CSU Wins!

Posted on September 8, 2012 by Craig

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Last week at my sons football game.  Colorado State beat Colorado.  Awesome day

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You Want Us To Do What????

Posted on September 5, 2012 by Craig

So, we headed to Georgia and we had a nice easy run.  We had a set appointment for 7 am to get unloaded and we had about eight extra hours.  So we timed the run to stop at Nick’s BBQ in Carlisle Arkansas.  Good BBQ with awesome service and they have truck parking.  About fifteen miles away we see a post on Facebook from Mark and Linda, a couple who follow this blog and have been driving for USX for a while now.  We had talked on the phone and emailed back and forth but never met.  They are at Nick’s.  I call and tell Mark we are 15 minutes away.  It was great to meet them and after a great lunch we were off to Georgia.    Got unloaded and headed up to North Cove NC to pick up a load back to Los Angeles.  We get there and then the fun begins.  We are picking up a load of medical supplies and so they need a refrigerated trailer as it cannot get to hot.  The shipper says our trailer is not loaded yet because it had not been cleaned.  We dropped our trailer and grabbed the dirty trailer, ran it across the street to a little truck stop and got it washed out, took it back over, gave it to the shipper and headed back across the street to wait for it to be loaded.  And we waited.  We then got a message on the truck computer with a new pre-plan picking up NOW 200 miles away.  No other information, our current load not canceled.  We sent a message asking what we were supposed to do, no response, sent another message, no response.  Tried to call, cannot get through to our fleet manager, tried again, on hold for 45 minutes and disconnected.  Sent another  message, got a response “Did you get that trailer washed out”?  This was not an answer to any of our questions.  I responded “Yes, a couple of hours ago and shipper has the trailer, what do you want us to do?”  No response, tried to call and found out our fleet manager is now gone for the day.  Still no instructions and our current load has now been ready for us to pick up for over an hour.  I said “screw it, we have a load” and went across the street and picked up our load.  We were just about at our maximum load so we had to manage our fuel level all the way across the country to make sure we did not fill the tanks just before we hit a weigh station.  The truck holds about 1500 pounds of fuel.  Then I started getting call after call from different fleet managers and load planners asking me to verify our load info.  It seems the shipper had screwed up a number of loads and all the other drivers had wrong loads.  It turns out we had the right load so after the third time I gave them the information, they finally believed me that we were good.  We got to Los Angeles, made our delivery and got a load to Denver and HOME.  We had two days to get there so I called the consignee and they told us they opened at 7 AM and would be happy to take the load a day early.  We were home on Thursday by 10:00 AM.  We had a great five days just hanging with the kids, attending the Rocky Mountain Showdown where Colorado State beat Colorado.  My son is a redshirting his Freshman year for CSU and is their quarterback of the future.  What a blast and we saw some old friends of mine at the game.  Funny when there are 60,000 people and you run into friends.

We headed out on Tuesday morning and after making a short delivery to WalMart we headed down to Denver to meet a solo driver who could not get to LA on time.  We are in Ontario CA, just got the oil change and periodic maintenance done on the truck, hanging in a hotel until tomorrow morning and we are heading up to near Monterey Bay. Sounds like another strawberry run to the East Coast.

Our next time off is in a couple of weeks when we are heading to Oshkosh Wisconsin for my Niece’s wedding.

 

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Way too much stuff.

Posted on September 2, 2012 by Anne Leonard

We are home for the holiday weekend. Yesterday we went to the Colorado State University game down at Mile High stadium. Cj’s first college game. He is red shirting this year. We had a blast!! Shelby and Lizzie (CJ’s girlfriend) Craig and I. It was an awesome game. CSU won. Shelby got a taste of what it is like to go to a college with a football team. Brought back memories of Tulane LSU games for me LOL.

Today I am cleaning the truck out. Getting rid of stuff we don’t use or stuff we don’t need. It is amazing how much stuff I use to think I HAD TO HAVE. Seriously you can get by with way less. Every time we come home I take out more things. Usually things I thought we would use but have never ended up using. I keep thinking but when we need it. But that doesn’t happen. So it is cleaning day. We rearranged….again. I am sure Craig will post some pictures when we get it all done.

It is so nice when you get the truck all clean and everything in its spot. I know Craig, at times. would like to push me off the truck with all the times I change things around. But he is a good sport about it. When you live in such a small space it  is nice to have it user friendly. It’s sort of like when you rearrange your house. We are rearranging the truck.

My motto of the day is less is more, at least when you live in a truck.

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Definitely not long enough….. but I’ll take it any day.

