Since California -- Winter Weather -- Plans

Currently. We shut down in Houston, Texas, yesterday after delivering our load here because we were both out of hours to run. The rule is that you can only drive/work 70 hours in 8 days (seems like a lot, but it is not when you are driving and doing everything that goes with that). You can reset that clock to zero by taking 34 hours off. So that's what we are doing here.

We had talking about doing something – going out to eat, going to shoot some pool, or something else, but both of us were so tired we just sort of hung out here in the room. We did watch part of the movie Fight Club on TV. I had never seen it, and I fell asleep before it was over, so I'll have to watch the whole thing another time.

Since California. The last time I wrote, we were shut down in California because our truck was being worked on. It was ready a day sooner than we thought it would be. We got a nice load (as far as mileage) going up to Connecticut. It was the first load going up to New England we had had in a long time. Not a bad trip, and the miles were good.

From Connecticut, we picked up a load in Elizabeth, NJ, that was going down near Fort Worth. Ah, The Great State of Texas! The perfect place to go after being in New Jersey. :-)

I can't remember every single load we've had since that, but we've been over to Georgia once, out to California again, down to Nogales, Arizona (south of Tucson, right on the Mexican border), up into Oklahoma a couple of times, and finally, yesterday we ended up here in Houston. Don't know where we will go from here.

Weather. It is winter time (or at least, it is winter weather time), and if you drive a truck all over the country that means that you will see more than your share of it. It's not even winter on the calendar yet, and we have already seen too much snow, ice, sleet, freezing rain, slick roads and cold winds. It seems that we have been following (or have been followed by) some kind of precipitation since we left California after the last entry.

The most amazing thing was driving through ICE in West Texas! Even as far as El Paso.

According to the weather I heard on TV last night, almost anywhere we get a load from here will take us back into some type of winter weather.

The rule is that if it gets to the point that we don't feel safe driving, we shut down. Schneider has never questioned us on any decision we have made in that regard (like when the winds/fires had us stuck for 3 days in California a couple of months ago).

Plans for the future. I mentioned in the last entry or two that Terry and I will no longer be teaming after the end of the year. A couple of weeks ago, we went through West Memphis to talk to our dispatcher about all that and try to outline what would happen with both of us.

Some things for both of us are still uncertain. But here's the general way we want it to work: we are going to go through Dallas on December 26 ^th so I can get my car. I'll take my stuff out of the truck and out of storage there, and will drive to Rome. I'm planning to drive through and spend some time with my good friend Billy Day on the way. I'll spend a couple of days (or so) in Rome, and then be ready to go on the road again driving solo.

I thought I was going to pick up a truck in Atlanta and be based in Atlanta like I was when I drove for Schneider a couple of years ago. But, I'll still have the same dispatcher in West Memphis (that is a good thing) at least for a while.

And I probably won't pick up a truck in Atlanta, even though I'll park my car there. I'll probably have to rent a car and go pick up the truck somewhere else – either Charlotte, North Carolina, or West Memphis, Arkansas. Schneider will pay for the rental car so that's no problem.

Terry will take our truck from Dallas to West Memphis on the 26 ^th and will turn the truck in there. He's going to take a few days off, and then will be driving in some capacity solo with Schneider after that. He's still looking at his options and working all that out.

I'm not sure how the blog will change after that, but I plan to continue writing about my adventures in the truck. I hope you will keep reading.

Until next time . . . so long from Houston . . . keep the wheels rollin' . . .

Allan