I really love these Georgia secondary roads…2 lane blacktops, little traffic, interesting scenery.
Really great little mom n’ pop truckstops….my favorite is this little place in Patterson, GA, (near Waycross) with a restaurant called Swee-T’s; Home-cooking like my grandma used to do it…buffet style and cheaper than a McDonalds Happy Meal (for all you can eat!).
Anyway…this trip it was down to Tifton, so I took I-95 all the way down below Savannah and US-84 to Tifton

which gave me an excuse to stop by Swee-T’s since it just happened that I was passing by at precisely lunchtime LOL.

Here’s hoping it’s a short hold up, anyway…got in and dropped my load at the Target distribution center a little before midnight and spied a brand new looking trailer gleaming like a diamond in a coal pile! Now, if there’s anything I can express disappointment with at JB Hunt, it’s the crappy old fleet of trailers that us OTR drivers are generally stuck with…oh, they keep good tires & brakes, lights and such on them, but dirty, rusty and hard-to-use doors with bent hardware are pretty common…aaaanyway; I spy this beauty among the beasts and immediately hook it. Check out at the gate, pull over to do my log and send a message that I’m done there and on my way down toward Suffolk…5 miles down the road I get an urgent msg back, telling me I’ve hooked a trailer that was flagged for repair and get another… LOL…now, imagine for the moment that you’re the duty guy at the gate; a truck shows up at midnight and the driver says “I’ve got a broken trailer here that I want to bring inside and leave you, and take a good one”. Unh-huh…ain’t happening, champ!

And so…here I am at a trailer repair place in Lyndhurst, VA getting a small hole repaired that someone carelessly caused when they backed their trailer into it. This little setback is gonna throw off my rhythm a bit…I won’t get more than halfway to Midway today (that could be words the next country & western hit!).

Well, so far I still like this “closed loop” I’ve been running. It’s been mainly Stuarts Draft & Suffolk, Virginia and Savannah & Midway, Georgia.

I can usually make each run within the 14 hours I have to work with each day without having to stop in the middle for the required 10 hour break…but it’s tight (I like it that way…keeps me from getting lazy on the job). Because of the long days, though, I usually run out of the 70 hour week every 5 to 6 days and have to do a 34 hour break (called a restart) before I can resume…and that’s what I’m doing right now LOL. I’m at a truckstop near Savannah…the Love’s in Richmond Hill

…waiting out the 34 hours before I pick my load up tonight and head up to northern Virginia. I’m getting caught up on a lot of sleep, watched a couple of movies, played “Words With Friends online with my sister…but the most entertaining thing here has been the flock of feral chickens

that appear now and then and watching the kids (there’s also an auto/gasoline section on the opposite side) chase them around until the roosters get mad and reverse the chase LOL.
I’m staying out an extra week this time to arrange to be home for an opera event on the 18th…and celebrating our 41st wedding anniversary over the weekend, (which is really the 21st).
Hmmm…no load out of here all weekend. Monday morning now and finally just now got a load…back up to Stuarts Draft, of course…oughtta get there by midnight; here’s hoping I can find a decent parking spot that hour of the night…more later; gotta get moving here

Well, I’m back on the road after a pretty strenuous stint of tree trimming this past weekend, and NOT the Christmas Tree type…wore my back and my chainsaw out.LOLI rented a cherry-picker and used it 2 days straight…could have used it another 2, I believe, and still have had more to do.

That’s Mary up there in it…she actually did at least half of the work and maybe more!
I’m down here in Georgia on a new gig with JB Hunt…something called a “closed loop“…not quite a dedicated account as much as a route that keeps me here on the eastern seaboard up and down…supposedly more consistent miles and home-time…I guess we shall see (since I’ve heard similar lines before).
To those of you familiar with a trucker’s routine, a “pre-trip inspection” is a requirement of the job and is self explanatory…unfortunately, it’s not always taken that seriously by far too many guys, but is one of my due diligences. Today was an excellent example of why…I heard the hiss of an air leak coming from one of the trailer air brakes when I hooked a new trailer this morning…my dash gauges indicated a leak, although the compressor was able to keep up with it. I decided to call in and get it repaired, even though it would probably be time-consuming (and we don’t get paid for sitting and waiting on repairs)…I mean, BRAKES, right? Ain’t going to get better on it’s own…well, it turned out to only be an hour or so for the repair and that on top of the leak, all of the brakes on that trailer were out of adjustment. Anyway, I get two hours down the road and got pulled over by a NC state trooper for a level 2 DOT inspection. Trooper Starling would have tore me a new one had I taken any shortcuts earlier, either in failing to notice the defects or deferring repairs…instead, I got a good inspection with no violations and pleasant conversation with a fellow combat-vet of Vietnam.
Tomorrow will be all Georgia…first west to Tifton, then back east here to Savannah for a load going north; not sure exactly where yet…
More later…right now it’s sack time for an early start.

Well…on my way home for the weekend…in Beckley, WV at the moment, finishing up my 10 hour break

I should be able to have this load dropped just west of Richmond and be home before midnight. It will be another working weekend, with a lot of tree surgery, but I’ve got that 40′ cherry-picker reserved and that’s going to help a lot.
I’m working on a new aspect of this job that should get me home every weekend soon, but I won’t know more about it until the next couple of weeks…we’ll see!