From School to Superior Carriers

I have been there a couple of times and did a 10 hour break at that terminal. I got a petty good load from there. It loaded on the Maryland eastern shore and ran up to New Hampshire. Can't really say much about them. Seemed nice enough and the shop guys seemed pretty good. Didn't care much for the Dana tankwash they use.

There used to guy posting here or at CAD called Moneycat who started with them on dedicated dry bulk about the same time did. He wasn't getting as many miles as he wanted but it was during the time lots of places were hurting. He was complaining about not hitting 40K his first year due to the customer he was dedicated to cut back. System should be Ok there.

 

1/4-1/9

I spent this week running back and forth from Greensboro/High Point to Georgia. Left Monday around 10:45 and ran down to Stepan in Winder Ga and loaded. I dropped that load on the yard Tuesday and ran back down to Stepan to load another one that afternoon.

I delivered it Wednesday at P&G then bobtailed up to Reidsville NC and grabbed a loaded tank headed to Summerville Ga. This was a pump unload and since we were experiencing a shortage of 3 inch hoses I had to swing by a tank wash and pull some off trailers that were parked there. I made it down to Commerce Ga Thursday night.

My paperwork called for truck pump and 60 ft of 3 inch hose. It also said that I may unload in 2 different parts of the plant. Happy Happy Joy Joy!!

Fortunately the first tank was just about empty and held all the product. The unload point was on the street. The pipe we hooked to was up a 55 foot 30 degree hill. I would not have wanted to unhook hoses that wern't blown dry on that hill with the truck sitting in a public roadway. That has serious mess potential.

I guess I could use my air compressor on the blow down fitting to clear the hoses or mavbe just close the internal valve and open the blow down valve and let the pump push air into the lines.

Everything went well, 2.75 hours to unload and I was actually able to make it home Thursday night.

I got a load headed to Valencia Ca that delivers Thursday so thats 2500 miles added to the 2000 I got last week. 2010 is starting out very well for me.

 

What terminal, and what was so bad? They are very terminal specific. I have been very happy with High Point as a company driver and there is very little turnover there.

 

1/11-1/16

Headed out Saturday afternoon for California. I decided to run I-20, I-10 instead of I-40 for 2 reasons. I have a cousin who lives in Tyler Tx and that makes a pretty good stop about 1000 miles into the trip. I also figured my chances of seeing snow would be significantly reduced and its only about 100 miles farther.

Everything was going great. I ran leisurely and found myself sitting in Casa Grande Az about 480 miles away from my delivery point on Tuesday night with a Thursday morning delivery window. My plan was to run up to the Pilot on I-5 about 5 miles north of Santa Clarita and be ready with lots of hours to run after my delivery Thursday morning.

When I did my pretrip I found that the turn signals wern't working on the right side of my trailer. I checked the bulbs and they were all burning. There was a Petro right across the bridge so I pulled in there and had the shop check it out. 4 hours later the grizzley old mechanic told me there was a short somewhere in the wiring harness and I needed tot take it into an International dealership. They wired me up a temporary solution since the closest dealer was 70 miles away in Phoenix. There are 2 circuits of right turn signals. One controls the front and rear of the tractor. It was working. The bad one controlled the light on the back of the sleeper and the entire trailer. They spliced a wire from the trailer pig tail connection into the harness on the back of the tractor for the tail lights. That gave me turn signals on my trailer with only one light not working so off I went to Phoenix.

This was a typical dealership experience. I waited 3 hours for them to start. This slightly younger grizzley old mechanic found a burned out bulb on the tractor, replaced it, undid what the Petro guy did and I was on my way again. I told him that it wasn't burned out this morning; but everything was working and feeling like a fool I headed out right into rush hour Phoenix traffic. I still didn't understand how a burned out bulb could cause that circuit of lights to remain lit with the truck turned off and the keys in my hand.

Almost out of hours I shut down in Tonopah Az at the TA. As I pulled off the interstate my turn signals frose again but then started working. I tested them a few times and they seemed fine. The next morning they frose for good. I called dispatch and they set me with a loner truck from our Parker terminal. I was to have the TA wire me up like the Petro did the day before, go to Parker, swap trucks, deliver my load, go back to Parker, then take my truck back to the dealership in Phoenix to get it fixed for good.

I had to wait 2 hours for TA to work on my truck. The mechanic they assigned to me looked like he was just out of high school. With all the grizzley old experience that had looked at my truck the day before I had little hope of getting it repaired and showed him how the petro guy had wired it up the day before. 45 minutes later he had discovered a short in the circuit panel behind the relay and I was fixed for good.

I ran 90 miles to the turn off for Parker testing my signals and 4 ways every 5 minutes or so. There were no problems so I called dispatch and told them it was fixed and I didn't need to swap trucks. They had already pushed back my delivery a day.

I got that done with minimal problems and am now doing a 34 hour restart watching football in a hotel in Blythe Ca. They are deadheading me Pasadena Tx where I will grab a load heading towards home next week.