Wow, what a disaster! This round actually took 3 days to complete. I waited until we were finished to post the dramatic adventures as it was overall a cluster! No maps are included on this one since we were all over the place.
After we dropped the last load we had to drive to their trailer lot about a mile away to grab an empty, then found out our next pickup was about 200 yards from our last drop. Sweet. So, we headed back there, dropped the trailer we pre-tripped 4 seconds ago, picked up our new trailer, and headed down the road.
Our 2 sources for routing directed us down back roads of Kansas, Oklahoma, and finally Texas before running into I-35 and meeting up in San Antonio. Due to our disdain for small US highways due to a lack of potty areas, slower speeds, and usually they are less maintained we weighed out taking the interstate. So, after agreeing to take I-35 the 50 miles out of route we headed off.
Now, Mary has been obsessed in calling on a new truck since she found out we are charged with finding our own. Even after we were told that since we are in a Volvo we won't get a new truck until our "number is up" she still insisted in calling. In one of our last calls one of the truck assignment guys told her she was "persistant." She straight up asked, "Is that your way of saying i'm a pain in your ass?" He got a kick out of that. Anyways, I tried to talk her out of calling this time but shes stubborn. Come to find out there was a Freightliner Cascadia sitting at our yard in Lancaster, TX just waiting for a team. Damn it. Mary 45, Daryl 3. One of these days I will submiss, but i'm only 32 so I have plenty of years to "learn."
After hearing the wonderful news I managed to wrangle some of our stuff into what containers we have on the truck before trying to sleep, but that was short lived. I managed to sleep MAYBE 3 hours before I was wide awake. So, I finished up organizing things and surfed the net a few hours before we arrived in Dallas.
Now, heres where the tricky part comes in. Earlier in the day Mary talked to our fleet manager who gave us the maximum amount of time to drop this load, which was 0400am. We arrived in Dallas at about 1000pm. With San Antonio being 4.5 hours away still we basically had a mad dash to move a small apartment within an hours time. I personally thought it was impossible but I guess when your job is on the line you can make anything happen. Once everything was loaded we were ready to take off.
Ya know, just when everything seems to be going your way someone always has to kick you in the balls to bring you back down. Our company uses a device that locks the air out from the in-cab valves to the axles and without that key you cannot go anywhere. Guess what we didn't have. We searched the truck inside and out just in case it was given to us and we lost it but we never found it. So, after fiddle farting around we decided to grab the dog, the case of water, half a wardrobe in case we could shower, and took off to finish our load to San Antonio, TX. In hindsight, that was a bad idea to grab and run because we ended up with like a pair of dirty underwear, 1 sock, no clean shirts, 1 pair of shorts... you get the idea. we would have been dressed like clowns.. and we forgot to grab any food to last us or pillows and blankets to sleep comfortably under. We realized this once we got to San Antonio, which was about 5 minutes off of our delivery time. All this crap and we still delivered on time...tired, sweaty, frustrated, sleep deprived, and hungry.. but there.
Anyways, during this ordeal we kept in contact with dispatch to let them know what was going on and thank god they emailed our fleet manager who apparently got a kick out of it because she laughed when we contacted her in the morning. She was light hearted about it and had a plan for us so that was really comforting. Anyways, our tentative plan was to deadhead to Laredo, TX to grab a load and then head back to Lancaster, TX where they hopefully have found a key for us to unlock the quads.
We got into Laredo, TX to find out we didn't yet have a load and were on the board. Grand. So we went to breakfast, ordered, and found out we had a load. Go figure. So we made a mad dash back to the terminal to pick up our trailer and head north. I didn't make it far though... only to about San Antonio again before Mary took over. I about passed out as soon as I got out of the seat as she did the night before. She got us to just outside Lancaster before waking me up telling me they found a quad key for us. SWEET.
Now, heres where the story goes jacked. We offered, since the truck had to go to Joplin to be stripped of company logos and such before being sold, to solo the trucks there. It sounded easy... keyword being "sounded." Our fleet manager worked hard to get us to convoy the load together.. she was awsome. However, the load from Laredo to Dallas made us sit there for near 6 hours before sending us off unloaded. That screwed the entire plan up, and because Mary needed a 10 hour break to drive the next day after I got to Joplin she requested Mary drive up on her own. She did try and we really do thank her for that. She really was trying to work with us on this since we offered to perform a huge favor for the company, but sometimes the moon and start don't line up or the tarrot card read anything good.
