Hopper, Dump O/O's & Drivers

The one place I loaded on the scale, I was pulling a short tall trailer that could only be legally loaded to 73k. They loaded me up to 81.5k and claimed not to know. "I should have told them." Then they called the boss when I left and told him that I didn't tarp it. Too bad for them the other driver was pulling in when I was pulling out and saw that it was tarped (of course it was tarped, all the corn would blow out otherwise, duh.)

 

I would have called them back and told them to make a doctors appointment and get their eyes checked.

 

Pardon me while I wipe the drool off my keyboard....

 

Ain't that the truth,RW. You are my hero,Jfaulk99,can i please,please come over and haul for ya,i will promise to not hit anything

 

Wow, what an interesting couple of days out here in the wide spaces... Seems like I'm having some serious lousy streak of luck when it comes to getting loaded! They can't all be this bad (or maybe I was just luckier before.....)

I wound up parking in a small town in mid-TX early this morning, only place I could find was a local fuel storage or ? with 24 hour lighting and a sign that said "If you can see this sign, you are being recorded on camera". Being it was also the only place I could turn around after driving all the way through town - I parked off to the side (in front of the cameras) and made the best of my "10 hour rest period".

The interesting parts of my day are scrambled like me right now, but let me see if I can get some of this out for the amusement of others.

Now for Chapter 2 (or maybe 56) of the loading fiascos sub-thread! I get my reload info today, and call the place to get directions. They consist of 2 separate addresses - one for the scale - and one for loading........

The lady on the phone even tells me that the 2 addresses are only about 2 miles apart and drivers tend to freak out a little about it. (Yeah lady, they're in different zip codes!) It's a truck, not a helicopter!!

So I drive on over and scale - a 123 mile deadhead cutting straight through metro Houston on a busy day. Even saw a Columbia and Dry Van flopped over on a barrier wall on the passenger side - complete with a crew trying to unload the trailer (and the ensuing traffic), had to skip my exit and circle back. This one topped the tractor burned to the ground I saw on the way in - even the wheels were gone! You would've thought it was a railcar if it weren't for the axles and engine.

Then I drive to the loading location, which was a total adventure around the Houston airport! It was probably 5 miles from the scale to the WAREHOUSE they load from. This "short trip" was like a drivers test course - all of the turns were tight - wide intersections screwed up with sharp corners adorned with utility poles. One of my turns had the left turn lane blocked off, another had a utility pole being replaced due to it's proximity to the street. There was even a wooden pole leaning so far over that it would've probably hit the windshield if I didn't change lanes in a hurry! All this made the mirrors instead of the front page.

So.... the warehouse..... I turn onto this narrow, torn up asphalt 1.5 lane dead end street thinking - this had better be the place or I'm screwed! There are chain link fences to the edge of the asphalt, and none of them are open anymore because all the buildings are empty. The other side of the asphalt is crumbling into a 3 foot deep V trench. I probably should've just taken a picture of the place, but here goes.

Looking at the place from the street, I was just dumb-founded. There was a gate that opened about 40 feet wide, and the concrete yard was filled with trucks torn apart, shipping containers on chassis, and about 4 guys working on a Chevy Malibu with a few tools - and most of them were hammers (they were using a forklift as a floor jack). Out of the 2 large doors, one was totally blocked, and the other was a blind side back at an odd angle, around shipping containers.

So I walk up to the "office", step inside, and it looks like the leftovers from a yard sale - folding table, a few folding chairs, a dirty old torn up couch with a guy sleeping on it, and a 5 year old boy trying to keep his quiet (and his sanity). I must've woke the guy, he looks at me and says "they get you loaded?". I said no, I'm out on the street - and he replied check with the guy in the loader.

The loader takes about 10 minutes to notice me standing in the building (I look pale in the place, and I'm wearing a red hat). He's been in the process of standing containers up and dumping them on the floor with a large loader - the entire place is just a pile of meal! He tells me it'll be a few, and gets back to work. 45 minutes goes by, and I see him drag the container out the door - in I go. After 6 G.O.A.L.s I manage to make it in the door without customizing anything, and they get to work.

An hour goes by, them asking me to back and pull forward (loading from a belt, when there's a loader right there). And the guy tells me I'm done, and then asks if I have gauges..... I check the gauges and tell the man I'm overweight - he says naaaaaah. My gauges have been off before, and for some reason I head back over to the scale across town.

To find out I'm 2,200 pounds overweight on my drives, and I don't have much fuel on board (1/8 tank). I weigh in at 81,800 - and found out later their scale was light - so back across town I go. Blind side back into the place again - but they were good enough to re-arrange some of the equipment to present new challenges this trip. After dumping off what looked like 3,000 pounds of meal - back to the scale to confirm it and get the heck out of dodge.

When I pulled into the next Cat scale I found, I had room for a whopping 400 pounds of fuel...... So I checked with other drivers about weigh stations and overloaded the truck some with fuel. This is going to be an interesting 1,100 mile trip to the northern tip of Indiana (the weather reports look ridiculous) with room for about 60 usable gallons of fuel. I'll probably be stopping every 3 to 4 hours all the way through (which just isn't my style at all). To end the night, I did manage to find the only decent parking spot in 100 miles!

Thanks for letting me vent, and sharing the trip - my wife has heard too much already! I keep telling myself it's got to get better, because worse hasn't got much room (or I'm going to start refusing some loads!).

Hope everyone rolls safe out there, and gets better than this for work!

 

geeesh!,HwyPilot,i'm tired after just reading that,what a day! makes me kinda proud of having my little ''day cab'' and local feed mills to haul into and out of! you deserve a good nights sleep after a day like that. good luck getting to Indiana

 

What were you picking up

Scrap metal it sounds like from that account. I thought Highway Pilot was using Eclipse for brokering and they were primarily in food grade product. I must be wrong about that and they'll move anything that goes in a hopper.

I'm up here in west and central MI and right now it's snowing pretty good. I don't know what Highway Pilot is seeing out there but I hope he's rested alright. Weather has not been conducive of late across those lanes. I guess he'll go to 55 then jig over to 65 at some point. Nashville is showing light snow. He's heavy for those hills through TN..., but hopefully the road will be dry.

 

I wouldn't haul scrap metal in a hopper. He said it was meal of some kind though.