Good Night From II

Gary terminal.

I had a little over an hour extra when I started driving, and after getting through Chicago I shut down with 1 minute left on my 70.

It probably would have been better if I could have left this morning but I had an air leak in a trailer brake chamber.
Turns out it was just frozen, and it released after the mechanic applied some heat to it.
That couple hours waiting made me wait another couple hours so I wouldn't have to go through Chicago during the peak rush hours.
I got to Gary at about 2015.

 

I lost $90 at the Majestic Cadino when they had a special for new members that your first $100 would be replaced, have not been back to try and get use it.

 

Well you beat my record of 4 minutes. Wayyyyy to close!

 

Buffalo Wyoming. Today was a cluster. Between drop and hooks in Denver and Cheyenne, I put down 589 miles but only made it from Denver to buffalo. The trailer I picked had the passenger side tandem pins in, and not locked. After some persuasion they released. Then after dark my trailer lights flickered and went out.

This trailer is haggard, but legal, but still wasted hours getting it road worthy.

I got here with 5 min left on my 14, I guess cutting it close is the trend for the day lol.

Mac 22z have been sent, this load will be late, which aggravates me, on top of it, I'll probably run out of hours tomorrow 2 hours from the house.

 

Got my pick up in Anderson SC last night going to Cheyenne. Due to coming in early am to terminal to do the stupid simulator and then pickup was at 10 pm shut down at Love's at exit 4 85 in SC. Woke up this morning, stomach and colon was a wreck. Drove for 7 and half hours having to stop constantly and in a lot of pain then when Qualcomm came up with a blue screen showing fatal error, I called that an omen to stop. Just in KY on 24 doing my 10. Feeling a bit better but not all the way. Ugh what a day.

 

You can reset the QC by cutting the battery power via the battery cut off switch.
Give it about an hour, then turn it back on.
All the electronic systems will do a reset.
I had to do that when my ECM got a hiccup, but it will also work for the QC - and you won't have to unplug anything on the QC doing it that way.


I feel for you with the internal problems.
That's one reason I try to keep a consistent schedule. My body doesn't like those day to night to day changes either.

 

I've been even closer.

A couple times I have gone over my 70 by 5 or 10 minutes.
Luckily I've been able to edit a little on-duty time to off-duty to fix it.
This time I would not have been able to do that. My time was so tight I had already made every effort to keep on-duty times to a minimum.
Tight indeed.
I probably should have postponed driving for another hour, just so I would be past more of the evening rush.

I actually had a window to t-call this load that allowed me to deliver early tomorrow morning, but I really needed these miles in this pay period.

 

The Cheyenne drop and hook turned into a two hour ordeal. No struggles with the trailers, that was fine. It's just that this particular Walmart DC charges a lumper fee of $50 for D&H's!!??? Oh, and they pay themselves.

Actually, I was wrong about the trailers. Dropping the loaded trailer was fine, but selecting a usable empty from the back dirt lot was a chore. Derelict 14 footers and old "T" trailers in the mix. I found the best of the worst and had to be creative about hooking to it, because their yard dog sets the landing gear on a concrete strip (a good thing, right?) AND parks the trailers so close to each other there is no room to lift the landing gear. Meanwhile the "dirt" is really like a mixture of rough sand, and every truck in the Swift fleet has been trying to hook to trailers UP on the concrete, digging a trench in front of the concrete landing gear pad.

The solution was to line up the tractor to force the trailer to the side away from the landing gear crank, get a running start, and get ram speed to jump up onto the concrete and make the kingpin catch the 5th wheel so it would force the landing gear to slide toward the driver's side when it locked. It worked. Took a while, but it worked.

Then it was off to the receiving office, go through the lumper routine, then finally check out and go to Love's for a shower.

I had been sending Mac-30's all day without any results.

After a LOOONNGGG shower and transflo the paperwork I went to the truck to organize to do much needed laundry, and got a call from my DM informing me that I was on safety hold because I was overdue for a CA BIT exam. He added empty miles to Denver on the Walmart shipment and told me to get there asap.

Okay. Drove to Denver, dropped the empty, got the BIT exam done, called Safety and they're not in until 6:00 am tomorrow.

Did laundry.

Sleep now....

I got hit with that "wreck" Saturday night. The last three days have been getting gradually better. Started eating solid food Monday night and actually managed to drive more than an hour at a time on Tuesday.

 

I had a strange experience this morning as I was leaving Fort Bridger, WY headed east on I-80 a bull hauler came roaring passed me and hit me with a spray of diesel that COVERED my windshield. He was being followed by about a dozen 4 wheelers keeping back a good 200 yards, all of them with their windshield wipers on and not one of them making a move to pass him.

I do hope he didn't have a load on. If so that entire load would need to be destroyed.

If he thought he had bad fuel mileage running fast with a windsock for a trailer, I bet he was shocked when he saw the results from today's efforts!

"Five gallons a mile!!!????"

Just can't believe he never looked in his mirrors, he HAD to have been able to see the plume in the headlights. There was a diesel streak on the freeway for miles.

I had to stop at Little America and spend about 15 minutes cleaning the diesel off the windshield.

 

been home the last couple days getting shopping done, working on cars etc, changed brakes today because my wifes car has been having a squeal and loud grinding sound, found the pads had nothing left and should of been changed awhile back, did it myself for only $24 compared to $150 or so at the shop.
Just scored me a Samsung Galaxy tab 3 tablet for $129 and also activated on the freedompop network where I will get 500mb of 4g data free a month for life plus the options to add cheap data if I want. I can use my note 4 to tether but I wont turn down free data if it works out well.

Might be something for others to check out, they offer voice and stuff too, most of the phones that work are old sprint phones but if you have an old device laying around or can get one then go for it.
https://www.freedompop.com/
for the list of devices supported
https://forums.freedompop.com/discu...-on-byod-update-02-04-2015/p1?utm_term=banner

they also offer cheap wifi, I will test it out once I get my tablet delivered.