They got me a load taking the Volvo over to Hawkins, TX to pick up a 47k pound load headed to Fayetteville, AR. Mary got a load headed up to Joplin, MO where we would meet up, get rid of the Volvo, and finish out her load to Armana, IA. She had a straight shot taking the dreaded US Highways up, but she made it safely. Me, I got there to find it was a drop and hook. I love those. I back up to the trailer and it might as well have been lying nose to the ground because it took me forever to crank it up. If you've ever jacked up a 47k pound load even 2 inches it takes forever and a toll on your body. So, after I was done I gave myself a home chiropractic job over the frame of the truck and I was off.
Now, that was the easy part amazingly enough. The hard part was going north with minimal out of route in a state that hates trucks. When I scaled I weighed 77,000lbs gross. Most of the roads were 58,000lbs gross max. That created problems. So after driving around for about an hour like an idiot trying to figure out where to go I made it to the US highways that would take me north. I would have used the atlas but because I had such a tight dispatch anything someone operating normally with common sense would have grabbed was out the window.. like food, more water, an atlas, a 5th wheel puller, and basically anything else a trucker needed. Shoot me.
Anyways, after begging Mary over the phone to find me a fuel stop because I was on about 38 gallons of fuel at this point I made it to Atoka, OK where I was able to grab a mandatory staple of Turkey and American on Cheddar bread from subway. However, it took a half hour to get the damn thing because this "Sandwich Artist" was trying to be the Piccaso of the food world. I've never seen ANYONE move that slowly. But I digress. Belly full I headed back north and after getting lost in Fayetteville, AR for a half hour I found my stop. The guy seeing I looked like I musta been hit by my own truck said he would get it unloaded quickly and get me out of there. It took long enough for me to get 15 minutes of a power nap before I was out of there and on my way to Joplin.
I got to Jopmo about 300am and offloaded the Volvo of any trash and gladly gave up the keys to the shop. I managed to scarf my frozen solid Swedish Meatballs lean cuisine before transferring in the system from the Volvo to the Cascadia and crawling into bed.
We got up about... well.. we is inaccurate. Mary woke up sometime around sun up it seems and I think I woke up a few hours later after she had showered. In hindsite I should have showered myself but at that point sleep took priority. The call of "lets go to breakfast" got me up pretty quickly though. Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day.. its so versitle. After getting a buffet to go.. which kinda sounds contradictary.. but we managed to turn it from an all you can eat to an all you can carry. Taking our 9 styrofoam boxes (or so it seemed.. it looked like we were packed for a 4 day trip to Paris) to the truck we were off. Since it was Mary's shift primarily she drove us all the way to Iowa, getting us there about 0645pm, 15 minutes shy of our appointment time. We were worried we wouldn't and requested an extra hour from the weekend dispatchers but EVERYONE refused to give us a little leeway... like it was a mega important load we HAD to make (in reality it was a drop & hook... I can't stand the fact EVERYTHING has to be there yesterday to them). Overall it wasn't as bad as we thought it might be.
As for the truck.. we absolutly love this thing. There is WAY more room in here than the Volvo. We lost the refrigerator but were working on a solution for that now. The space in the Cascadia is actually designed to store stuff... in the Volvo I had to turn the closet into a food storage compartment placing plywood shelves in there to make it functional. We also love the side windows. We actually slept last night without idling and it stayed reasonably cool with our 12v fan running. There was a decent breeze so that really helped. And, the best thing about this truck is WE GET LOCAL TV CHANNELS. It does not seem like much but you can only watch movies and CSI so many times before you long to watch the news or even Jerry Lewis' telethon as something different. This bed is actually a twin size.. so we both fit. Now we don't have to wake each other up and shout "ROLL" just to turn over. I think that was the single most annoying thing about that Volvo. I personally think they took the mattress out of a Graco crib and built the sleeper around that.. but thats just my opinion. We're fixin' to put in for some home time so we will get pictures when we get to Denver and post them on the site.
