11-2-06 - Thursday - On the road again,

I should be getting back on the road this afternoon. The guy I'm going out with is leasing his truck today so hopefully by late this afternoon we will have a load and get going. I'm not going to take everything that I took with me before. I figure I will only be out for about 6 days max so I don't need to bring everything. That said, something will probably go wrong and I'm be screwed with out my boots and other stuff I'm leaving back here in my car. Oh well, we will see.

I will try to get to an internet connection sometime later this week, but if not, I should be back here by next Wednesday at the latest, Tuesday evening would be even better and I'll be able to update the Blog and check my email at that time.

11-1-06 - Wednesday - Gotta Go Back Out,,,

I'm back in Salt Lake City now. My screwball CAT first seat told me that I was ready for my lease and dropped me off in Dallas, TX yesterday. I could have waited for a truck to take me back to Salt Lake, but I decided that I wasn't going to waste time waiting for that or a ride on the Grey Dog, (Greyhound Bus), so I got a flight out of Dallas, TX to Salt Lake last night. I went to CRE this morning and found out that I still needed about 7 days in the CAT program. Ouch! I thought I was done. Oh well.

First, a little detail about the past day or so. We left out of Denver Sunday afternoon and I drove out east on 70 and then south on 287 towards Dallas. I got to within about 150 miles of our first of two deliveries on this trip by about 1100 pm. I went to bed and my First Seat drove the rest of the way. Well, at about 0330 he woke me up and was asking me to help him with directions to the delivery point. We had directions on the Qualcom to the customer, but they weren't very clear. They were perfectly clear when you looked at the map. I struggled to wake up and did a little map reading, (something he could have done if he wasn't busy asking me to help him), and found the correct routing. We were only about 20 miles out of the way, thank goodness. So much for a good nights sleep. I napped for a bit while the first half of our meat load was unloaded, but it wasn't good sleep. At about 900 am I started driving again.

We stopped a few times on the way down to our second drop in San Antonio and I used the direction on the Qualcom and a call to the customer to find the customer. It was even dark, and in the middle of an industrial park. I found it. It's amazing how easy this job is if you have half a brain. My co-driver was in the sleeper watching TV. I didn't bother him to help me find the place, I just used my half a brain and had no problem.

We ended up parking on the street outside the customer for the night. The customer didn't take any early deliveries. Oh well. That's how it happens sometimes. I did get a good nights sleep.

A side note now. My co-driver got a call from his ex-girlfriend that he has two children with ages 18 months and 3 years. Turns out that after being separated for about 6 months, they want to get back together. Another little detail, his ex-girlfriend is 5 months pregnant with someone elses baby. Wierd. He was on the phone with her for hours.

I woke at about 530 am when the dock manager came around to all the parked trucks to line us up and assign us dock doors. My co-driver woke me up by telling me I had to back up into the dock because he was too tired to back the truck. I told him it wasn't my turn to drive. He bitched some more, but I didn't change my tune. I was in the middle of my 10 hours of rest. He bitched some more. I didn't care. I went back to sleep and listened as my co-driver scraped the trailer landing gear on the bump in the driveway leading to the docks. I had seen this bump with scrapes and chunks out of it the previous evening and told him about it. He would need to go over it at an angle to avoid scraping the landing gear on it. He didn't listen. I don't care.

On Tuesday morning my co-driver decided that he wanted to go home to Oklohoma to get his girlfriend. He told me I was ready to lease a truck and that I could catch a ride out of Dallas to Salt Lake on another truck or maybe a bus. I elected to fly instead. That's how I got back here to Salt Lake City.

I was sure to tell CRE about how scary it was to ride with my co-driver. Tailgating, speeding, space management, and a total lack of driving sense. They said that the previous second seat driver with him had said the same thing and had even stated that he thought he was "going to die". My only concern is that CRE sent me out with him after hearing this. Serious concern. I guess they waited to hear it from two drivers so they could see that it was not just a personality conflict, it was a real issue. They told me that he was now not "elligible" for a second seat CAT. At least no one else will be subjected to the near death experience that I was. My only continuing concern is that he is on the road driving and so is my family and to that extent so is everyone elses. I hope he doesn't hurt anyone.

So here I am. Tomorrow I'm going to meet a friend at 200 pm at CRE and we will get on the road. The guy I am going to finish my second seat CAT time with was in my initial training class but he got finished a bit earlier than I did because he had previous experience. I like and trust him, so it should be a good 6 or 7 days. I hope we just get a load going east and then another one going west again. That should get me back to Sal Lake to lease my truck next week sometime. So close, yet so far. I am really looking foward to getting out on my own.

Time to relax and get ready for tomorrow.

