Hay Trouble

Delivered steel plates to Van Dam Metal Works in Wyoming, Michigan, just outside Grand Rapids. Then we thought we had a load out of Mid-West Pipe Coating in Schererville, IN, only to be told we didn't have it. But instead we got a load of hydraulic door parts from R Batke & Assoc, out of Benton Harbor, MI - which was much closer. While we were waiting for them to load, we went to Point Blank Shooting Range across the street, and I shot a 9mm pistol for the first time. I did quite good.

(20 yards on the right, 25 yards on the left)

 
The door parts were for four drops; one in Iowa, and three in Nebraska. We got three of them off in one day, then the fourth the next morning. The people we delivered to in Nebraska were all farmers, and very nice. We delivered the first stop to Leland McCormick in Pleasantville, IA. He sold irrigation materials, and had built a giant new pole building that needed a door or six. Then we delivered to the farmers: Dan Winkleman in North Bend, Nebraska; Roger Klone in York, Nebraska; then Jeff Huffman in Maxwell, Nebraska.                 
                                          Maxwell, Nebraska

We set up a load of hay out of Gothenburg, Nebraska, just 30 some miles away from Maxwell, going to Garden City, Kansas, but the hay didn't work out. First we were told we could load right away, then it turned out not to be until after 3pm. Which then turned into 4pm, and then it wasn't until about 4:30 before we actually met up with the guy. Then we had to find a scale to get a light weight, since the co-op was backed up with corn trucks and couldn't be bothered with a hay truck. We ended up going to some random scale out in the country, which thankfully was only about 4 miles away.

When we got to the field, however, we started realizing what round bales would look like on our trailer, and it didn't look good. We were told it was 'a legal load, no tarp'. Then we find out it is going to hang over the sides about a foot on each side. We got a couple loaded, and one side was hanging out even farther than that, and we realize we are going to need to treat this as an oversize load with all the signs and flags, etc. And we realize we wouldn't be able to see back traffic out our mirrors. So we call the broker with our concerns that this wasn't a legal load. She said they do it all the time, you just need to dodge scales, and not drive at night.

Suddenly something was going south, and it wasn't the hay load. If we couldn't drive at night, there was no way we were going to get to our reload before they cut off at 2:00pm. After a bunch of hemming and hawing, we decided not to take the load, and asked for a 'truck ordered, not used' fee of $250 to cover our time and trouble since the load was not what we were led to expect. Needless to say, we haven't yet been called back on that count. Just because 'they' do it all the time, doesn't make it legal and doesn't mean we could get away with it.

So we drove to Elm Creek and spent the night at a Bosselman truck stop there, on our way to Salinas, Kansas where our Friday load was picking up. It was going to be 250 miles dead head, uncompensated, but better than taking an illegal load and winding up with fines and marks against us on our CSA score.
 
In the morning we got up and drove to Salina Galvanizing in Salina, Kansas and picked up a pile of pipe bound for San Diego, California. They pipe had already been stacked and staged, and they had three forklifts pick the whole thing up, and we backed under it, they set it down, we strapped it, and off we went. Quick and dirty. The load doesn't deliver until Monday, so we have a leisurely trip ahead of us.

Cattle Panels & Crumb Rubber

Delivered cattle Panels to Western Rebar Services in Pleasant View, Utah. This company uses them in concrete as they function a lot like Rebar in forms. Another driver told me they also use them in mines to help stabilize walls. They put them up on the natural wall, then spray concrete over them.

After this delivery, we drove to Liberty Tire Recycling in Salt Lake City to pick up some 'crumb rubber' bound for a baseball field in Waupun, Wisconsin.

This is a new ball park complex going in across the street from the school. One of the bags tore, and I could see that the crumb rubber was very fine, old tires ground up to a consistency of Graham cracker crumbs.

Then we drove to Verona MI to a job site for Epic Systems,where we picked up some pallets of small steel plates - looked like weights for something, bound for Wyoming, MI. We contemplated taking the ferry across, but besides it being cars only, it looks like it is horribly expensive.

Check out the Epic Systems website photos of the place we picked up. The campus was huge, and looked like a casino/resort, with its own arena for, oh, concerts or something. Pretty wild place...
http://www.th-photo.net/Epic-Systems/

Boys from North Dakota

Delivered pipe to Alexander Pipe Yard, then drove to Williston, ND to pick up a pumping unit gear box, bound for Shafter, CA.

The gear box was heavy and awkward to strap down. Took some doing, but we put five chains and four straps on it, and that did the trick. It did walk a little to the side, due to the road construction in Salt Lake City and Provo, Utah.

Delivered pumping station gear box to Lufkin in Shafter, CA this morning, at 6:00am, after a wild ride down from North Dakota. With the roads in such bad shape, especially the construction through Salt Lake City to Provo, Utah, I was worried that the load would walk right off the edge of the trailer, or the trailer would break in half.

