Okie Antics

Got four new tires on front axle of trailer at Les Schwab, then hit the road bound for Tulsa. Didn't get out as early as I would have liked. I also was having trouble sleeping on the truck. Don't know if it was watching Third Watch that got me riled up, or I was just too well rested after being home so much. We didn't get as far as I would have liked before Collin stopped for a rest, and I wasn't rested enough to feel good about driving, yet.
I started driving at 5:00am, and we drove all day and night, with bare minimum of stops. Uneventful day.
Delivered pipe to Inserve (Integrated Services) in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Then searched for a load. Collin found a Landstar load going from Emerald Falls Golf Course in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma to Des Moines, Iowa.
It was supposed to be an easy, short, quick load, taking a trailer 400 miles.
The catch? There was no way to load the trailer - a piece of equipment called a Line Tamer - onto our trailer. Collin thought he would be able to come up with a plan to load it, though, so we took the job.
The equipment was basically a metal framework on wheels, with rollers and some kind of motorized thing, that apparently helped the golf course lay irrigation lines, or something. It had flat tires, and was weighted heavier on one side so it was lopsided when lifted.
We spent 2 hours assessing the location, looking for something to use as a makeshift loading dock, then driving around to neighboring businesses trying to find a place we could go to load it, but we struck out. The dispatcher then decided to call a tow truck to the scene to pull it onto his flatbed, and then we could push it onto our trailer from there, having disconnected from the truck, and 'kneeling' our trailer by lowering the landing gear as far as possible.
It started out okay, until during the process of moving it from the tow truck to our trailer, it started to roll, and almost fell off the side of the trailer - only it's axles kept it from tipping all the way.
It then took an hour or more to get it back up on the flatbed, using the tow truck to push it from the side, then pulling it from the other side. Then we had to move it back toward the center of the trailer in increments, trying to prevent another incident of it rolling and falling.
All in all, we were at the site for about 6 hours. So much for easy and quick. We also found out that they had had another truck there the week before, but couldn't find a way to load it. The tow truck driver said he had come out then, too, but the driver wouldn't have anything to do with it. That driver was there from 9 in the morning until 3pm, and was pitching a fit at missing out of loads from all the time he was burning.
We got it on 'well enough', chained and strapped the snot out of it, and headed out, keeping our fingers crossed that the delivery site would have a way to unload it.
Neither of us got much sleep that day - we were glad it was a relatively short (8 hour) trip.