It's Official

I'm officially going to Mercer on the 21st of this month. I'm really hoping that this will allowed me to control my schedule a little better. I've got 2 days of Oreintation and then a day of securement training so I don't drop anything heavy on anybody. More later.

I had the most interesting discussion while we were waiting on the bridge to get back into the US from Canada. It was about how to fix the trucking industry. I've got some things to research but the plan is taking shape.

Here's a thing you don't want to happen

I saw the most interesting/disturbing thing on Sunday. I was driving past the Russellville AR scales on I40 (got a green light on the pre-pass) and there was a fully inflated tire on an aluminum rim just a the entrance to the scale. Apparently, minutes before I got there a truck had lost the inside of his drive tires. It came off and rolled into a tanker in front of him. I don't think I need to say that if you're going to lose a tire the entrance to the chicken coop is not the best place to do it. The disturbing part is that he had already lost the outside somewhere back down the road and hadn't noticed.

The other disturbing part was that there was a state trooper down the road that had pulled over two trucks because he thought one of them had lost the wheel (instead of the guy sitting in the coops with 2 wheels missing from a drive axle) When he determined that it was them he cut across 2 traffic lanes in front of me and the 2 cars in front of me without any warning. You've got to wonder sometimes.

Mr Appetites Go Fish Trucking

Haven't posted anything for a while and thought I'd pass along the most interesting trucking company name I've seen in the past year. It was on, I think, a Freightliner and the company name was Mr appetites Go Fish Trucking out of Bakersfield CA. I really wanted to ask the driver about it but he wasn't around. Laughed about that for the rest of the day.

Top 10 Most Dangerous

OK Henry's been bitchiung that I don't update often enough (and that's probably true) so here is the Middle Year Top Ten List:

Ten Most Dangerous Vehicles on the Highway

10. Any type of Uhaul or rental truck
9. City Truck of the daycab variety
8. Any Type of beverage truck (beer/coke)
7. City truck - straight truck
6. RV Transporters (these can be identified by the DOT stickers on the side - alot of them are Horizon Transport)
5. Service trucks. This includes any truck with a service body on it or tradesman type acoutrements hanging off of it.
4. Service trucks towing trailers. See above but also towing a ditch witch or bobcat or whatever. The bigger the item being towed the more dangerous it is.
3. Dump trucks. Most of these guys appear to spend their day talking on their cell phone.
2. RV's. Just because you can afford a $300k Prevost does not mean you should drive it like it's your Lexus.
1. RV's towing a trailer. This applies double to anybody towing a car or boat behind especially when it's a Hummer on the trailer. Apparently that indicates they are so rich that other people must move from the road that they are entitled to.


I hope that satisfies your fix for the next little while. I'm hoping once I get the Treo that I ordered I'll be able to update in a more frequent fashion.

The Trip

So I was coming back from LA and I was taking my time because I picked up on Wednesday and the load didn't have to be in Hopkinsville, KY until Monday. Then they started talking about the ice storm so I started to run for it. It caught me at Friday night at Hinton OK about exit 91 on I40 and I stopped for the night after I had the back end step out on me the second time. Saturday morning I got up and the trucks looked like they were moving down the interstate pretty well.... and they were up until mm200 on the other side of OK City. From mm200 to the 287 was some of thee worst carnage I have ever seen. There were probably 12 or 15 wrecked trucks and so many cars and trucks that I stopped even trying to keep track. On 53' van was torn completely in half with the front part still attached to the tractor. I heard that he had gotten sideways ond another truck drove through it. OKC to the Arkansas line took 5 hours.

I got to the west side of Little Rock about dark and started hearing guys coming the other direction talking about taking 12 hours to get from W Memphis to Little Rock and how there were trucks all over the road at the 161 where the Petro and Pilot are. So I stopped for the night in Conway to give them time to clean things up. I got up the next morning and hadn't gone 10 miles when I got to the Swift truck jackknifed and blocking the entire eastbound side of the interstate. Sunday was another day of seriuos wreckage. Little Rock to Memphis took 6.5 hours.

Sorry, there are no pictures. I thought maybe controlling my truck was a better idea than taking pictures.

Donner picture that I promised

Here is the pricture from the top of Donner during maximum chains.

Donner Pass

Wow. Has it been that long? Sorry. All driving and now blogging makes 'jak a dull boy. Had my first experience with chaining and Donner pass the other day. I was trying to make it over to Sparks NV before they went to chains but only made it to Kingvale. Got the chains off the rack and spent something like an hour trying to get them on. Turns out they are too little for the tires we run. So I bought a set from one of the chain installers on the mountain for $150. By the time those were on, a couple of trucks and cars had wrecked on the curve right past the exit and the CalTrans guy came by and said they were going to maximum chains. So I said I'd turn around and go back down but he said I couldn't b/c it was max both directions. So I bought another set of chains ($150) and went the 20 miles over the top to the bug station. I almost garuantee that it will never happen again. Picture coming shortly if I can remember how.

