A very Blue (Skies) Christmas

Posted on December 24, 2011 by Craig

Christmas in Southern California is a bit different.
So we have a couple of great days. We finally got out of Amarillo after about 20 hours. We woke up to over an inch of solid ice on everythng. By early afternoon the road crews and the sunshine had cleared the roads and we were off. We got into Riverside almost a full day late and the consignee told us the earliest they could unload us was Thursday at 17:00 (This was Wednesday morning) Or we could pay them $138 to have the trailer unloaded SOMETIME today. We called and got authorization to pay the $138 but when I went back in with the check the story had changed. Now no matter what, they would not unload us until the next day. Pretty bummed because as soon as this trailer is empty, Christmas vacation starts. I called in and our Customer Service Rep went to work. An hour later, “Go back and ask for Carlos, they will unload you right away” An hour after that the trailer is empty and I drive Anne to pick up the rental car. We drive up to Yucca Valley to spend the night at Anne’s mom’s house. A very nice evening. On the way up we get a call from our son Tyler, his car just died. After talking to him it was obvious to me it was the alternator. He was only a few blocks from home so we made plans to fix it on Friday morning. Thursday we drove down to spend the evening with my wonderful friends from high school, John and Mary Vande Bossche. It is so nice to spend time with them. Got up Friday morning and after more visiting time we headed up to the Valley to fix Tylers car. Went and saw his new apartment and then drove over to the car. OK, we have a bit of a problem. I cannot even get my hands in next to the alternator to work on it. He is on the street right in front of a repair shop so I walk in and ask the owner, a Japanese man named Julio (of course) He said he would charge me $100 labor plus the cost of the alternator and would do it today. DEAL. So now we have more time today so we head out for a sushi lunch and then off to Steve and Lupe’s for a couple of hours. We love these people and it is just so fun to spend a few hours with them. About 4:30 Julio calls and the car is ready. We drive Tyler over to pick it up and then we drive to Anne’s brothers home near Pasadena for Christmas. Now it really feels like Christmas. Lots of family, noise, music and great food. Going to be a couple of great days to top off a great week. We will be heading out Monday morning but only for a few days as we are spending New Years weekend in Seattle with my family. We kinda love our jobs.

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Lil Bit’s new shoes

Posted on December 20, 2011 by Craig

Our crazy dog and her new snow boots

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I’m Back!

Posted on December 20, 2011 by Craig

I will try very hard to not let it get this long between posts.

I am really missing summer.  My poor feet have been cooped up in real shoes for a couple of months now and the shorts are all put away.  This is not easy on me.

So, the load Anne mentioned on December 1st with all the bad weather was a very high value load.  Almost 3.5 million dollars worth of Playstation 3’s going to Chicago.  What killed me is the way they locked the back of the trailer.  They put three seperate seals on it and this big metal bar.  They might as well have posted a big sign the said “HIGHJACK THIS TRUCK”.  Just dumb if you ask me.  I will post a picture of the lowe seals below.  They also had a cable wrapped around the bars at the top of the doors.

We are loving the new reefer fleet and our new fleet manager.  Johnathan was awesome and we really like him but we are with an FM who pretty much gets her way ALL the time.  She has been with the company 14 years and we never sit. We always have a pre-assign before we drop a load.  We love it.  We went to Chattanooga last week to get the truck worked on.  We were due for maintenance but as we turned for Tennessee from New Jersey the truck started running aweful.  Lost power and shaking.  We were not sure we were going to make it but the grandkids are in Chattanooga and our friends Bandit and Sandi were there getting their truck worked on too and Phyllis had given them a couple extra days off so they could play with us.  We pulled in to the terminal at 2:00 AM Sunday morning and got the truck checked in and went to sleep.  Sandi and Bandit came and picked up in thier rental Escalade.  Katie came up from Atlanta (Anne’s friend, see earlier posts) and we went out to play.  It was Katies birthday and the next day was Sandi’s birthday.  I am not going to go into too much detail about this day, partly as it is a bit fuzzy, but we had a blast.  After we recovered a bit on Monday, wel, I recovered a bit, Anne needed a nap.  We went to Jason and Anna’s house   While Anne slept I ran and picked up Sandi and Bandit at the airport as they dropped off the rental and took them to thier truck and they went back to work.  The shop was done with everything they could do to our truck but there was something very wrong with the engine and the Cummins rep was working on it.  They had to order some parts so another day in Chattanooga.  I drove back to the house and got Anne and we ran to Costco where we ended up buying each other our larger Christmas presents.  I have been wanting a new camcorder and I wanted to get her a tablet computer as they are so much easier in the truck than a laptop.  We went home and I watched the kids while Anne took Anna out Christmas shopping.  A very nice afternoon for all of us.  We then all went out to a wonderful dinner.

