Good Night From II

At the T/A in Laredo. Thought I wouldn't be here long BUT you know how THAT goes.

Dropped my JIT from WI at the broker on time and went back to the terminal to pick up my 28K lb hazmat going to IL. Got hooked up, called Compliance, got dispatched. As soon as I pulled out of the line I knew it was MUCH heavier than 28K. Uh oh! Went across the scale three times trying to fine tune it..no dice. 81.5k lbs gross and over on all three "axles". Got a scale ticket and parked it. Called DM and Compliance to update and took the paperwork to the window.

They asked me if I'd mind taking it to the broker with extra stop pay to get it reworked. Sure, why not..couple hours I'll be on the road outta here. Get to the broker in a rundown flea bitten section of old Laredo. Backed up to their "dock". Trucks came and went and they kept telling me I was next. After a while things got quiet so I hopped out for an update as my 14 was getting low. I'd been there 5 hours.

Got to the back of the trailer and found they had closed up shop and had all LEFT!! No one said a word to me. I went looking around for ANYONE (they had my paperwork and scale ticket). Found an old guy with a broom who could barely tell me "You come back Monday". I don't think so!!

Pulled it back to the terminal and told the window guys what happened. They told me I should've just left it on their dock!! Seriously?!? Leave an open hazmat load sitting unprotected all weekend that I signed for?? That ain't happening. Load has been removed, I'm out of hours for the day and Mac30 is as dry as the surrounding desert.

Exactly what I had tried to avoid before I arrived. Oh well.

 

Emporia, KS. Have to stop in Edwardsville in the morning to replace my fuel card and I have this feeling that they might try and pull this load off me saying that the system says that I can not be 500 miles in 9.5 hours. They can pound sand. Already have pplan picking up in Faribault going to some soup place in Maxton, NC. You all know the name. THen have this sinking feeling that will be picking up there and getting stuck running the SE for little while.

 

As you know, the weight deal coming out of Laredo is almost always done in Kilograms. 28k kilos comes out to be roughly 61k pounds, way over what we can pull. Sorry you got hosed on that one.

The driver that brought it in should have scaled at the yard when he got there.

 

You are correct. That's why the first thing I look at on load paperwork down here are the Kilo and Pound weights. This loads BOL showed around 13k kilos and around 28.5K lbs...which would be correct. But someone screwed up their math calculating pallet weights when loading and in actuality it was 47K lbs or roughly 21.5K kilos.

Either way i agree that whomever brought it to the terminal should've scaled it and let the window know it was over 80k lbs. They HAD to have known it was much heavier than stated. Another example of just drop it and let someone else deal with it.

 

jurupa terminal. got both loads done. general mills didnt say anything about me being 40 min late for the delivery. got a door and unloaded pretty quick. had about 2hr 45 min left on 14 when i left there and made it here with 30 min left. this place is really bad tonite as far as parking. finally saw a local pulling out of a spot. so waited for him to leave. while backing, heard a crunch and said what the heck???. turned out that another driver pulling out in front of me had his trailer rear knock a mirror off the truck next to him. then the guy took off. douchebag. the driver that got hit ran him down enough to get trailer number and turned him. nite manager came over and got her info and see what happened. just a shame people cant be honest.

 

dang houstank...that just sux. hopefully it turn out better for you

 

Petro in Cheney, WA taking a 10. During our drive from Pendleton, OR this morning we received a message that our live unload delivery was rescheduled for 5:00 am on Monday. I contacted DM to get the load t-called in the Spokane drop yard so we get our drop and hook and start running to Denver:

- Then as we were waiting for the updated dispatch for an hour decided to get out the rubber mallet to knock ice off the steps so we wouldn't slip getting in and out of the truck and off the landing gear so it would lower. Went around to thump the tires and found a dud on the trailer. We'd picked up a chunk of broken chain in the tread and the tire was completely flat.

- Spent 30 minutes on hold with On Road, got through and they got us set up to repair the tire in the Petro shop here in Cheney, where we were sitting while waiting for the updated dispatch.

- Got the truck in line to get in the shop and waited an hour and a half.

- Got the truck in the shop and waited an hour for repair to finish.

- Took another 30 minutes to finish the paperwork.

- Drove to the drop yard and dropped the trailer, then searched the yard and there were no empties. Next load required an empty according to load assignment. So sent messages and also got on the phone with the DM, then waited 30 minutes to receive a message from the planner to go ahead and bobtail to the customer.

- Drove to the customer and hooked to the trailer and the running lights don't work.

- Drove four miles in the dark to the Petro and called On Road. Got the truck in the shop right away, had dinner, and the truck was done. New pigtail and a broken trailer socket fixed the problem.

Now we are down to 2 hours on my trainee's 14, so we decided to park it for the night and start early a.m.

Our route is east on I-90 to I-25 south to Denver. Anyone run through that route in the last day or two? If so how is it?

 

I'm trying to keep Moose's comments in mind about not getting pissed off at too much of this crap because all it does is stress me out. Today was kind of funny in a pathetic way.

It may all be for the better though. Planners just threw me a high mile load up to Pasco WA, 22k lbs. We'll see how this one scales in the morning when I pick it up.

I hope the weather up there calms down before I get there.

 

Lepton..Your day wasn't too hot either!! Good for your student though to experience some of the issues that pop up.

Saw your post about the weather crossing Cabbage and now find I'm going through there to WA in a couple days. Trying to decide if I'll take I-40 to the south and come up thru MOAB and US6 to the SLC area to get to I-84 or to run up thru the Panhandle to I-25 north to cross over on I-80. The weather will probably be less an issue getting to SLC if I go up on the west side of the Rockies. Only one way to go after that.

 

Most of the B/L that I see that originate in Mexico have "Must scale at a Swift yard" stamped on the bill. If the load was brought over by Trans Mex, well, lets just say that they have special rules for those drivers.