We stopped somewhere north of the Maryland state line for the night, as Collin was too tired after the Chesapeake mess to get all the way into Delaware, and anyway we had been specifically instructed not to come into the yard for the pick until 6am.
All day on the radio they had been forecasting wind, and boy did it hit some time in the wee hours. And I am glad we were parked. We woke to the truck being shaken by wind, and rain pelting the cab. The blow lasted about an hour, then by morning it had cleared off.
Again the iPad showed it's limitations. I had pinned the drop based on the address we had been given, and the satellite photo even showed what looked like a lumberyard. However when we got there, the pin actually marked a place called the "Rock Pile". The map app had just marked the highway, not the actual address, and I had no way of knowing it, because when I tapped the pin it showed the address I had entered. It turned out we hadn't gone far enough.
This pick was interesting. We loaded at a place called 2nd Time Designs - which is artwork made out of recycled items. The proprietors are retired husband-wife truck drivers, and it was interesting to hear their take on the profession after 30 odd years on the road together. They had enjoyed their time together, and Judy wasn't sure what she was going to do once they parked the truck, but now she finds it hard to leave home.
What we picked up was more recycled material - 100 year old redwood pickle vats from Vlassic Pickle company, broken down. (Apparently Wal-Mart told Vlassic that they wouldn't buy pickles made in wooden vats, so they changed them all out.) Makes me wonder what this project is.
The third pick, from a place called Tindall's Virgin Timbers in Peach Bottom PA, was walnut: beams and tongue and groove flooring. This was beautiful wood that we had to tarp for sure. (The pickle vats we did not tarp - they had been sitting outside at the shippers, not to mention that in their previous life, they had held briny pickling water in them.) Getting to Peach Bottom...talk about your country roads... There was no direct route to or from this place. We didn't get lost, but the windy roads and stop and go through traffic in small towns was eating up our time. In Lancaster, we had planned to cut straight up through about 30 more miles of country road, but we opted to go out of route by about 50 miles, just to get on a proper highway so we could make up some time. As far as I'm concerned, it was a good call.
We made the fourth pick, in Scranton, PA just in time. The guy was still there to load us, and it was still daylight in a rather scrofulous part of town. What did we load here? The guy just called it 'olde wood' - from a shipper called Olde Good Things. I think I heard Collin say it came from a boardwalk in New York. It looked like crap wood to me, all bug eaten and weathered. But whatever... We were getting paid to move it, and crappy wood like that wouldn't need to be tarped, either, which is a bonus.
Once we were strapped down, we beat feet out of there. While the place was located next to a high school, it still didn't look like a place to be after dark.
We had been debating whether to take the I-80 turnpike or not. It is the most direct route on the map, but it is a toll road, and we didn't know how much it would cost us, or even how the toll roads work. Since we were running behind, we thought we would give the turnpike a try. At the very least, we would know what it was like, so we could make an informed decision next time.
I think it was a good move. Near Hubbard, Ohio, we took a ticket at the booth, then it was pretty much smooth sailing through Ohio! And it 'only' cost us $36. Indiana was the same way - driving through at night, we pretty much had the whole thing to ourselves. Indiana 'only' cost $30, and the bit to get by Chicago? $3
The really nice part was knowing that we were staying on the same route the whole way, and not trying to string a bunch of highways together. I'm thinking what we saved in time and aggravation more than makes up for the expense.
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