End of Year awards

Here are my awards for 2005 ( I know it's not the end of the year but I don't think things are going to change between now and New Years):

Worst Roads:
2nd Runner Up: California
1st Runner Up: Kentucky
Worst Roads: New Jersey..... Driving on NJ Interstates is a lot ike driving through a field but without the scenery and a lot of times you're paying a toll for the priviledge

Worst Drivers:
2nd Runner Up: New Mexico
1st Runner Up: Kentucky
Worst Drivers: Massachusetts.... As near as I can tell nobody from MA has any idea what the driving conventions are in the rest of America, ie. apparently they believe that if the speed limit is 65 as long as one of them is going 95 and another isgoing 35 they're both OK and there seems to be a general lack of understanding regarding the point of mulitple lanes.

So, apparently the worst place to be is Kentucky since is shows up in both categories (or in NJ surrounded by cars with MA plates)

Most Improved Roads since the early 80's: Maryland. I've been telling people how horrible MD roads were since I had to drive on them in the old days. They're very nice now. Sorry.

Flying J Wireless, Part II

Ok, so now I'm beginning to get pissed off. Right now I'm sitting inside the FJ at Clearbrook VA because last night I tried to connect at a TA listed in the brochure and the Hook at Wytheville, VA and neither would work. A little while ago I pulled into this one and tried to connect but it wouldn't link. I called tech support and after they screwed around for a while their advice was to move to a different place in the parking lot. Last words "Good luck". This, of course, nicely illustrates the problem with outsourcing. The competent engineers are driving trucks and Rajneesh isn't going to be flown from Bangalore to set up FJ's network. Guess I'll have to set up a wardriving rig on my truck.

Flying J's Wireless

It is cool to be able to surf from the road. It would be extra nice if I could afford Sprint's Broadband Wireless deal but for now I'll have to go with Flying J. Sadly the last 2 places I tried to get connected from (Madison GA T/A and Texarkana AR FJ) were having issues and wouldn't connect properly

Henry

FO

Good news

I got my laptop so now I'll be totally religious about updating, ok?

The Breakdown

OK, I keep saying that I'm going to keep up with this better but I haven't been real good at that, have I? I'm hoping that when I finally get a laptop I'll be better at it b/c I can do it from the road. I guess we'll have to see.

A couple of weeks ago I went to Richmond. It reminded me why I always liked Richmond but would never live there. The roads were apparently designed by crazy people. I do want to say thanks to the guys at Automotive Headliners Unlimited (710 Research Rd, 897-4000). I was backing into the place across the street from them and was busy not hitting Automotive Headliners mail box and didn't see the ditch that suddenly appeared next to the mail box. If it hadn't been for those guys coming out and helping me stacking lumber up underneath the tires there probably would have been a tow truck bill in my future. Thanks again guys -- you are the kind of people that periodically renew my faith in mankind. If they do headliners half as well as they help people out of ditches you should stop by if you need one. I may drive my Camaro from Tennessee just b/c they helped me out.

Lexington, GA may be the prettiest town on earth. It's east of Athens on US78. In fact the whole drive across 78 when you're going from Atlanta to Athens is pretty nice. Lots of old house and small towns.

I worked over Labor Day and took a load from Lebanon to Tacoma WA. Once I was unload there I picked up in Portland & Wilsonville OR and Rancho Cucamunga CA (that's a lot longer run than I had previously realized) bound for Lebanon. My truck was due for a PM when I got back and I had started making my list of things that I wanted them to check. One of them was that it was hard to start after it had been sitting for a few hours and it seemed to be idling rougher than it used to. While I was in Barstow at the Flying J (I ALWAYS stop at the Flying J in Barstow, it's the only place I know of for sure that there's an In-n-Out Burger in walking distance to a truck stop.... CA drivers feel free to let me know of others) I was talking to my wife on the phone and told her it wasn't running right.

Coming across the Mojave desert that night I started getting passed by Swift trucks and Schnieder trucks and knew I was in trouble. I was willing to let the first one go since he might be empty and I had on 31,000 but after a while it was obvious that unless they were nigrating all the emptied east there was something seriously wrong. I called Penske SOS before I got to the top of the mountain coming into Needles because I had to drop down on the low sidemore than once. They said they had to find the tech (it was about midnight on Friday by this point) I said I was going to keep running down the road to try and find a milemarker to give him as a reference. About the time they called me back to find out where I was I crested the pass and told them I'd roll down into Needles to the shop.

