Thursday, May 3, 2018

I got called up at 6:30 am.  It was the safety guy.  He's not in any way involved with dispatch, so I don't know why this Sheila person is contacting him to contact me.  In the time it took her to write him that email, she could have just contacted me directly.  They wanted me to take a trailer down to Houston to have a "Visual" done on it. That's both doing the annual inspection required by the Feds and an inspection of the unit on the cryogenics level.  So I obviously got out of bed and got moving, drove down there, got the inspection done and got back up here in time for another load in the morning.

Which, never materialized.  I have zero knowledge of what's going on.  I do have this inkling - again - to start looking for a new job.
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Oops, as bit behind on my blog. Well I did go down to Houston, got that trailer inspected  and back up to the yard. Then, the next morning Sheila calls me: I need your help with something. I new it would be a trip somewhere, so I immediately agreed. Turned out to be a whopper of a trip.  Bobtail to Nashville (bobtailing means driving with the tractor only, no trailer), pick up a trailer and head to West Virginia with it/ Turns out a driver had his truck break down.  I pulled into that truck yard at something like 630 miles of driving that day, hooked onto the trailer and dragged it out of the secured yard.  I wanted to leave early, didn't want to be stuck in there.

Fortunately for me, there was a restaurant right there, so I grabbed a bite, went to bed and then got on over to WV.  I'm on the last leg of this adventure, sitting in a small fuel station parking lot in Malvern, Arkansas.  This tiny place actually had showers, of which I needed one badly lol.  I don't always get a shower every day on the road, much to my chagrin, but that's because I am finding the big brand truck parking lots full by the time I get stopped. Everyone is blaming it on elogs, I've had elongated conversations with truck drivers about this debate, turns out they are just cheating on their logs - or have been on paper logs anyway - elogs forces them to keep it honest.

I dunno, but you can count on truck stop parking lots filling up early nowadays and don't even bother trying after 7 or 8 pm.  They are full.  I have a couple of apps that I use to find alternate parking places, usually not truck stops but who cares when you need a place to park and sleep for the night. That also means, however, not getting a shower.  I passed by a Love's earlier, 6 pm - it was completely full.  So, I used that app to find this place today. There is a HUGE truckstop up the road, but it's hardly got any asphalt, it's mostly dirt and it's been raining. I didn't even bother looking, I always have to get out of the truck after driving, no way am I going to sludge around in mud.  But, that place proabably has room for at least 500 trucks.  It's just a vast open lot, and I do mean vast.  It's got fuel and a restaurant at the front. I would have pulled in there for no way it's full at 6:00 pm. 

Okay, well anyway, James found a job today. He went in for an interview and they didn't let him leave lol. He went straight to work. Hopefully he can make it work there instead of going OTR, though every time I ask him about it, he has his heart set on OTR. Yet, if he found a decent place and good money, perhaps he would just stick with it.  Rene is going to watch the kids and the other guy is still looking for a job.

So, there it is.  I'm going to text Sheila tomorrow morning - please do not leave me hanging for 6 days again, I need to work, thanks. Send me out Monday at the lastest, please and thank you.

As for the morning, I could leave around 4:15 am.  I think I will just get out of here around 5:30 am.  I need some sleep.  I took a nap on my mandated 30 minute break this afternoon and fell in to a deep sleep.  Thank goodness I set the alarm, I don't know how long I would have slept before waking up. I had the curtain closed to the sleeper and that keeps it pitch black in here.  Here, is where I am now, the sleeper, cause I'm fixing to go to bed early  It's 8:30 pm and if I go to bed now, getting up early wont' be such a problem.

G'nite. 























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