From School to Superior Carriers

Yeah but I am already almost a geezer. That ditch in the first picture was another concern. One guy at the plant kept saying "that ground is hard you can drive on that". That's enough of a drop off to roll a tanker and it had been raining for 48 hours.

 

3/17-3/22

The load last Wednesday went without incident. I bob tailed about 65 miles where the load was spotted. Found it no problem and was on my way with plenty of time to make my delivery appointment. The route took me right through the town my parents live right around lunch so I gave them a call and had a nice hour and a half lunch break. I was still 30 minutes early for my delivery and was home by 6:30 PM.

I got Thursday off, came in and ran about 9.5 hours of local work on Friday and left with a water treatment polymer load for Racine Wisconsin on Saturday afternoon. It delivers Monday morning in a window between 7 and 1500. I could have left Sunday and made it but I decided to run it over the weekend so I can get to the next dispatch terminal as early as possible. I am sitting about 10 miles from the plant right now and will be there ready to rock and roll at 7:00 AM with a fresh 14. This plant is right on the lake in downtown Racine.

I am taking a week of vacation after this trip and heading down to Florida with the family so I hope to keep moving this week. Vacation pay is $750 a week gross which is below my weekly average and I would like to get a little ahead this week. We will see. Tomorrow I will be in the Markham black hole more than likely. It will be Monday though so hopefully there will be something out promptly.

 

I got deadheaded 850 miles home from Racine primarily because I had a compartment tank. I had Wednesday off, worked local Thursday and Friday picking up around 20 hours. Now I am on vacation in Florida for the next week. My brother in law is career air force and we are staying at his house near Patrick Air Force base. Its 3 blocks from the beach. Probably won't have much to post to this thread for a while.

I did read some bad news on another board. Its rumored they closed our Nashville terminal last Friday laying off 13 drivers and one mechanic. No transfers offered to other terminals.

 

Drove 30 minutes over to Port Canaveral Fla this morning and applied for my TWIC card. Took all of 15 minutes to do the paperwork, finger prints etc. Had a great lunch at a little seafood tiki bar place at a marina right around the corner.

I think when its time to pick it up I will take my son on a weekend fishing trip. 600 miles is a long way to drive for a weekend trip but with a reason and a free place to stay its doable.

 

Nope you have to pick it up in person at the same office you apply for it. Security reasons I guess.

 

Week of 4/5/09 looks to be a good one. I have another Greensboro NC to California run leaving Wednesday. Monday I am going in at 8:00AM to load 2 tanks with waste water. That will give me at least 8 hours local pay and will also provide an opportunity to do some spring cleaning on the inside of my truck. Perfect scenario in my mind since I took a lot of stuff out when I went on vacation.

This vacation was one of the better ones I have had. My Brother in law is career air force stationed at Patrick Air Force base in Florida. He is the commander in charge of security for the air force side of the Cape Canaveral space launch facilities. I grew up during the moon missions and always loved this stuff. We got to go to the launch pads and into the block houses where they launched many of those historic missions. These are all on the air force base side and not part of the Kennedy Space Center tours.

We also got to drive right up to several launch pads with rockets on them. It was real cool. below are some pics.

pic 1. is the actual launch pad where Apollo 1 exploded. Its a memorial now
2. is a delta class rocket scheduled for launch in a month or so
3. is the space shuttle on stand by in case a rescue mission was necessary for the shuttle mission that landed last week
4. is an Atlas 5 rocket the day before it was launched last friday. We watched the launch from our front porch.