Good Night From II

They have appointment times for a good reason. Getting there 11 hours early, I'm not surprised they turned you away.
Places like that have a constant flow going in and out. They simply don't have the room to take loads too early.
Nor do they have room for camping trucks.

 

Except I was told by the scheduler that it was OK to show up early. Learned to ALWAYS get the name of who told me it OK as that has kept me from being turned away since.

 

Rockford, IL. What a day of winds and rain. Winds out of the SSE still. Listening to the weather coming across NE and it is not looking pretty for tomorrow. Severe storms. Then what kind of pplan do I get, back to Denver with another lite load that can not deliver early, so Monday a 6. Nope. Declined. Reasons, weather and last place I want to be on Monday morning, Denver and those planners. Then MAC 30, Cheyenne. What is with it staying North. Then another pplan, pick up Coke and take to St Charles, IL 90 miles, backed up with one to WA for Tuesday. Taken off before I could refuse. Home time PHX 5/21. Then one from Command, can I pick up north of Milwaukee and deliver to Sacramento by noon Monday, about 2200 miles. Save that load for one of your super truckers, and this just right after I told her how Swift is trying to keep offering me these loads across I-80 and I am saying no because of the weather. Then this evening another pplan, Mount Holly, NC for Sunday. Guess planners still do not know how to look at a truck and see home time so declined with reason, too hard to find a load out of there on Sunday. No weekend miles.

 

Vinton, LA.

With a blown trailer tire.
I lucked out this time. About 1/4 mile from exit 4 it popped, a so I was able to get right off and to a small truck stop. I've got about 2 feet of tread dragging behind the tire, but it doesn't look like anything was damaged.
On-road answered in about 10 minutes and I have a repair truck on the way.

 

Every now and then ... Parked on a customers lot in the middle of nowhere in Vermont, next to a river. Nice and quite ... just the sound of frogs croaking, the babbling of the river and nice and cool ... going to sleep well tonight.

 

Swift just paid me $1000 for unpaid vacation. Nice for cash flow as I transition to ACME. Still have one more paycheck next Tuesday. My departure from Swift, done correctly, has left me in good standing if I were ever to want to return.

Finished my two unpaid "ride alongs" Tuesday and Wednesday. Yesterday had my first paid load with the truck owner as a team, getting 14% TTT for an inexpensive back haul from Freer, TX to OKC.

Did orientation this morning (an hour of reviewing policies and paperwork), much needed laundry, and waiting for the truck owner to return to the terminal with a Hazmat load headed to Odessa. Hazmat pays at least 20% more than normal loads, so I'm excited about this.

After a few more team loads the owner will turn me loose to go solo. So far we've only done pipe loads, and I'm comfortable securing them. I want to get some more complicated securement loads so I'll be better prepared once I'm solo.

The idea of being home most nights is something I'll need to get used to. In a few weeks I'll fly back to Ontario, CA to drive to OKC with my wife to make the move permanent.

Swift was a great company for me to get back into driving. No real complaints other than stuff that can be expected in trucking OTR.

 

Here at the Peelot in Oak Creek, WI. Another day of pplans going everywhere but where needed. My DM explained to me that because I still have 6 days to get home that the computer can to this, so I changed my PTA for tomorrow morning after sitting almost 6 hours at my delivery waiting for something. Now the system says that they have 5 days to get me home. Today was 2 more pplans to Zanesville, OH for Saturday and one for Streetsboro, OH for Sunday, a 5 stop John Deere finishing in Columbus, MS on Monday and then Landair to Greenville, TN for Monday morning. This is it for me as far as coming up to this area or the GLR area.

 

North Houston, TX at the J.
Finally! Got someplace I could do laundry. I was down to nothing.

I t-called my load at the terminal. They said no mt's for my next load but I was free to look. Nothing.
So I went back to the shack for some scan sheets and to request a trailer solution.
4 whole scan sheets, they gave me. They are in short supply there.
But an mt had just rolled through the gate as I walked in. The driver was bobtailing to his next load, and I got it.
I was back in the truck and there before he had unhooked.
A 500xxx, but in good shape and pretty clean.

I got to my pick up an hour early at Redbull and had another nice surprise. My live load turned out to be pre-loaded. In and out in less than 45 minutes at around 1400, and I figured clear sailing because I would miss rush hour traffic.
Not so much. It got heavier and heavier, and was moving at about 20 mph when I got on I-45 north bound.
I guess it would have been much worse if I had the live load and went through 2 hours later.

I'm headed to Roswell, NM for a Monday morning delivery. 2 days to run ~700 miles, but it is more miles than my last load would have been if I had taken it to Laredo for a Monday morning delivery.

Maybe I'll get lucky again and see another spaceship crash?

 

Where did Wolfie go I haven't heard from in while, Is he still with Swift?