Good Night From II

Taking my break at the Petro in Milan NM on I-40.
Will head up 491/191 thru Shiprock and MOAB, then US6 to south of SLC for tomorrow. It's darn cold here too. Forecast low is 6 deg tonite.

As as I was getting off 40 here I heard a pop and steady hiss as I was getting on the brakes. Line to trailer service brakes split open at the tractor connection. On hold for an hour with OnRoad, then to the shop here to replace both air lines.

 

An hour wasted on the phone and however long it took for the shop to repair it! In less than 30 minutes you could have fixed it yourself ! Spare airlines should always be part of your tool kit along with the necessary tools to simply replace them yourself. You can get the airlines free at any Swift parts department.

 

Just outside Oklahoma City at a Love's.

Did a couple Walmart loads today, then picked this one up going to a Walmart in Lincoln, NE.
Rather windy with some snow today.
It was early evening and traffic was only going around 25-30, so I decided to park it and get an early start in the morning. Only ~400 miles by 1300, so it shouldn't be difficult if the weather and traffic are better.

Oklahoman's are pretty bad when the snow rolls in. They have no idea, so they just slow to a crawl.
Still, there were a lot of crashed cars littering the roads.

In nearly 4 years I've never been involved with Walmart stockpiling trailers in the parking lot.
Never even noticed it, if it has been done before.
Even small Walmart's have 2 or 3, and one that I delivered to had at least a dozen.
I got a look inside of the last local trailer I delivered. It was marked 'high value' but it only filled up about 8 feet of the trailer with what seemed to be odds and ends.
My current load is less than 7,000 pounds, so probably the same.

I've been told it is good money. I'll just wait and see what the next paycheck produces. They said I would be paid hourly plus mileage both ways.
In my experience the 'bonus' pay seems to get lost somewhere along the way because 'someone' wants to save some cash.
Still, it was easy work. Get the trailer to the store and drop it, then bobtail back for the next.
And the OK folks seemed very grateful for the help, even though I didn't have a good reason to turn down any of the loads. Just a days work, you know.

 

Spare EVERYTHING would be nice, if I had a place to store them.

But, I won't.
An hour or three for something to be fixed doesn't kill my week.
And I'd rather be down a couple hours to let someone else do it in freezing temps, like it is now.
Especially since I'm not getting paid to do it - and if something goes wrong after I fix it, it is on me instead of the other guy.

 

Yep what he said. I keep a spare set and luckily I do. Got popped by DOT once and he put me OOS for the same reason. Pulled out a spare and he put me right back in service. Then told me to just duct tape for now so that he did not hear it hissing and on my way to fix down the road

 

The last time I was pulled over, because I was pulling a HM load, the officer heard a hissing sound.
Then, he was stung by a bee as he was checking it out.
He started to feel bad and cut me loose.

A glad hand bushing was misaligned.
A bee lost its life just to save me some points.

Bad for the bee, and the officer - but good for me.
True story.

 

I run out of the west Jefferson, OH distribution center (15 min outside of Columbus). We never go to Baltimore, but we do go to Chicago a lot. I doubt they would send a solo truck up to Chicago that often though. You'd mostly run Indiana, OH, PA, KY, WV, and south MI. Perhaps the only troublesome city in the solo running area is the Pittsburgh area stores.

 

Dongducheon, South Korea. 38 degrees and clear; 21:30 on 17 Nov 2014...

 

A
Ahh good old camp casey. When mamasan packed the food stand we know that we would be leaving the field soon

 

Not mamasan, more respectfully called Ohmani.