Splatz
Oct2002
SEPTEMBER 2002
Wed, Thu, Fri, Sep 25-26-27
The mill is still down, and won't take any of these trailers full of recycle bales until later. We're running out of empty trailers, and the yard is filling with heavy-laden trailers waiting to go to the mill. Thursday our dispatcher is able to send four trailers over; I take two, for some "local" money. Otherwise it is $50/day layover. Going broke slowly.
Friday is a dead day. Hang around the lounge, swap stories, catch up on email and work on this weblog. Just before 5 dispatch calls me to say that a load will be ready 9 p.m. Saturday night, going to Nampa, ID.
31 miles for 3 days.
Tue, Sep 24
Sit in Butte until mid-morning, and dispatch sends a message sending me to Helena to drop my empty trailer, and pick up a trailer that came in from Canada filled with scrap cardboard for the mill at MizZou. I can get the truck front end worked on tomorrow.
193 miles today.
Mon, Sep 23
Rolled into Butte with the dawn sun; a friendly crew hustles the load off the trailer and I head for a truckstop on the edge of town. Sit all day; no freight in the area. Boredom. I need to get home to Boise! Dispatch has been trying to get me home for a week, but with the paper mill down and not making paper, loads home are scarce.
31 miles today.
Sun, Sep 22
The truck front end is pulling to the right and the steer tires are out of balance. It feels like one of those old-fashioned vibrating exercise belt machines when I hold the wheel to the left and the big steer tires wobble at 63 mph. The front axle is carrying about 12,500 lbs, putting 6,250 on each tire. The thought of those big Michelins being put to that pavement-scouring mistreatment is unsettling. The MizZou shop tried to fix the problem Friday; I'll have to get them back on the problem asap.
594 miles today.
Sat, Sep 21
Made it to Bismarck by early evening; swapped trailers and run east a few miles to get a parking place and a good night's sleep.
582 miles today.
Fri, Sep 20
The big paper mill just west of MizZou is shut down for annual maintenance. I'm told to drop the scrap paper load at the terminal.
A driver has come in with a furniture load that must get to N. Dakota and he is short on hours. I'm asked to do a "hot" weekend run, picking up his load and running it to Bismarck; there I'll drop that load and hook to another pre-loaded trailer that comes back to Butte for delivery first thing Monday a.m. I'll be rolling hard this weekend. I head east to get a jump on things.
584 miles today.
Thu, Sep 19
Deliver the scrap aluminum at 0900, my appointment time. They don't get around to unloading me until noon. Then up to Ogden for a load of scrap cardboard bales that go to Montana for recycling through a kraft paper mill, to be used in making more cardboard cartons.
This forklift operator puts on 45,500 lbs. but loads too many bales too high in the front of the trailer. I scale out too heavy on the truck's drive axles. Another tiresome, lengthy delay while the young operator pulls most of the bales out of the trailer to reload the front end. In about an hour I'm at legal weight front and back, and can roll.
Most of this day has been spent unloading and reloading. I make it to the McCammon ID truckstop on I-15, northbound.
240 miles today.
Wed, Sep 18
Denver, CO: picked up 46,000 lbs. of scrap aluminum in bales for an aluminum extrusion plant in the central Wasatch Front area of Utah. I hate this run: it goes west on I-70, over the high Rockies. Its a hard climb up, and steep grades going down. It's hard on the truck and tiring for the driver. On the western slope in Utah I'll pick up Hwy 6 and cut to the northwest toward the big lakes.
The forklift operator got carried away; my trailer weighed too heavy on the rear axles. 34,000 lbs is the legal limit for tandem axles; these scale out at 35,500. I back into the dock and he pulls off a 1,700-lb. bale.
The driver is responsible for everything concerning the truck; if I let a customer load me too heavily or too unbalanced, I pay the DOT fines out of my own pocket.
Tonight I sleep on Soldier Summit in a gravel lot beside a closed gas station/cafe. I wake up at dawn to find two trucks beside me.
