This is a large post, but then again, Texas is a large state. And it's true, everything is bigger in Texas.
What a week. From Jackson, Missouri, we ended up back in Delaware to pick up a load bound for Laredo, Texas. A truckload of foam insulation headed for Mexico where they build Freightliner trucks. We only take freight to a forwarder in Laredo, and Werner has an affiliate transfer trailers across the border and back -- luckily. The ride from Newark, De, to Laredo is a long one. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 1800 miles. Along the way, I saw Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and finally, Texas. We hit the Texas border as the sun was setting, and continued trucking into the night, getting to the far side of Houston sometime around midnight. Driving in Houston is a trip. You need 3 things to drive there -- titanium balls, a photographic memory of where you're going, and a sick sense of pleasure. The lanes are narrow, there's construction everywhere, the roads go in 17 directions and merge and peel off just as fast as you can focus on them at 60mph, and there is minimal signage. I was fortunate enough to be able to pick a middle lane and just run straight through without stopping. It was still fun, however.
Werner has a curfew on all student drivers for their first 2 weeks on the road where they can't drive from midnight to 6am. This requires us to plan our stops very carefully if we want any chance of having a place to park 75 feet of steel for the night. It was somewhere around 85 degrees and 99% humidity in Houston. Werner doesn't allow their trucks to idle more than 5 minutes, so we were without air conditioning. We parked just long enough so Greg could finish his 10 hour break, then continue the last 5 hours to Laredo. We got to Laredo around 8am, and from there headed out into the desert to find the industrial park that serves as a link between the US and Mexico. It was a mess. Road signs are non-existent, people drive like idiots, and half the people running the drop yards don't speak English. We got our load of foam dropped after about an hour of waiting, and headed back to the truckstop on the other side of town. From there we got orders to hit the Werner terminal in Laredo for an empty trailer and head back to the industrial park for a load of truck parts from Mexico. Once we found the warehouse, I had the chance to do a 90* blindside back (pushing the trailer around to the right where all you see in the right mirror is the side of the trailer) between 2 trailers with about 30 feet of space on the front side. 4 attempts later it was perfect :-)
Once we were loaded (around 3pm), we beat feet for Dallas. Along the way we were greeted with rush hour traffic in San Antonio. It took over an hour of 10-20mph to get back to open road. Then we hit Austin rush hour. This went quicker, but still added time to the drive. Once we got out of Austin, the sun was once again below the horizon, and we ran headlong into a construction zone. Somewhere in there we got a message on the QualComm to call a driver on his way to Dallas so we could drop our load at the terminal and pick up his load headed to Lufkin, TX. Along the way, we stopped at Willie's Place just north of Waco. This is the truckstop in Carl's Corner that Willie Nelson bought a few years ago and started making Bio Willie biodiesel at. A few months ago they rebuilt the place, more than tripling the size of the building, and adding a bunch more fuel islands. The store now boasts a restaurant and a full blown bar. We just stopped to stretch our legs and check the place out. It was awesome. I will totally go back again if I ever get the chance.
We arrived at the Dallas terminal sometime around 11:30, and were promptly directed straight into the Safety Lane there. This is where arrogant little shits who claim to be mechanics "inspect" your truck, especially if there's a factory recall on something. Unfortunately International has a recall on the jumpstart terminal post on these ProStars, and this truck supposedly needed it fixed. It had been fixed before the truck was handed to Greg, yet somehow the computer system said otherwise. The "mechanic" got into a huge tizzy over the fact that the tire pressure in all 10 tires on the tractor were 10psi low. He got all huffy asking if we were doing our pretrip inspections like we were supposed to. Um, yeah. We do. Our lives kinda depend on it. We make sure the rig is safe. Little schmuck. Of course, he then proceeded to OVER-inflate the tires by about 10psi as we found out the next day when we checked them. Its something you notice right away, the truck handles totally differently; and in fact being over-inflated made the truck harder to control.