Posted on August 21, 2012 by Anne Leonard

We made it to Ontario, Ca. A little late but that’s ok. We had Tyler check into the hotel early so he could beat traffic and then he came and picked us up the TA (truck stop in Ontario) We all were starving so we headed out to find some food. Not so easy on a Monday night at 9 pm. We finally ended up at BJ’s and had a really nice dinner. Woke this morning, a little later than usual and checked out. Took the dogs and our stuff to the truck and then hit this amazing sushi restaurant. Revolving sushi and it is our new favorite. Lunch was perfect and then we hit Sam’s Club. Mostly ended up getting stuff for Tyler. My son has good shopping habits. Fish, peppers, chicken…. I thought he’d get ready made stuff. Craig and I were laughing at how different all the kids are. I am so happy we got to spend some time together but it wasn’t enough.

We are now  picking  up a load and heading to Monroe Ga. Hoping to meet up with one of Craig’s oldest friends from high school and hopefully Katie too. This is not one of our favorite places to deliver. Last time we sat but actually I’m not going to complain cuz that turned out to be a lot of fun!!

My son has decided it would be so cool to travel with us and film what it is like out here.  At least for a week. Hoping when we get our own truck he will be able to do it.

It has been an interesting month to say the least. We have seen a big part of our families. Totally love that part of this job. Now we have to work on seeing the rest!!

 

 

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California here we come.

Posted on August 20, 2012 by Anne Leonard

We are almost to Phoenix where we drop this load and we pick up our next load tomorrow night in Colton, Ca. We are planning on getting there as quick as possible and my son Tyler is going to come down and spend the night with us. At a hotel, not in the truck. That would be a little too cozy. Keeping my fingers crossed that it works out since we haven’t seen him in 3 months. Usually we stay in the truck but I think both Craig and I are ready to get out of it even if its just a night. We then will be heading to Ga and then we will need to do a reset since we will be out of hours.

I can’t wait until we can choose where we go and when. That will definitely be a plus. We have to have our own truck to do that but hopefully next year we will be ready to do it.

We met up with some friends yesterday in Sayre, Ok. Randy and Irene. Craig has been in touch with them for awhile but we never met so it was really cool to be able to meet up in person. The little things with this job make it really fun. Meeting up with friends and family. Stopping in hole in the wall places that you would never know about. It’s all a big adventure. We luckily have been running pretty well since leaving Yuma. My least favorite place in the country.

I really hope today works out like I want it too!!!

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Sort of like New Years resolutions.

Posted on August 17, 2012 by Anne Leonard

I have good intentions about writing more often but by the time I finish driving I am usually too tired. I am going to try to write every few days so I can keep the posts short and not forget what has happened.

We ended up leaving our lovely Wal Mart and headed to Phoenix. We then had a few different loads that all cancelled but ended up driving to Calexico, CA. I can tell you, there isn’t much there. Pulled up to the shipper and found out there was no load. Drove around the corner and parked and waited, waited, and waited some more. Finally our night FM told me to head to a parking spot, the closest one was 50 miles away in Yuma. I headed out and let me just tell you. There is NOT a lot to Yuma. I realize there must be something fabulous about it but not that I could see. First off it was 120 degrees and I couldn’t walk the puppies. So we sat in Yuma for the night and finally the next day got a load. Surprise we headed from Yuma to Compton CA. These few days were frustrating to say the least but we are so lucky that this is not a common occurence. Deep breaths and we are off and running.

We should have known this trip wasn’t going to go smoothly. The shipper in CA was pretty bitchy. Craig asked for the Atlanta load and she handed the paper work. It was a preloaded trailer. While looking at the paperwork it didn’t have the Atlanta address. But it was going to another shipping company and the shipper had said this was the Atlanta load.  We head out and somewhere in Arizona the messages start coming across the driver tech. She gave us the wrong load. This load is going to PA. We get the new route and head to PA. Note to self if you have any doubts. ASK??

We are still heading to PA where we will drop in a few hours. We just stopped in Springfield Ohio and had dinner with Connie and Steve. Fellow drivers who we haven’t seen in ages. Love being able to do that.

Oh and the good news of the past few days. While driving to Calexico I was pulled into a CA Weigh Station and had a full level one inspection. For those of you that don’t know what that means. I was the lucky one that was pulled in and a DOT inspector went over my truck and trailer. Over, under and through. I was scared I will say. I’ve never been pulled in for that before. The good news is I passed which is a really good thing. So even though it was a bad few days. I came out ahead. We will drop this load and then see where we head to next.

Most likely California LOL

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Been a while

Posted on August 14, 2012 by Craig

OK, now so much has happened I started to put off writing because there is so much to say.