445 miles today.
Tue, Sep 17
Rainy day sunset
Ran hard from northern Utah on I-80 into Wyoming and across to Cheyenne; down I-25 to Fort Collins. Spent a few hours with my son and his family; granddaughter Maggie, 2+ years, now recognizes "Grampa" and his gray beard. Warren and I had a "manly" dinner of ribs and steak, and I picked up the antique 35mm camera outfit we got from eBay. In the mid-60s, the Argus C-44 was like a poor man's Leica--a rangefinder 35mm camera with three basic interchangeable lenses (35, 50 and 100 mm) that were made in Germany and produced razor-sharp images. I owned one during my first newspaper job as news editor of a large country weekly newspaper, and always regretted selling it later.
623 miles today.
Mon, Sep 16
Delivered 22 tons of cedar bark mulch to a Colorado mountainside sod farm. Drove six miles up a steep, winding county road to get there, straining in 3rd gear to pull the grade. Lovely place; nice people. The young men used a chain and scissors clamp to pull the heavy pallets to the rear of the trailer, where they could reach them with the forklift. One pallet was rotten and collapsed, spilling two bales to burst open on the ground.
Orders to deadhead to Tremonton, UT for a recliner chair load going to Denver.
392 miles today.
Sun, Sep 15
Down I-15 along the Wasatch Front past Salt Lake City and Provo. This place has grown, overgrown, and is trying its damndest to become another L.A. basin, except this big salty puddle sits atop most of the flat valley floor. I don't doubt that in a few more years some development consortium will start building platforms on stilts, with hi-rise condos and shopping plazas, all connected by hi-speed monorail.
They've already gone up the steep slopes of the Wasatch mountains with glass-walled executive homes to the point where a cog railway would be needed to reach the next tier of "view" estates.
Made it to a tiny little parking pad at a gas station in Glenwood Springs that doubles as a truck stop--probably about as much of a truck facility as the city executive committee will permit. We have 9 trucks squeezed in here tonight.
Got lucky--there is an Oriental restaurant right next door, owned and run by a local family. I had hot & sour soup and Kung Pao chicken, one of my favorite spicy meals. Small room, large local turnout. Excellent food, inexpensive menu. "Ocean Pearl"--nice name for a good place to eat. I-70, Exit 114, Glenwood Springs.
398 miles today.
Sat, Sep 14
At the MizZou terminal long enough to do my laundry, take a long hot shower, watch a TV movie, swap a few tales with the guys hanging out at the terminal last night, and to get my windshield replaced first thing this morning. I'm under load, so I get jumped to first in line. I'm done and rolling by 9:30 a.m. On to Butte, catch I-15 south through eastern Idaho and down to Utah. Hello, Ogden.
487 miles today.
Fri, Sep 13
Hoo, boy!
Not
my lucky day. This 53-foot trailer contains 59 overstuffed sofas, convertible bed sofas, love seats, recliner chairs and a few ottomans. All stood on end and jammed in, three abreast, with the loveseats, chairs and ottomans on top of the sofas, up high under the trailer ceiling. The Spokane customer has temporary warehouse space rented behind a landscape nursery, so I get to angle the trailer in at a 90-degree angle off a narrow street through a chain-link gate and into the pad behind the building. One pleasant young man with a handtruck greets me. For the next two hours I wrestle furniture to the back of the trailer and ease it as gently as possible to the pavement. He wheels it into the back of the building and stashes it. I finish unloading drenched in sweat (it is 95 deg. inside the trailer) and bone-tired.
I get a satellite message to hightail it over to Superior, MT, 140 miles east over two major mountain passes, by 3 p.m. Hmmm--it is almost 2 p.m. I call the shipper. Nice lady. "You can't get here in time," she sez.
"I know," I reply. "How about we load it in the morning?"
"We don't work on Saturdays."
"OK. Will somebody be able to load me if I get there by 4?"
"No, not unless one of the guys is willing to stay and work overtime"
"Great, I can be there by 4. See if one of your guys will stay."
