Well. 

Tuesday late afternoon.

The company where we drop the loaded trailers wanted the lights fixed on it before they would take it.  My manager called me - on speakerphone - you'll have to take it to Harlingen and get it fixed. Why on earth would I want to do that? It's just lights I can fix them myself.  The mechanic, listening in, offered to order the parts at the local Peterbilt and I could just go pick them up and not have to front money. 

30 minutes later, he calls and says they didn't have the parts, but FleetPride does.  Over to fleetpride. I assumed they were the right parts, they 'looked' like the right parts, but our mechanic is pretty good so I didn't question any of it.

But, that's exactly what I should have done. I should have brought the rubber light holders from lights that didn't get broken so I could match them up.  Yup, I ended up having to back. But, they didn't have the right ones, so I went to another place down the street. They had the right rubbers, but not the right light.  Lol.  So, I went back to Fleet pride to get that light back. I had returned it because it came with the rubber thing to hold the light and I didn't want to have the company paying for duplicate. 

Anyway, back to the yard, but I had gotten the wrong light for the side marker.  Gag. BACK to the store for a THIRD time, but I got it right this time, fixed all the lights and they immediately hauled it out of the yard and to the port crossing.  Well now I know what kind of lights all of them are on those trailers, I won't have to guess again when this happens in the future.  I was very happy to get done with that as it's almost 100 degrees out and very high humidity. Great day for the beach! 

Instead, I went to Wingstop, got 21 Cajun spiced wings and headed over to the local hotel. America's Best Value Inn.  I was going to go to Residence Inn - but their prices went back up after I had found  the price down and I'm not going to pay $179 for a room.  Im not on vacation and it just isn't worth that much money to me. It was disappointing tho, really wanted to stay there.  This hotel is nice enough for the money, which I can assure, is nothing even remotely close to $179 or even the Residence Inn's normal price. 

So here I am, relaxing on the couch, watching TV, perusing the internet and out of that truck.  30 hours in the thing, I had had enough.  A small dent in the amount of detention pay I'll make on this trip, well worth it to me.  Don't get me wrong. There are trips where I'm in that truck over 90 hours, but Brownsville is different, getting paid to sit around and do nothing. And finally, a 2 day layover after the last what, 4 trips down here getting no detention pay at all?  Yes that makes me happy.  Oh an yes, I verified for a last time with the manager of the yard down here - how many more empties coming back today? 1, only 1.  Good, I thought, Joe will take that and I'm getting a piece of this detention pie.

I'm still in awe at how much has happened in the last - very short period of time.  A man is killed by a police officer - of that I am not questioning and it was merciless, brutal, savage and outrageous - but then the whole nation erupts into riots and protests...and then....they now demand to eradicate or defund entire police departments?  I''m not sorry to say that they aren't interested in defunding the police, I'm pretty sure this is a power grab move.  I'm not going to go into that excepting to say that no one in their right mind wants entire police departments. There is more to this story than what we are hearing. Even Joe Biden - a person I wouldn't vote for in my worst nightmare - is saying he won't support defunding the police. 

Soooo....
Late load appointment time yesterday, at least in my book it is. But, it definitely worked out to my advantage. I was the 3rd load coming down to Brownsville yesterday.  2 drivers were already sitting down there according to the manager and 2 more on their way down there.  I get a lot of information from the dude when I sit down in his office and chat.  Otherwise, you get minimalistic replies from him on texting or even on phone calls.

As it stood, I had to go into the office to get the run, he didn't have all the info on Sunday.  He was wasted tired - this particular job being a dispatcher will keep you up all night long on some days.  He clearly wasn't liking it, I'm wondering how long he will last at the position. I've grown to like his style of dispatching, much better than the previous manager, so I kinda hope we don't have to go through yet another new manager,  if he decides to quit.  His wife makes boocoo bucks doing whatever. They have brand new vehicles, bought a brand new pontoon boat, live on a ranch.  I'm assuming his money is just extra and I don't get from him that the extra is all that worth it.