He looked it over and said that it was an injector and that it would probably be Sunday or Monday before anybody could look at it. The called Bob West and got him out of bed at 3 in the morning to ask him what he wanted them to do. He asked me if I could make it over to Kingman AZ and I said that I didn't think so but if he wanted me to try I'd go. I took me quite a while to get over there -- coming up the hill into Kingman I was down to 15 mph and wouldn't run on the flat in 10th gear. I parked at the address they gave me for the Frieghtliner dealer. Next morning I realized that service had moved down the street and that I was at the tire place. But my truck wouldn't start. So they had to fire up a tow truck to drag it 2 blocks down the street. They looked at it and said that it was a recall item on the fuel injection system and that I had an O ring on one of the cylinders that had gone bad so it needed a complete rebuild.

That night Penske woke my up in the hotel room that I had gotten and told me that my sub truck was about an hour out and that he'd stop by and pick me up and there would be somebody to let me in to the service bay so I could get my stuff from my truck. They never showed up to let me in the service bay which was fine with me since I wasn't going anywhere that night anyway.

The next morning I went down and started transfering stuff from one truck to another. They had the injector problem fixed before I got everything moved but it still needed the rebuild. The sub truck was a 2000 FL Century with 400k+ miles on it. It was pretty obvious that it had spent it's life as a rental b/c it's pretty well abused. Anyway I got back to TN and took a few days off. I'm leaving this evening headed back west to Canoga Park CA and I'll pick my newly rebuilt truck on the way.

Long time

I can't believe that 12 August was the last time I posted. One of the boys came out with me for a week from the 15th to the 19th. We ran around in circles MI, IL, IN, KY area for most of the week. Last week I was hauling all kinds of weird freight around.... this is the slow time for water heaters apparently. Had 2 really choice western loads pulled out from under me. One was a 500# load of foam insulation going from Mt. Pleasant TN to El Paso TX and the other was a 3000# portable conveyer belt going from Atlanta to San Francisco. Not sure why they went to other drivers but I guess I'll live with it.


I have several rants saved up that I promise I'll post but for right now I'll go with I'm becoming increasingly convinced that motorhomes should require a special license to operate. I've lost count of the number of dangerous things I've seen them do. The biggest part of the problem as near as I can tell is that people get in them (pulling their huge driving around car) and treat them like they're driving the Lexus.

I'll be getting a laptop RSN and I promise I'll post more often then. Got to get to bed. Out early tomorrow for a pickup in Red Boiling Springs TN for a 0700 delivery Monday in Columbia SC.

Into the routine

Ok so this week looked kind of like this: Ashland City to Franklin OH. Deadhead to Jeffersonville, IN. Jeffersonville to Johnson City TN. Unloaded at the American Water Heaters plant and ran across the street to pick up a loaded trailer bound for Las vegas NV. Dropped the Las Vegas load in the Lebanon yard and turned around for a multi-drop at Statesville & Raleigh NC. Unloaded in Raleigh and deadheaded to Charlotte for a load to Nashville, TN. Went home.


Not sure about the miles but it's a short week and I was really tired. I could just never get really rested. Now that I'll have had a couple of days off I'm sure I'll feel much better. I have an outbound load from AShland City to Franklin OH to start the week again.

The load to Franklin last week was one of the least pleasant driver assist unloads I've had so far. They loaded these "fatboy" water heaters on the front deck of the trailer 3 high. I'm sure they put them up there with a clamp and then pushed them to the front of the trailer. Anyway there wasn't any way for the guy to get them back off with a clamp in Franklin and they were too heavy to get down by hand. WE ended up kind of rotating the stacks really carefully until he could get them with the clamp.

Nothing much new this week except that I've noticed that probably 50% of the cars have a person in them screwing around with a cell phone. Not necessarily the driver--I think some of them are playing games on their phones. I don't think I mentioned it before so I'll make it the most interesting sight for this week (even though it was when I was out west).

I was driving along and saw this Harley coming up next to me. The rider was in full leather and all alone. The bike got up next to me and the rider looked up and started to wave a beauty pageant/parade queen kind of wave. It was then I realized that the rider was this 75 year old grandmother type. Lose the leathers and she could have posed for a Norman Rockwell Mrs. Santa painting. Then she grabbed the throttle and took off. It was surreal.


Bitch of the Week

I'm not sure if it's something that's been going on all along and I just now noticed it and have become hypersensitive but the last week or so I've noticed an increasing number of really expensive motorhomes pulling cars parked in truck stop parking lots and sleeping or eating. The first one I remember noticing was a Prevost motorcoach pulling a Hummer. I thought 'This guy can afford a $300,000 motorhome and a $50,000 car but can't pay $30 to park it for the night?' In my younger days he would have come out and found his Prevost and Hummer keyed to hell and back. I just think it's kind of sad that people that this are taking parking places away from people who work for a living.