A useless newbie trying to become less useless

A few days ago made it to my delivery in southern SLC area. Picked up the new trailer and knew that there would be some trouble. The new one was a 14000 series so about 5 years old. It was only 390 pounds over on the tandems, so I tried to move them forward a hole. Whenever I tried to back the whole thing would roll, so I spent some quality time under it readjusting the brakes. After I got it set I headed to the yard for refueling. Once there, they told me that my oil filter was recalled and the shop would get to it tomorrow. There went that load. Since I was close to my 70, I decided to take my 34 and see SLC. Did the tourist thing for the day shooting some pics to load to the historic sites website that I am helping with. The shop went ahead and worked on my brakes as well and just after got a load bound for CA, East Bay area. This was my first descent of Donner, so I wanted to make it before the weather turned, and it turned on Wed. On Tues. when I made it, it was just wet with sleet and fog. Went to the 49'er in Sac. and headed down the 5 to Patterson and then Richmond this morning. My reload came through as I was almost to Modesto, Ripon actually, the closest real truck stop on the 5. They want me to go back to the same place and take the load to Iowa. This means that I get to ascend Donner. Right now it is under a winter storm warning, chaining restrictions and occasional closures due to accidents. I am going to follow the school's and company's advise and not chain, but wait it out, storm is due to end mid-Fri., tomorrow. Had some fun with the wind coming back, empty, on the 580, but the traffic on the WB was horrible. I am glad that I was EB. Tomorrow is a late load, so the Sac. TS's will probably be filled, anyone know of any good places to shutdown between the Bay Area and Sac. or a little east of there?

 

Yeah, I always shook my head at the endings for the death reports. They could at least had a comment from someone who dealt with them. Sad.

On Thurs. my DM sent me a load for p/u Fri. at the same place and never responded to my request for an a.m. time. I should have just gone to the customer that morning because when I got there 2 hours early they told me that they had been light that morning and could have easily gotten me loaded and out of there before the p.m. rush hour, on the Fri. of a three day weekend. Great guys at that warehouse, non-union of course, told me to just show up early whenever and they would just work me in or had a place to park if busy. So far I have only had non-union shops, so I get treated like a human and if there are no drivers' restrooms, they let me use the employees'. Loading took 1/2 hour and getting out of the Bay area took almost 3 hours. I knew that the Ripon Flying J would be busy, so I parked it in a brake check area off the 580 for the night. The next morning a miracle happened, I started the truck and 60 gallons of fuel had magically disappeared! I wasn't the only one hit, but at least they left me just enough to limp back to Ripon for fuel. Donner's Pass was still chaining, so I waited until today and headed over, nice and dry. I still have 3 days to make delivery in the MidWest, so should be able to deliver early.

 

Been a while since I posted. Made it through my employment anniversary and am approaching my solo driving anniversary. Through the summer they put me on the Sterling, IL Walmart dedicated running grocery loads to stores around Chicago and some of the surrounding states. This really helped my backing especially at some of the older stores. Then after a stint back on the North American fleet, they put me on the Walmart out of Grantsville, UT for the Black Friday runup. The pay went to 41 cpm and it was all drop and hook with 2500 miles a week. But now I am back on the 48 run . Had a couple of bad swaps. In April I picked up a load of cantaloupes bound for a NY Walmart DC in Joplin. When I got there, I found out that the other driver hadn't heard of a new invention called load locks. 110 trays of cantaloupes spilled and WM was going to refuse the whole load. So I picked them up and they took the rest. I then sat for a couple of days while claims figured out where I should take them. They then sent me to a food bank in Albany, the cantaloupes only had a bruise a piece. Later the weekend DM found out about it, called me and asked what happened. Claims hadn't set me up for that run, so he did it, sent me $75 a/r for the repacking I did, a $200 a/r for layover and a 4 day trip from Albany to Reno, so it worked out well in the end. This swap isn't going quite so well. I only had 183 miles and when I arrived in Laredo found that the shipper in NE had put in 4 load locks. The problem was that they just threw them on the floor of the trailer lengthwise between the pallets and I had to restack 40 boxes of beef. The "really good reload" that I was told by the Cust. svc. person I would get, has not materialized in the last 16 hours. We'll see.