Team starting out with US Xpress

Well, we thought we were getting a new truck tomorrow but they ran out. The entire reefer fleet is getting new trucks as you have to have a catwalk to do a pretrip on the reefer unit. USX eliminated catwalks a couple of years ago on the new trucks so they ordered a couple hundred Cascadias with catwalks and load bar racks. All white so we are going to look different. We are 5000 miles over on our BPM (Oil Change and maintenance) and our batteries are going bad. We cannot shut off the truck. We have an empty reefer trailer we are dropping in Ellenwood GA and then heading over to the Austell Terminal since they can get us in first thing in the morning. If they can get us out quickly we have a Pre-Plan from Ellenwood to Salt Lake City at noon tomorrow I would really like to make. We will see. Should get the new truck in a week or so.

 

Sitting in the Colton Terminal for the night. Had some sushi, got laundry done. Showers for us and a bath for the truck in the morning and then off to Pennsylvania. Dealing with failing electronics all around me. Bad inverter (that is why we carry a spare) Refrigerator is dead, not the freezer, just the refrigerator part, explain that one and the little 12 volt cooler we keep up front that we just bought last week quit. A bunch of food just got thrown out. Need to run to walmart in the morning to replace the reefer.

Still having fun though

 

I have thought of that but if I am going to spend that kind of money it will be for my own truck where I can install the correct wiring and have a 2500 watt inverter

 

Just when you think you know what the plan is.........trucking happens. Driver tech went off at 4 AM telling us to go to the Los Angeles downtown rail yard to pick up an empty reefer trailer for our load to PA No problem, our pick up is not until 2 PM here in Colton. We get up at about 6 AM with plans to get the truck washed, head over to walmart to replace our broken refrigerator and go to breakfast at the Rodeo Cafe. One of our favorite breakfast spots anywhere. Then the DT beeps again with a new preassign. They now want us to head for Watsonville CA for a live load at noon. After over an hour on hold Anne gets through to our Fleet manager to tell him we are going to be hours late for pick up since we still need to get the empty trailer and we are 400 miles away from Watsonville. He says the rail yard is only 55 miles away" Anne says, you have never been to LA, have you? Rush hour in LA, it takes over 2 1/2 hours to get to the rail yard and then we sit for over an hour waiting for our watsonville Load Assignment. I am not driving 350 miles without a load assignment We send message after message and Anne gets cut off on the phone after waiting on hold over 30 minutes. I call and get Jonathan, our old FM He sends the load right away and then we spend some time catching up. Awesome talking to him. We are now rolling up I-5 and heading for Monterey Bay. Love the coast.