Just A Spoon Full of Sugar.....OR....a Starbucks Frappuccino

You ever have one of those days....dumb question.
Well, we've had one. If you read the following post, you'll hear me in a nostalgic, slightly "woe is me" mood. That was written on the way to our next load.
But let me back up and tell you about the past few days.

Like I mention in the following post...its time to go home. Week three....we're both reaching the end of our rope. Time to go home, but we stretch it out to four weeks because thats the responsible thing to do...that also allows us to stay home longer. Plus:
1. the truck needs to go to the shop in Billings to have a couple of things done.
2. it was time to replace the steer tires on the truck, and we had a trailer tire go bad, so we had to stop and do that on the road, instead of waiting till we got home....where its cheaper
3. the computer, as you may have heard, has been possessed by an evil force, and I need to get home to my software to do battle
4. On a good note we sold our older hopper trailer this week and the guy came to get it yesterday. But then we found out it's going to be 2-3 weeks before the check clears and we were worried that it might be a forgery, even though its a bank draft, and now we have to wait so long. Kind of depressing.
5. I'm totally uninterested in the books I have with me to read.
6. There's other things that escape my mind, but thats good...why dwell on them?

There have been a list of things in the last few days that were irritants or just not going right, and we're both ready for a break.
This morning was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back so to speak. The back hopper was full so we backed up to fill the front hopper, and apparently he hadn't looked to see if we cleared the back auger that was hanging out over the runway, and....well.....I kind of backed into it and it ripped the end cap on the trailer. I don't have a picture, but lets just say its like a foot and a half wide and it covers the tail end of the hopper and it was ripped in two and crushed downward. Its basically what the tarp rests on at the back and it keeps things sealed up and water tight....or at least it used to.

So being at the end of the rope, and the rope is frayed beleive me, Malcolm called Mark, our broker, to tell him we need to get towards Billings to get the trailer fixed (and go home because that was the last straw) and besides that, his medical card expires the 30th so he has to get in for his DOT physical. To which Mark replyed that there isnt' anything going to Montana....at all....until July sometime.
All four of us kind of withered right there.

And after about an hour of being really frustrated over the whole going home thing and working on the trailer (pounding on the trailer with a hammer, wedging it with a pipe, and using that all powerful tool......a roll of duct tape) we're fairly water tight again and thinking that maybe this is a good thing (sorta?), because we would have just gone home, but we really ought to be responsible and stay out at least another week. And on top of that....maybe since we now know that going home isn't actually a possibility right now, even if we decided to...maybe it won't be such a nag in our mind.

Things continued.....We called the receiver of this load and they said it was unloading by appointment only, except the appointment setter was out and would have to call us back..hasn't happened yet and its almost closing time. Then we get north towards Sacremento, and shock of all shocks....a traffic jam...in California? No way! Beleive it! Expect Delays of 45 Minutes.

Well, when things are bad, they eventually look up. We nursed our wounded spirits. We stopped to get a little fuel. While Malcolm was getting fuel I walked across the parking lot for Starbucks (the second one of the day) because I NEEDED it. We both did. And I blissfully ordered two drinks, feeling satisfied in doing something so enjoyable as standing in a Starbucks listening to the whine of the espresso machine and admiring the choices of mugs available (and trying to forget that Malcolm was across the way pumping fuel into the truck...as little fuel as possible because it was $4.92 a gallon and we just got enough to get us out of California and into Nevada where its SO much cheaper...only $4.87!)

Mary Poppins said a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down. Well, we had a lot of bad medicine this morning, but since I'm 30 and not 3, I pass on the spoon full of sugar and followed our medicine with a Starbucks Caffe Vanilla Frappuccino. Ahh....I feel so much better already, and the bad taste of the medicine dissappeared quickly.

While sipping my little drink of sugar, I was playing around with the computer and discovered a way to trick the internet into not shutting down on me when I try and post pictures to my blog. (take that you fiend that has possessed my laptop companion), and so ...though the computer problem isn't fixed....I've been emptying my mind of its stored up things that have needed to spew forth the last couple of days. They are saved for an uninspired day, so I'll have something to put up on the blog.

Ok, so we're feeling much better, and...provided we can get past the scale in Sacremento without a ticket because we are a LITTLE over weight (the truck, not me....don't go there), its looking like a better day.

Curses....another traffic jam...and its not even rush hour yet!

Loading Cotton

Last Saturday morning we loaded whole cotton seed in Slaton, TX. We delivered it this morning to Wiggins, Co, which is east of Fort Morgan on I-76, to a Co-Op. It is fed to cattle. It was hot in Texas, around 98 degrees, but it was a dry heat and the wind was blowing so it didn't feel to miserable...at least not to me sitting in the air conditioned cab and walking around taking pictures. It might have been hot to Malcolm and the guy that was loading us.

