Life on the Road

I finished my on-the-road training with Swift, the company for which I drive, the weekend before last. I got my own truck on Wednesday and hit the road, taking a load of empty beer cans to Ohio, where they would get filled. That first day was stressful, what with running around the Swift terminal like a chicken with my head cut off, trying to find an empty trailer. The way this can place works, we have to leave an acceptable empty trailer before hauling away the can-laden trailer. "Acceptable" is specifically defined, and hopping up in each trailer to check it for acceptability on a sunny day gets tiring, especially when you only have 15 minutes in which to find a trailer, get it inspected, and drive half an hour to pick up the load on time. I'm learning that I need to allow a lot more time for unexpected delays. Like, a lot.

I'm currently outside the Chicago Metro area, with my last message having informed me that there are very few loads in this area, so I should find a place to hang out. Thankfully, I am already parked at a Walmart near a few eateries. If I had to drive anywhere, my onboard GPS/computer would start counting down my daily 14-hour clock. Truckers have 14 hours from the start of our on-duty time in which to complete up to 11 hours of driving before having to take a rest period. "Fourteen hours is an eternity," you say? Well, it can feel like that at times, but when you consider that if my 14-hour clock started ticking at 9:00am and I got a load at, say, 8:00 this evening, I would be left with less than half of my daily driving time available, likely necessitating me to take an additional rest period on that run. Since the rest period must be at least ten hours, what could have been a leisurely trip with all the pit stops I could ask for easily turns into a harried butt-hauling session.

Speaking of butt-hauling, my second run was going to be leisurely. After taking forever dealing with the trailer's broken landing gear (retractable struts at the front), deciding to try adhering to my company's silly US highway route instead of my onboard GPS's faster interstate route, and getting a flat tire, I was really sweating it trying to get the load in on time. I kept having visions of having to sleep on the side of the road, getting a demerit for late delivery, not making it to Walmart to get groceries to put in my cooler (the horror). I like having the down time now, but I've never been good utilizing down time when I don't know how long it's going to be. So, I'm at a Dunkin' Donuts trying to find normal jobs back home and getting back in the swing of blogging.

A quick note regarding the tire blowout, the only clue I initially had was a weird noise. Apparently, 100+ PSI rupturing 3/8" of rubber makes quite the loud noise if I could hear it 60 feet away over the radio and engine. I thought it may have been cargo falling over, but I was on a glass-smooth road at the time (unpaid plug for the Indiana interstate system). A couple miles down the road, I noticed in the mirror one of my tires looked a little rough. If it hadn't been the obvious outside side wall of the outside tire, I may never have known I had a flat or what the noise was.


Below are some pictures of things I've seen along the way.

Scott

 You've heard of row houses. There are also row clouds above US 287 in Southern Colorado.

 

 

 Brilliant hands-free bathroom door handle in Toot 'n Totum north of Amarillo, TX. I guess you'd call it a footle.

 Parked back on the grass, you can see Mater. Tow Mater. Roughly near Alvord, TX.

That dark cloisonne truck, as Volvo calls it, is mine. I'm dropping off an empty trailer and picking up a load of empty cans in Golden, CO.

 

 Blown out tire, just East of the IL-IN state line on I-74.