Mix Up

Well I got to my delivery a couple of hours early the following morning, so had to wait till my appointment time. Once off loaded, my reload was 40 miles down the road in Lebanon, Tennessee. Got there only for them to take 4hr to load me. Which meant I was out of hours by the time I was done. Luckily there was a little truck stop at the end of the drive so I stayed there. I needed to weigh the truck but could not do it in my off duty time, so planed to do it when I got up about 2am only to find them closed. What a bummer. So I took a chance and went to the Flying J in Franklin, Kentucky. I knew I would be ok for overall weight, and the weight on my drive wheels as the truck tells me. So I was pretty sure I was safe. The load was going to Toronto. I planed on stopping in London, Ontario, but that was only an hour and half from our yard so dispatch wanted me to carry on. I then had to wait up for someone to fix my satellite GPS on the truck as it kept going wrong and dispatch would know I was moving because they can see how fast the truck is going all the time, but did not know where I was. The guy finally turned up at 9pm, I had been up since 2am. So was well tired. My reload was going back to Woodstock. I was not looking forward to that. That night they had shut the 20 off due to a bad accident in the snow in Quebec. They had a real bad storm. I got a message, once I got back did I want to go home. I had already told them, I didn’t want to go home till the 31st as I wanted to be home for my sons birthday, so said no I will continue on. When I got back yesterday, they wanted me to go to West Virginia for delivery today. I had the hours but when Joe asked me what hours I had left, he miss understood what I meant. So he thought I had not got the hours. Anyway with the mix up. I said I would go home. The fleet manager was not happy as Joe was screaming at him to get someone to get in my truck to take the load, while im off. Least I will know how to explain it to him next time, so there is no mix up. The pain is I will now miss my son’s birthday even though Joe did say he will try and get me back to see him. Instead we are going to do something while I’m off. So I better get dressed as he is due home from school soon, so till next time, have a nice day.

This was Ontario nice and sunny, then...

2hr later in Quebec

lots of snow again

They have these Sandwich vans here too, but in Quebec they are permanently fastened up to those sheds to make snack shops at rest area’s

That train to the right was a mile long

Oooops

Thats what you call an RV trailer

Shadow of my truck on a tanker as we pass

Snow....Again

Well I had my 24hr off and set off about 2am, getting to the yard to drop my trailer then they gave me another to deliver in Winnipeg. Wow it was cold in Winnipeg, still in the minus and Emma told me it was +15 degrees in Woodstock. I do remember watching the temps in each province last winter before we came out and Winnipeg was the coldest throughout, except northern Canada of course. Once I was empty it was down to Carman, MB to reload going straight back to Le Vergne, Tennessee. Because I have to preserve my hours now so I never run out. It meant I had to do three over nights again, so I have been setting off at midnight local time then sleeping late afternoon till time to set off again. Yesterday I got to Sioux Falls again. They had got flood watch in South Dakota. The fields was flooding with the melting snow and over flowing into the roads.

Sun rise over South Dakota

Today I drove nine hours straight to Warrenton, Missouri. Where I am now, Then tonight I will drive to the customer for delivery in the morning. I got a bit of a shock by the time I reached just before Kansas City. They had had a lot of snow. Luckily the roads was clear but black ice in places. At first I kept looking at the snow thinking was it there the other day. Driving at night in the US or Canada is not easy as 98% of roads do not have street lights or cats eyes in the road etc. The painted lines do not reflect either so all you can see is what your lights show. So at first I was not sure if I was just seeing what was left or fresh, till I got to the city where the streets had lights. Wind was bad too. I was having to steer into the wind just to go straight. I soon slowed down when I went down this hill where the roads started to be wet and this bridge was just black ice. I was half hour away from here before I had passed all the snow. I thought I had seen the last of it, but nope. There was more cars in the ditch, I lost count after about 40. Anyways time I was asleep again so will leave you with a few more pics.

That one is not going to be easy to get out. some while it was really dark was on their side.

Two cars here

Hospital Trip

Well the logs never got moved. The ground is really soft with the frost melting out of the ground so I would have needed wellies (Canadians don’t recognise that word lol) not sure if mine made it to Canada or not. We are having unusual nice weather, even though it was only about 7 degrees, which without wind is nice and warm, on the Friday we decided to take the kids to the park. We was there a while having a great time till my eldest tripped on some plastic stepping stones, bashing his chin, splitting it open, and the more he cried the bigger the split got. So off to hospital we went. He his a very bright boy and knew exactly what was coming. He was not going to let it happen either. He kept getting up asking the doctor what he was going to do. The doctor turn out to be one of our neighbours. As he would not keep still. They ended up wrapping him up like a baby and holding him down so they could put four stitches in him. He put up a fight but was ok once they had finished. He got a great big banana split from Dairy Queen out of it and he polished it off too. Now we will have matching scares. I was about 12-13 when I did mine though.