After Donner Pass we ran to a little town called Crows Landing CA and picked up a load of tomatoes that we hauled all the way to Williams South Carolina.  We got to this place in middle of nowhere down all these tiny back roads, parked until someone showed up in the morning and I asked “are we in the right place?”  Yep.  Got unloaded and we headed up to our main terminal in Tunnel Hill Georgia to pick up a load headed to Kent Washington and home time.  We got out of the terminal as quickly as we could and with an extra day in schedule, we called our oldest son and he picked us up and we hung out with the grand kids.  This is the BEST part of the job, seeing family and friends all over the country.  We then headed out and had a good trip to Seattle.  Our delivery appointment was for 8:00 AM on Tuesday but we rolled in at about 10:00 PM on Monday.  The guy told me we would have to wait until 8 AM since he could not give me an empty trailer, I said “fine, I don’t need an empty since we are home” I dropped the trailer and drove to my parents house.

We had a BLAST in Seattle.  Tuesday night we went down to Lake Union to hang out with our friends on their boat and watch “Duck Dodge”, a sailboat race that is held every Tuesday night in the summer.  My friends Bill and Trish brought their boat across the lake to hang out with us and our future changed.  We have been planning (and I have been doing research) on buying a 38 to 42 foot Catamaran Sailboat to live on.  We had not decided whether to put it in California or Florida.  Well,  after Anne saw Bill and Trish’s 34 foot Sea Ray powerboat, she said “This would be awesome and we could live right here in Seattle”  It is always easy to think about living in Seattle in the summer as it is the most amazing town in the sunshine, summers are just not that long.  She has, however, been to Seattle a number of times in the winter so she knows what she is saying.  I am now doing the research on a power boat and since it will cost about a third of what the Cat would have cost our plans are much closer.  Spent time with my daughter and all three of my sisters where in town so I made a big spaghetti dinner and we had a pool party with the whole family.  We also went down to the waterfront for a seafood lunch and Anne, Aleena and I took the ferry across the Sound to Bainbridge Island and back and then we headed up to Queen Anne Hill to have dinner with my Nephew Aaron and his Fiance Sarah.  We love these two and it was so nice to spend a few hours with them.

Anyway, five days flew by, the weather was perfect and our batteries were re-charged.  Saturday night we headed down to our Kent drop yard and picked up a pre-loaded trailer headed to Target Distribution Center in Fontana and we were off….

Dropped that load and headed up towards the coast near Monterey.  Just before we got there they sent us back South on the Coast to Santa Maria and  loaded up on lettuce and we were off to Annapolis Junction Maryland.  Saw something pretty cool in the middle of the night in the California high Desert.  About 40 miles East of Barstow I saw these very bright, kinda eerie lights in the sky.  There were two of them and they just hung there for over two minutes, then another light appeared a little higher and then another next to that one.  About 30 seconds later the first two lights faded out.  This repeated for about 20 minutes.  It was star shells on parachutes from the Marines at 29 Palms doing night training.  Pretty cool.  Picture below but not clear.

Awesome storms across Oklahoma and a couple of amazing sunrises.  I love the sunrises and sunsets we see.  At least a few times a week they are amazing.

OK, I need to tell on my wife…..
Just after we crossed into Oklahoma from Texas we switched drivers.  It was my turn.  I did the pre trip and got settled in and off we went.  Anne sat up front with me to watch the amazing storms on all sides of us.  We were kind of in a clear pocket so visibility was amazing as the lightning was hitting in all directions.  I had been driving for about 20 minutes when Anne’s phone beeps and she looks at it and says “Oh-Oh, a severe thunder storm warning”  I laugh because I think she is kidding.  Then she says “did you hear me?  A SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING”  I said, “honey, I can see the lightning all around us”  She shakes her head and says “No, a thunder storm”  I say yes, I see it” and she says (like I am not too bright) “a THUNDER storm!”  I just started laughing so hard and said “other than lightning, what do YOU think makes thunder?”  Silly Valley girl.  I think I giggled for an hour.

So we made our delivery just South of Baltimore and we had a full day to get up to Boston so we hung out and had dinner at one of our favorite seafood hangouts with my Nephew Dustin and his wife Jill.  Dustin is a Major in the Air Force and is a JAG officer based at Andrews AFB and Jill is a Captain in the Air Force and is a C-17 Pilot flying out of Dover.  We had a great time with them and they dropped us off at the TA and we got some good sleep.  I got Anne up at 04:30 AM for breakfast (did I mention she is NOT a morning person) and after we ate and she felt awake we drove up to Peabody MA to pick up a load of frozen seafood headed to Anaheim CA.

