What 40,000$ Looks Like

I don't care for that Black mtn either....The 1 on 64 is bad too, Seems like the ones out west are Longer, But not as hard on the truck..Except that S.O.B in Wyoming on us hwy 16 from Meadowlark lake to Buffalo...

How I got down that thing safely is beyond me...... No wonder I didn't see any other Semi's during that whole stretch.. I DO NOT recommend even the most experienced hands run that road..I Thought I was saving Time instead of running back up to billings then across. I loaded in Greybull

 

When I joined Marten back in April they were saying 1 year OTR experience was required. They may have lowered the standards since then.
Either way,Swift,Western Express,CRE and Carolina Cargo must be breathing a sigh of relief right now because it wasn't one of their trucks involved.

 

Signal Mountain in TNs not a fun one to go over either or didnt used to be anyway. Skinny two lane with switchback curves. I had to take a load of Railroad Crossties to a building supply place on top of the mountain. Had an old Brockway without a jake brake. To climb the mountain, youd go up a while, then back down, then back up some more until you got to the top. Fun Fun.

 

Gee I hope this doesn't cut into Randy's Harley collection or next African safari .

 

Who's Randy?

Oh Lemme guess, The owner of this Marten....

 

What happened to Don, did he retire? He used to advertize for drivers on T.V. talking about he was a driver before he was an owner so he knows what drivers go through.

 

A reasonably intelligent driver doesn't need a trainer. I never had one outside of running with someone to show me the route, customers, company specific freight, and to see that I actually did know how to drive. Never had a trainer teaching me to drive except that two hours of up and down some city streets in CDL school.

The fact is that some drivers will benefit from a good trainer, some will never learn from even the best trainers, and some will never need a trainer. That's just life.

40,000 sounds about right. Most of those wreckers are probably billing out at about 500 an hour. 5 wreckers at 500 an hour for 14 hours is 35,000. Some of them may have been a little more, some a little less, there may have been some cleanup charge, an incident commander charge, and a transporting charge to tow the wreck back to the yard, so 40k sounds just about right.

 

Yeah Randy Martin ...lol...mondovi terminal full of his trophy's .

 

I bet I remember that toll booth now. You probably ended up the last ridge prior to Lexington where it meets with 81. You came out of West Virginia most likely on 64 crossing Sandstone Mountain and then White Sulphur Springs which is a historical driver and truck killing mountain and valley combination. There is a lodge style truckstop on the side of that hill you can visit and enjoy a meal as you learn it's history.

As it so happens there is Greenbrier Hotel not far from there. It has the abililty to at one time during the Cold War until the 80's Walker Navy Spy case blew it's total cover. to Hold the entire US Congress and our Leadership plus Supreme court in time of Nuclear attack. There is or was (Most likely is now...) a special train under very blackwatch type secret agent gaurds waiting at or in a siding not far from Downtown DC Union Station to collect Congress and ship em into West Virginia asap.

There is another facility called Raven Rock 6 miles west of Camp David near Thurmont Maryland ( I went to green top camp there as a counsler two years running and specialized in overland compass heading and distance by dead reckoning which takes our group along one of Camp David's Fencing next to or very near the 6 Cabins they maintain for the public to reserve a week at a time to spend a vacation there if they so choose. But it takes time to make it all happen due to BG checks and so on. That particular forest grouping is one of my favorite places in the USA due to the beauty and wilderness offering all sorts of deer to shoot and so on. Raven Rock is a pure command facility for nuclear war. Nothing else. There is a old Fort Richie under a massive granite caprock not far from the National Fire Training Center in a place called St Mary's or Emmisville Maryland I think it's called (Spelling is off) They are deemed obselete because newer Soviet Satan SS-N-19's can penetrate that caprock and incinderate everyone under it. (Capacity is 3000 persons for months after a all out nuclear exchange) It's not much of a secret anymore thanks to the cursed walker case back in the 80's There is a special mountain in West Virginia that is absolutely a secret, Even the name Mount Weather does not specifically point to it. Google Maps have it blanked out as it should be except there is two rail lines that go into there.