My truck did not get back till Saturday afternoon, so it was tea time before I was getting back in. I managed to have my inverter fitted so I could put my Microwave in the truck and start and save a lot of money on food while im on the road. Next thing will be a fridge. It is real easy to spend $150 a week on food and I only have two meals a day just to save some money. So I’m already saving loads on food. It his tempting though every time I go into a truck stop to have a buffet meal or a big fat 18” pizza, but so far I have been good and cooked what I had in the truck. Sometimes its not easy parking a big truck in a supermarket car park though, but its not unusual to see either.

Anyway my first load was to Chicago, which was just over 1300 miles, but I had to be there by 6am Monday morning. So as always it was the night shift for two nights getting there on time. Now I have my own truck I cant do like I did when I was slip seating and max out my hours each day. So I do not run out of hours early, I should only average 8.75 hours a day in the States. Canada you can do more. Because I only had two nights to get there I had to do the US maximum of 11 hours each night to get there, so already I was running out of hours. My reload I expected to go back to Canada, but I had to do a switch at a customers and take a load down to La Vergne, Tennessee. Excellent I so prefer driving in the states. My reload was in Batesville, Mississippi which was four hours away but in the direction I need to go as it was going to Winnipeg. Luckily I had three days to get it there and I was still doing the night shift, I was still doing to many hours just to get me to the truck stops I wanted to stop at. So by the time I reach Sioux Falls, South Dakota, I only had 19 hours left to do over three days, and I knew my reload was going to bring me right back into the States, which would mean I would run out of hours. Well I was due to arrive tonight, a day early, so I let dispatch know, I was taking 24hrs off and setting off tonight and get there early in the morning. They could see it made sense, so that’s where I am now, but should get some sleep before I set off so I’m off, till next time, night night.

Entry and exit ramps here are like going round a roundabout. They all have speed limits on everyone of them. If you don’t follow that and go to fast. This is what happens. It was one thing they drilled into me when I was training, as i never slowed down enough at first

This women met the side of a van

He had a rottweiler dog in that truck. No one was going to nick his truck lol. I don’t know how people can take pets with them. The trucks must smell well nice. ..Not lol I notice women are the worst for it. I pulled at the side of this women’s truck the other day. She had the biggest fluffy cat sat on the dash I have ever seen. Cat litter trays in an house is bad enough but in a truck Wow I just could not do it. lol

Un-Marked Cop car

I think this was a Baseball Stadium in Kansas City

Somewhere in Missouri

Thats World of Fun in Kansas City

Long Loading Days

Well got off loaded Monday morning then it was off to Albion, Michigan which was just under an hour south. This meant I had to cross at Detroit. It is not easy to cross there as you have to go through the city more or less to get to it, and its all messed up. Yet it’s the busiest port crossing in Canada, letting over 6000 trucks a day cross.

This is me crossing the Ambassador Bridge from the US on the left to Canada on the right of the picture.

Once across the border, my load was going to Ottawa, Capital of Canada, but I was just dropping it at our yard in Toronto and switching for an empty to go to another part of the city to load. The only down side to running single is you have to wait to be loaded and unloaded. Teams just drop and switch trailers saving hours upon hours. Canadians and Americans are just so laid back. They don’t worry about how long they take. Sometimes it can be only an hour, other times it can be six hours. Its ok for them, they get paid by the hour. Me I get a loading fee, but I can earn loads more driving than loading. So the longer I’m unloading/loading, the more I’m out of pocket. This is why now I have my own truck, I would like really long runs. As the less actual delivery days I have, the more miles I can do. Delivery days are always long days, that’s if you try and do your average daily miles too. Like this time, my off loading in the morning took 3+ hours and my reloading at night took 3hrs. Then to do at least 500miles a day, that takes eight and half hours. So delivery day I end up doing my maximum working day of 16hrs, just to do as many miles as I can.

When I pulled off the bay, I jokingly made a sarcy comment, “Wow, the three hours it took you to load me, I would have expected to have a trailer full to the brim.” It was only 25% full. I then drove till the early hours leaving me 10.5 hours left to get back to Woodstock the following day, which got me back late last night. This meant I had no more US hours left, so decided to come home for a couple of days to reset my hours. Then I will be back out on Friday, hopefully with the truck left as clean inside and out as I left it. The outside of the truck was Black,

Joe would have not been happy seeing it this morning in that state. So I took it to the truck wash early hours this morning. It took him an hour to do it. Then into the shop for maintenance.

