Mon-Thurs, Mar 2-5.... We're Here....

We're here... ok... so now what?

We were dispatched out of the Laredo terminal Sunday afternoon. The plan was to run up I-35 and actually get loaded live! I called my 20 year old son, as we sat at the dock, and upon his inquiry as to where we were and what we were doing... I proudly and innocently answered, "Oh Trapper and I are sitting here at the dock getting loaded." Due to his response, he must have imagined the two of us sitting by the lake, on the dock, "getting loaded."

I sat him straight and we both got a good laugh out of it. (Crazy child of mine.)

We were dispatched to Atlanta, GA with our tonic water and our delivery was set for Wednesday at 1600 hours. Not a bad run at all.

Arriving in Atlanta, early, we were empty and dispatched immediately to Cartersville, GA for a "beer run". The problem with hauling beer is that the dispatches are fast. It goes from brewery, to long haul truck, to distribution within a matter of non stop hours.

The load didn't pick up until 1:00 am on Thursday morning and delivered a couple hundred miles away in Fletcher, NC at 6:00 am. Driving at night isn't our favorite thing to do, so dinner and naps were much needed.

We arrived at the brewery early and this was a drop and hook. We dropped quickly and found our new loaded trailer. As we were scaling on the way out of the brewery... we were 460 lbs over our allowed 80,000 gross weight. Just great... back to the dock to have them unload a little and go weigh the truck again. Our second weight wasn't a lot better, but at least the load was legal weight.

Our trip to Fletcher, NC was, again for the third time in two weeks, taking us right by our house again. This time within 4 miles! We've been out for 8 weeks and we're both ready to take a couple of days off, so of course, the idea of highlighting for home came up. At times, there are just things you need to return home to take care of.

The drive to Fletcher was a familiar run, straight up I-85 to I-26 toward Asheville, NC. Both of us, being from the general area, we anticipating how our 47,000 pounds of liquid courage was going to affect our steep climb up Saluda Mountain when we crossed over the NC state line on I-26. We had our momentum going good and within about 15 seconds we dropped from a steady 65 mph to an outstanding crawl of 19 mph! Turn the hazard lights on, grab the coffee, sit back and relax... it took us a few minutes to reach the top...

The plant in Fletcher was easy enough to find and we were unloaded quickly. If every company operated like the breweries... this job would be so much easier. There are very seldom any problems and they move trucks through like clock work.

Anyway, as soon as the "arrived at customer" qualcomm message was sent, the next one was to highlight for home. Hoping they would go ahead and dead head us there today.... we are 35 miles away, right...

We still had time on our 11 (driving hours) but for some reason we are still sitting in Fletcher, NC taking our mandatory 10 hour break. It's funny, for us anyway, once we decide to take a break and go home... we are READY to get there. However, the company has 5 days to accommodate us.

The likelihood of doing another "night" run is looking better and better as the day drags on...