So I called the shop the next morning and they told me the Cummins guy could not figure out what was wrong but call back in the afternoon.  We gave the kids their presents and had a very nice morning.  I called the shop at 2:30 and they said the truck was fixed!  Just as we were ready to stay another night.  Packed everything up, said goodby to Anna and the grandkids and Jason drove us to the terminal.  We got everything put away and we were off and running.  It turns out we had a bad injector on the engine.  It is running great.

I cannot remeber everywhere we have been but we dropped a Fedex load in Hermiston Oregon and they had us run empty to Sumner Washington, got there at 6 AM and the load was cancelled, so they sent us to pick up a loaded trailer at the Portland drop yard heading to Houston.  We get there and the bills say the load is almost 44,000 pounds.  That is very close to our max so we headed to the TA truckstop in Troutdale to weigh.  We had a problem.  Even with the tandems (trailer axles) moved all teh way forward we could not get the drive axles on the tractor legal.  Max allowed is 34,000 on the drives and we are at 34,260.  Normally you would take the load back to the shipper but it is Saturday and the trailer came from our drop yard.  No shipper to go to.  Weekend dispatch can be…..problematic.  We sent a message and asked what to do, our weekend FM said he would ask and get back to us.  We wait about 90 minutes and call, that guy went home and we have to start over with the next guy.  Same story, we wait 90 minutes and send a message asking if they have a solution.  Message comes back from a third person “Solution for what?”  All I want is a message on the truck computer saying to run with the load.  It is so close I think I can talk my way through a scale house and we are over a thousand pounds short of our 80,000 total gross weight.  The problem is that if we do get a ticket, it starts at $500.  After a lot of messages back and forth I get the one I want “Run with the load but do not fill the fuel tanks over half way”  Kind of a pain to fuel every 400 miles but we are off.   One nice thing about the load is we are going through Fort Collins at dinner time (would have been lunch time if we could have gotten out of Portland on time) so we stop and have dinner with Shelby and Scott.  Back on the road and running through Kansas.  About Colby Kansas we get a message to meet another team in Oklahoma City and swap loads.  They are going to Houston for Christmas and their load is going to Riverside California near where we are spending Christmas.  We meet at 2:00 PM today and we headed West……….RIGHT INTO A MASSIVE STORM.  We are shut down in Amarillo Texas.  I 40 is closed from here all teh way to Albuquerque New Mexico.  Hopfully by noon tomorrow we will be back on the road.  We are finally pulling a reefer trailer however.  After over three weeks on the reefer boad, it is about time.

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I have been slacking

Posted on December 18, 2011 by Craig

LOL, ok, I have gotten a couple of messages asking if we are doing ok. I guess I need to post on here. We are doing great it is just hard to type in a moving truck (like now). I will get to work on a nice long post. Lots to tell, lots of miles, lots of new friends and hard to remember where we have been over the last month. We just had dinner with one daughter and her boyfriend in Fort Collins as we drove through on our way to Houston. My turn to drive, I will put up a post tomorrow when I finish my shift. REALLY looking forward to family time over Christmas and New Years

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8264 miles

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Anne Leonard

Ok we are on a major roll. This past week we did 8264 miles. Not quite sure how we are doing it but somehow we are. We are scrambling for time back but we are still able to roll. I am so ready for a day or so without doing anything. In the past two weeks we have run a total 16229 miles. We’ve had a couple extra days in there but still pretty impressive I think. What’s even better is Craig and I are still on speaking terms LOL. Christmas is right around the corner so I keep thinking the money will come in handy for sure.

The past two days have been pretty rough weather wise. We left LA and thought we were going to miss a storm in Colorado but we ended up hitting one in Utah. Major winds and heavy snow. We shut down for a bit but after watching the news decided we could get in front of it before it hit big time. Utah was super windy and lots of icy roads and then we got to 70 through Vail which was really good in some parts and crappy in others but nothing too bad. Was so happy to finally hit Nebraska which is sort of funny for you who know our history with Nebraska. We are 8 hours from our drop and it’s time for me to drop to sleep. Hoping tomorrow will be a slow day.

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Ahhhh to sit for 12 hours.

Posted on November 29, 2011 by Anne Leonard

Well it finally happened. I pulled into a Pilot in Dunnigan Ca and had 2 minutes left on my 70. Craig actually still had a whole 28 minutes. We start getting hours back at midnight and we will be dropping this load at the Colton terminal and picking another one up in Chino and heading to Illinois. Not use to running out of hours but when you run hard it will eventually happen. This is the only day we couldn’t drive much. Tonight we both get 10+ hours back. We stopped and had dinner, took showers and watched a movie. Felt like heaven. Now it is super foggy out and Craig is not looking forward to the drive. Hoping the grapevine will be clear.

