Posted on 12:15 AM

Mon., Dec 15 .... Rice and Toilets

By Lynette at 12:15 AM

Last night we were parked in McCrory, AR... I stayed up until about 12:30 a.m. blogging and stock researching with the truck rocking in the awesome winds that were blowing through. The temperature was supposedly 61 degrees when I finally turned in for the night. Trapper gets up around 5:30 a.m. and it is 31 degrees!!!! The temperature swings you run into out here are phenomenal to me!

Anyway, today was a perfect trucking day! We picked up at McCrory, AR (toilets!) and moved on down the road, 52 miles, to Crawfordsville, AR to pick up 21,000 pounds of rice... (that's right... rice and toilets!) We arrived at the rice packaging place at 10:30 a.m. and our appointment time wasn't until 1:00 p.m.

This was a very rural packaging plant and we docked to this "porta dock". It was out in the open, Trapper backed up to it, they chained us to the dock, and drove the fork lift straight from the ground... up the ramp... into the trailer. Pretty cool. Our first experience with a portable dock!

Another first for today... the guy loading us APOLOGIZED because they didn't have the order completely ready! Anyone reading this, in the trucking industry knows, no one ever apologizes for not being ready... especially when you arrive 2 1/2 hours early! Just that little fact would make me buy their rice! (It's available at Family Dollar stores.)

As the day was progressing nicely, one of the guys at the rice plant mentions bad weather moving in. Well, that's all I needed to hear... I was then glued to weather.com to see how the weather would be on our trip. I came to the uneducated guess that it was a good thing we were ready to go! Memphis, TN schools were closing early, Nashville had storm warnings posted, etc. etc.

According to my self taught weather forecasting... we needed to drive east of Nashville. Being in snow is one thing, but it only takes a little ice to cause many problems. We decided to stop, for the night, in Cookeville, TN. I was born in this town... who would have thought 40 something years later... I'd be in an 18-wheeler right down the street!

Funny how things work out!

UPDATE: Whoops, Trapper told me we have toilets SEATS! I was kind of wondering what Family Dollar was doing with toilets! (my bad)

1 comments

PrimeTime on Tuesday, December 16, 2008 at 4:00:00 AM EST  

Ity strikes me as funny that you would haul toilets and rice back to back...not sure why, but I chuckled. Weird weather...Im in the NE with 60+ degree weather and you are down South freezing and in ice...go figure!