Anyhow... It's not too difficult to go from trucking a local historical area of great interest to drivers to a thought towards a cold war won but on verge of losing to a rising Russian Federation that is absolutely more focused than our own Congress is these days.

I watched last afternoon on thurs from 12:50 EST to approx 3:30 est a total and complete double line of all 187 Democrats including Minority whip and Nancy Peloski all repeating one question to the house speaker wasting everyon'e time and essentially paralyzing our Congress for a few hours asking one simple question to bring a gun bill to the table that which has not yet made it out of committee and cannot be brought to the table. You think those ######## in Congress will know better. They Do. But they intend to raise hell until they get what they want like a petulant and bad baby demanding a candybar with sugar from a harrased hired help until they get tired and give in and quit. Speaker should have gaveled the house into recess. I know I would.

Anyway. New River Gorge is also along that route if I am not mistaken. It is one of the highest bridges in the USA at close to 900 feet above the gorge below. Previous to it's construction it took an hour by train to cross that gorge a few miles or two hours by car or horse to cross that gorge. Now it takes about a minute if that to cross thanks to the engineers who designed and built that 9th wonder of the free world. Consider the washington Monuement at 560 feet tip to grass below the bridge is almost twice as high on that interstate.

Finally not not last. You have what is called Blair Mountain in West Virginia formerly known as Ginseng Mountain prior to 1900. There was a revolt there a uprising against certain authorities which eventually involved the US President when he sent in the National Gaurd to do battle and restore order. If I remember correctly, they are getting ready to completely and utterly remove about half the mountain itself to uncover a coal seam source that will probably last a few hundred years to mining. There is quite few of the People committed to never seeing that mountain removed for that purpose. We have as a Nation sometimes such Hubris and capability using very large CAT equiptment, some of the largest in the world availible to us to make it happen. The tires on some of the equiptment being built are so big, that if they ever blew out, a man standing nearby or aboard the equiptment is expected to be ejected and sent to approximately 12,000 feet above the ground level which would be around 16,000 feet in which time the negative air tempartures combined with approximatley 30% of availible sea level air levels will render him unconsious before his final fatal drop.

Anyways that's quite enough of my rambling about I 64. There is quite a bit of more information availible to the area, especially when you consider the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad that runs Tide Coal East to Richmond and eventually Norfolk for export to Europe back in the 50's There is also a logging railroad called Cass Scenic Railroad that at one time was a working logging outfit feature some of the largest Shay engines ever built in the Free World for service on those grades.

I was taken to Cass as a 14 year old and we spend half a day grinding upgrade first through a series of 10-14% switch backs until we reached Spruce And then after a nice break on the ground up there enjoying the cool scenery I found myself standing next to one of the brakemen working our passenger gondola's maual brake wheel in coordination with the engine's braking and every car had a brakeman also on his brake wheel to manage the individual cars collectively as a whole train to protect the Passengers and engine from what would be a run away on the 14% grades that are too steep for a human to think about walking on without falling in places.

That was my first taste of mountain work in gravity, braking power, engine power against the tonnage of our train (approximately 60 tons per car times 7 cars and two cabooses which I think was 20 ton each for a total of about 600 ton) against the 14% grade. The Engine was probably about 250 ton by itself and generated around 6000 horsepower and huge amounts of tractive effort (The equivlant of torque) to apply against the weight of the train downgrade in addition to it's air braking systems, there was again a man on every car in the train manning a manual brake wheel at all times, tightening and loosening according to what was going on in the couplers between them in tension and in slack out of tension.

I recieved an education that day. By the time we got to Cass and back in our car to go home I was committed to making a adult life working in the mountains in one form or another. Trucking provided that. And half of my family provided another knee length jackboot to cause me to go into trucking as sort of up yours against them all. No one tells me what i can or cannot do. lol.

 

I had forgotten about randy marten. It's amazing recalling his outfit. Wasnt he some kind of big pooh bah NASCAR God or something at one time?