DJ Brian's Trucking Journal
Journal Entries Nov2002-Mar2003 Apr2003 May2003 June2003 July2003 August/Sept2003
October 2003 November2003 thru April2004 Current
May2003
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May 02, 2003- Drove through the upper Texas panhandle
yesterday
and New Mexico today and I am spending the night at the Pilot truck
stop along Interstate 40 in Winslow Arizona. Around 2pm, my
dispatcher hooked me up with a trailer swap with another driver so I
can head to Phoenix for some hometime. I was so excited cuz I
havent been home in TWO months. In the past two months I have
driven nearly 20,000 miles and never had as much trouble at a weigh
station than when I got to my home state. Usually I can just
bypass weigh station because of a program called "PrePass" that
automatically weighs trucks out on the highway doing 65mph but when I
got to Arizona my PrePass responder signaled to enter the weigh
station. I got up to the scales and the lady asked for my
registration and then she made me park the truck so the Arizona
Department of Agriculture could inspect my trailer. Come on,
I'm carrying a load of aluminum ladders..but they made me break the
seal on the trailer and open the doors. The guy said since
the load originated in Alabama they were looking for evidence of fire
ants.
May 03, 2003- I got up at 2:30am, took a shower and headed off to Phoenix. When I got to our terminal I took the truck through the truck wash, did some paperwork and packed up my things so my mom could come pick me up. I have 5 days of hometime. Got home in Gilbert and will take a small nap so I can go out tonight. After I wake up I'll drive back to Phoenix, get a hotel room and go to BOOM nightclub. I'll take a cab from the hotel so I can have a few beers. I'm really looking forward to going out although I don't know why cuz every time I go out and drink I just end up with a headache the next day.
May 04, 2003- I have a headache.
May 08, 2003- I'm back on the road and went to Albuquerque...AND I have a new sound system in my truck along with Sirius Satellite radio.
May 10, 2003- Uh oh....last night I spent the
night parked at a peanut company (to get loaded this morning) in Texas
and headed to El Paso but I was out in the middle of nowhere
and almost out of fuel
(the fuel gauge is the left of the 3 small
guages). Because
of my fuel condition, I had to make a route change and got off US62 and
headed south to Van Horne Texas. I finally made it to Van Horne but the
engine was sucking fumes all the way. I was almost completely
empty when I refueled.
May 12, 2003- I got assigned a new load and headed to a tile plant here in El Paso that makes clay/ceramic floor and walls tiles. Its headed to a place in Ft. Worth. I spent all day driving east along Interstate 10 and Interstate 20...a real boring driver but thanks to my Sirius Satellite radio, it made it very enjoyable. My favorites Sirius Satellite stations are the Disco, 80's, New Wave (I guess it would be Old Wave today) and OutQ which is a gay and lesbian station with round the clock talk shows pertaining to the GLBT community. On the Derek and Romaine show they interviewed singer Amber , Nelly from Little House on the Prarie and Andrew from Buffy the Vampire. I've only been listening to their show for a few days but I really like it and recommend it..plus Derek is cute..they keep me smiling and laughing during the whole show. I'm surprised at the number of truckers that call in. Tonight I spent the night at a rest area just outside of Ft. Worth. About 2:30 in the morning it started storming like mad...the lighting was hitting all around...some must have only been a couple hundred feet away because the truck was shaking from the booms and I was jumping like a Mexican jumping bean every time there was a loud clap of thunder and I mean LOUD. I laid on my bed with my fingers in my ears so I wouldn't jump and bump my head.
May 13, 2003- I thought I was
delivering these clay tiles to a tile store but when I got here, its
actually a freight train yard. I guess they will unload my
product and put on a railroad car. There are some trailers
here where they just attach the railroad wheels to the bottom of the
truck trailers. They are finally unloading me
and
if you look in my rear view mirror you can see me backed up to a small
dock with another trailer behind it. There is a forklift
taking the tiles from my trailer and putting it on a trailer designed
for rail travel. I seem to be in Dallas quite a bit and getting used to
the freeway system here.
May 15, 2003- Today was rotten. Not to mention that I only got 3 hours of sleep but I got to my first stop in Lawton, Oklahoma and couldn't back the trailer into the dock if my life depending on it. It took me 90 minutes to get it in there and the whole time the dock crew just sat there watching me. I was getting so frustrated I thought I was going to cry. After my last stop in Weatherford, Oklahoma, I'm heading back to Dallas.