But we'll see.  After I baked my @$$ off in the plant - they still aren't allowing us to come inside the AC conditioned unit at the loading rack, we have to wait in our trucks, not running and hot and humid gag - I started the longish trip down to Brownsville.  I was tired, I didn't sleep well and it was dragging me down.  But I decided to force myself to drive at least 300 miles before stopping for forced break.  Tho I don't really complain about that 30 minute break too much, I usually zonk out for a nap and extend it to 40 or 45 minutes. As long as I can get the trip done that day, they aren't going to care.

I was 6 miles away from having 300 behind me when it happened - again.  This is the 3rd time I've had one of those deficient tire caps come off.  So, something catches my eye in the mirror, I look back and there it is flying all over the highway and cars and trucks slamming on their brakes.  It's a busy highway all the way down. The Interstate they are building there will eventually make it a much nicer, smoother trip without having to go through endless small towns and slow downs and traffic jams excepting maybe Houston.  But that's years away, I'm guessing.  Anyway, this is a "Super Single" tire, it's one of those extra wide tires that takes the place of dualies.  So, the cap is huge.  No one stopped claiming any damage, since I pulled over immediately to see what happened, at least that was good.

Well, sitting on the side of a busy highway with trucks and cars zooming past you only a few feet away going 70-75 is not my idea of fun, and since the tire still had pressure in it, I decided to slowly drive to the next exit and get away from that mess.  You know, this whole idea of having flammable, explosive, volatile cryogenics in the trailer? And the idea of someone not paying attention slamming into it and killing all of us with a huge explosion.  That's not really my idea of a day's worth of fun, thanks.

It took them an hour and 45 minutes to find a service truck to come out.  Why? Because the company wants the same, specific tire on the truck, but, they want it to be a recap.  Well some places might have a recap and some probably won't. No one in a 100 mile radius had one so my company eventually gave them permission to put a much more expensive drive axle tire on there. Like a thousand dollar tire.  It was over 3 hours before I was on my way.

An odd thing happened, tho, while I was waiting. A red Nissan pickup pulled over in front of me.  I was thinking, Hmmm, now what?  Do I get out a club? Or is this someone asking if I need help?  Well, a boy- guessing 16 or 17 years old?  Got out, came up to the truck and started chatting as if we were long time friends. He didn't even ask if I needed help, it was really strange lol.  He had a big smile on his face, nice person, good natured you could tell, I guess he's just the type to - approach strangers to start talking?  I didn't want to be rude to him so I chatted with this boy for at least half an hour.  He was going bowling, he proclaimed and was going to meet his friends there.

Which made the encounter even more odd. Why did he stop, then, if he had a date with his friends? But I didn't ask him that. Lol. After hearing his life story, basically, growing up in that region - which I can tell ya the biggest town around there probably has a couple thousand people - he decided it was time to go meet up with his friends. I bid him a fun time and that was that.

Just one of those things that leaves you scratching your head.

Meanwhile, I was nervously looking at the 14 hour clock. By that time, it was too late, I didn't have enough hours to finish the run - but the guy was working on the tire.  It's a process, they have to take pics of the tire and write down a report before they even begin changing it out.  This to prove to the company that it was, indeed, ruined and needed replaced.  Guessing if it didn't then they come back down on the driver and ask why? Well I can assure you that sitting on the side of the highway, broke down, is not my cup of tea regardless of whether I am getting paid for it or not.  Anyway, there is this feature called a "16 hour exception" that adds 2 hours to your drive clock. You can only do it once per 70 hour reset.  I was thinking, well if I do that, it's going to be 2 am by the time I get down there.

The other side of the brain was thinking - the sooner I get on the detention clock, the more money I make. If I take a 10 hour break before getting down there, I'm shorting myself.  The 16 hour exception won, I drove until 1:30 am, stopped for fuel at the local Love's down here, uhh, the fuel gauge was in the red zone, it couldn't wait until today cause' I would run out of fuel and that's not anything you want to do - got to the yard and got the day over with.  There are still 2 drivers waiting on trailers here, that almost guarantees I will be here until tomorrow. The manager confirmed that as well, I would be getting an empty on Wednesday, I haven't seen them drag 3 trailers in here on one day in a long time.  But it's almost noon and they haven't even gotten a first empty in here, so I'm fairly safe in that assumption.