We have had great weather these last couple of weeks, still only reaching 4-8 degrees but the snow has gone except the odd patch. Which is great except for one reason. I now have to find time to landscape my land as it still looks like a building site, all 5058 square meters of it.

Guess I better get dressed and get started by stacking the logs I just chucked out of the truck, so off I go till next time. Have a nice dayyyy

This is Montreal. All the housing estates in the cities are no Different here as back in the UK.

All the houses are packed in like sardines

No more Ice here either

Back running single again.

Well I made the collection and off to Hearst we went 660 miles away. Gets there and sent the message, ETA on the other truck. Gets one back, carry on to Winnipeg. I was not impressed. I don’t think they had intentions of switching us, even when an eastbound team pulled in at the side of us, so off to Winnipeg we went. Luckily after we left New Brunswick, the weather was clear skies and dry roads all the way to Winnipeg, except a couple of flurries near Longlac. We then switched for a load going to Plano, Illinois, which is near Chicago. We stopped at Fargo, North Dakota to fuel and shower etc. when I got back to the truck, we had a message to switch in St Cloud, Minnesota, for an urgent load going back to Toronto. That was good as we was going to be 12hr’s early for Plano anyways. Then from Toronto, we got a load back to Woodstock to drop Ion off as promised. We got back about 4am. It was great to finally get my truck back to myself. we did do some excellent miles though. 1200miles a day, so was not a bad week really.

I was not expecting a reload till the morning, but when I handed my paperwork in for the trailer I just brought, he gave me my reload straight away. Great I could get straight off as the night shift in the shop had just gone home and the day shift was not due in till 6am. So could skip that and go. That was till I scaled the load to find it was only a few pounds short of 80,000lb which is the max you can take into the states. Canada you can carry more, so the trailer wheels was not in the right place to balance the load, neither was the fifth wheel. It took nearly an hour to find the right balance for the drive wheels and the trailer wheels, but the only way it would do that was to have 100lb to heavy on the front wheels. My fuel tanks where only half full at that, so I had to keep running the tanks down to nothing before just filling them less than half full to keep the weight down. Had I been here before I would have known there was no scales to cross once I got in the states as a thousand miles of the route was through Canada anyway. The other two hours was in the states, so all that hassle I had, I could have just left the trailer alone. Anyway that brings me to where I am now. Lansing, Michigan, waiting for the morning to off load. So time for bed. Till next time, have a nice day.

Notice the snow is starting to melt in most places, gone in others.

This is Ontario, the snow has already gone here. hopefully its that last we see of it, but i won't hold my breath. its too early yet.

Must be getting warm, the first splat on my windshield this year

These are the new trikes they have here. No point having two wheels, your not allowed to filter down traffic here anyway. 

Finally….YES

Well Monday morning came and I managed to get off loaded first. Then it was off to my reload in Greenville, South Carolina, which was going back to Toronto. Gets to the collection and it took them five hours just to allocate me a bay, which turned out to be down the side of the building…..great, not. This building must have been designed by an English architect sat in Britain, basing sizes of the bays and yard for 50ft length English trucks, not 75ft American trucks. Good job all the trailers on the other bays where only like 40ft long or something like that as I would have been stuffed otherwise. That telegraph pole was right in my way, but a couple of shunts and I was on the bay. Not much room left though as you can see.

Another hour and half I was on my way. From Toronto I went to Dorval, Quebec. From there to Joliette, Quebec for a load I was taking to Woodstock. By this time it was snowing really hard again, but because temperatures are rising. It was that wet snow just like the UK. So I could not wiz along as fast. From the collection I had to go along a back road for a while till I got back to the highway, and the typical French drivers, as normal was going way to fast. One coming towards me at a bend just went straight into the ditch at the side of me. What an idiot. The snow was really bad till I got passed Quebec City then it calmed down. Well I drove out of it, put it that way. It did not stop there as the following day they shut the road off for a day it was that bad. I was down in New Jersey by this time. It rained all the 9hr’s down till I reached New Jersey, (the pot hole state) then it turned into really heavy snow. I got to the customer to find not much room to park for the night. The only way I could park without my nose sticking in the road, was to put my trailer 6inch from there wall. Now a tip for you people that don’t know. When you are going to park on snow, always park further forward at first to allow your tyres (tires) to cool down. Then move back into your parking space. As the heat from your tyres melts the snow, then when it freezes over night, you have ice under your tyres. I thought I had left them long enough to cool, buy time I got close enough to wall. WRONG. I woke up to find me totally snowed in and ice under the wheels. The business opened up, so I borrowed there snow shovel to dig the truck out. While doing that. One of our other trucks turned up with a part load for them so I said he may as well go first. He then got stuck also trying to get on the bay. He was another English dude that had been here a couple of years. The only way to get him out was put the chains on. He had never been shown, or me for that matter, but before I came over here, I did loads of research and one bit was watch a video of some dude demonstrating how to put snow chains on. So I got him chained up and onto the bay. I then chained mine up

