The Long-Awaited

I know what you’re all thinking: “Oh, is he still doing this blog? I thought maybe he realized nobody reads it and nobody cares. “

But frankly, I don’t care if anybody cares. This blog is for me, and the rest of you are given leave to ignore or enjoy as you see fit.

Honestly, I’ve been kind of busy for the past several weeks, and when I’ve had free time, I haven’t had internet availability, or I’ve had better things to do (re: spend time with my family).

However, right now, I seem to have some limited internet, some limited time, and I’m in “Colorful Colorado.”

Here’s the long and short of what you’ve been missing:

I ended up in New Jersey (very pretty state, if you stay away from Newark), bringing me all the way from one coast to the other. I completed my training period on March 25, and ended up stuck in Denver for a few days waiting for a truck. Eventually they rented me a car and had me drive down to Dallas to get my truck. So, after about 2 weeks of not working, getting paid roughly $20/day to sit around and twiddle my thumbs, I finally got on the road.

My truck was… less than perfect. 505,000 miles when I got in it (now up to 524,000), it was certainly showing its age.

I drove solo for about two weeks, spending 98% of that time in Missouri, Illinois, Arkansas, and Texas despite the fact that I was technically a “Western Regional Driver,” meaning I was supposed to be driving in the western 11 states (and some of western Texas). Then I got a call from a dispatcher who had an opening for a team on one of his dedicated runs between Ogden, Utah and Paris, Texas. It was a guaranteed 7800+ miles every week, resulting in a pay increase of roughly 90%. The teammate he was hooking me up with was from Ogden, and (as it turns out) LDS, so I agreed.

Our first week running together, we pulled in about $500 more than I made my first week running solo. Our second week running together, I pulled in about $100 more than I was making in training. That was kind of rough. But I think I know why:

We have had to stop for hours and hours on EVERY SINGLE LOAD that we picked up that week because of broken this and broken that on the trailers. Every driver should be checking these trailers and getting them fixed, but NOOOOO they’re too lazy so Josh and I are single-handedly getting the entire Werner Enterprises trailer fleet (16,000 trailers strong) repaired. We’d probably let some of these go, except that we actually got pulled over one day, and Josh ended up with a ticket because we hadn’t noticed something was wrong. So now, we check and fix everything. Well, except for one tire that actually looked ok, just a little worn. Not three hours later, it blew, costing us another five hours of sitting and waiting.

So, all our sitting and waiting cost us between $400 and $600 this week. Totally unacceptable. Right now, we’re in a motel in Denver waiting on repairs to our truck (leaking water-pump). Could be another day or two. So… I’m expecting a smaller than acceptable paycheck again this week. Nothing I can do about it, though.

I’m sure I have more to blog about, but I’m not going to right now. Be grateful for what I give you, and be glad I don’t give you more ;)

A Mile High

Ok, so my first night sleeping in a truck wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t overly restful, either. The first 6 hours or so were spent in a truck stop in Richfield, UT. At about 4:30 local time, Mike got up and started driving, which meant I had to move to the bottom bunk (it’s against the rules to sleep on the top bunk while the vehicle is in motion).

I was only able to get about an hour more sleep after that, and spent the rest of my down-time watching shows on the laptop, and sitting in the passenger seat till we cot to a little town in Colorado called Cameo (see below), where I moved into the driver seat and finished the drive to Denver.

I’ve always heard that Parley’s Canyon on I-80 between Salt Lake City and Park City is really hard to drive in a truck. We only drove it once in school, and mostly just to give us an idea of what we could expect from a pretty steep grade. After driving I-70 through the mountains of Colorado – both directions, eastbound with a “light load” of about 22,000 lbs, and west bond with a heavy load of 44,000 lbs – I have no fear of Parley’s Canyon. Parley’s is a short, nearly straight-shot. I-70 through CO is a winding twisting stretch of hell that somehow escaped the netherworld and inflicted itself upon the world, lying across the Continental Divide.

Advice to any other truckers who need to take that route: Don’t miss your gears.

So, as you may have gathered from the context of the above, we dropped our load in Denver and picked up a new one… and as you may have also guessed from the fact that we had to pass back the way we had come, our new load is westbound. Indeed, we’re headed back to the lovely state of California. However, we were only able to make it as far as Cameo (where we had breakfast and changed drivers yesterday). It was about 11:15 PM when we pulled in, which was just in time since (as a driver in training, Werner won’t let me drive after midnight local time, until I’ve been out for 14 days).

I got about the same amount of sleep last night as the night before, which is regretful, since I like getting 7-8 hours, not 6… but it should be ok. Most of my driving today should be in daylight. We’ll probably switch places in Richfield since it’s about 2 hours away, and I’m not legal to drive again for another 1.5 hours.

It snowed in Utah, last night. The roads are ugly, but don’t seem to be causing us any real trouble, at this point. Hopefully that doesn’t change. I really don’t want to chain up.

Now we just drove into a fog bank. Oh, come on, now, weather! Be nice!