My Experience with Lone Star Transportation

I'm sitting at the houston yard to drop at the port first thing in the morning, then I have to grab a different flat since mine has another airbag leaking, and load up some pipe heading somewhere in NJ... ugh, ill give anything not to go to NJ.

 

Think I passed a couple of those coming back from GA, it was large diameter coated pipe.

 

Been almost 8 years since I drove for LST, so my memory could be a little off.....but doesn't Houston have a shop? Why not get that leaky airbag replaced while you're sitting there anyway so that you won't have to swap trailers? They aren't that hard to replace...

I've always hated drop & hooks...seems every time I hook to another trailer, I have to waste time fixing problems that should have been addressed by the previous driver or at the very least written up so that the shop could take care of them while it was sitting on the yard.

 

For the most part the mechanic in Houston is the south end of a mule. I would much rather have teeth pulled than deal with him.

 

I know I've swapped airbags out on my tractor on the road with just the tools I carry with me, and it doesn't take more than 20-30 minutes as long as things go right. At the shop with all of the "proper" equipment? Shouldn't be too bad even if the mechanic is a less-than-desirable person to deal with.

Heck, just yesterday I got a call to pick up the slack for a driver who was having mechanical difficulties. I had to hook to a pneumatic tank...and of course, it had a soft tire and NONE of the lights across the back were working. Shop was closed by the time I even got the call, so I was on my own sorting it all out. After loading, I head on across to deliver the load and discover that the aerators on 2 of the 3 hoppers were plugged up...product had back-flowed into them. That was easy enough to deal with, but a hassle nonetheless. Needless to say, while I had HOPED to get home in time to at LEAST catch the end of yesterday's cup race, I tuned in just in time to catch the last 30 seconds of the post-race wrap-up. I was not amused, but it was far from being the worst trailer I've ever had the joy of hooking to.

With my luck, if I tried swapping trailers just to avoid having to deal with a guy in the shop, the trailer I'd get would be in even worse shape and I'd have to spend 5 times as long dealing with that person I was trying to avoid.

 

Thinking of applying to LST...been doing flatbed for a while now otr using a conestoga and that sure limits what you can haul, but sometimes is a blessing in real bad weather!!

 

There's a shop here, but its closed this weekend for some reason. If I had a spare bag I could do it myself, but since I don't have one that takes that idea off the table. So once I'm empty ill just swap trailers so I don't have to wait for it to get fixed.

 

I got to the border around noon today to be greeted by 2 other LS drivers... apparently there was a hell of a storm moving into southern Alberta today. I finished fueling and parked by them.. then hit up the 'ol interwebs and sure enough their due 11 inches throughout the day. So we're all sitting here until tomorrow when it's expected to have blown through.

This load has been unforgiving. I had problems initially with the way this thing was loaded, which i'm still bitter about because it delayed me 2 days, have had electrical issues on this trailer, and aside from shutting down 350 miles out from delivery I received a ticket yesterday at the Fort Collins CO scale for a missing Oversize Load sign on the rear. Apparently between the time I did my pretrip in Longmont and the scale, 30 miles north, a gust of wind (which had been gusting >40mph throughout the previous few days) snapped a few bungee and ripped it off... but the way i'm stacked I didn't see it take off... so after going in and showing my permit and paperwork.. he has me back down the exit ramp to the scale coming in (real safe, lemme tell ya) so I can rescale... then writes me a ticket for 48.50 on a zero point, 0 CSA point citation. Lovely. I'll be happy when i'm done with this load.

 

I'm pretty sure he was banned from the site. But he quit the company within 3 months of starting here for a local position.

 

Colorado has been picking on us this past week or so I think. I got a level 3 empty coming in on 70 from Utah.