Waterloo, New York: Petro

Yes, I am still here, still no loads, however I do get to finally move. They are letting me head over to our yard near West Middlesex, Pennsylvania. There I can grab a lighter trailer hopefully. Then I might actually get a load. I am fairly certain they are thinking I am happily heading to that hole in a wall they call a terminal to spend the night. Instead I will leave out of here early tomorrow morning to get there around 8ish. So I will use some of my driving hours and start my clock, at this point I could care less about having a full book for a load. At least there I will be 4 hours closer to home.

Waterloo, New York: Petro

It is now day three of sitting here at this truck stop. I am basically going stir crazy sitting here, I have wandered through the various sites I belong to just looking for interesting threads in forums to post to. Other than that, it has been playing games on Facebook, watching movies on Netflix, and staring at the walls. I did have a good conversation with the Roehl driver next to me, and I decided to fill out an application for them yesterday afternoon.

My Sprint connection is starting to drive me a bit nuts, it keeps disconnecting for no apparent reason. my guess is the most recent update added an activity timer, so if I am not actively browsing it cuts out. It just did in the middle of this post.

I sent another fun email to dispatch last night, and talked to my dispatcher this morning. He swears they will find me something today, but I will believe it when I see it. I am guessing it will be another load tonight and deliver tomorrow type load. After all I am on break and can instantly drive my eleven hours no mater when they dispatch me, and I have this nice property in Florida I can sell you for a deal.

Been on and off the phone all morning to both my mortgage broker and my fiance as we try to get the rest of the paperwork off to the underwriter. I just found out from my fiance that the appraiser hasn't gotten his report in yet, which is ridiculous since I paid for it at the beginning of the month and had the contract for repairs and changes in last week. There really is no reason that someone who gets $400 to look at a house and determine its worth can't do it in a timely manner.

Waterloo, New York: Petro

Yes, I am still here. So far today, I have slept in, showered, eaten a leisurely breakfast, and am now slowly getting caught up on entering my receipts into Quicken. Exciting I know, but it does need to get done. I also called dispatch twice and it doesn't sound like they have even found a load for me on Monday. So who knows when I will actually get out of here. The good news is that they have a shop here, so I plan on getting a bunch of things fixed. What the heck else do I have to do this weekend, so might as well try to cost the company as much money as possible. The trailer could use at least two hub oil seals, and there are a couple of minor things on the tractor that could be looked at as well. There is a small exhaust leak that I have been putting off getting looked at, I don't seem to be getting any in the cab from it at least, but since I seem to have the time, I might as well get the clamps replaced or tightened.

One thing I cannot believe is how little they seem to care about getting me moving, it isn't like either of us is making any money. I cannot wait until I close on this house, there has got to be a company out there doing better than this.

Waterloo, New York: Petro

Once again, the load planners failed to surprise me, I have no load right now, and doubt I will for the rest of the weekend. Which means I will be spending my weekend here in Waterloo. I saw an outlet mall a little way away that I could browse through, but definitely can not afford to shop there. At least the internet is coming in well, so I will be able to be entertained.

When I got here, I once again violated my fuel solution, well I didn't have one, but I did fuel without permission. This was so I could get my showers for the next two nights, and get a cash advance. I don't think the five dollars I had in my wallet would have covered me for the weekend. Especially since, if I am here until Monday, I will have to buy at least one shower. When you fuel and put at least fifty gallons in the tank, you get a shower. At a Petro, if you tell them you have a co-driver, they will give you a slip for a second driver. So I have two showers off of one fuel up. Now a shower typically costs $10.00 to purchase, which is just annoying for me, because Falcon currently reimburses for showers.

Dinner tonight will be the steak buffet, it just looks good, and they have plenty of other items to round out my planned lengthy meal. It isn't like I have anything else to do, other than sit here in my booth, eat and use my laptop. Adding to my blog, like I am now, or chatting with friends. I don't think I will go as far as watching some netflix, but who knows, I might.

Well off to start grazing, I mean try out the salad bar.

Douglas, Georgia: Walmart Distribution Center

This is the second Walmart DC that I have been to today, and the first was much more pleasant to deal with. While I am a bit early for my appointment time, They simply expect everyone to know what they are supposed to do, having been here before or not. It doesn't help that the rules seem to be either totally different than the last one, or are just enforced differently.

Either way after I empty out here, it seems likely I will be hunting for a spot to crash for the night in the area, rather than heading back to a real truck stop closer to the main highway. They just don't seem likely to get this empty quickly, even if it is seven pallets.

Horse Cave, Kentucky: Loves

It has been a while since I added to this, mostly I have been doing shorter updates on Facebook. Right now I am on a load that picked up in Jackson, Alabama, and is heading towards West Carrollton, Ohio. I think it is the messiest load I have carried to date, at least it should be fairly easy to clean out the trailer afterwards. My trailer is loaded with bales of scrap paper, so there are pieces of paper that have fallen out of the bales all over the place as they loaded it. I know there will be even more when they unload it. Hopefully they will have a leaf blower available to just blow out all the paper, but more likely it will be me and a push broom.

This week has been slightly better than than the last several weeks, I actually might clear two thousand miles for the first time in a while. I just don't know what it takes to get loads out of this company, it seems that after I have been sitting for a while, (this week it was about 35 hours after unloading, closer to 43 if you count when I actually got down there) if I send an email with just the right tone of insulting and questioning their intelligence, I get a load. This last one I asked if I should put in an application at the Loves in Loxley, Alabama, and put as my address the blue truck in the back row.

Currently I am going slightly crazy while trying to get to the closing of a house using a 203k FHA loan. We have made it past the first bunch of hurdles and are basically now at the contractors mercy as to getting estimates in. Once we know about how much everything will cost, we can move forward to signing some contracts and getting everything off to underwriting. The part that is driving me nuts is that I am having to do this all by cell phone and laptop. I would rather be there for each contractor to make certain we are on the same page. We also have to get a quote for appliances, and I haven't done any research at all about those yet. I have just been too busy working, looking up home improvement tax credits, how to claim my first time home buyers credit and half a dozen other things including trying to relax a bit here and there.

Now to find out if I can get rid of this load early or if I really need to get it there at midnight tonight.

Rolumus, Michigan: Terminal

While I have been sitting around here today, I have visited the mechanics twice. The first time was earlier this morning when I got three mirrors adjusted and fixed due to broken and missing nuts, and just being hard to adjust on my own. I also got a new pigtail, it handles the electricity for any trailer I haul. Now after sitting for a while, I noticed a puddle of coolant under my truck. I was lucky in that all it needed was a couple of clamps tightened, but it is still irritating to have to go back and get something else done in the same day. It does explain why my coolant was so low this morning though. I also got a new license plate light. It isn't essential, and they rarely replace them, but at night in the rain if I am bobtailing, it is one more light on the back of my cab. It also comes in handy while dropping or hooking a trailer, keeps me from stepping in puddles while pulling the fifth wheel pin or cranking down the trailer's landing gear.

Back to waiting for them to get me out of here. My break will be over in a little less than an hour, but it seems doubtful that they will let me move before four this afternoon.