuasion in general will know about this but for you Norte Americanos and American pie people here's the low down.
On the Dia del Muerto (O.K. it's also known as All Saints Day) the belief runs that the dead can come back and visit with the family and in general fiesta with the folks. So families will go to the cemetery and clean up and decorate the graves with flowers and paper garlands and whatever else they can think of that might please departed Viejos (Grandfathers) Papas, Mamas and kids who have gone beyond. Then they have a picnic! Right there. With all the other families. There,s bar-b-que and hot dogs traditional dishes and plenty of beer wine and sodas. Sometimes a band will play and everybody of course has music of some kind or another. A splendid time is had by all and the departed know their families remember and love them still. All-in-all a great way to spend a day. In the cemetery.
The thought occurs to me that it would be cool if anyone has any spooky or weird experiences of the supernatural variety it would be great to hear your stories.
Here's one of mine.
Every Dia del Muerta I go visit a dear friends grave at Ft Sam San Antonio. His name was Julian and he was killed in jail and they never found out who did it. The family suspects the guards 'cause Julian was always a ####y, mouthy guy (he came from Chicago so go figure!) and he probably gave the guards a hard time. Anyway he and I used to make a lot of music together. He played guitar and I played piano and harmonica (harp for you hep cats out there). When he was buried, I waited until everyone else was gone and played some of our favorites to him on the harp and ended with "Amazing Grace" I then tossed in that harp and poured a quart of his favorite beer down the hole and left.
Well, like I say, I try to get back every year at this time and play harp for him and pour a beer out for his enjoyment. And I would swear, every so often, I can hear a guitar playing, faintly and far off, along with whatever I happen to be playing at the time.
Well, that's it. It's not really a trucker trucker driving spooky story but it is true. So if anyone has anything in the way of the strange or uncanny please send it in.
Be safe out there, and remember, Don't let the Minahunees get you!

 

MaryDragon, You said a mouthful about boring waiting! Also, the pay Sucks! If you haven't finished your first 50 hours, your trainer should be sitting in the right seat (not in the bunk!) the whole time you're driving.This is the best time to ask questions about what to do in different situations and how the system works. Swift, like all big companies, has their "system" and the more you know about it, the better you can game it to get better loads, more miles, and up your standing. You do know that when you reach gold status you can pick your loads off the board, right? If not get your mentor to explain. Also, it helps big time if people call in and say what a good driver you are. Big time points toward the next level.
Don't let him stint you so he can get the big bucks off your miles.
Take care, be safe and Don't let the Minahunees get you!

 

Another fun filled day at Brown Brothers. I got a call at 0100 to come in and relieve a driver who was almost out of hours. So I get my tail moving and get to the shop where a chase driver takes me to the driver at the rail yard. He was supposed to pick up a load of silicon (very fine sand) and take it to the Schlumberger bulk yard about 20 mi. away. Sounds easy, right? HAH! I scoff at this! I pretrip the cement tanker I'm hauling the load in and get in line to get weighed empty. This is where the problems begin.
Firstly, I had never been to this site before or done a sand pick-up. Still I figured what the hey how hard can it be. Well the first thing the girl at the weigh-in window asks is what is my BOL. BOL? I never heard of no steenkin' BOL!! We don't use them. So she says I have to have one of these mythical elusive creatures and reweigh when I have one. She also tells me it's a 10 digit number.
So I go to the waiting area and call dispatch. THEY don't know what this Mythical BOL is either no one had heard of it. I call the guy I relieved and HE doesn't know about this either and he drives cement all the time.
O.K., so I notice that there is a PO# and lo and behold it's 10 digits long! Eureka!
Nope.
Go back and get in line and drive on the scales and give the girl the number, feeling like I just found the Lost City of Atlantis, noooo,no, no, she doesn't Like that number and wants another one. So back to the waiting area I go, get on the horn with dispatch (who has now changed shift so I have to explain the whole mess all over again ) who still doesn't know what a BOL is but says she will call Schlumberger Logistics and see if they know anything. So there I sit, with my thumb up an uncomfortable spot. Well, I get the bright idea to call the bulk yard and see if they know anything about this rare beast. They have no idea what I'm talking about but we conspire and the generate a 10 digit number which I proceed to take to the weigh-deamon after waiting in line again.
Wonder of wonders I fool her and she grudgingly gives me a map to find where the pick-up spot is. I follow the directions and come to a detour sign (Oh, did I mention the road was all torn up with construction? One lane Hell!) so I stop and look. I'm somehow supposed to get to the other side of some rail tracks. Only problem is they are occupied by rail cars. Straight ahead I can only see torn up road and a fence at the end of it. Looks like a dead end to me so I follow the detour. Big mistake! I wind all around and finally end up where I came in to get the truck in the first place. So I do a Uey and go back where I started from. This time I ask at the second weigh station (for loaded outgoing traffic) and they say that yes it looks like a dead end but I can get to a spot where I can cross over the tracks and find my load spot. So I drive down this spooky road that looks like a dead end but sure enough, there's a place to cross over. A place that would be very spacious for oh, a 4 wheeler. Not so much for a cement hauler. I get her over and sure enough there's the place to load. Only I have to stop and let another truck get past me to load at a different site with a different mix. O.K. I pull up to this overhead blower that will fill my tanks with 200 mesh silicon and the old guy there gets me set up and then tells me his shift is over so he's leaving and the next crew will take care of me.By now it's 0700 and I still haven't got my load.
Sure enough about 0730 the next crew comes in and starts loading me. Time passes. More time passes.Then the crew boss tells me that the old guy didn't set me up right which is why it was taking so long to load me. He disconnects me and has me maneuver my rig so I'm in a better position and resumes loading.After about 2 hrs. he says for me to run it over the scales as he doesn't have a scale or way to measure how much he had given me. I drive around the train cars again and go to the outbound scale where I''m told I'm 8000 lbs. short. So back I go and reconnect and they continue loading me.It's about 0900 by this time so I call dispatch to let them know what's going on.
In a little while they come to the cab and say weigh it again so I do. 2200 lbs. under. I, as you might imagine, am starting to get P.O.ed at this point so I call the bulk yard and tell them what's been going on and ask if I can just bring what I have in as I'm afraid I'll have to wait in line to get finished loading as there was another truck right behind me when I went to get reweighed.So far I'd been there 5 hrs and I didn't relish the prospect of perhaps spending the rest of my driving career waiting to get loaded with stupid sand! The guys at the yard said fine but I needed to get a scale ticket showing the proper weight. So I go up to the scale and ask for a ticket as they had taken so long loading me I was going to take what I had back to the plant. They said they wouldn't do it unless Schlumberger sent them an e-mail saying it was alright. As you can imagine, I was not pleased but I didn't want to piss off the Schlumberger man so I went back and miracle of miracles I got hooked up right away and finally got the rest of my load +320 lbs. which of course put me overweight (tare was 38000 and change and load was 45000) I would have been over anyway but it was only 20 mi. so I took the load. I would have caught the problem but I had gone to sleep at 2200 and got woken at 0100 so was not as mathematically alert as I would usually be. Anyway I got out of there at 1015 and in the yard at 1030 so I left at 1100.
What a day! The Minahunees were working overtime on that one.
Sorry about the rant. Be safe out there and Don't let the Minahunees get YOU!