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Running running running running……

Posted on November 27, 2011 by Anne Leonard

It has been another great week.  Another 6000+ week.  We changed FM’s last week. Unfortunately our FM went to an Owner/Operator board. Our loss was their gain.  Really miss Johnathan but haven’t had much to complain about. We haven’t run a single reefer load but we have been kept running. (We moved to a reefer division of USX)

Denver to Kansas to Hermiston to Portland to Laredo to Portland. PHEW. First time in a long time we need a 34 hour reset. We also need a reset for us. It has been tiring to say the least. Still trying to finish the new design of the truck but haven’t had a second to do that. So excited to finish it and get the pics up for you to see.  So far it’s working out really well and the new tv set up is the BOMB. Funny how the little things make such a big difference. But when you live in a truck it is the little things that make the MOST difference.

Thanksgiving was a little depressing. Totally grateful that we have a job, our health and each other but we really missed the family. We ended up sitting at the Denny’s counter having a Thanksgiving dinner watching football. Not the way I envisioned it but  you have to compromise and it turned out really nice. At least Craig and I were together. We can have Thanksgiving next time we see the family.

We have run the gamut of weather in the past couple weeks. I think the only thing we haven’t run into is the locust. At least not yet. In Texas (of course it would happen in Texas) I ran into my first sand storm. It wasn’t bad but I was a little freaked out and Craig was sound asleep after driving all night. I ended up calling a friend (the very first trucker and now friend that I ever spoke to, who may I add is moving over to USX next week!!!!!!) She just gave me sound advice and I made it safely through it. Once you know what to expect it wasn’t so bad just really eerie. We just drove through Moub Utah which is absolutely gorgeous! Love when the send us this way. At least no Wyoming wind this trip.

I hope everyone had an awesome Thanksgiving!!!

 

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Home Time!

Posted on November 20, 2011 by Craig

Well, I have said it before, it is the little things that seem to matter the most. I LOVE doing this job with my wife. I know a lot of people who are in great relationships that could not do what we do and have the marriage survive but it just really works for us. We, of course, have the stupid arguments that all couples do but we have so much fun. Even the not fun times, we are at least in it together and this really is a team.

We ended up with 7965 paid miles on this weeks paycheck. This was in part due to the load from San Diego to Quincy MA that started on Monday evening of the previous week. Payroll cutoff in early Wednesday morning so a couple of extra days running ended up on this paycheck. We ended up running a load from Philadelphia to Chicago and then running empty to Des Moines IA to pick up a FedEx load to West Sacramento. We got to Cheyenne Wyoming and I-80 got closed due to nasty winter weather. We parked at the Flying J just as the weather there got bad. We posted on facebook that we were stuck at the Flying J and I got a text from Jim who had been following this blog with his wife Sandi and had joined USX in part due to us. We had become Facebook Friends but had never met. They were on a FedEx run to West Sacramento also and were stuck at the same truck stop. We had breakfast together the next morning and decided to run together to California. The freeway reopened about then and off we went. We got all the way to Laramie, about 45 miles and they closed the freeway again. This time we sat on the freeway and just hung out for about four hours. It was Sunday so I had the Bronco game on the TV, the Redskins game on XM Radio and my tablet on with my fantasy football page up. The best closed freeway episode ever. Anne walked back and hung out with Jim and Sandi for a couple of hours. Road reopened and we inched our way across Wyoming. Pretty tough driving conditions but we just took it easy and had no real bad issues. We dropped at Fedex and thought we had seen the last of Jim and Sandi for a while. We were told to run empty to LA to pick up a load heading to Washington. On our way South, we stopped in Lost Hills CA to fuel and eat. Two trucks over were Jim and Sandi. So we had dinner and watched Monday night football together. Pretty funny.

Uneventful trip to Fife Washington and my parents said they wanted to come down to Fife and meet us for breakfast. A big surprise when they brought my 20 year old daughter with them. Such a wonderful 90 minutes.

