CRETE - A Year in Review

Waiting for a load in El Paso at the Petro. The yard here is kind of...unfortunate. Watched Ted in the movie theater with a roomful of middle aged truckers...that movie is hilarious. It shouldn't work as well as it does (come on, a 35 year old talking teddy bear and he's a stoner?) but out works and works well...laughed myself stupid.

 

I bought a 2' x 25' roll of the silver insulation from Lowes(looks just like the regular window shades). I just cut them to fit. One for the windshield, and one for each side window. I put velcro on the side windows.

 

Results of this latest test of my heater repairs...FAIL...2 degrees, 1 bottle of anti-gel, 2 full fuel tanks...47 degrees this a.m. inside casa-de-snackbar's truck. So I start the beast, wait for the oil pressure to stablize, then park my foot on the throttle and attempt to hold it around 1400 rpm so it generates heat. Once I have heat, I let off on the throttle, I turn the fans on high, the temps to hot, and pick up my Thunderbolt to post an update. The truck, on it's own, decides to rev to 1500 rpm, holds at that speed for about a minute, then idles back down. 2 minutes later, it ramps up to 1500, on it's own, holds there for a couple minutes, then idles down. Now it's up to 1500 again. This truck is possesed. Anyone know how much a priest charges for an exorcism?

 

I know a guy but you have to be sure to pay him on time or your truck will be repossessed (ba-DUMP, bump)

 

Day three in captivity. I feel I am slowly going insane. It was two hours' work to fix the truck. That was bracketed by better than half a day getting authorization to get it looked at, and looks like another day waiting around for a load. Something has happened at Corporate; these guys have apparently abandoned all pretense of being on the driver's side--and I've had just about enough of this $#!t.

 

Got a load going to Indy. Window was 0800-1245. I received dispatch at...wait for it...1145. On the far side of town. 3rd party brokered load (HG Robertson). After I accepted the load they didn't want to dispatch because three was a question if I could make it on time to pick up. I went to the shipper while waiting for a response from my message saying it was not a problem and finally called in from the loading dock saying please dispatch me on this blank blankety blank load, and you'll just have to give your cousin another good load. In motion now. God, I'm so fed up with these guys.

 

Got a night dispatcher mad at me now...she called (not from the Celadon number) and started in on me, I told her my cell didn't have a good signal where I was and I couldn't understand her, and could she please just message me whatever she needed to say on the Qualcomm. She hung up without a word...nothing on the (documentable) Qualcomm yet. Wonder why that is. I'm not usually a problem child, I didn't set out to be a problem child, but in the immortal words of the great hero (Popeye), "That's all I can stands, I can't stands no more!"

 

I picked up a load out of Neenah, WI back to Indy...to the same place I delivered to Monday morning. And another snow/ice event is inbound. Coming through Gary yesterday was a total joy. All the way through Chicago, roads were dry, the sun was shining...it was cold...but warmer than WI. I hit the state line and traffic all but stopped. You saw cars into the wall, cars into each other etc. But the roads were just wet, at first. By the time I got to exit 6 the roads were slightly snow covered. By the time I got to the I65 exit, you couldn't see the lanes. On the ramp between I80 and I65 there was at least 4" of snow on the shoulder...althought not snowing at the time, the lake effect downburst musta caught Indiana's plow crews off guard. Geez, it snowed in NW Indiana in January...what a shock! It took almost an hour to get from the IL/IN line to the US30 exit on I65. You get past the scales by exit 240, nothing...no snow, no traffic. It was if God balled up a snowball and pegged Gary as he came outside.

The heater not only worked fine last night in Indy, but the front was blowing warm all night as well. My truck needs Lithium, it's bipolar.

 

It did the same thing when I came through there Tuesday.

 

I have just determined that we passed each other going opposite ways. I heard some jibber-jabber about getting off at the 31 and going north on 49 to 94 because the toll road was cluster-####### just beyond the 31, so I did that. 2 mile detour to 94, get 4 miles on 94 west and it too stops. Proceeded to take an hour and 45 minutes to get from approximately the 20 on 94 to the IL state line.