Wednesday, January 6, 2010

A Shortened Trip - Truck In Shop Again

I guess it was just meant to be. Trying to avoid stopping at the home office in Joplin, MO, but ended up there anyway.

Started out this morning in Rockford, IL at A&B Freight. They never did come and wake me up when the load was ready around midnight. That was fine with me because I couldn't start driving until 3:30 AM anyway when my break was over. I did wake up at 2AM, so I went inside to check on it. They just finished loading the trailer, so I got my paperwork, hooked up, and get ready to go.

Oh by the way. The temperature was a frigid -4 degrees. Don't know what the wind chill was. Where's global warming? The whole global warming thing is a scam and just another tool for the government to control it's citizens. But that's an issue for another blog.

Anyway, got underway at 3:30 and headed south on I-39. Drove all the way down to Bloomington, IL where I stopped at a T/A for breakfast. All you can eat french toast! Yum!

Now I had been contemplating stopping by our home office in Joplin, MO to get the truck washed. It was really filthy and almost white due to the snow and road salts. But I didn't want to take a chance of going through the inspection lane and having them find something wrong. That would put the truck in the shop and I'd probably have to give up the load losing the remaining 180 miles.

Well continuing on down the road, I had a rock fly up from another truck and put a chip in the windshield. A little later I noticed another crack about 4-5 inches coming down from the top of the right side of the windshield. That will definitely put me in the shop and lose the load. Hmmm. Do I stop or keep going.

Well now I'm in Missouri heading west in I-44. I was leaning towards skipping the stop in Joplin and continue on. About 100 miles from Joplin and now the truck starts making the same engine noise that happened a few days before Christmas. Now I have to stop. Arghh!

So I call my dispatcher and tell her the situation. The load was considered Hot Freight and HAD to be delivered in Oklahoma the next morning. She basically tells me to inform the local dispatcher upon arrival. So I did and sure enough he had taken me off the load. The inspection lane did find some issues with the trailer as well, but they were able to get the trailer into the shop quicker and re-assigned to another truck.

As for me, I get to hang out here in Joplin, MO and wait for the shop to fix my truck. Hopefully it won't take long.

See ya tomorrow.