Fog in Pennsylvania

This fog is easy to.drive through compared to what we drove through the other night

Sunday morning

It is nine thirty Sunday morning.  We just dropped off the load in Carlisle, PA and picked up another load at the same place.  This load is going to Marcy,NY to a Walmart distribution center.  The very special thing about this load is......it should get me to my 240 hours needed to be promoted to a solo driver......yea....  I am not sure where I will be going next after this load.  I will need to get to a terminal to take my road test and then be assigned to a truck.   The tricky part will be getting this done close enough to Saint Louis so the company will allow me to "bobtail" home for a.couple of days.  The ideal situation would be for Ronnie to get a load that will deliver close.to.either the Memphis or Edwardsville, KS terminals.  I would most probably be allied to bobtail home from either of them.  If I go to another terminal......I would have to wait for a load that would get me close to home.  The goal is to try to get home for this weekend.  There is allot going on at home this weekend.  I will write more after i find out what is going on..... Tom

From KY to PA

Well the wait wasn't too long!  We got a load going from Louisville, KY to Carlisle, PA.  The biggest problem with this load is that we can't pick it up until six o'clock this evening.  So I am driving to the pick up and then until my hours run out around eight o'clock this evening. Ronnie will take it the rest of the way. Back to fog capital of the world....no fun....but it means that I get to pick up a few more hours driving.......Tom

Saturday morning

Good morning ,

It is 6:00am Saturday morning.  We are in Hebron, KY.  We were taken off safety hold yesterday afternoon.  We picked up a load in PA around 5:30pm and Ronnie drove it to KY. I slept the whole way.  The only time I got up was to help to fuel the truck up in Gerard, OH.  While I was up I got to talk with Diane and Logan on the phone. 

We are waiting to be unloaded and then we will wait some more to get a load assingment.  Who knows where I will end up next.  I do know that i will be missing Al and Nicks homecoming this weekend.  I hope they all have a great time.

I will write more when I know where I am headed.......until then.......Tom

I have been busy driving

I am sorry that I haven't posted in a couple of days.  I have been very busy with two long hauls. The first started in Kentucky and ended in Denver. The second began in Denver and ended in Pennsylvania.   During these hauls, Ronnie and I have been team driving.  I drove first out of KY and drove through KY then IN then IL and finally to the middle of MO.  Ronnie then took over and drove through the rest of MO then all of KS and into CO.  Ronnies hours ran out about an hour and one half short or Denver.  I took over again and brought the load into the Swift Denver terminal.  We were supposed to have been able to pick up the load going to PA immediately, but it turns out that the load was late getting there from Idaho.  So we waited for three hours for the load to show up.  We ended up waiting until nine o'clock that night.  All that waiting ate up a large portion of my available hours to drive.  I took the load out of the terminal and was able to drive it all the way through CO and all but forty miles of KS.  I drove through the night and stopped at six thirty in the morning.  Ronnie took over driving and drove through the rest of KS, all of MO, IL,IN and thirty miles onto Ohio.  I took the load the rest of the way through OH and to it's final destination of Shenandoah, PA.  We arrived there at seven thirty this morning.....

Needless to say we are both pretty tired right now.  We drove over 2500 miles in less than forty eight hours.

We are now parked on a tiny truckstop in Ravine, PA.  We are waiting to receive a new load assignment.

We had been waiting for an hour or so when Ronnie spoke with his driver manager and found out that he and his truck have been put on a "safety hold".  Ronnies driver manager has been working on getting the hold removed. This has something to with Ronnie being arrested. So now we sit.  I can't drive again until Three oclock tommorrow morning. With all the hours i have logged these last few days, I am even closer to the magic number of two hundred and forty hours of driving.  I now have two hundred and thirty hours of driving time. I am really hoping that I can get this done sooner rather than later.  I would love to be able to be home by next weekend.  There is allot going on next weekend and I would love to be part of it.  That's all I have for now.  