I thought I'd post pictures of us loading, because you havn't seen this yet, and this is another way they load/unload us. You've seen the pictures of us sitting in the elevator and dumping into a chute. This is different. The loader dumps the seed into the end of the auger, and it carries it up and dumps it into our trailer. They can also unload us this way. They put the one end of the auger under our hopper doors and we crack the doors open. As the product falls out, it is augered up and dumped into whatever they are storing it in. And once we unloaded this way, and they were just augering it out onto the ground in one big pile.

Also, I thought maybe you hadn't seen cotton seed before, so I took a picture of it as well.

When they unloaded us this morning they had a time getting the stuff out of the trailer. They had a guy there who climbed under the trailer and stuck an air hose into the cotton seed from the bottom and blew air up into it. Then he climbed up onto the cotton and sat on the edge of the trailer poking a long sick down into the cotton seed to force it through the hopper door. I guess because of the fiber still on the seed, it all sticks together terribly.

Anyway, so thats cotton seed hauling. It was a nice drive up through Texas, the pan handle of Oklahoma, and through eastern Colorado. And I didn't take pictures to prove it, but no one gets to complain about lack of rain and being dry anymore. Western Texas and southern Colorado take the prize. You havn't seen dry till you've been there! And the wind was blowing all their dirt away in Texas. The sky was just brown.

They Have Soul

I love old buildings. There's just something neat about them. Malcolm likes them too. He likes to go prowl through them. I really think older stuff is neater. It has more character, more individuality. It has soul.

When we pulled into the feed mill this morning to get loaded, we both immediatly spyed this little treasure sitting next to the scale. We had to wait for the mill guys to get back from lunch and Malcolm disappeared on me. Didn't take me long to figure out where he might be once I realized he wasn't working on the trailer.

Sure enough, I went and just stood in front of the building and he appeared from the doorway. He'd been in there discovering finds, like a Gulf road map (the kind you buy at a gas station) of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Nevada from 1973.

After we loaded and I was waiting for him to get the paperwork and weigh out, I went and took a few shots of the building and tanks. There's just something about old places and things.

The Pied Piper of Hamlin

Weeks ago we delivered a load of lamb meal to a pet food mill in Hamlin, TX. As we drove through the little town I admired buildings, the surroundings, and noticed that the school mascot was the Pied Piper, which I thought made a rather odd mascot. The name of the mill was also Pied Piper Pet Foods.
Today I made the connection. I knew the story of the Pied Piper, you know, the guy with the flute that leads all the rats from the town? I never realized the name of the town in the story was Hamelin.
Get it? Hamelin...Hamlin.....its almost the same.
Here's the irony.
Malcolm went into the mill to find someone to instruct him on where to unload. And when he returned to the truck he told me it was like a horror movie in there. He said he'd not seen rats so big in a long time, they were running around everywhere, on the machinery, in the rafters, on the stacked bags of dog food.....get the picture?
I didn't go to see....but I was sickened by the thought. Not only are little doggies getting cereal for breakfast, apparently they also may be eating....well....other things.
SO, maybe not the town, but the mill in Hamlin is over run with rats, and the Pied Piper needs to come.

I did a little research online and looked up the mills website. They produce dog and cat food for several unnamed pet food brands and do private labeling at the facility. I couldn't find a list of companies they manufacture for.

Sometimes You Don't Want To Know

Sometimes you don't want to know, but in this job we're finding out a lot.
We loaded this morning at a mill in eastern Missouri. Just seemed like an ordinary grain mill. We were loading "cereal finds" which as it turns out is.....
well they had large tubs (really pallets with sides) filled with various kinds of cereal....things like frosted flakes, captian crunch, corn puffs, and even cocoa puffs, or at least these cereals looked like those type things. No name brands were available. I'm assuming it was either the flakes that didn't size up, left overs from cleaning the machines, OR out of date cereal returned from the stores.
ANYWAY.....they were taking this stuff and throwing it together and grinding into a meal which they loaded on us.
We are taking it to Hamlin, TX to a pet food mill. Yes, thats right. Little doggies get frosted flakes in their morning meal too! I just hope they don't really include the stuff that looks like cocoa puffs.

We delivered here before, the Texas place, and we brought in lamb meal that time from CA. We've hauled lamb meal, chicken meal, and "meat and bone meal" which is beef that we picked up at a kill plant in CA. (mostly dairy cows...guess ole Bossy went dry)
The chicken meal went to Purina in Flagstaf, AZ so you know what it was going into....pet food again. And when we picked it up they were bringing in truck loads of the stuff they make it with, which consisted of (very smelly loads of ) left over chicken parts from processing chickens, including the feathers!!!
The "meat and bone meal" in CA went to Foster Farms. I'm assuming that went into chicken feed.
And you know, I'm ok with dogs and cats getting the chicken and lamb in their food, its nutritous. However, I always prefered to think it was choice little cuts of meat like I get. Not feathers and bone and innards all ground up and dryed.
I know of people who make their dogs food from scratch, even have the recipe stored somewhere. But I always thought...."what a lot of time, not to mention money!"
I think now, I'd be temted to fix my girls their food from scratch.