10-29-06 - Sunday - Back HOME!!!

I am back home in Denver! That's right. It's only for a day because our load dowesn't have to be in Dallas until Monday morning, but this is the first time I have been home in 8 weeks.

To recap the week, my CAT first seat picked me up in Mira Loma, CA on Satruday morning and we picked up a load going to Salt Lake City. My first seat CAT is a 22 year old driver that has been leasing his truck for about 2 months. He sort of knows what he is doing, but it's kind of like we are dumb and dumber running the truck. He doesn't follow the CRE policies too much which is frustrating to me because as a new driver I am pretty much by the book. I want to do things the right way before I start cutting corners. So the week has been pretty tense for me as I try to keep my mouth shut about doing things right and not blowing things off. I only have about one more week on the truck with him, so I think I can make it. He says he will try to drop me off in Salt Lake City by Friday or Saturday. That would be great. Then I can lease my own truck and start rolling and making my own money. Right now I'm only making 11 cents a mile for all the miles the truck is rolling. Not much, but it's the experience that matters. Well, enough about that.

We got to Salt Lake City late Saturday night and dropped our trailer and picked up another one going to Rock Island, IL. I started driving about 0300 Sunday morning in western WY on I-80. It was fine for about 65 miles then we hit fog, then a little ice on the road, then alot of black ice and other slippery stuff on the road. YUCK! We sat for about an hour while a flipped over semi truck was cleared from the road and then slowly made our way down the road. At Larimie, WY, the roads cleared up nicely and it was smooth running from there on. I hit the bunk after my driving shift and when I woke we were at our delivery point. We didn't have a reload yet, so we both rested till morning when we got a load out of Wenona, IL. It was about an hour and a half run down to Wenona and when we got there we picked up our load going to Hershey, PA. It was a load of chocolate or something. We ran through Chicago and I got a shower along the way. We were running pretty much ahead of schedual, so when I stopped driving at 2300, we just parked it and we both slept till morning. My co-driver drove all day tuesday to our delivery point and then I started driving to our reload point that was only about 20 miles away in another town near Hershey, PA. The problem was that the directions we got took us through the town itself. Bad, very BAD! We should have stayed on the highway, but we followed the Qualcom directions. We had to go under a bridge that was only 13'6". There was probably only about a hairs clearence. When we did get to the pickup point the guard at the gate wouldn't let us in with the trailer we had. It smelled like onions and garlic. I guess Hersheys doesn't want their chocolate smelling like that. So I had to drive about 12 miles down the road to a truck washout place and then go back to the customer. OK, the truck got washed out, but it still smelled and they wouldn't take it. Back to the truck wash and this time we put our own soap in the trailer before they sprayed it out. The customer finally let us in with the trailer and we picked up and I drove down I-81 to where I-40 intersects with it and we headed west. I stopped driving at about 0700 and gladly went to bed.

OK, now the interesting part. We were in western Arkansas when we got a message to go to Miami, OK and trade loads with another driver. I was driving and it was about 2200 when we got the message to trade loads. We got some directions that made it seem like it wasn't that far away, but it took about 4 hours to get to where they were supposed to be. We exited at the exit that we were told to, but the other truck wasn't there. We drove around for over an hour in the middle of the night in a tiny OK town. Finally we say a CRE truck at a rest area on the highway near the exit we got off at. We were behind the rest area with about 200 yards of field between us and the rest area. The highway was a toll road, so we weren't going to get back on it and try to circle around to get to the rest area, it was over 30 miles to the next exit to turn around. So, I grabbed my flashlight and took off through the field. I bang on the truck for about 5 minutes before they woke up and I told them to meet us at the Super 8 motel near where we were off the highway. They had their CB turned off, they weren't answering the Qualcom calls we were making to them, and they didn't give dispatch their cell phone number. Dumb, very dumb.

We got the load from them and headed to Phoenix, AZ. They got our load going to Redlands, CA. I drove for a while longer and it was time for bed. What a night. I started driving again in Alberquerqe, NM and took us to Phoenix. It was uneventful. We got to Phoenix at about 0300 in the morning and dropped our trailer and grabbed an empty one. We didn't get a reload till morning and it was to trade trailers with another driver in Phoenix and head to Loveland, CO. We did that and headed back where we came from up the 76 and across the 40 to Alberqureqe, NM. Between the two of us driving, we hit Loveland, CO at 0800 in the morning on Saturday. Our pick up was at Ft. Morgan and it was going to Dallas. It has plenty of time to get there, so we decided to overnight in Denver. That's how I got home. I have about 5 hours left here with my family, so I'm going to get visit with them some more. I hope to be back here in a week and half or so with my own truck for some much needed home time.