When we got into Denver the light was fading fast.  I promise to get a better picture of the Rockies on my next trip out there......
Tom

Majestic Mountains

If you look really closely above the trees you.can barely see the Rocky Mountains

POP QUIZ

Can you guess what state I am in?

The beautiful views we see all the time

This is typical view at either a shipper or reciver

The next day

Most of the time, I spend my time on this blog telling you where I am picking up and where I am delivering to.  There is another aspect to this job I haven't written all that much about........   the waiting!  I.do.allot of that too.  We always seem to be in a big fat hurry to get to point A on our way to point B.  The problem comes up when we are on the clock and the people at point A aren't ready for us.  Then you have to find a place to sit and wait.  That place is usually a truck stop or a Walmart parking lot. There just aren't that many places that are either set up to have a big truck hanging around or wants one hanging around.  We found out earlier today that our shipper wasn't going to.be able to take us early today like we wanted.  So Ronnie drove out his hours on the way there and we found a truck stop to sit and wait.  The shipper thought they would be ready around six o'clock this evening.  We waited until four thirty.to bead over there.  We got here at six fifteen.......and they still aren't ready for us.   So we sit here and wait again.....    There is nothing wrong with waiting......the biggest problem is that we aren't moving.  The only time.we make.any money is when we are rolling and covering miles.....it is all about miles.....miles equall money.
I have also been trying to add little tidbits of information I find interesting.  Things like a National historic site I drove by last night in Flat Rock, North Carolina.  I'll bet you didn't know that the home of Carl Sandburg is located there.  I'd also bet you didn't know that the Martha Layne Collins  Bluegrass Parkway is also known as the Whiskey Trail due to.all the distilleries located along it.  The Wild Turkey distillery is located in Harrodsburg, KY.

I.also though I would give you a look at the scenery we get to look at while we are waiting......hope you like the pics.......Tom

Going out west

The last post I wrote was written in a hotel in Ft. Lauderdale on the beach.  I was scheduled to drive in the morning so I went to sleep early.  Ronnie decided to take a walk along the beach and give his finace a call.  I fell asleep quicky, I was pretty tired.  The next thing I knew, it was12:20 am and someome was pounding on the hotel room door.  I thought the door was going to come off its hindges the pounding was so loud!  I opened the door to find a police officer who informed me that my drivimg partner was on nis way to jail! He told me that the truck was being towed and that if I wanted anything out of it, I had better come and get it before the tow truck left. I threw on some pants and went outside.  I grabbed a bag of clothes and asked what happened. All the officer would say is that Ronnie had been arrested for resisting and obstructing an officer without violence.  I asked for the name and telephone number of the towing company and what would happen next for Ronnie. The policeman told me that Ronnie would most probably get out of jail within four to six hours.  Since our load was already at the delivery point and all we had to do was to drive back there to deliver it by seven in the morning.......I decided that going back to bed was my best course of action...... so that is exactly what I did.
I got up at five am central time.  Ronnie wasn't back.so i checked out of the room and start making phone calls. I found out that Ronnie was in the Broward County Jail. I also found out that I could post a 100 dollar bond and he would then be released. I found an ATM machine, took out the needed cash and got in a cab headed for the jail.  I posted the bond and was told that it would take four to six hours before Ronnie would get through their system and be released.  In the jail they don't allow cell phones.  I retrieved mine from the locker they made me put it in when I first arrived. I went outside and as soon as I turned my phone on, there were three missed calls from the Edwardsville, KS terminal.  I called my "Driver Manager" who immediately wanted to know where I was and why hadn't we delivered our load.  My DM was shocked when i told where I was.  She told me to sit  tight while she made some calls.  She said she would let me know if Ronnie and I still had jobs or not!  I spent a very nervous next hour and a half waiting outside for her to call.  When she did call back, she told me to get on a bus and that she had made arrangements for me to spend the weekend in a hotel in Ocala, FL.  Swift has a terminal there.  My DM told me me to go to the terminal on Monday morning and someone would be talking to me about what happened. I pointed out that most of my things were still on Ronnies truck. She told me to take a cab over to where the truck was towed to, pick up my belongings, then go to catch a bus to Ocala. While I was waiting to be given access to the truck, Ronnie called and asked if I knew where his truck was located. He took a cab over and it took until four thirty for him to get it released.

