Posted by admin on Nov 8, 2008 in
Where Am I? Okay… so we’ve done the Atlanta, GA to LA run… then we got a FedEx run from LAX to Fort Worth, Texas which we delivered this morning… anyone want to guess where we’re heading on our next load at 1600 local? Yup… apparently my Freight Manager (FM) has been reading my blog and thinks because I don’t like LA traffic I need more practice… we’re heading right BACK to LA with this load!
OY VAY!!
Back and forth, forth and back, make up my damn mind! ROFLMAO
Oh well, at least this way I get to know I20 out of Dallas and I10 the rest of the way very well!
Posted some new pics up on Flikr…
Posted by admin on Nov 7, 2008 in
Where Am I? Well, got out of Wisconsin okay and trucked it on down to Atlanta, Georgia without much adoo. Our next load was at the docks in Atlanta (actually Garden Park, GA) headed to LA. Yup, another LA trip to land of the fruit and nuts! Only this was a “hot” load… meaning don’t spare the fuel, hammer down, run as hard as you can to get there because there is ZERO (0, nill, null, noting, nada) time on this load… it’s already been sitting for 15 hours and MUST be there by 0900 on the 6th or there’ll be hell to pay!
So we blasted across I20 through Georgia, Alabama, Luisana, Mississippi, and Texas to the I10 across New Mexico, Arizona and into California… arivving at the 90 dead on time… only to be told it WASN’T 0900…it was 1900 hours!! The shipper screwed up and missed the “1” in the time…dumb-asses!
So we sat around in LA all day today, hit the local truck stop for a decent sit-down meal (BTW our fridge died…those college style small fridges just can’t handle the rough roads in a truck!), did the shower thing, refueled and I pulled into the 90 at 1830… got unloaded in about 45 minutes and then headed to our next assignment.
LAX
Let me tell you…when you hear horror stories of the 405, and the 605… add to those the 110 and the 105, they’re JUST as bad, if not 10000000000000000 times worse in a truck!!
Manged to get in here, drop our trailer and backed into the one we’re taking… to Dallas / Fort Worth, due Saturday (the dispatch says “NO MORE THAN 30 HOURS FROM DEPARTURE”)
By the way… if you ever wonder who’s the worst truck drivers out here… it’s not Schneider, it’s not even really Swift… it’s FedEx drivers that drive the fastest, balls-to-the-walls. I know…I’ve seen their “training grounds” at LAX!!!
Posted by admin on Nov 4, 2008 in
Where Am I? Sat along-side the road for about another half hour when night Monkey calls…give us a different PO number… instead of XXXX-004, try XXXX-002. Rolled back to the 01… they’re happy now, ‘cept got put back to the end of the line waiting for a door. They came and got us about an hour later and took 20 MINUTES to load us! They were slamming pallets into us so fast and hard I thought they were going to shove us off the dock… I think there were two lift operators working us as the pallets slamming in were too quick for just one!
Anyways, bailed out of Milwaukee, WI around 0130 and rolled to Gary, IN where I turned it over to co-driver. He ran us all day and passed it back to me in Kentucky and I drove it down to Hardeeville, SC where we sit about 20 miles out of the 90. Got a pre-plan picking up in Atlanta going to Riverview, CA ASAP… Dispatch wants us unloaded in the morning (they don’t open until 0800) as quick as possible as this Atlanta load needs to be there Thursday (it’s already loaded sitting in a trailer waiting).
On a related note, co-driver informed me this morning that I WON’T have my miles before he has to turn his truck in on 12/13, I’ll still be about 7k short… gave me the option of staying on until then and then trying to find another co-driver to finish my TNT, or step off of the truck next week to find one (that way he can run a CDL student through before giving up the truck and taking his 45 days vacation and getting his Cascadia after the first of the year).
So once again, I’m gonna have to slut myself out to find a co-driver to finish me up…. <sigh> I think I’ll step off next week as my odds of finding a TNT driver should be better than the two weeks before Christmas?
Saw a really bad accident about mm (mile-marker) 48 in South Carolina on I95 at the rest area I WAS going to pull into… from what I could tell a Ford Explorer was either coming into the rest area too fast, or they (for whatever reason) wandered too far to the right (fell sleep maybe?) and slammed into four or five cars parked AT the rest area then bounced into the trees between the highway and rest area. To say there wasn’t much left of the explorer is an understatement, and there were at least a half dozen ambulances and another four or five fire trucks all at the entrance to the rest area. NOT pretty at all!
That’s about all from the road…