10/09/2009

It's offical. Buffalo is home or my home for the weekend. At 9am this morning they hadn't dug deep enough into the motor to determine what the ailment was. A decision had to be made by checkout time as to wether to extend the accomdations or not. Well they (the powers that be) decided to go ahead and book me for the weekend.

Not going to be a bad deal I got my book reader. A good internet connection. Plenty of resturants in walking distance. And the baseball playoffs. Life could be a lot worse.

Well here's to chillin the weekend away and hopin for a rapid fix for Betsy.

Have a good day

Bookerz out

10/08/2009

Bad News, Good News, Bad News yada yada yada

Bad news lost the forth coming load Geneva, Ny - Fenton, MI expected so not so bad

Good News could be just a EGR cooler (whatever that is).

I dump 2 gallons of coolant into the truck and off to Buffalo I go. They are expecting me or so I'm told. Pull in find the service manager "Hi I'm with Maverick I was told to come here to get my truck fixed". First it seemed like whatever I needed to get fixed wasn't worth his time and then he tried the we are to busy to even look at the truck. Finally when he quit crying the blues and I got to attempt to describe the problem.

On a side note. Talking to me about a truck problem. Has to be like two peole trying to talk to each other. One only speaks and understand Japanese and the other only speaks and understands french.

Once we got beyond the language barrier I could see the dollar signs popping up in his eyes and things started getting a whole lot easier. Strange how a few greenbacks can do that.

At any rate they were real busy even me the mechicanically challenged could see that. They pulled Betsy over and took a peek under the hood.

Bad News its not the EBR cooler (already covered but whatever that is).

Good News off to the hotel room for the night. Baseball playoffs televised!!!

They are gonna dig deeper (visions of a needle trying to dig out that splinter) and see what it might be.

Hopefully it won't be too serious because my FM (figuratively) cussed me by saying the "loaner truck" phrase. Let us hope it doesn't come to that

Well it's off to the playoffs

Bookerz out

10/07/2009

Well today went almost good. The drive in for the most part was uneventful. Arrived 45 min early with enough time to loosen the tarps and pull the stop blocks. It looked like it might rain so pulling the tarps outside as they sometimes have you do was out of the question. Back in about 1:30 pm pulled the tarps. They got a good crew here so they had the glass off in good time.

Now to the address the "almost" part of the good day. As I was in line at the I had thought it through as I did at the consignee. It would have dawned on me the the other trucks were not smoking excessively. Anyway while at the consignee I decided to check the fluid levels again. Come to find out the coolant was almost empty. So I filled it with water (only thing I had available). Took off after I was empty (of course) and didn't see any smoke. Ok maybe problem solved maybe. The coolant was fine that morning but I sorta lied to myself. I was in Canada and wasn't sure of any other solution at this point anyway. I get to the Lewiston border checkpoint, shut the truck down while the do their thing and soon I was free to go. As soon as I fired up the truck it was like a white cloud descended onto my truck. Ok there is no deny it now there is definetely something wrong. Nearest TA is 40 miles away they are generally who fixes our truck if we not near a terminal. So off I go. I called a fellow driver with about 10 years of experience and describe the problem and he told me a couple of things it could be. Go to the TA and the tested it and said it was a head gasket and they dont do those. Alright now I'm told to go over to some place in Buffalo to get the truck looked at. It to late to do it tonight so off to the resturant to get a bite to eat and call it a night. I deal with it refreshed in the morning.

Have a good night

Bookerz out

10/06/2009

Was second in line at the consignee. First in line backed in at 11pm. So far, so good. Figured an hour and a half at best settled in and watch the new ABC program "Flash Forward". It was pretty good. At 2hrs and 15 minutes into the great wait. I'm fighting the nod off. Finally 30min later the Combined Transport driver pulls out. It can't possibly take that long unless the driver or the unload crew doesn't give a shit.

I start backing into the door at 1:45am. At 2:10am the load is uncovered and ready to unload. Thinking to myslef now it's up to them. At 2:42 I'm firing up the engine and pulling out the bay. So the bonehead vote goes tooooooo.... Combined Transport. I've seen them load/unload before so there is no great surprise there.

Anyhooo pull over to the drop yard grabbed me a nap and took off at 8:30. Plan is to be stopped by 2-3 pm and find a location in which to catch the Tiger/Twins game. After a successful traverse through the greater Chicagoland area the plan to be in Perry, MI for night is met. There's a sports bar across the way here so meandering over in a short to catch the game sounds like a plan.

Only 270mi to the consignee tomorrow. So 6am departure should leave plenty of leaway to get there an hour early and set up for a unload. Got a pre-plan today (starting to see alot of these) and I would have lost my bet. Thats two loses in a row. No lumber, No stone, it's off to Geneva, NY 190 DH out of Canada which was previously unheard of to leave Canada with a empty Flatbed. But I'll struggle to get over it. Taking a load of glass over to Fenton, MI. Only my second load with a destination of MI. and my first glass load to MI.. Looks like I'll finish with around 2800-2900mi for the week. I'll post the finally numbers tomorrow.

It's off to see the game have a good night.

Bookerz Out

10/05/2009

I stopped driving early yesterday in order to get more sleep so that I might fight this cold off. The extra sleep seems to have help some.

Took off from Royal Blue, TN bright and early this morning among some fog and occasional light drizzle, by the time the sun decided to put in an appearance most off it had burned off and made for a nice driving day. Got into Ottawa about 4pm and grabbed a bite to eat and kick back for a bit reading a book. My appointment wasn't until midnight.

Got a preplan for Etobicoke, ON for WED at 1pm. So once I get unloaded gonna creep over to the drop yard and grab at least enough sleep to make sure the greater Chicagoland traffic is done for the morning and then scoot through there. Only planning to put on about 300 mi tomorrow so still should be done about 3 or 4. Then finish off the other 250 on Wed morning so I don't get there too early. Fairly busy client so getting in early is generally not a good bet.

Running bet for the next load consist of Brantford, On for lumber or Cambridge, On for stone, but at this point the jury is still out. Hoping for lumber myself.

I'll be in Michigan tomorrow and The Tigers/Twins game is bound to be on somewhere so I plan to check it out.

Have a good day

Bookerz out

10/04/2009

Thursday night only made as far as Bishopville, SC before pulling into the Wilco Hess there and called it a day. Took some Nyquil and crawled into the bunk. And slept and slept.

Got moving about 6am and traveled the rest of the way home. After spending the weekend (fri-sat) generally going from feeling ok to feeling bad and otherwise sleeping and generally being so-so company it was time to put some miles on this morning.

Took off this morning and put 300 miles behind me that will leave a little more that 500 to cover tomorrow good enough.

On a positive note racked up 32500 miles last quarter the best quarter yet and the mpg came in at 7.15 good enough for a .02 pm bonus. Next quarter won't be so good with the Turkey bird and christmas holidaysbut I still should get a bit over 100k for the year. No complaints for my first calendar year in the business.

Have a good day

Bookerz out