Everything about this vehicle is big. Big tires, big steering wheel, big expenses.  They charged Ronnie $450.00 for the tow! If the trailer were still attached, the bill would have been $800.00!  This truck will hold.over 200 gallons of fuel.  Whenever we fuel the truck up, the bill can run anywhere from $400 to over $800.

Ok back to my story........
When Ronnie got to the wrecking company he looked terrible! He told me that when he was heading to the beach to call his finance, his hearing aid battery started to die, so headed back to the truck for a replacement. Just as he got into the truck, it was surrounded by three police cars. One officer approached the truck demanding that Ronnie exit the vehicle since it was going to be towed. The policeman shouted for Ronnie to get out of the truck a second time while Ronnie tried to explain that the truck wasn't parked illegally since we had a room at the hotel and that we had parked it where the manager had told us to park it. The policeman then opened the door to the truck and pulled Ronnie out of the drivers seat to the ground.  (You have to remember that the drivers seat is at least five feet off the ground).  Ronnie landed on his back. He was cuffed and had to wait another two hours before the tow truck came.  While he was waiting he asked one of the other officers to make sure that I knew what had happened to him. He gave the officer my name and room number.  They took Ronnie off to jail and then woke me up. We think that the policeman may have broken a couple of Ronnie's ribs.  It really hurts him to breath.

We finally delivered the load at six that evening.  We found a tiny truckstop in Pompano Beach to spend the night. We got a load the next morning picking up in Ocala, FL delivering to three stops in South Caolina.  We took the load and got the heck out of Dodge while the getting was good!  We delivered the load to the three stops yesterday and then drove to the Swift terminal in Greer, SC.  While on our way to the terminal we were offered two more loads.  The first picking up in Greenville, SC and delivering to Bardstown, KY.  The second load picks up in Mount Sterling, KY and delivers to Denver,CO.  So I finally get to go out west.  Hopepully I will finish up my 240 hours with this trip and a return trip.  I am sitting on exactly 200 hours right now.

It is early Tuesday morning.  We are waiting to be unloaded in Bardstown.  As soon as we get unloaded we will deadhead the empty trailer 100 miles to Mount Sterling, KY to pick up our next load.  I will be writing more later....

Remember.......be careful out there! ........Tom

Ft. Lauderdale Beach

This is what it looks like now.

Memory lane

Can you identify these pictures?

More pictures from the past

Look familiar?

Memory lane

Do you remember these places?

The Intercostal Canal

The Elbow room

Same

The old Yankee Clipper

This is now a Sheraton

International Swim club

I used to swim on their swim team

Fort Lauderdale

We arrived in Sunrise, FL around 3:00pm local time.  We got permission to drop the trailer and decided to take a look around.  What a difference thirty years or so can make!  It is quite a drive going east before you get to Plantation High school on Sunrise Blvd.  When we lived there the entire area was cow pastures!  I can't believe how far west the area has been developed.  The high school has grown considerably.  We were going to drive by our old house, but 11th place is a "no truck route"so we went by the old PAL fields instead. Almost all of the baseball fields.are gone.  The football stadium looks great.  It is now named for my old coach Roy Salmon.  The junior high school is still there and also has grown considerably.  What used to be called Doctors hospital is still there under a different name.  The old FFA military school is now a Jewish Community Center.
We continued Easter on Sunrise Blvd until we ran into the ocean.  Blue, Blue, Blue....  Johnathan Dickenson state park has been renamed, but is still there. The beach front and all of the shops that used to be there are almost all gone.  Huge buildings have taken their place.  There is a small section of shops that haven't changed.  The infamous "Elbow Room" of "Where the boys are" fame is still there and showing its age. The Bahia Mar area is still there.  The old "Yankee Clipper" hotel is still there but now is a.Sheraton hotel.  We drove over the Intercostal.waterways canal. There is a shopping center called Pier 66. All in all I almost didn't recognize the area. 
We drove around the area for a while and actually found a place to park the truck.  We went to a restaraunt called the Deck and had dinner.  While there we noticed a small motel next door with a.vacancy sign. We decided to get a room for the evening. It was only $53.00 a night!
We will be herring up early and drive back to deliver the trailer by 7:00am.  I will write more later.......Tom