Later on today, assuming this situation remains as it stands, I"m getting a hotel, jump in the pool, relax and enjoy myself. The detention pay will go up to around $800 if 2 days occurs, the little added expense of a hotel isn't going to hurt anything and I rarely do it anymore.  Brownsville shut their town down when the virus hit and all the restrictions. They went well beyond the state mandates, so there isn't much to do down here besides just go relax in hotel. I'd prefer a nice hotel, that usually what makes it fun, but the Residence Inn? They are listing at $160 to $180!  2 weeks ago they were listing at $70 lmao.  Must be some kind of event going on?   Dunno but I'm not paying that much money for a hotel room.

Interesting. Just like that, overnight, Residence Inn came down $60.  Yes, I was checking yesterday for a room for today, so that's kind of weird.  They have great rooms, quiet, nice, and Monday through Wednesday they have dinner - tho I dunno if they're doing that now with this Covid crap in place.  I might do that.  I don't want to jump too far ahead and counting chickens before they hatch.  I know the manager says there is no 3rd trailer today, but I am not going to do anything until around 3 or 4 this afternoon.  Watching for any trailers to come in for the other drivers, I figure 2 of them will show up at roughly the same time, after that? I'll ask my manager to ensure that I'm not wasting money on a hotel room when a trailer is showing up. They will want me to leave immediately with one the second it shows up.  We go through this busy -not busy at all - routine and right now, for the next few days anyway, we're busy.  He was complaining that he had so many drivers stuck down here that he didn't have enough to cover the loads.  It's like this constantly. We either have too much work or we're sitting 2, 3 and even 4 days. 

I started weightlifting again. Nothing too intense, but my arms and chest have lost a lot of muscle mass after 2-1/2 plus years of not doing the kind of work that kept me in good shape, namely, lifting heavy fittings to load onto pallets and load onto the truck.  That was a pretty active job and that was one of the things I knew I would miss when I was considering quitting the place. This rather high protein Keto diet I'm on will help with rebuilding muscle.  Growing old is not an option, that's just part of life unless you die early for whatever reason. But growing old and weak? Unless you have underlying medical problems that stop you from being able to engage in weighlifting and workout routines, there is no reason to allow your skin to just become flabby and looking like you have zero muscle.

Just that it takes a lot more discipline to force yourself to workout versus a job where you have no choice, it's part of the work description.

Lol, the manager just sent us a text - the 4 of us down here - asking if any trailers had shown up? Uhhh nope. Anymore they don't get here til afternoon or even early evening.  He clearly wasn't happy with that answer but that's the truth of the matter.  His issue is with the customer, but I doubt he gets too cranky with them since they are far and away the biggest customer we have. And it's a different culture in Mexico, they don't do things like we do here. And don't take that wrong, it's not a slur or slam against Mexicans, but I've spent enough time around them both in Mexico and the US to understand that if you say a meeting starts at 3:00 pm, they will show up at 4 or 5 pm.  Same with these trailers, if you ask them when one is coming up and they tell you a specific time, do not take it literally.  It could be hours after that time.

Oh, and now? They want the lights fixed. I did a temporary fix on them, but they went out, looked at it, took pics and declared that the wanted it fixed before they would take it across the border. I find that laughable. They don't care about truck conditions in Mexico, you can be 20000 pounds overweight, have bald tires, leaking oil and air, lights out - they literally don't care.  So now, my manager called and said I need to take the trailer to a place in harlingen.  Like what? It's just a couple of lights for crying out loud.  I can fix that shit myself.  Yes, yes! they were all over that, the mechanic was also standing there and said he's call Peterbilt - a mile away versus Harlingen - 30 miles away - and see if they have them. So, I"m getting off of here because either way? I have to have the trailer fixed.