My turn to drive but we sat there for five hours until we were loaded.  Massive downpour and flash flood warnings and I got soaked closing up the trailer.  I got the bill of lading and put the info into the computer and we were off.  We did not find out until St Louis that I had made a mistake.  We got pulled into a weigh station just West of St Louis (Anne was driving) and they told us we were 3200 pounds overweight on our tandems (trailer tires) and we were at 78,600 gross (our maximum allowed gross weight is 80,000)  I said “No way, we the load is only 34,600”  We only scale the load if it is 37,000 pounds or more.  I grabbed the bill and looked, it said “Net Weight 34,600″………….but a ways over to the left is said “Gross weight 39,400”  The DOT guy let us adjust the tandems and we were able to get legal on all the axles…….for every State Except California, where we were, of course, headed.  In CA, if you have been following the blog you might remember, the rear axle can be no more than 40 feet from the kingpin.  We had the tandems at about 44 feet from the kingpin to make the load legal and there was nothing we could do.  If I had caught this at the shipper we could have had them reload the trailer or take a pallet of two off but I missed it.  Going into SoCal, there is only one weigh station you cross, the one at Cajon Pass between Barstow and San Bernardino where we got shut down the night we learned about this law.  What we learned that night, however, is they close the weigh station late at night. I did the calculations and figured out that if we ran hard, we would pass the weigh station at 3 AM on Monday morning.  We both needed showers but we had to suck it up and keep moving.  The plan worked and we sailed by the closed weigh station at 3:30 AM.  Got to our Colton Terminal and went to sleep.  Got up this morning and took showers, did laundry, got the truck washed, made our 14:00 delivery in Anaheim, dropped the empty trailer at the leasing company, headed over to FedEx in Mira Loma to pick up a different empty trailer and headed to one of our favorite sushi restaurants and a little grocery shopping.  Sitting in the Wal-Mart parking lot waiting for our next load assignment.

It has been a good few weeks.

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Happy Anniversary

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Anne Leonard

Today is our anniversary and it has been an amazing road. I truly love the path we are on and love spending every day with my best friend. I thank god for bringing Craig into my life! We are home in Seattle for a few days and will post pictures later of our adventures here. I love you Craig!! Life is good.

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Rollin’

Posted on July 25, 2012 by Craig

We have been moving since the last post.  Still sitting a bit too much between loads.  I contacted the person in charge of the reefer fleets (love her) and she told us she had been on vacation and she was working on getting our miles back up.  She is a very A type personality and she gets stuff done.  Already have seen an improvement.  That being said, one of the things that makes this job nice is taking advantage of the down time.   We had a run from Louisville KY to Reno NV.  They gave us the load a day late so there was no way to  make the delivery time of 07:30 yesterday.  We pushed hard to get there anyway hoping we could deliver in the afternoon…..nope, only take deliveries in the morning so we went to the TA truck stop in Reno which is right next door to an awesome casino, Western Village.  We spent the evening there and I introduced Anne to video poker.  We are not big gamblers but Anne came out ahead on poker and I came out ahead playing blackjack.  That is a definite win.

The food choices at this place were stellar….and cheap.  Anne had a massive seafood salad and I had a 16oz Rib Eye, both spectacular and only $36 total.

We are heading over Donner Pass this morning on a glorious day without a cloud in the sky.  Picking up an empty reefer trailer in West Sacramento and then we suspect (they have not told us yet) we will be heading to the coast to pick up a load of strawberries going East.

We will be going to Seattle in six days for five days off with family and friends.  Really looking forward to showing Anne the San Juan Islands.

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My new favorite city.

Posted on July 15, 2012 by Anne Leonard

We went to Memphis to pick up our next load which wasn’t until 1:30 am. It was 10 in the morning. Craig and I jumped into a very expensive taxi. Went to one of Craig’s favorite restaurants, Rendevous. Amazing BBQ place. We then walked over to Beale street and sat at an outside joint and listened to some blues. Awesome music and just had a great day. We walked over to the Peabody. They have ducks that live in the fountain in the lobby. They are escorted down at 11 in the morning and back up at 5. I now have a duck charm for my bracelet. We went back to listen to some more music and then grabbed a cab back to the truck.

It’s days like this that I LOVE THIS JOB! I want to spend some time in Memphis one of these days. It had been years since I’d been there and it is a freaking fun town. Try to talk Bandit and Sandi into taking a few days there 🙂

We are now heading to Michigan. We picked up in Memphis to head to Phoenix. That was changed to Cali and then we did a repower in Albuquerque and now we are heading north. We need the miles so I’m not complaining. Our miles have dropped a bit and hoping its a temporary thing. We did get to spend a week home though so I’m not going to complain yet LOL.

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