"Nobody will stay for less than $50."
Okay, we discuss it back and forth and I mentally figure that losing a load because it was dispatched late and having me and the truck sit idle all weekend and I really need to get to MizZou to have the driver's side windshield replaced cuz some car driver was in a big hurry and sped past me doing 65 in a 35-mph reseal project with loose gravel on the roadway, and flung a rock into my windshield which has now cracked all the way across and will cost me a $$ ticket and a shutdown order as soon as some sharp-eyed scalehouse inspector sees it...
"Okay, tell your guy I'll pay $50 overtime for loading. I'll be there at 4 p.m."
I call our dispatcher and explain the deal.
"Great," she says. "Pay the $50. Turn in a receipt." I love this little company. Do the common sense thing to keep freight moving, and everybody loves you.
A few hours later I'm loaded down with highly aromatic cedar bark mulch from the Montana mountains, 36 bales stacked two high, weighing 44,420 lbs. It goes to western Colorado, for the gardens of the rich and famous trendy folk living at the foot of the ski-trail groomed Colorado rockies.
I only have 20's in my reserve cash stash, and a few singles in my pockets. "Got change?" I ask after we've loaded. Three guys and a lady, all fidgeting and peeking for 5's or 10's. No change. "Ah, what the heck," the young Montana woodsman says. "$40 for less than an hour's work ain't bad pay. Give me two of those 20's"
Done deal. On to MizZou!
332 miles today.
Thu, Sep 12
Another "easy" day. Up at 5:30 a.m. (I log and live in Mountain Time, required by DOT law, since that is my home terminal time. I'm in Oregon, (Pacific Time Zone) so by local time I'm rolling at 5 a.m. PDT when a hot mug of coffee in the cupholder. It's black outside, with no glimmer of sunrise. The days have gotten much shorter.
One hundred fifty-nine miles to the Portland terminal. I hit morning rush hour right on schedule, and I-5 and all connectors are flowing like cold molasses. Patience, patience!
Arrive, drop the trailer, give the paperwork to the good folks in the terminal office, and they have a trailer loaded and waiting for me. It goes to a big furniture outlet in Spokane. Can't get it there today--my logbook is still running on crutches. I'll make it to Pasco, WA, shut down and rest, and deliver the load Friday a.m.
381 miles today.
Wed, Sep 11
I came up short on legal hours today to drive a full 10. The three 600-mile days ate up a lot of my logbook. With six hours available, I run up I-5 from south of Redding, past Mount Shasta, over the Oregon border and a gauntlet of mountain passes and steep grades, and call it day at Rice Hill, north of Roseburg.
Today I decided to start this weblog. I have a nice table in the fast food corner of the truckstop, and several hours to lay out the structure and automatic formatting of this weblog. It ain't pretty, but it should be easy to maintain from a truck bunk.
371 miles today.
Tue, 10 Sept
After unloading the sunflower seeds this morning, I was dispatched on a "local" run from Modesto CA over a network of freeway spurs, 100 miles northwest to pick up 44,500 lbs of trendy fruit beverage at American Canyon, above the north end of San Francisco Bay. This was a "live" load, meaning I backed the empty trailer up to the dock, and the warehouseman forklifted the palletized, shrink-wrapped cartons of 12-oz drink cans into my trailer. This done, I back-tracked down across the I-680 toll bridge ($9.25 to take a big truck across), ran down the bay's eastern shore, and cut over to CA-99 to Modesto, dropping the loaded trailer for someone else to take to San Fernando. A full trailer of assorted furniture orders was waiting for me to take north to Portland. No set time to deliver; this was good. My logbook was getting a bit lean.
A "local" run is less than 100 miles. It pays $40 plus mileage, because the normal mileage payrate would fall too far short of fair compensation for the work involved.
