Team Driving North

This is condensing Thursday and Friday into one post. Thursday night I was just too tired to post anything, and my laptop battery is not holding up well with the additional load of the Sprint broadband attached. It is an older battery, but it does seem to die fast when it isn't plugged in.

We started out early Thursday morning, getting going at 3 AM to get our day started and on the road before the traffic starts. Which means that I headed off for an early shower at around 2 AM. Fortunately the late, or early hour allowed the staff time to get the showers clean. The rest of the place still looked like a garbage dump though.

After arriving at the shipping point we got our first load out right away. This was one that went to the drop yard, then we were supposed to get a second load. The second load left with an owner operator that slept there overnight. The next three loads were not going to be ready until the afternoon at that point. So after calling dispatch to find out what they wanted us to do we had to sit and wait. It was a really beautiful sunrise, and when the day shift came in at at dispatch my trainer was able to find out that we could just get going with the load we had already pulled out of the shipper. We then managed to get going around 5:30 or so north bound.

My trainer started out driving, and I took over after he had driven around eight hours. At this point we had seen so many police, state troopers, and DOT inspectors, it looked like a parade. There wasn't a mile that went by that we didn't see either a car pulled over, or one sitting waiting to catch a speeder, or cruising around. I think that was the most police that I have ever seen while driving ever. I don't remember what time we actually left Texas, but I do know that we passed the owner operator that left out before us at a rest stop in Arkansas.

It took a while but by 1:30 AM Friday morning I was out of driving hours. We ended up stopping at another Pilot, this time in Tennessee. My trainer wasn't able to sleep very well while I was driving, according to him he never was able to sleep in a truck while it was moving, so it wasn't my driving that kept him awake. We both were able to sleep in a stationary truck until around 5:30 AM when he started his driving. I went back to sleep until around ten in the morning, and took over driving at eleven thirty when my ten hour break was over. This got me the last miles from just north of Cincinnati until the Terminal in Perrysburg, OH. This was to give my trainer the ability to drive the rest of the way home to Romulus, MI. So I got home on Friday by 4 PM, not to bad for leaving Laredo around 34 hours ago.

Next week is the start of the automotive shutdown. This means that a lot of the trainers, well drivers period, will be going on vacation. So instead of going out with a trainer I will be going to the Perrysburg yard to do some group training. So I will definitely be home for the Fourth of July, and will be home every night that week.