So after sitting most of the day in that dusty truck stop in North Denver, we got a load assignment from Sterling CO to Kansas City. We drove to Sterling and picked up 42,000 pounds of dried beans for Sams Club. (being me, I of course thought “if civilization ends today, we are in good shape”…I know, I know) For the first time ever, we could not get the load to scale legally. We can run at 80,000 pounds gross but you are only allowed 12,000 lbs on the steering axle, 34,000 lbs on the drive axles and 34,000 lbs on the tandems (trailer axles) You can move the tandems forward and back to adjust the weight distribution but even with the tandems all the way forward we were still 1500 lbs over on the drive axles. I had to have the shipper reload the trailer to make it work. That took an extra 90 minutes or so but if we had gotten caught the ticket, which starts at $500 and goes up, would have been on us.

So as we got to Lincoln NE and headed South, I get a message on the satcom from a Fleet Manager asking us to repower a load near Kansas City. I replyed that we would love to as long as we did not have to sit all day waiting for the load. After a bunch of very confusing messages back and forth I called and got through to my night fleet manager and we finally got it straightened out. We dropped the beans in Kansas City at about 2:30 in the morning were it was still 82 degrees and then headed West to a rest stop just outside of Topeka KS to meet the other team. We took their trailer heading for Salt Lake City and headed West. So Anne got her request to stop by home. We were going through Fort Collins at dinner time so we started calling the kids to see if they could meet us. The only one available was Shelby so she met us at Johnson’s Corner and we went to PF Changs, then ran home for showers. Shelby ran us back to the truck and we were off. We took Hwy 287 to bypass I-80 between Cheyenne and Laramie where it was snowing hard. We found out later that I-80 was closed over the pass so it was a very good call. We fueled in Laramie in snow and 27 degrees. So I drove across Wyoming and into Salt Lake City where we dropped at UPS. As I was filling out a message to our Fleet Manager asking him to keep us moving we received our next load. We were heading to San Leandro CA (The Bay Area)

Something pretty cool happened here. We went to get an empty trailer and we saw another USX team hooked to one with the only other USX trailer a couple over. They told me that the other trailer had a flat tire. I was pretty bummed out but then the other driver asked me if we had another load and I told him we did in two hours. He said they had to wait all day so he unhooked the one they were on and gave it to us. What a cool thing for them to do.

With perfect weather we ran across Utah, Nevada and over Donner Pass into California. As we got near our delivery we got another load assignment to run empty to San Bernardino and then to Albuquerque. We thought we were going to get to have breakfast with Anne’s Mother but the route did not allow it, we were very bummed about this. As we were getting near Albuquerque, we got a repower request to wait there and a solo driver would bring us a load heading to Hebron KY (Cincinnatti). So we dropped our load six hour early and went to a truck stop near by to wait. The driver got in a couple of hours late but he finally made it and we were off.

We are in Kansas on that run and we already have our next load assignment heading back West. This is going to be a great week as I think we will have about 6500 miles for the week. We will be home on Wednesday for CJ’s High School graduation and Aleena’s 20th birthday. We are really looking forward to spending four days with the family.