Lol.
I arrived at the yard today and walked into the office, one of the drivers about s*** his pants.  What, what, what are you doing here?  I mean, are you loading today?  Yup.  Welllll, what time?  2:30 appointment.  I dunno what he was thinking, but he was scheduled for the appointment before me. I had shown up early.  Well, he got up and went and got in his truck and took off.  He wasn't late or anything, but it was apparent I wasn't going to get to load early - at all.  20 minutes before my load time, I left the yard as well.  Like an hour and 20 minutes later. 

Lol.  Upon arriving at the loading rack, I was greeted with the sight of fully 4 trucks sitting there ahead of me. One getting loaded and 3 waiting.  It was already 2:30, I figured I would be at the plant until 6:30, I was off by 23 minutes on that guess.  At 6:07 pm, I finally got out of that plant and headed down the road.  That is a very late start to be attempting to get much of anywhere.  My only goal? Get south of Houston today.  Well it's past midnight now, so that was yesterday.  And  did!~ easily I might add, that late at night there is very little traffic on Houston freeways. 

So I'm toodling along, about 30-40 miles south of Houston, kablaaaaaaim!! Look out my mirror, sparks flying everywhere, was dark, couldn't see what it was but knew instantly it was a blown tire.  Of all things to have happen this late at night.  I was planning on driving another 100 plus miles down the road before I stopped.  I had no intention of making it to Brownsville - I'd have to drive til almost 5:00 am to do that. I just wanted decent miles behind me.

Instead, I was stopped on an overpass with very little shoulder room, got out, found the flat instantly, said the heck with this, got back in the truck and drove 45 MPH - minimum speed limit out there - until I got to the Love's travel center 12 miles away.  I kept my eye on the blown out tire the entire time. Any sight of smoke and I'd just  have to stop it on the side of the highway and have a service truck come out there. 

Upon arrival here started an unbelievable ordeal with my company in order to get the damned thing replaced.  Call this number, they send me to another number, which is a separate company that deals with breakdowns and tire blowouts.  I was literally fooling with this guy on the phone for an hour in waiting for him to figure out how to do his job.  He hangs up one me, calls me back 15 minutes later:  the Loves doesn't have the right tire, a service tech will be there in 90 minutes.  OMG.

How does Love not have a standard trailer tire? 11R 22.5 - it's a very common truck sized tire.  Of course, the answer is: my company insists on using Michelin only tires and Love's didn't have one.  They had 11R22.5's, just not Michelins. At that point? I gave up on driving any further today.  Then, the dude puts me on hold, gets back on.  Umm, can you move the truck somewhere else?  I mean, I could but I really don't want to.  Well, let me talk to these people again.  Just ridiculous amount of time to get a simple tire replacement accomplished.

And so now? It's past midnight, I have to wait that 90 minutes for the dude to get here to replace the tire.  I'm sooooo tired!  I'm going to go to sleep anyway. They have my number, they are going to call when they get here.