After we were released from the "Safely" Lane, we left the terminal and parked at the Pilot next door to wait for the other driver. He finally showed up sometime around 130am, and we snatched his trailer and parked for the rest of the night. Friday morning was shower time, and since we only had a 3.5 hour ride to Lufkin with a 6pm appointment, we took our sweet time. Hot shower felt awesome, hot coffee tasted great, and a hotcake breakfast at McDonald's was scrumptious. We got rolling sometime around 11, and proceeded to run some secondary roads, just to kill more time and get me some more hours towards my 275 goal.
Secondary roads in Texas are quite strange. Most of them are posted for 65mph, are 2 lanes in each direction, and aren't divided or limited access. So yeah, you're hurdling down the road and at any point someone could come bumbling out of their driveway or a side road and you'll be on top of them in negative time. Getting used to traveling that fast is not easy. It's worse when the road goes down to a single lane each way, still 65mph. We made it unscathed, and showed up at the grocery warehouse about 3 hours early, at about 3pm. They were nice people and informed us that despite our 6pm appointment, if we waited until 415, the warehouse would be open for receiving then. We decided hunger was getting the better of us and doubled back about 3 miles to a roadside BBQ place we'd seen. There is simply nothing like good Southern BBQ. We had chopped beef bbq sandwiches with pickles and onions, made by this little old Mexican guy. Check FB for a pic of the sandwich, and of their roadside smoking gun. Actually, check FB for all my pics from the road.
We headed back up to the warehouse, were ushered right in, got to "cheat" backing into the dock (I was able to turn so I was straight in line with the dock, didn't have to adjust hardly any -- as opposed to doing a 45* or 90* back from perpendicular to the dock. We checked in and got settled back in the cab to watch a SWIFT (Sure Wish I Finished Training, See Werner I'm First Today, ask me for the less PC acronyms) trainer try to get his student to back in 2 doors down from us. After the student tried 4 times, the trainer got behind the wheel.....and failed, too. It was a sight to behold. The best part was 10 minutes after the trainer *thought* he was properly docked, one of the dock workers came out and told him he needed to move over 4 inches so the dock plate could be put into the trailer :-D Trying to subdue the giggles was almost impossible. They unloaded us quickly, and then told us the load was 64 cases short compared to the Bill of Lading. 896 cases of paper towels supposedly shipped, 832 cases counted. Great. Luckily we'd only had the trailer for 18 hours, and we confirmed the seal was intact when we swapped the load in Dallas, so our rears were covered as far as liability. Not a big deal; recount the load ourselves to verify, call the Claims Dept. in Omaha, say sorry to the customer, hit the road.
3.5 hours and Greg's gonna be home for the first time in 40-something days. Talk about excited. I mean really excited. Like 8-year-old at 5am on Christmas morning excited. It's a good thing Werner trucks are limited to 65mph, and that I was driving :-) Driving through Shreveport, La on a Friday night is quite the sight. There are lights everywhere. I suppose you could consider it a small version of Las Vegas, with casinos everywhere. We got into Jonesboro, La, sometime around 10pm after making a couple stops here and there to get fuel and check out another new truck stop that just opened in Carthage, Tx. Greg decided that it would be better if we stayed in the truck Friday night instead of going to his home and waking up his 3 grandsons that late. Apparently they have just as much energy as grandpa.....
So here I am, Saturday morning, October 30, 2010. I'm in the motel he puts his students up in when he has home-time. I had the option of hanging out with him and his family while he works on his house today, but I felt the break from society was needed instead :-) Of course, now that I'm used to sleeping in a single bed on a rock-hard mattress while bouncing down the road, a king bed that doesn't move may have me wide awake all night. Oh well, I should be just getting used to it by Monday night, just in time to get back in the truck and head for points unknown yet again. I'm just happy to get a mini vacation from everything, even if I'm in some small town in north-central Louisiana and have no idea where anything is. Greg is kind enough to leave a vehicle for me should I decide to venture out into the vast wilderness. If I can find a shopping center or mall somewhere, I may just go for it....
Until next time....keep the chrome side up.
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