And got me out. I could not do it any other way with been so close to there wall. I wanted to make sure if a snow plow came up the road, they did not take my front end off. I have see what they do to letter boxes lol  well it took them about eight hours to off load us both. Which should have only taken two. I gave them an hand in the end to speed things up.

This was New Jersey the following day.

My reload took me back to Toronto, where I was to pick up a new English driver, Adie, that was coming to work for us. I had to be there in the morning so I had to drive all night to get there in time to pick him up. He had landed to night before about three hours late, as the first attempt to land was aborted at the last second as the plane in front was sliding on the runway. So they diverted to Ottawa to refuel while they treated the runway then back to Toronto they went. He stayed in an hotel over night so I got chance to get some sleep before he checked out. Then off to Woodstock we went chatting all the way. We stopped at a truck stop after 10 hours driving. I was tired with driving all night the night before then only having a few hours sleep. We then got back to Woodstock Sunday lunch. I took him down to the Ayr Motor House where he will be staying like I did for his training. Then picked him up later for supper so Emma could meet him. Adie’s wife and kids will be following in a couple of months. Emma will have a new friend then. She is looking forward to that. His kids are the same age as my eldest too.

The following day I rang to see when I was out again. They said call lunch time. Then a couple of hours later, I gets a call. Someone has handed there notice in and Joe has given me his truck. Its all ready to go so get your things together and come down I’m on my way to Alabama. Yippee my own truck at last and some new states to visit too. So I rang the shop to find out what kind of truck number 800 was. An International Prostar, my favourite truck.

My assigned Truck

 
When I got to the shop they was giving it a good clean up for me. The old assigned driver was still there, and he said he had just put three months subscription on the satellite radio, wicked. All my wish list filled in one day.   I then hooked to my trailer and was just about to go when Seth, Joe’s son rang me. Could I go see him in his office. He asked me if I would team for a few days as they had got some on there days off and wanted to cover them. Because of what happened with my last truck. I did not want them to take it off me as fast as I got it and put a team in it if I said no, so said yes, but only for one trip to Winnipeg and back. I had to take a load to Oromocto NB where I would collect Ion (Jon as they call him) a Romanian. We switched in Oromocto for load going Moncton NB then switched for empty to take to Lameque NB which is as far east as you can go. We was in the middle of a bad snow storm by now, so driving was really bad. I was only doing 35mph and was loosing grip on the snow covered black ice all the time. We found a truck on its side in a ditch with its lights on so looked like it had just happened. We both waded through snow up to our waist to find no one in the truck, so we carried on. By time we reached the customer to find them closed for the night and got stuck in there yard in deep snow three times, I had had enough. I rang dispatch and said even if the customer had been open, I was parking up and going nowhere till morning. I should not have said yes to teaming, even just for a few days. I could have been half way to sunny Alabama by then. Knowing our place would have been more than a few days. I woke up to find Jon driving. Not without troubles. Jon got stuck a couple of times. Had to be pulled out on their yard. After we had been sent to the wrong address. It was a couple of miles up the road where we needed to be. When he got there. There was a couple of tractor units in a ditch. With the bad winds and snow. This ditch was totally filled in with snow and looked level with the road, so people did not know it was there. I then rang Seth and told him for my safety, I did not want to run team anymore. Teams have to run 24/7, and I get several satellite messages a day saying how bad the roads are at night out west. Which is where he wanted us to go. Least when I run single, I get to park up if it gets bad. I don’t think he was happy but sorted it out that we would pick up in Dorval and go off to Hearst, Ontario to switch with someone else for their load going east. So that’s where I’m at now, Dorval waiting for my collection at midnight. So I’m off and will keep you update next time. Hopefully still with my own truck.

In the UK they have American Limo's. in America they have English lol

Took this for my brother. bet you not see any like this before. i did not know whether to sit on them or stand at them lol