It's been a bit since my last post, so I'll try to get everything caught up tonight.
Let's see. Last Tuesday I delivered to the local Toro distributor here in Denver. I got there at 7:00am, just like the directions said to do. Hmmm, interesting. they don't open until 8:00am. I guess the directions are a bit outdated. Anyway, I got docked and unloaded by about 9:30am. Not bad. Next I got direction to pick up a load of pallets at a pallet maker and take them up to a baking soda mine in Rifle, CO. I picked up a loaded trailer and headed up over I-70. It's only about 185 miles to the exit at Rifle, but it's also just about straight up. It took me about 5 hours to get to the Rifle exit and another hour to get the last 40 miles up into the mountains on a small ice and snow covered road to the customer. I got there at about 4:00pm. The sun was low on the horizon and the ice was pretty much a perfect glaze on the road and at the customer. I had to get a running start to get the trailer backed up against their dock. It was up a small incline and the compacted snow and ice made it really hard to get up. I did get docked and then unhooked and drove through about 6 inches of fresh snow to the back of the mine processing building to get an empty trailer to get loaded with 44,000 lbs. of baking soda to haul back to Denver.
I was finally loaded and ready to roll out of the customer at about 6:00pm. I decided that I was going to get back to I-70 before I parked it for the night. There was a Walmart Supercenter there and I wanted to do some shopping. The little two lane dirt road that ran about 10 miles back to where the pavement started again was ok. The dirt had absorbed alot of the melting ice water, so it was ok to drive on. When I hit the last 30 miles of small two lane paved road back to I-70, that was really slippery!
I got back to the Walmart and parked it for the night. There were signs that said "NO TRUCKS", but I just pulled in and parked next to the other trucks ignoring the signs.
I have to tell you that the best thing about my new truck is that I have a DirecTV receiver in it. I put it in when I was home for a few days last week and I love it. All I have to do is find South in the sky and spend about 5 minutes aiming the satellite dish and I have a zillion channels of TV. So much better than hoping for some local broadcast station.
On Wednesday morning I got up at about 5:00am and started driving East to Denver. I got there mid-morning and went to the Pallet company where I had been told to go by my Driver Manager to drop the load of baking soda. When I got there, the owner of the pallet company wanted to know what I was doing. I told him and he said he didn't have any extra room for any dropped trailers that weren't customers. I called my DM and told him this and was told to take the load to the Sapp Brothers truck stop and meet the relay driver. That's fine, but I was a bit irritated that I had to reconnect to the trailer and drag it some place else. I get paid to drive. Paid by the mile, not by the hook and unhook!
I got the load relayed to the other driver and got the empty from him. The next load I had was out of Sterling, CO. That's about 2 hours NorthEast up I-76. I hauled ass out of Denver and got the the customer at about 3:00pm. It turned out I was hauling sugar. They got me loaded pretty quick and I headed to a feed mill about 1/4 mile away to scale the load. Before I even weighed, I knew I was going to be heavy on my drives, so I tried sliding my tandems. No go. That's right. The old trailer I had was not going to let me slide the tandems. I beat on the the locking pins with my hammer and got really dirty fiddling with the pneumatic retracting mechanism, but it didn't matter, they weren't going to move. Oh well. I drove onto the scale and to my delight, I was just legal by about 400 lbs. on my drives. Cool!
I hit the road on some small county roads and back roads working my way down to I-70 so I could head East to Poteau, OK. I made it to Burlington, CO and stopped for the night.
Thursday was for driving. I pretty much just drove all day to Webbers Falls, OK. That was about 60 miles from my delivery point and also my refueling point. I fueled up and got the free shower that I got from Roehl buying 150 gallons of fuel. The shower felt so good! When you are on the road as a solo driver and you aren't lumping freight, you really only need to shower once every 3 days or so. Just be sure you shower before you go home to see your wife or husband. They probably wouldn't understand.
Friday morning I followed the GPS to Poteau, OK. This is a small town with a big bakery facility in it. I guess that's why they needed the sugar. I got docked and unloaded by 8:30am and was headed to Kansas City, KS to the Roehl drop yard there to relay a load back to Denver, CO! Cool!
On the way to to Kansas City I wanted to get my "trips" scanned before 11:30am cst so I would get paid for them by the following Wednesday. I needed to find a Pilot on the way. I tried faxing them and the fax number didn't work. Darn! I thought I found one in Fayettsville, AR, but I got off at the wrong exit and ended up wasting about 30 minutes driving down a 4 lane stop light ridden, shopping center infested road! I finally found the Pilot, thanks to my GPS, and got my "trips" scanned. Scanning is easier is there is a place to do it. I really didn't mind dropping the TriPac envelopes to get paid with CRE. Oh well, just something else to get used to. Did I mention that anything is better than CRE!
I got to Kansas City, KS at about 4:30pm and found the drop yard easily with the directions provided. The trailer I was looking for was there and I got it and headed West on I-70. I got to Junction City, KS and put it to bed for the night. There was a good Chinese Buffet restaurant there, so I had to help myself.
Saturday I raced back to Denver and was there at 3:00pm. My delivery didn't have to deliver until Monday at 8:00am. Oh, what's that? Yes, more home time, and still getting really good miles!
Monday I got up and did the delivery thing at the Toro distributor again. I was second in line, so I didn't get unloaded and clear until about 10:00am. Next I was to go to the Purina factory and grab a load and relay it to Fountain, CO. The only problem was that the load assignment didn't have an address to Purina. It just said Denver. That doesn't work. I finally got directions from my DM and picked up the load and ran it the 88 miles to Fountain, CO. When I got there I found that it was a typical grocery distribution warehouse. My appointment was at 2:30pm. I got there at 1:30pm. I got a door at 2:15pm and was unloaded at 3:00pm. OK, that's all well and good, but unloaded doesn't mean done. They have to "receive" what was unloaded. OK, so receive the stuff already! I didn't get out of there until about 4:30pm, and that was only after being very persistent about the need for me to get moving. I only had 2 pallets on the truck and one of them was only half loaded. Seriously, 4 hours to get it unloaded and counted.
I was to go back to the Pallet company in Denver and get a load going back out to the baking soda mine at 8:00pm, but I called the pallet company and they said the load going to the baking soda mine wasn't going to be ready until 3:00pm on Tuesday. I called my after hours service reps. and told them. They told me to hold tight till tomorrow morning when my DM would be in and figure it out. Fine with me. I dropped the trailer I had about a block from the pallet company and went home! I love this job!
So I'm home and it's time to get a good nights sleep before I go back to the crazyness of driving.
If you aren't reading this at:
http://a-truckers-journey.blogspot.com/
Your should be!