After we dropped the last load we had to drive to their trailer lot about a mile away to grab an empty, then found out our next pickup was about 200 yards from our last drop. Sweet. So, we headed back there, dropped the trailer we pre-tripped 4 seconds ago, picked up our new trailer, and headed down the road.
Our 2 sources for routing directed us down back roads of Kansas, Oklahoma, and finally Texas before running into I-35 and meeting up in San Antonio. Due to our disdain for small US highways due to a lack of potty areas, slower speeds, and usually they are less maintained we weighed out taking the interstate. So, after agreeing to take I-35 the 50 miles out of route we headed off.
Now, Mary has been obsessed in calling on a new truck since she found out we are charged with finding our own. Even after we were told that since we are in a Volvo we won't get a new truck until our "number is up" she still insisted in calling. In one of our last calls one of the truck assignment guys told her she was "persistant." She straight up asked, "Is that your way of saying i'm a pain in your ass?" He got a kick out of that. Anyways, I tried to talk her out of calling this time but shes stubborn. Come to find out there was a Freightliner Cascadia sitting at our yard in Lancaster, TX just waiting for a team. Damn it. Mary 45, Daryl 3. One of these days I will submiss, but i'm only 32 so I have plenty of years to "learn."
After hearing the wonderful news I managed to wrangle some of our stuff into what containers we have on the truck before trying to sleep, but that was short lived. I managed to sleep MAYBE 3 hours before I was wide awake. So, I finished up organizing things and surfed the net a few hours before we arrived in Dallas.
Now, heres where the tricky part comes in. Earlier in the day Mary talked to our fleet manager who gave us the maximum amount of time to drop this load, which was 0400am. We arrived in Dallas at about 1000pm. With San Antonio being 4.5 hours away still we basically had a mad dash to move a small apartment within an hours time. I personally thought it was impossible but I guess when your job is on the line you can make anything happen. Once everything was loaded we were ready to take off.
Ya know, just when everything seems to be going your way someone always has to kick you in the balls to bring you back down. Our company uses a device that locks the air out from the in-cab valves to the axles and without that key you cannot go anywhere. Guess what we didn't have. We searched the truck inside and out just in case it was given to us and we lost it but we never found it. So, after fiddle farting around we decided to grab the dog, the case of water, half a wardrobe in case we could shower, and took off to finish our load to San Antonio, TX. In hindsight, that was a bad idea to grab and run because we ended up with like a pair of dirty underwear, 1 sock, no clean shirts, 1 pair of shorts... you get the idea. we would have been dressed like clowns.. and we forgot to grab any food to last us or pillows and blankets to sleep comfortably under. We realized this once we got to San Antonio, which was about 5 minutes off of our delivery time. All this crap and we still delivered on time...tired, sweaty, frustrated, sleep deprived, and hungry.. but there.
Anyways, during this ordeal we kept in contact with dispatch to let them know what was going on and thank god they emailed our fleet manager who apparently got a kick out of it because she laughed when we contacted her in the morning. She was light hearted about it and had a plan for us so that was really comforting. Anyways, our tentative plan was to deadhead to Laredo, TX to grab a load and then head back to Lancaster, TX where they hopefully have found a key for us to unlock the quads.
We got into Laredo, TX to find out we didn't yet have a load and were on the board. Grand. So we went to breakfast, ordered, and found out we had a load. Go figure. So we made a mad dash back to the terminal to pick up our trailer and head north. I didn't make it far though... only to about San Antonio again before Mary took over. I about passed out as soon as I got out of the seat as she did the night before. She got us to just outside Lancaster before waking me up telling me they found a quad key for us. SWEET.
Now, heres where the story goes jacked. We offered, since the truck had to go to Joplin to be stripped of company logos and such before being sold, to solo the trucks there. It sounded easy... keyword being "sounded." Our fleet manager worked hard to get us to convoy the load together.. she was awsome. However, the load from Laredo to Dallas made us sit there for near 6 hours before sending us off unloaded. That screwed the entire plan up, and because Mary needed a 10 hour break to drive the next day after I got to Joplin she requested Mary drive up on her own. She did try and we really do thank her for that. She really was trying to work with us on this since we offered to perform a huge favor for the company, but sometimes the moon and start don't line up or the tarrot card read anything good.