 

The good thing is, at Brown Brothers, I don't get paid by the mile I get a guaranteed salary plus bonuses for over six movement orders in a week. It cheeses me off that, because of all the time wasting nonsense, I couldn't make more moves that day.
I guess there's downsides to everything. It sure makes me miss the Road.
Be safe and Don't let the Minahunees get you!

 

Another week in the books! I'm hoping I get called in today as I will then have 7 way bills (WB's) and will get a bonus. I can really use the money as I have $10 bucks to go till Thursday after paying bills.
Yesterday was O.K. but time consuming. Me and 3 other drivers took 4 air slides (Tanker trailers holding dry bulk cement) out to a site near Tilden, Tx . Only one truck at a time could get on the pad to blow down (unload) their loads so we were there from 1030 to 1930! Makes for a full, but boring day.
Anyway, I guess that's why they pay me the "Big Bucks".
Be safe out there and Don't let the Minahunees get you!

 

What a weird run I just had! I and another driver had to go pick up 2 ABT's outside Nixon TX and bring them back to SAX. Well, we drove out to the drill site and no ABT's! Not a good thing!! The guard said they had been taken the previous night so we cruised to back (and I DO wean Back) roads to see if we could find a staging site where they might have been left. No luck. So we go back to Nixon and call dispatch from an ice house and they say to wait while they talk to Schlumberger. So I check out a Bar-B Que place which was closed and then walked over to a taco house (Rodeo's tacos) and got a really yummy egg, bean, and nopalito taco. It was hudge and homemade. Muy Sobriso (very tasty)!
When I got back, we were still waiting for directions. Eventually, they called back and said GPS had it located in Nixon.
Nixon is not exactly the largest metropolis in the world and we were in the middle of it. So we went to see if it might be at another rig site. As we were stopped at the only light in town I looked over at a dirt lot where a lot of truckers park to get food or go to one of the 3 ice houses located there and caught a glimpse of blue (Schlumberger colors). Sure enough the ABT's were there! Left overnight, unsecured in downtown Nixon!!!! It was a wonder they were still there! Plus they had hoses on board that any cement trucker would value and They weren't even chained down!
We got the loads secured, pretripped and delivered. But need I say the caca hit the rotating blades when we got back.
What a day!
Well, be safe out there and Don't let the Minahunees get you.

 

Rainy Days! Happyhappy JoyJoy! Nothing like driving 110,000 lbs. of FracPump down a lease road in the rain! Put in the differential and let 'er rip. Pay no attention to the man behind the mud.
The other day me and a chase driver (Dave) had to go down to pick-up a pump at a well site not far from Catarina TX. The way in is called Espejo(s-pay-oh) Gates Road and it's fairly notorious for being a really sucky road. We were in a little four wheeler van and the mud was really bad. Finally we got to a place where there's a load limit bridge that I would have to drive around going out. Only problem was that the water flowing into the hollow by-pass was up to the bottom of the bridge! We should have brought our fishing poles.
Anyway, after much discussion and map reading we thought we might get out the back way which leads to a paved county road. So we ,of course, scouted the road and found only one place where we might have a problem. There were three "lakes" in the road... hollow places that had filled with water. Well, we watch the traffic and it was apparent that I would be able to get through no problem. The bottom was firm and I was driving a FracPump. Dave, however, was a different story. The van didn't have four wheel drive and the water was pretty deep for a four wheeler. We watched awhile and Dave thought he could get through so we went back to the pad and picked up the pump. After pre-tripping her we set off down the back way until we came to the three lakes (tres lagos). The first one was fine no problem, the second was deeper but by staying to one side Dave could get through but the third one was a bear. We couldn't scout it out because we didn't want to try to go through twice or three times actually so we held up there to watch other drivers go through. It was deep! But there looked like a way we could go and stay out of the worst part and Dave decided to give 'er a go. He went first and it was deeep!!! When he was almost through, he slipped off to the left a bit and caught this hole... I don't know how he got through it. The water came to the top of the van's hood!!! He hit the pedal and bounced through it and was out! Amazing!!!
I got through no problem and we completed the run without further incident but what a day!#@%!
Take care, be safe, and Don't let the Minahunees get you.