Sunday in Dallas

Thursday morning was nice in PA. Light rain in the early morning hours, cleared everything up. Boy they've got some hills in that part of the country. Not long necessarily but steep, some over 8 degrees. Doesn't sound like much but try pulling 43,000 pounds over it. On one hill I slowed so fast I missed a downshift and then the next and before I knew it I had to stop completely and actually use 1st gear to get started. Really unusual and unnerving. As I have said plenty of times in this space, the directions are most times very good, but occasionally they're not. Well, I missed one turn; I was looking for an address on RR 837 but I was supposed to turn on Hwy 837, knew it as I passed it but what can you do ?

I called the shipper and talked to the receptionist she gave me clear directions, indicating NOT to take the turn as it came upon us rather to go on down the road and take the jug handle to make a U turn. She was very clear, our truck wouldn't be able to make the turn. I was privately thinking I could probably give it a go. As I arrived at the turn the sign indicated "No Trucks Over 40 feet Long" I could definately see where both sides had been beaten up heavily. Needless to say we took the jug handle.

Our w/a had given us an estimate of 3 hours for load time. Took them about 30 minutes. We skipped on down to Louisville, KY Thursday then into the OC in W. Memphis on Friday arriving at about 1500. I had called on Thursday for an appointment for the 50,000 mile PM. Got 10 new tires, front end alignment and all the other regular stuff. Since this PM usually takes several hours we checked into a hotel for the evening. Nice dinner at Ameca and a swim in the pool. Life is good.

We made it on down to the Dallas OC yesterday and will be heading out for Laredo this morning, with a delivery at 0800 tomorrow. We can only hope to get a quick w/a out of there after delivering. The weather forecast indicates 104 for today and 106 for tomorrow. Guess we'll be "idling" tomorrow night.

Turns out all of our diligence paid off for last quarter; we were notified that we met the bonus criteria. The bonus is 2 cents per mile for each mile ran during the quarter. On average we covered about 2,200 miles a week. If you're a mind to you can extrapolate the bonus, I'm just trying to convey that we worked hard and suffered a bit and got it. Not sure that will hold for the summer months since idling is a big piece and at 106 you've got to stay comfortable some way.

As I get my update in the Funny Lady is getting her beauty sleep. We've only got about 420 miles to Laredo today, so she can sleep as long as she wants this morning.