They got me a load taking the Volvo over to Hawkins, TX to pick up a 47k pound load headed to Fayetteville, AR. Mary got a load headed up to Joplin, MO where we would meet up, get rid of the Volvo, and finish out her load to Armana, IA. She had a straight shot taking the dreaded US Highways up, but she made it safely. Me, I got there to find it was a drop and hook. I love those. I back up to the trailer and it might as well have been lying nose to the ground because it took me forever to crank it up. If you've ever jacked up a 47k pound load even 2 inches it takes forever and a toll on your body. So, after I was done I gave myself a home chiropractic job over the frame of the truck and I was off.
Now, that was the easy part amazingly enough. The hard part was going north with minimal out of route in a state that hates trucks. When I scaled I weighed 77,000lbs gross. Most of the roads were 58,000lbs gross max. That created problems. So after driving around for about an hour like an idiot trying to figure out where to go I made it to the US highways that would take me north. I would have used the atlas but because I had such a tight dispatch anything someone operating normally with common sense would have grabbed was out the window.. like food, more water, an atlas, a 5th wheel puller, and basically anything else a trucker needed. Shoot me.
Anyways, after begging Mary over the phone to find me a fuel stop because I was on about 38 gallons of fuel at this point I made it to Atoka, OK where I was able to grab a mandatory staple of Turkey and American on Cheddar bread from subway. However, it took a half hour to get the damn thing because this "Sandwich Artist" was trying to be the Piccaso of the food world. I've never seen ANYONE move that slowly. But I digress. Belly full I headed back north and after getting lost in Fayetteville, AR for a half hour I found my stop. The guy seeing I looked like I musta been hit by my own truck said he would get it unloaded quickly and get me out of there. It took long enough for me to get 15 minutes of a power nap before I was out of there and on my way to Joplin.
I got to Jopmo about 300am and offloaded the Volvo of any trash and gladly gave up the keys to the shop. I managed to scarf my frozen solid Swedish Meatballs lean cuisine before transferring in the system from the Volvo to the Cascadia and crawling into bed.
We got up about... well.. we is inaccurate. Mary woke up sometime around sun up it seems and I think I woke up a few hours later after she had showered. In hindsite I should have showered myself but at that point sleep took priority. The call of "lets go to breakfast" got me up pretty quickly though. Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day.. its so versitle. After getting a buffet to go.. which kinda sounds contradictary.. but we managed to turn it from an all you can eat to an all you can carry. Taking our 9 styrofoam boxes (or so it seemed.. it looked like we were packed for a 4 day trip to Paris) to the truck we were off. Since it was Mary's shift primarily she drove us all the way to Iowa, getting us there about 0645pm, 15 minutes shy of our appointment time. We were worried we wouldn't and requested an extra hour from the weekend dispatchers but EVERYONE refused to give us a little leeway... like it was a mega important load we HAD to make (in reality it was a drop & hook... I can't stand the fact EVERYTHING has to be there yesterday to them). Overall it wasn't as bad as we thought it might be.
As for the truck.. we absolutly love this thing. There is WAY more room in here than the Volvo. We lost the refrigerator but were working on a solution for that now. The space in the Cascadia is actually designed to store stuff... in the Volvo I had to turn the closet into a food storage compartment placing plywood shelves in there to make it functional. We also love the side windows. We actually slept last night without idling and it stayed reasonably cool with our 12v fan running. There was a decent breeze so that really helped. And, the best thing about this truck is WE GET LOCAL TV CHANNELS. It does not seem like much but you can only watch movies and CSI so many times before you long to watch the news or even Jerry Lewis' telethon as something different. This bed is actually a twin size.. so we both fit. Now we don't have to wake each other up and shout "ROLL" just to turn over. I think that was the single most annoying thing about that Volvo. I personally think they took the mattress out of a Graco crib and built the sleeper around that.. but thats just my opinion. We're fixin' to put in for some home time so we will get pictures when we get to Denver and post them on the site.