Heading to Florida

Good Morning!
I am headed to my second home.  By second home I am referring to southern Florida. Ronnie and I arrived in Murfreesboro, TN early this morning.  We went to the consignee to see if they would accept our load early.  Since the load wasn't scheduled to be delivered until 11:00 on Thursday,  they were a bit hesitant.  They agreed to try to work us in if the opportunity presented itself.  We were lucky and they unloaded us at 1:00 in the afternoon.  We then accepted a load that we picked up in Red Boiling Springs, TN.  Yes, the location of the shipper was every bit as rural and out in the boondocks as the towns name might suggest!   Lots and lots of hilly, winding country roads.  This load is scheduled to be  delivered to a Sam's club on Sunrise Blvd in Sunrise, FL.  This will be the first time in over 25 years that I have been back to the area.  Once we deliver this load, we already have another load scheduled to be picked up in Miami Lakes, FL and then delivered to Atlanta. The goal is to get Ronnie back home to North Carolina by Saturday night so he can go to a family reunion on Sunday.
I have 184 hours driving now. Hopefully we can get a load out west early next week. So far Topka, KS is as far west as I have been.  I would like to get out west with a trainer if at all possible.
I would like to do some sightseeing / reminiscing in Florida, but I am affraid we will be limited as to where we can go due to the size of our truck.  I will try to post some relative pictures if at all possible.
OK, time for some sleep.... nite all......

Windmill in Minnesota

Closer shot of windmill in Minnesota

The road to Murfreysboro,TN

Tuesday morning we dropped off our load in Bloomington and then drove to Mankato,MN to pick up our next load destined for Tennessee.   The shipper was located on a very old building right on the riverfront in downtown Mankato.  Getting to the pick up point wasn't easy due to road construction and one way streets.  We had to back down an ancient alley in order to get to their docks.  Since the cargo was food related, the trailer we were hauling had to be inspected prior to loading.  This particular trailer failed the inspection due to cracks in the floor.  Luckily there was an empty Swift trailer on sight, so all we had to do was switch trailers
  After we were loaded, we started our way down south.  I saw another windmill farm in Minnesota.  I was driving so Ronnie took the picture for me.  I know.....enough with the windmills already......I just can't seem to.get over the fact that they are there.  They are huge! If you look at the latest picture you can get an inkling of just how big they are. Each one of the blades is around 100 feet long!  They lookn so.surreal sitting out in the middle of a cornfield.  They remind me of something Steven King would have patterned a character in his Gunslinger series after. OK, OK....I am done with the windmills......
Until I see some more of them.....
We took a.break and ate lunch in Iowa.  I knew Diane would get excited when I told her what town we ate lunch in.  I can now say that after hearing about the Methodist church camp at Clear Lake for our entire married life, that I have been to Clear Lake,  IA.  The rest of the trip south has been pretty uneventful,  so far.   We have just driven through Saint Louis City and are now on our way over to Effingham,IL.  We will pick up highway 57 going south there.....