We had forgotten to put in our time off request early for Thanksgiving so when we did, we were told all of the time off slots were taken and we would have to work.  Totally sucks but what can you do.  Johnathan, our Fleet Manager had told us we could go home the weekend before Thanksgiving so that is what we decided to do.  He gave us a load picking up in Sumner WA heading to New Jersey with the plan to repower the load in route so we could get home.  It was a load of kcups (coffee) so it had to be a clean and dry trailer.  Unfortunately it was raining hard in Washington (who knew?) and finding a dry trailer was a big issue.  They also asked us to go looking for some other trailers to take to a shipper.  We never found any but spent most of the day looking.  I had sent a message with my concerns for the weather over the mountains but to no avail.  By the time we got out of the Seattle area it was late evening.  We got about half way up the pass when we were stopped by a big flashing sign …..”CHAINS REQUIRED”…..  We had made the decision when we started that we were not going to chain.  Our rationality was, if it is bad enough to chain, it is bad enough to stop.  We were faced with the consequences of our decision for the first time.  After some discussion, we decided that we were going to stick with the decision and we turned around and drove about 10 miles to an off ramp to park and wait it out.  I got up about 3:00 AM to check the DOT website and, since it had stopped snowing, kept refreshing the site for about 20 minutes when it paid off.  No chains required Eastbound.  I started up the truck, made coffee and off we went for the toughest 26 hours of driving we have had so far.  Slowly over the pass on ice and snow, fog and ice, including black ice in Eastern Washington.  Lots of snow on Lookout Pass into Montana and then a big snowstorm and bad visability from Bozeman MT to Buffalo Wyoming.   Just as I got out of the snow, the winds hit.  50 mile an hour gusts from the side.  Got a message in Montana to head to Cheyenne WY to meet a team that would take our load on to NJ.  We got into Cheyenne (the same Flying J we were stuck at last week) at 5:30 AM.  We swapped trailers and headed home.

It is so nice to be home.  Went bowling with our daughter and her boyfriend last night and having dinner tomorrow with them and my son and his girlfriend.  Weather is nice, sun is shining and we are reorganizing the truck (again)

Life is good.

I am going to post a bunch of pictures later.  To lazy to go out to the truck and get the camera.  We are also going to do some cool things to the truck setup and I will post pictures of that too.

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It’s going to be a great week.

Posted on November 10, 2011 by Anne Leonard

We have been running hard this week and it is paying off. We will end the week on Tuesday pushing 7000 miles. Can’t say I want to do that every week but with the holidays coming I will totally take it. I am sitting in Milford Ct writing this. Took showers and did some laundry. Craig is sleeping and I am bored LOL. Playing on the computer and waiting till 9 so I can head to Pa to pick up a load at 3 in the morning. We then head to Illinois and then head to California. We are running low on hours but since we keep our hours around 9 a day we can keep rolling which is awesome. (If you drive 9 hours a day. After the 8th day you will keep getting enough hours back to keep running.)

I am glad we have some down time for a few hours. This run from San Diego to Boston was rough. We first had to deadhead from Phoenix to San Diego. Then of course leave San Diego smack dab in rush hour traffic. Let’s just say it was a really long drive. Funny thing was we were able to see Dudley and Wonda again since they were driving the exact same route we had finished in Phoenix. Love that about this job. This was a rough drive from the start and then on the 40 in New Mexico we literally were parked on the freeway for hours. There was a BAD accident involving two semis. As we drove by the accident on the frontage road it made me cry. The destruction was amazing and not sure the second truck driver made it. I hope so but I’ve never seen anything like it. It really makes me more aware as a driver when I see things like that. When I’m tired I stop. Sometimes I wish I could drive one more hour but realize I need to be a safe driver and it’s just not worth it.  People are always in a hurry. Today is what pouring rain and drivers were flying by me and you could barely see out the window. That is just stupidity! Get there safe that is the only thing that matters. We had 3 major accidents in 3 different states: New Mexico, Indiana and Connecticut. That’s a first for us.

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I can’t believe I forgot to take pictures.

Posted on November 7, 2011 by Anne Leonard

We dropped our load in Goodyear AZ and are heading to San Diego to pick up one heading to Quincy MA. It’s going to be a great week!! On my phone I have google maps and one of the perks on there is Latitude. Friends of ours are on there and it enables us to see where they are. I think we did a post about it because I felt like a stalker. Well this trip I got to use it again. Wonda and Dudley are a team that we met months ago in California. The main reason we met was Misty a boston terrier who is a doll. The other was I was amazed at how awesome Wonda could back. We became friends and keep in touch so when we saw we were going to pass each other we made plans to meet. Worked out really well since we were both fueling in the same place about 30 minutes apart. The puppies got to play together and we got to catch up. Would have been even better if the restaurant at the Flying J had been open but we made it work. I love when you are able to have these sort of memories. Just another fun part of the job. Right now we are almost to our delivery and after driving the 8 feeling a little car sick. I was in the back. Good thing I’ll be driving out of here. Think this is the first time I’ve felt sick from a windy road. Should have kept the curtain closed entirely.

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