Beep Beep Roadrunner

So my contract is due to expire 123114 at the stroke of midnight. My mission if I choose to complete it is to sign a new contract before or after that date. I tried to log on to the website to do it but all the contract pages came up blank except the 'sign here' 'initial here' stuff is nice and clear. hmmm. Thought it was a problem with Mozilla Firefox to logged into Internet Explorer and same thing. My next option is to go to a FedEx Office and try on one of their computers.

In other thoughts, I served 4 years in the United States Marine Corps. HBO put out this miniseries called Generation Kill about a group of marines invading Afganistan. One of the episodes was named Stay Frosty. And they kept saying Stay Frosty all the time. I gathered it means 'stay alert' 'maintain a constant state of suspicious alertness' etc. It bugged me because I had never heard that while I was in. I got out in 90 (recalled in Feb 91 but released 21 days later after the war was over) and figured these guys in 2004 had come up with a new phrase-- stuff that makes you feel old. Well I kind of just filed it away and forgot about it til a couple nights ago. Was watching an old episode of Black Sheep Squadron- Baa Baa Baa. It was a TV show based on Marine Pilot Pappy Boyington and his squadron of Corsairs in WWII Pacific theatre. Anyway there was a scene where a pilot reported that he thought he saw something down in the jungle so Pappy decided to do a run down on the deck with the other pilot but tells the rest of the squadron to fly high cover and -get this- Stay Frosty lol. So the saying must come from at least as far back as WWII, but I can't find any info on it.

Kinda bugs me like that Oliver Stone movie JFK, Tommy Lee Jones is talking about butlers and how butlers should be named Smedley while the camera hovers on TLJ's face just an extra millisecond. Every marine knows there was a marine general named Smedley Butler. Stuff that makes you go hmmm.

First stop was closed Saturday so had to sit out Sunday and deliver 0400 Monday, took them several hours. Got out of there then had to chain up coming over Cabbage. Basically ran out of time today. Deliver in Portland tomorrow then deadhead home 600 miles. It will be a race to get back before midnight New Years.

 

Delivered in Portland OR, was in sleeper and felt them running in and out of the trailer unloading. There was a long pause, I figured they were done and counting product. Then more banging around and sometime after knock on my door to have me come back and observe the hole that 'was already there' in the roof. So I called the place that loaded and they denied they poke holes in the roofs. Long story short, I deadheaded home and will get the roof fixed myself.

In other news I was able to sign the new contract before midnight New Years. Still need IFTA stickers and a couple of permits which I will pick on on Monday.

 

I've always been happy with T2T myself. RR does have 'agents' we can call to book loads for us when we deliver outside the terminal network or if there is not enough T2T to go around. We are no longer allowed to say, find a load on a load board and book it ourselves.

 

they actually strongly discourage riders. There are a few owners out there who have a companion with them, say a wife, and the end-around is that they have the wife on the owners 'payroll' and her job is to do 'paperwork'.

They do have rider insurance and all that but they did tell us chances are poor they would allow us to have passengers.