Sometimes I'd pay $40 to avoid the freeway congestion. People get impatient, and crowd in front of my truck as I ease along. Some cut in just as I have to brake for slowing traffic ahead, meaning I must brake much harder as they steal my stopping space. This week a very expensive Mercedes sports sedan jumped in front of me at the last possible moment. He very nearly got rolled up in his expensive toy--I had a heavy load and he stole too much of my stopping space.
Late this afternoon I'm rolling up CA 99 to Stockton, to the crosstown expressway east to I-5, and I give a little sigh of relief to be leaving the California crazy-quilt of spurs and interchanges and rush-hour crazies behind me once more without incident. I stopped somewhat short of Redding, and crawled into a parking place in the dark. I'm too tired to fool with the microwave; I eat a faux-Oriental salad from the truckstop fast-food bar.
388 miles today.
7-8-9 Sept
After shagging an old spring-suspension trailer out of a customer's yard in western North Dakota, and leaving a newer air-ride trailer in its place, I was dispatched to central North Dakota to a furniture distribution center. I dropped the old trailer and hooked up to a trailer loaded with furniture for two stores in eastern North Dakota. I ran across half of North Dakota that night, and was able to catch several hours of sleep behind the first store before it opened at 8 a.m.
A "lost" trucker woke me at 5 a.m., with the noise of turning his big rig around beside mine in the tight space behind the store. I drifted back to a restless slumber, and was again awakened by a brigade of concrete trucks running back and forth on that street to a new store construction site half a block away.
Later, at 8 a.m., I backed into the dock and the crew pulled off their part of the load. I ran across to the border and up to Grand Forks. A tight street, a square concrete block sticking out from the back wall, under a freight elevator for a loading dock, and I cramp the tractor back 45 degrees to swing the trailer into one side of the concrete platform for unloading. My cab is halfway into the street, and impatient local drivers race past, slowing only to peek around to avoid charging into a head-one collision with a neighbor.
The store workers take over 2 hours to pull the furniture off and run it up the freight elevator, one and two pieces at a time. Empty, I head to a local truck stop. Dispatch. Go across the border into Minnesota, and pick up sunflower seeds for a run to California. I have an hour to get there, 30 miles on skinny rural roads. No sweat.
The big processing plant is on "Sunflower Lane." The seeds, 22,500 pounds of them, are salted and processed and are going to central California for distribution by a national snack food brand. This is a moderately light load, and an 1,886 mile run. It will let me go three 600-mile days and a bit, down the skinny roads kitty-corner through Montana, a portion of the west edge of Yellowstone Park, into Idaho, and down to I-80 in Nevada, then over the "hill" via Donner Pass into Sacto and parts south. I like this run in the summertime. In the winter, it can be a bitch without mercy.
1,886 miles this load.
7 Sept
Stopped at Exit 36 on Interstate 94, the Painted Canyon rest area and overlook near Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota. In a few moments of leg-stretching and looking out over the marvelously eroded badlands, I was covered with "no-seeums," the almost microscopic little blood-suckers with the stinging bite. I was 30 miles down the road before I had rubbed the last unwelcome hitchhiker off my arms and neck.
I-94, Mile Post 103 in North Dakota. Someone has mowed the heavy grass along the freeway right-of-way, and rolled it up into big round bales. A large white and tan hawk has chosen one bale for a hunting perch, and is staring intently at the base of the bale, waiting for a careless mouse or vole to venture out.
603 miles today.
5 Sept
Stopped by a South Dakota road construction flagger, while the road crew ahead was grinding blacktop off the road surface for a re-surfacing project. A Tennessee tourist walked up to chat. He said they had just visited the Mount Rushmore site. It cost $8 for a parking space at the National Park entrance, and a new sign announced that the transaction was being videotaped. The Park employee asked what state their vehicle was from, and he was told, "Tennessee." In a moment the employee handed back a receipt with the state, vehicle indentification, and city of registry printed on the ticket. "I think they must have run a license check from the plate they could see in the video monitor," the Tennessean told me. "This new government security is getting a little spooky," he observed.
557 miles today.
Splatz
Oct2002