Warning: High Levels of Sodium

Here's the picture I promised of the salt pile. This was at a salt mill on the north side of the Great Salt Lake near Ogden, UT off of I-15. There were many piles of salt there, but we loaded off of this particular pile. The stream of salt coming out of the auger was continual. The salt we picked up went to a DOT salt shack in Saint Maries, ID for the road department to use on the roadways during the winter. However, don't fool yourself. I beleive your table salt was in another pile like this one, sitting out in the open on the ground, with the sea gulls flying overhead.

As you drive along I-80 on the south side of the lake you pass two other salt mills. One is Cargill, which is the major beef packing company in the country. We've delivered cows to several of their kill plants, as well as picked up processed beef when we drove for PRIME, INC.
The other mill is Morton, with the cute little girl with the umbrella posted up on their building so large you can see her clearly from the interstate. She has a particularly large pile of salt sitting next to her.

Don't be fooled about the size of this.....there was a large front end loader driving around on the top of the hill leveling it out, if that gives you any indication. And if you don't know what a front end loader is.....well it looks kind of like a bull dozer.

Ok, on to greener pastures. We're loading in Missouri this morning, well barely in Missouri. We came in last night through Illinois, from the opposite direction our directions were from, because I didn't know we were coming in this way when I got the directions from the nice lady. SO...we were coming in on back roads from the east, and it got dark, truly was a lovely drive up till the darkness, and we're trying to interpret the directions...backwards.... and we get to Chester, IL, which is a little town on the river just before you cross into MO. And we're on this highway, but when you get into town our GPS said turn on this little side street, even though the road signs said 150 went straight. I said turn, Malcolm said straight. We went straight....even though we had to stop for TWO semi's to turn out of that little side road. And so we went straight, and 150 dissappeared and we turned down another little side road that the GPS said would take us back to 150. Almost ran over a fire hydrant, had trees dragging the top of the truck, went down a steep hill that for all the world looked like it woudl catch the hoppers and drag them, made the turn and were met with a dead end sign.....no highway 150. So there we are, in a run down little neighborhood, no where to turn around, tree branches dragging along our roof, and the neighborhood running out to move their cars off the street, because apparently this is a common problem....there were semi tire marks on the cement, and the neighbors seemed to know what to do to save their vehicles. We backed up, crawled out of there with our tails tucked, made it back around the fire hydrant, and took the little side road that looked rediculously small and...tada.....we were on 150. Kudos to Malcolm for being an excellent driver and not destroying the town or us. Curses on you, Chester, IL, for not posting a few signs like "150 turn here," or "truck route," or "NO TRUCKS." Seriously, it looks like it happens frequently. They need to do something.

Anyway, it felt like old times (not the good ones) when we drove for Covenant and were ignorant young truck drivers up in the northeast getting into all sorts of sickening, make you want to hide under the covers so you can't see, kind of events. Like the night we got lost in Queen's NY...actually that was with Prime. Ahhh...the memories.

But here we are in Missouri, a few yards from the river and that wretched town, but it already feels more open. Like we parked on the side of the road last night, and this morning we pulled up alongside this cornfield...so OPEN and peaceful.

And now we're loading and going to Texas....back to the land where EVERY road is truck friendly.

Hope you all have a great weekend.

A Quick Update

Hello all. Did you think I left forever? Well, I havn't felt real inspired lately, and there hasn't been much going on since we left TN and the reunion. Which was really fun by the way. Afterwards we ran to Mississippi after loading at the big grain elevator in downtown Chattanooga. From Mississippi we went to Flagstaf, AZ, and from there we drove to Brawley, CA. We loaded in Brawley, emptied in Traver, CA, loaded in Firebaugh, CA and went to Collinston, UT. Yesterday we loaded in Ogden, UT at a salt mill on the Great Salt Lake. I did take a picture of a huge pile of salt for you, but I havn't downloaded it onto the computer yet. From Ogden, we took the salt to a DOT salt shack in northern Idaho. We emptied out last night and drove down here to Clarkston, WA where we just finished loading peas that are going to Mattoon, IL. From there, I don't know for sure. Mark, our broker, said probably load to Mississippi again and then run kind of the same route. He's got us lined up for some hard running this week, which will be tiring, but if we pull it off, it will mean some big bucks, and that will make up for our extended time off last month. BUT.....I sure am envying all the talk about going to movies and playing in the garden I read today on Mom and Meagan's blog.
I'll get that picture of the salt posted sometime, but if you don't hear from me for a few days, don't get sad. I'll be back. I think we're just going to be running like "old times" for a few days....meaning I drive while he sleeps, he drives while I sleep, and there's not a lot of playing going on.
So..till later....