We tried to find a load out for Saturday, but we didn't have any luck, so we checked into a Motel 6 in the big town of Buttonwillow for two nights.

47 Out Of 48

Delivered steel cable coils to Four Winds Casino in New Buffalo, Michigan. This marks state 47 out of 48 since we started out together last October.

Onions and Englishmen

Delivered steel coils to Spokane Culvert in Airway Heights, WA, then spent some time searching for loads, and found one from Progresso Farms in Othello, WA - onions bound for Maryland.

Very slow loading process, it took better than two hours. Tarping was problematic, since you are supposed to let the air flow over the onions, but yet keep them dry, and we knew we were going to run into rain on the long trip. We secured the sides pretty well, stretched the back flap over the long straps to make a kind of tail, and left the front rolled up and opened out. We didn't have to button it up until Indiana.
 
We delivered the onions to AAA Foods in Jessup, Maryland, three days later, and then drove to McLean, Virginia to spend the night in the Best Western. We walked to a nearby Sprint store and I bought a new phone and tablet. Got a Samsung Epic 4G android phone, and a Samsung Galaxy Tab.

We also Met John, an Army Engineer from Great Britain, and had a nice conversation with him. He was thrilled to meet real truck drivers, as he enjoys looking at our big rigs. He was lamenting the lack of sidewalks on the east coast, and how nobody seems to walk anywhere in Eastern America. We assured him that things were better in the west, and suggested he make his way out here when he can.

Fire Detour, Thunderstorm & Wobbly Tires

Got a load of telecommunications poles out of CHM, in Saginaw, TX, bound for Eugene, OR. Decided to take it, and get our home business done earlier than the end of the month. It was a hot day, 'only' 106 degrees, by the time we were loaded. The paperwork said to tarp, but the shipper said they didn't really need it, as they were going to be outside when they were installed, and they were empty poles, no electronic guts, yet.

Driving through drought stricken NW Texas, we got diverted around a wildfire that had Hwy 287 blocked off. It was a pretty hairy detour for big rigs, as it was narrow, and there were a LOT of trucks going both directions. It wasn't nearly as far as our flood detour earlier in the year, though; only about 10-15 extra miles.

We stopped in Jolly, Texas, to have the guys there install a couple "Centramatic" wheel balancers on the steer tires, since we had heard about them and the reviews were pretty good. They use what looks like buckshot in a fluid to balance the wheels as they roll. Good idea in theory. Problem was, they didn't get installed right. The guys were supposed to take the old weights off the tires, and they didn't. So all night the front end developed a pretty shimmy that got worse as the night wore on.

In the meantime, I'm driving on into the Texas panhandle, into a fantastic electrical storm. At the height of it, I swear there were a good five lightning strikes a minute; they sky was lit up almost non-stop, and I was in the middle of it all. I was praying for rain to accompany all that lightning, because the last thing Texas needed was dry lightning. And rain it did, fairly hard. It must have been enough, since I didn't hear any news about more fires.

By the time Collin took over in Amarillo, the shimmy in the front end was shaking the steering wheel pretty good, and when I took over again in Laramie in the morning, it wasn't long before the front end had periodic wild wobble sessions, enough to slow me down a few miles per hour. We had plans to meet Collin's brother Sheldon and his wife Tammy in Little America, and by the time we stopped there Collin decided to have the shop there remove the balancers until we could figure out what to do. When Collin brought the truck around to the shop, he noticed that the steer tire on the driver's side had steel belts showing through. This had happened overnight, as the guys in the shop at Jolly would surely have said something if they had seen that kind of damage. So we had to get another steer tire put on. Sheesh.

Brunch with Sheldon and Tammy was nice. We ate at the restaurant there in Little America and got some nice chatting and catching up done. It was nice to have finally caught up with them out on the road.

Micro-managers & Stress Cracks

Delivered container of auto parts to Mobis CC in Opelika, AL, then took the empty container to the CSX Rail Terminal in Fairburn, GA. This particular broker is the biggest bunch of micro managers, wanting a phone call the morning of the pickup, even though our appointment wasn't until 1pm, and again when we were loaded, then two calls the next day, and a call when we got to the first delivery site, then again when the container was empty, and another when we got to the rail yard, and another when we got the container off, then we were supposed to IMMEDIATELY fax the POD to them, and Cathy was hounded until I got it sent. Bother.

We damaged the strap rail sometime overnight between Tuesday and Wednesday. We figure the strap holding the rolled tarps came loose and got run over, and pulled the rail away from the trailer. We happened to find a trailer repair shop not 1/4 mile from our delivery site. As we had time before our next pick, we had the rail repaired, and some stress cracks welded. Mark from Trailer Specialists is a good guy. I would reccomend him to anyone in the Atlanta area who needs work done.