So I made it round trip to Oklahoma today.

The method of doing this legally isn't difficult, but if you get pulled over, troopers are probably going to give you a hard time about it.  They can try to write you up - or threaten to - but in reality, they can't really do anything about it.

This is what I did.  Drive straight up to the plant, stopping only once for 3 minutes to relieve myself, lol.  Get up there, go into on-duty mode and while I"m weighing the truck, dropping the trailer, weighing the tractor afterwards and then hooking up to an empty, I'm also on my 30 minute break.  

No, I didn't get a break today.  After I got the empty hooked up, I pull outside the property, do a pre trip - cause' I want to not because I have to (but yes, it's federaly required) and then take off.  I drive down to the love's maybe 70 miles away, fuel up, get a lettuce wrapped Carl's Jr avocado bacon burger and take off. 

Now, I just pass right on by the casino truck stop.  I look at the drive clock, almost 2 hours left on there.  So I just drive the clock all the way down to two minutes, pull into a parking lot, and then hit on-duty on the elog.  Then I post post-trip, wait 8 minutes, go off duty and then?  I put it into personal conveyance mode. That's glorified off-duty mode for all intents and purposes.  

I enter into the comments seek safe haven and I know that between where I am at and the yard, there is no place to park. Well there's one place, but at that time of night? It's full, there's only a few parking spots in there.  So I drove back to the yard, took it out of that mode and then - got into my personal vehicle and drove home lol.

My company could make an issue out of it - my manager won't but higher ups could - tell me we can't do that. But technically, it's perfectly legal and especially for hazmat.  Hazmat is allowed to, per federal regulations, "seek safe haven".  

I could do this every time, actually.  I won't tho. Not because I don't want to or think it's wrong, but because those late loads in the afternoon?  Yea, no.  I would end up getting home at around 3 to 4 am and no thanks. I'd rather stop somewhere, spend the night in the truck, get some sleep and finish it out the next day.  But for the morning loads, going to Oklahoma?  Yup, I will probably start doing that every time.  
Why not?  I get the next day off, at homeOr if they see what I'm doing, they can just dispatch me again the next morning.

And that's what's happening here. I'm going right back up to that plant tomorrow - but afternoon load.  So no, I am not going to try and do it a day trip.  Not only because it would get me home too late, but also because I am due for a reset.  And no, I didn't want to stay in some crap truck stop for 13 hours, I want to go home since it's possible. 

So that's that.  

It's midnight-thirty and I'm going to bed soon. But I wanted to recheck some properties that I had looked at before but discounted.  I had forgotten about the 33 acres that is in "residential zoning" - like a lot of them they try to tell you in county land.  The county has no such zoning. The county laughs at the idea that realtors call a street "residential zoned" in an area outside of city limits.  The allure of that property is that it's more acreage than the one I am looking at 

Okay, here we go again....the birds start chirping at midnight - midnight-thirty.  Why? Oh why oh why.  This is a recent development, never happened before, it's become a nightly thing.  I have to wear my ear plugs again.  

Did I say I'm tired? This is a long trip to do in a day. Almost 700 miles, it just wears you out. I think I'm ready for sleep.

Land

 At long last.

I got an approval notice for the land loan this morning. 

I don’t have the land yet, I just have the loan to pay for it. 

But the more that I think about this particular plot of land, the more I think it would work better than that 8 acre plot. It’s 22 acres, 14 acres bigger. It’s got a pond. Plenty of wooded area. Probably about 4-5 acres is power line easement, but all of that could be used for walking trails and area for fog walking/running. 

The burned out portion is ample room for office/laundry and pull through sites for big rigs. 

It’s just a bit over a mile off the Interstate. 

I dunno bur the door has been opened. I’m going to walk the property next chance I get. Which won’t be today or tomorrow, possibly Thursday for I was dumped with an impossible schedule and asked to get it done.  

I left for Oklahoma today. Dropped the trailer and heading back. But they want me to load another Oklahoma tomorrow afternoon. 

So I have to drive out every last minute today and get as close to the plant as possible and then leave for the plant tomorrow at however much time it will take to get there before my appointment time. So I’m looking at sitting in a dirt truck stop for 13 hours to make that happen.

This kind of stuff is what drives me to find a way out of trucking. I’m tired of ir and I want to work for myself. 

Now comes the rather agonizing decision of which property to take. I have 90 days. The realtor sent a list of over 30 properties today that fit my parameters. I’ve probably looked at most of them. My phone wouldn’t open the attachment so I probably won’t see it until tomorrow when I can get on a computer. Yes I like the property I used for getting the loan but there are other properties I like as well. 

So there it is. Get the land and embark on a new adventure. Land has been the eternal obstacle. There will be other obstacles to come, but I doubt nothing that comes to the level of this land business. 

I’ll post a pic of the land I’m thinking about getting on my Facebook page. 

So many things floating through my kind right now. But I’m not using a keyboard and I’m going to cut this one short.