The Big Boys

My first monfort was a character. BOOOM he blew my doors off. I stood on mine. Caught up to him actually.

He smiled waved and then lowered the hammer. GONE.

UPGRADE loaded Fancy Gap. I didnt have anything left other than to take two gears down and he walked away laughing.

I did not know anything about them then.

I should have run the west, maybe I have some room to really get up and go then eh? I would have hurt myself.

 

I pulled a lot of Monfort loads back in the mid 90's. Use to work for Transtar before AmeriTruck bought them out. They also bought out Monfort too, before AmeriTruck went bankrupt.

Sad end to the legend of Monfort

 

Transtar of Baltimore maybe? Or just a yard?

I took a road trip in one of their eagles once. A team, spouse team tested me together. It was intense. The odo on that thing was theoratical I cannot remember what they said but it had close to 3 million on it they claimed. The transmission sounded just like a steel bucket of ice, bolts and slop shaking with a lid on top. rattle shakey roar, grind.

When you got down to the spooling down of RPM to downshift it had a very special rattle just like a kid running a stick on a picket fence. TICKTICK TICK T I C KKKKK TIV CCCCC KKKKKKKKKKKK gawd that clutch felt like it was sitting on a foot of sponge.

\And a ten speed road ranger to boot. How am I supposed to cross the box from say 5th low to 6th high or 6th high to 5th low if I cannot feel the sloppy gate or find the clutch.

The road trip was successful. But I think they figured I made too much griping about that particular truck, it would not have been a good marriage.

 

Transtar out of Etters PA...on the outskirts of Harrisburg. Main terminal was up in Wisconsin somewhere...I think it was Madison?

But yeah, that's some memory you got there X. I forgot all about the blueberry International Eagles they had...LOL. I drove around in a Freight Shaker. Wound up with a Lynn Volvo truck later on when AmeriTruck bought them out too. I wound up doing a lot of meat loads for them. Use to pickup Monfort loads all the time. I think they had a big cattle slaughter house up in Colorado somewhere back then. I hated picking up loads at the slaughter house. Use to also pick up loads at the slaughter house in Wyalusing PA at Taylor Packaging too. Smelled like death everywhere.....

 

There is a slaugher house in Greely CO, That one treats hides in addition to harvesting bone, hoofs and everything for a large variety of useful things such as medicines we take (Ugh...) carbon black for gardening (Ground and burnt bones for ground) and so on. Hides, the good ones stayed true to our domestic boots and clothing. The less good got exported. Usually Eagle Pass Texas to Mexico.

The hides are process in a vat house. I think if I remember right it's a long house with about 10 vats. Hides come in, blood, fat, nerves, vessals and scrapings taken off, then soaked in different vats until either you have domestic hides or export hides. One or the other it will be useful. In the summertime though, you will learn how to kill flies by the ton inside your truck and realize that there are more that has bred maggots and more flies hidden in the dark crevices of your tractor. A big pair of bug bombs in glass pyrex dishes on steel plate against heat plus 4 hours takes care of that hooey. You will be sweeping out dead bugs for a week. Make sure you get them all over every inch of that cab interior. Nature has a way of sending armies to help process the dead inside and around you. Potentially discovering you a source of plump pink hosting for blood to drink and lay eggs inside your skin and hair.

There is another in Fort Collins CO. This one is for Hogs in addition to cattle. Cut, load to order. If Port of New Orleans wanted say 48000 pounds of center cut steak one inch, it will take about three days to cut, chill, pack and weigh, document to order specific then loaded to floor of trailer to about 550 boxes or so. All of it is pretty much either getting exported from the USA or sold in the local New Orleans downtown. It's really good quality meats. Generally insitution packed in large plastic rolls in bulk, say 70 to 110 pounds each then boxed. I forget the exact format, but if it is center cut steak, it's individually packed.

You learn to wait a while in the bullpen. I spent my time on the side road near the shop to the south and west two blocks over. That shop featured a very very big dog that equals any man in weight. When that thing barks at night and goes after a intruder. That one is not going to make the fence in time. By day that dog is great company and easy to pass the time near the wood stove. Although it's head on your knees gets heavy after a number of hours. But shop talk and local gossip passes the time easily enough between resting naps storing up the power you need to be in New Orleans straight through from Fort Collins about 1400-1500 miles run in about 22 hours flat. Maybe 20 if you are able to run a non governed truck on paper logs. Boom you are there on day two. Call it 11 hours 8 hours bunk and another 11 should put you right there downtown or very close to Hammond. for 8 more hours.

In the old days of paper logs you could run 5 and 5 until your 70 burned up. But that has been unfortunately and sadly abolished. What fools are our lawmakers. No more BS splits and mandatory stops that rob your ability to keep moving and put the miles away. I cannot stand to stop 30 minutes because the law says so. Why? All i can think of is that I aint 30 miles further down the road. That's stressful.

Throw in Garden City KS and Liberal OK (Which is a mighty meat plant seriously National in scale. Something like thousands of cattle killed daily) I recall bullhaulers running hell bent for leather above Denver, 80 miles sign saying check gas, no services. Or was it 76 miles. Who cares. Yer late, get going.

MN and so on have hams and related product. Searcy AR has Land of Frost for lunch meats etc. One visit inside that place I learned not to buy their product where possible. Esskay is Baltimore downtown I don't know if the stockyards and processing plant is still active. In my day you walked past mountains of lunch meats and bologna laying on the tables end by the ton waiting to be packed in those round containers along with hotdogs etc. You are not exactly sanitary. IF that causes you to cutback or cut down on the meats, I apologize. Just cook them really well, you should be ok as long you understand that they take time to shut down once a week to clean the chopping knives and sanitize the tables under pressure to reopen the plant and get back to new production.

Anyway there is also Dumas Texas and a few other plants in what I call the meat triangle that serves the entire United States. There are regional powers such as Carolina Hogs and Swine related to say Smithfield and Delaware perdue chickens along with Arkansas Tyson Chicken. There are other parts of the USA that feature different animals in speciality for meats like Turkey and so on. Chesapeake Bay for Seafood, Alaska for Salmon and King Crab and so on.

There is a special kind of Meat FFE ran with I think May Trucking if I remember right. Those trailers have roof racks to run swinging beef. That is one type of trucking that you will not find stupid newbies. It takes a very special hand to control a tractor trailer intent on flopping over or swinging beef hanging one frozen ton at a time times 20 or god only knows how many hung from the roof of your trailer going to Chicago or Omaha. That is one particular type of reefer load I work really hard not to haul. I prefer to haul salt, say knee high on pallets so that you can roll that trailer making time on the curves.

 

Makes you kinda wonder how sanitary them reefer trailers we're. Meat loads always had blood spills all over the place. I don't think no amount of trailer washing would ever fully clean and disinfect them trailers. Looked like a murder scene just happened when you saw all that blood leaking out of the trailer when it was being washed....

 

Before deregulation and FMCSA trucking was a fun job. You could go 100mph and not get a ticket if you had a pilot license. And drivers got respect.
So I've heard.

 

I wouldn't know nothing about that...lol. My truck was governed around 62 mph. They gave you $500 bonus a month if you kept it under 57 mph. That was when 55 mph was the norm on the east coast. I only worked east of the Mississippi river. Once AmeriTruck took over, I started heading out west a lot more. Scared the crap out of me how fast everybody was going. I felt like that old man you see on the road driving under the speed limit, causing a traffic jam.....