When the parent’s away…the teenager will…sleep?? 0223hrs
Been another busy couple of days… got our load into LA (Walnut, CA a suburb of LA actually) without incident… ran into a bit of an issue with the reciever however; by policy, when we bump a dock, the first thing the driver is supposed to do is turn off the refer unit. See the way those things work is that they blow cold (or hot!) air through a canvas “tube” along the roof to the rear of the trailer, where it sinks to the slotted floor to be returned to the refer unit and reconditioned. When you open the back doors (as in when docked) it just blows that conditioned air into the dock area, and subsequently sucks the warm dock air in through the floor of the trailer, thus making the refer run harder and warming up the product quicker.
BUT…
The dumpass receivers only know that if the refer isn’t running, it must not be cooling thier product, hence…hissy fit! So this receiver says the product is ruined (a load of Tropicana orange juice) that was to be maintained at 32 degrees (BUT keep from freezing the Bills Of Laden – BOL say! ROFLMAO)… they claimed that because we bumped the dock at 1400 hours, and they couldn’t be bothered to start unloading us for an hour and a half with the refer NOT running, the product must be ruined. Well…we had their dock dork call Prime’s honchos to get things straightened out…hence the customer pulled the product off the truck and check it again… ‘magine that…right at 32 degrees where it’s supposed to be!
Anyways… we bugged outta there in a hurry and headed up to the Frieghtliner of LA to have them look at our driveshaft (front one of the two)… it’s starting to rust where the yolk connects to the driveshaft, making us nervous that it might puke the shaft going down the road.
Once we got there, we had already gotten our next load assignement (picking up in Earlimart, CA north of Bakersfield…however LA Frieghtliner couldn’t see us until late the next day… AFTER our scheduled pick-up time.
Well, we blew off the driveshaft (hoping like hell!) and scooted north to the next load… we arrived at the 0900 appointment time, got our load going to Manteno, IL due Friday at 0700. Because we needed to go Northeast of LA, we back-tracked to catch I15 our of Cali going into Nevada and Colorado.
Man what a ride! In the space of 24 hours I went from LA, through the Mojave desert, through Death Valley (where the dash temp computer said it was 117 outside the truck!) to Vail and Denver Colorado!
BTW…let me backup a minute and say the drive out of LA to Earlimart was friggin awesome too! Leaving LA on I10 North, you have to go through this wicked winding, mountainous terrain know to truckers as Grapevine. It’s one of the place truckers “cut thier teeth” sort-to-speak because it’ll test your nerves with 7% grades, lots of curves and heavy LA traffic. Well, because we were empty, I got to play “super-trucker” and go flying by all the slow-boys loaded and handled Grapevine with ease! Next on the list… Donner’s Pass <gulp>
For some of you dear readers that have been observant… I’ve already posted some pics up to the Flikr account of the journey through the Mojave, Death Valley (passed through Vegas at night which doesn’t photograph worth a shit), then earlier this morning going through Vail, Colorado… breath taking all of it is all I can say… I’ll throw a few pics as a sample below, but make sure you take a look at the entire album!
So… current day… my shift began in Denver where we jumped on I76 North into Nebraska… let me tell you..what a boring, dull, shitty highway that is! Flat, straight and the most exciting thing in all of the barren terrain I could see was a farmer tending his fence with a quad-bike and herding dog while the cows stood there and watched him! <YAWN>
Caught I80 (my old friend!) in Nebraska and headed East into Omaha, NE where I currently sit at the Frieghtliner here in town. My co-driver headed over to his house for some wife time while I watch the load and try to get the truck checked in first thing in the morning.
We’ll head out (pending repair time) around 1800 tomorrow (tonight) for Illinois, or, if the repairs take too long, we’ll hand this load off to another driver to finish up and go from there.
So what’s with the title of the post you ask? Well… with Charles at home, the truck to myself… it’s off to bunk-land for a few hours of shut-eye! I’m too old to party anyways!
EDIT: Update: When we first pulled in here tonight, we thought they were closed. Turns out, we were wrong, they ARE 24/7 and I just talked to a real decent mechanic “Jeff” here who looked at the driveshaft…
“No problem man. That’s just a grease cap that’s rusting… those drive-trains are life-time sealed with grease and where your lease is up in December, I wouldn’t worry about it at all”
Um..OKAY!! WHOO HOOOO! Shot off a text to Charles to let him and know…