Well it is time for this one to crawl back into the bunk for some sleep.  Ronnie will be driving the rest of the way into Murfeeesboro........That's all for now.....
Tom

Monday recap

It is late Monday evening and we are in a truckstop about twenty miles south of Bloomington, MN.  It is supposed to get down to the low 50's tonight!  We picked this load up in Fort Worth, TX yesterday at 8:00am. This load had one stop in Earth City, MO that was scheduled for 11:00am today.   I was very excited to get this load.  Because of the first drop, we had to spend the night in Saint Louis.  I actually got to sleep in my own bed last night!  What a treat.  It was the first time in over a month.
Yesterday was a special day for Diane. She was able to drive down to see Logan make his first start for Drury University.  The game went well. Drury won 1-0 with Logan earning the shutout.  Diane was then able to visit Alli and Drew and meet the newest addition to our family...their new daughter. 
Diane drove me to the truck on her way to work and we headed over to Earth City for our scheduled drop off appointment at 11:00 am.  We have had some good luck arriving early to our drops and having them unload us early.  Well today our lucky streak ended.  Not only did we not get unloaded early.....they didn't get us unloaded until after noon!  After we finally completed our drop, we hit the road for Bloomington, MN.  We drove north on Highway 61. Through Missouri and on into Iowa. I am pretty familiar with "The avenue of the Saints" between Saint Louis and Iowa City, north of there was all new territory for me.  My first surprise was how big Cedar Rapids is.  I have been to my brother in law David Buresh's home before, but that had been many years ago and I don't remember seeing the downtown area. My next surprise came just south of Charles City, Iowa. We were cruising along highway 218 heading north and all of a sudden there were lots and lots of windmills!  The windmills are high tech and enormous.   I have seen pictures of windmill fields out in California, but really had no concept as to the size of them.  There they were, spinning along creating energy....pretty cool!

All in all....a pretty good weekend.

We will be picking up another load going to Murphysboro, TN after we deliver the rest of this one.  I'll write more later ......Tom

Cedar Rapids, IA

Cedar Rapids, IA

Windmills in Iowa

Wind at work in Iowa

Moon over Minnesota

Full moon

Update from Texas

Hello all,
I am sitting waiting for some warehouse workers to get back from lunch so they can unload our trailer.  We are near the Dallas Fort Worth Airport.  We got here after leaving the Chicago area, driving to New York City, then to New Jersey to pick up a load that we delivered to Pasadena, TX.  We picked up another load this morning about 100 miles East mlof Houston and have just arrived at our current location.

We have encountered many trials and tribulations along the way.  The details are boring.....so here are the Cliff notes.......Driving through Pennsylvania we had to drive through some incredible rain.  This impacted our exit out of New Jersey due to the flooding from the rain we drove through.  Highway 80 had to be closed in several areas due to flooding and mudslides.  We had to stop in Knoxville, TN to have a quarterly DOT inspection on Ronnie's truck.  The truck failed the inspection due to a leaking inner wheel seal.  The long and short of it was that the mechanics at the truck stop had Ronnie over a barrel...so to speak.....and Ronnie declined to have them do the work.  Ronnie needs to have the inspection completed by tomorrow. If it isn't done and sent to the company by tomorrow, they will put him (and me) on a safety hold.  That means we don't move!  So...we will be dropping this load and then heading to a local truck stop to do the required repairs this evening.  That is one of the unique aspects of this industry.....it never shuts down!  The mechanics work 24 / 7.  So the plan is to have the truck fixed by tomorrow morning, send in the inspection forms to the company, then pick up a load in Fort Worth at 8:00am.  This load is going to Minnesota with a stop in Earth City, MO on Monday morning at 11:00am.  I will be going back home again.....yea....to bad everyone will be at school or work......oh well maybe I will see someone on my next trip....
I included some pictures of my drive through New York.  When we got the shipper in New Jersey, we noticed several deer only 25 to 30 yards from us.  I included some pictures of them too......

That's all for now......Tom

NYC Traffic

Driving through the Bronx

NYC PICTURES

The George Washington Bridge

New York skyline

I was driving and Ronnie was taking pictures as we drove through NYC

Deer in New Jersey

Deer by our pickup point in New Jersey

Interesting street name

One of my fellow classmates from truck driving school.sent these pictures.  I thought I would share them with you.

The New River Gorge, National River

I have seen some very beautiful areas while driving......this Gorge has to be the most beautiful so far.  This is the second time I have been in the drivers seat when we passed this area.  This time I was able to pass Ronnie my phone in time for him to take this picture.