…but now on my way up to Louisville, KY to have it fixed there while I’m at the Mid America Truck Show this week. I’m stopped for the night here in Candler, NC at the T/A with its laundromat and Buckhorn Restaurant.

…and my truck’s A/C is not working…open windows at night aren’t really a good option; Mosquitos and criminoids, not to mention the ambient noise, occasional rain spatter…and I can’t get any service on it until Monday morning, so it hasn’t been a very comfortable weekend here in the Savannah, GA area

Yeah…I’m back after almost 2 months of trying to sort out some account problems with this thing. It seems I’ve been sending all of my updates out into the “bit-bucket” (old-timers would recognize that term as the description of data that’s lost in space LOL).
Most of the posts were about fairly uneventful stuff, anyway…back and forth between Stuarts Draft, VA and Tifton, GA (where I am currently writing this from) with the occasional trip out to northwest Alabama. I took a load up to Hammond, IN earlier this past week, though. My brother Jim lives up there and, as a matter of fact, I was within a coupla blocks of his house, but wasn’t able to get hold of him until days later so didn’t get to see him. Apparently he isn’t any better at checking missed calls and voice mail any better than I LOL.
I’m doing a mandatory 34 hour break here at the Pilot Truck Stop…
carried the max 70 hour work week right down to the wire this time with only 9 minutes left on the clock LOL.
Took advantage of the time to doll the Big Girl up.

at the Blue Beacon Truck Wash here in the south end of the parking lot…below is a stock photo…you pull in to this large 90′ garage and up to ten guys leap into action with brushes and high pressure wands and wham-bang, 15 minutes later you’re bright and shiny!

The Alabama trip was just short of total fiasco…I’m not particularly proud to report that I now know *exactly* how far I can go on 200 gallons of fuel at 6 mpg (hint: it’s NOT 1200); it seems 35 gallons or so isn’t usable. LOL…damned truck quit on me at the stop sign, top of the exit, 100 yards short of the fuel island. Oh, well…so now I know…don’t attempt 900 miles again ( I made it 920).
On top of that, a little later after finally getting some fuel brought to me, getting the engine primed and finally coughing back to life enough to get down to the pumps, torrential rain hit ahead of a cold front that sent temps plummeting.
It took another day, after dropping my trailer to find an en empty one to get another load back down here near Savannah and when I finally did, it was super-heavy…I weighed out okay at the shipper, but who knows how accurate their scales are…I sweated at each weigh station I came to on the trip, but luck was with me each time as I passed one closed and got got two greens on pre pass with the remaining two…whew! Anyway…it’s good to be back here in Savannah, with temps in the 70′s and brand new set of batteries, fresh oil change and new/used, but better than the old drive tires.

South Georgia…Tifton, actually…absolutely beautiful weather in the 70′s. I’m spending what’s left of the weekend at the big truckstop right across the street from my drop Saturday afternoon…heading up to northwest Alabama in the morning via Albany, GA. Most of it will be state roads as opposed to interstate, so it should be an interesting trip and I’m looking forward to it; a little something new for a change instead of that same old closed loop I’ve been driving the past few months.

Well, I’ve been fortunate to have gone so long this winter without dealing with snow, but coming into the Virginia Blue Ridge last night and since, here in Raphine it has been bitterly cold; light snow, but driven by high wind…nothing accumulating, but a few icy patches to be careful of. I went ahead and pulled up early; spent the remainder of the night here at White’s Truckstop. After a nice big breakfast I’m hitting the road in a few…drop this trailer about 20 miles up the road and run on down to Suffolk for the next load…OMG, hope it’s not as long a wait as most have been lately…more later

Hmmm…I’m not so sure that this “closed loop” gig was such a good idea anymore. The loads available have been limited since Thanksgiving, so the number of trips and thus miles have been somewhat stunted…much less than those promised when I accepted. I really love the idea of avoiding the severe winter conditions of over-the-road up north and out west, but I’ve been living with nearly half less money and their excuse/explanation of holiday slump isn’t flying now that we’re into the new year…and I’ve yet to see improvement. This week I was required to be back on the truck at 6 PM Sunday and spent that night and the entire next day waiting to be dispatched…5 miles from home, yet AWAY from home! Sure…I got layover pay, but that’s just not right, ya know? I finally left Big Charlie’s a day & a half later at dawn on Tuesday for a load down to Savannah; delivered it last night and was tasked to drop an empty at a new customer and then go to the local terminal to wait for the next load going north…LOL…well, that was crazy and I knew it was going to be…always is. As it turns out, where i was supposed to drop the empty is inside the port and requires a special security card, so I was turned away…now I’m at the local terminal waiting on the fleet manager to tell me what to do about it…the wheels turn soooo slowly and communication is, at best, a royal pain in the ass with telephone wait times that usually result in accomplishing nothing anyway…and ya know what I’m getting paid for this frustrating mess this morning? Nuttin’ honey. Now, what I’m supposed to be doing on this closed loop is simply drop & hook Target loads in a loop to and from Virginia and Georgia…not this other stuff.
I’ll try to put up with it a little while longer, but if I don’t start seeing progress as far as more Target loads go, well…then it’ll be time to make a change of some kind, I guess; or go elsewhere even.

Okay…yeah, I’ve been lazy about keeping up with this blog…and my goal this new year is to get better about updating things regularly. Fact is, I’ve been home most weekends this past month; less time on the road = less time to do this sort of thing LOL. As I am writing this from my iPad2 for example, my desktop is crunching pirate movies into mp4′s for the road, my laptop is sending scanned docs to a technophobe friend’s recruiter, and my desktop’s monitor is tied up with repairing Marci’s friend’s broken computer. All this is pretty typical, especially the repairing other people’s computer problems…couple that up with the “honey-do’s” that piled up while I was away and there’s not much time for diaries…only reason I’m catching up right now is the slooow formatting of the broken Dell.

I’m still running on this closed loop between northern Virginia and Georgia…getting to be a little dull and I miss the variety of OTR…the miles have been dropping off lately, too…I just might have to bag the regional, but that ain’t happening til winter’s over, I can promise ya!
Well…Sunday night finds me back on the truck; waiting for load details and heading back down south to Georgia…got everything done this home-time after all…and even found a little time for myself. Life is good…