May 16, 2003- I'm spending the night here at the The
Flying J truck stop in Amarillo. Its early afternoon but the
wind is blowing pretty hard and as I sit here in my truck the wind is
shaking the truck back and forth...it kind of feels like sitting on a
boat...I hope I don't start to get seasick. Last night I
picked up a load in Garland Texas and stayed at the Total truck stop in
Jolly, Texas along US287. It was a good thing I stopped when
I did because we had a severe thunderstorm for most of the
night. I switched my CB radio to the weatherband and our area
was also under a tornado watch. Unlike last month when I was
in a hotel during a tornado watch, this time was in my truck and it was
dark so I wouldn't see anything should a tornado start to form. I don't
know if it because of the wide open spaces or what, but the thunder
here in Texas seems to be a lot louder than the thunder I'm used to in
Phoenix. The thunder here really BOOMS. I finally put up my
"gay rainbow colors"
and it really brightens up my
otherwise drab gray and black interior.
May 17, 2003- The drive from Amarillo to the Rip
Griffins truck stop in Limon, Colorado just east of Denver was pretty
much uneventful. I've been on US287 and its basically prairie
so it was a good time to finally pull out my cd's and try out my cd
player. I've been listening to Sirius Satellite radio
nonstop. Be sure to check out Sirius
OutQ and if you don't have
Sirius Satellite you can hear OutQ from the internet off their website.
I just realized I haven't taken a picture of the back of my sleeper cab
so here it is
.
Its actually quite roomy in here. The ceiling above the
driver seat is about 7 feet high with a sun roof and then it curve up
to about a 9 foot high ceiling toward the back with 2 twin size bunk
beds. The top bunk folds down and there are 2 windows with
screens on both sides. I have a 13" color tv with a VCR/DVD and my
in-dash sound system has a remote so I don't even have to get out of
bed to change my Sirius Satellite station. I also have an electric
cooler so I can kept things refrigerated such as soda, juices, lunch
meat/cheeses and milk for my Lucky Charms in the morning.
Uh oh...a driver with a cattle-hauler just pulled into the truck stop...please, please don't park next to me..otherwise I'll be smelling manure all night.
May 18, 2003- Made it to my stop in Greeley, Colorado at
the Greeley Mall. I arrived early and actually not scheduled
until tomorrow so I have a lot of time to kill so I head into the mall
to shop around. I walked around a bit but nothing really
caught me eye except the cute guy working one of the stands. I
guess I'm not the mall shopper I used to be...Walmart seems to satisfy
all my shopping needs now. I went back to my truck and walked
over to Pizza Hut for dinner. After the mall closed I backed
into the dock and spent the night
May 19, 2003- Brrrrr...I thought it was summer. I'm here waiting in Denver for a load now and its in the 50's and cloudy...kinda looks and smells like snow but what do I know..I'm an Arizona boy and I think its freezing when it drops to 70.
May 20, 2003- I spent the night at the Denver terminal
last night (here's downtown Denver in the distance)
and
made a quick delivery thins morning and then picked up another load
around 1:00pm at Pepsi and headed to Albuquerque. As I was
heading out of Denver I could see snow on the top of the Rockies
still. I didnt have my camera within reach until I hit this
rest area but unfortunately you cant see much other than it looks cold.
This picture is about 100 miles south of Denver..
.
May 21, 2003- Hello New Mexico.
.
It's 80 degrees and within in comfort range so I'm not
freezing. I drove to Pepsi In Albuquerque to make my delivery
and its city driving like this that I don't like. I had real
tight t
urns
and when making right turns, I had to turn into the left turn lane of
the side street making that traffic back up. It's a little
known fact though that a truck has the right of way in that
circumstance and can make that traffic back up in order to make the
turn. I got to the consignee (the place receiving the
product) and it wasn't much better. I had to back in from the
street blocking both side of traffic for a few minutes (seems like
eternity though when you have cars on both sides of you sitting there
watching you and waiting to get through). After I made that
delivery I headed over to our drop yard ( a place where we swap
trailers with other company driver) and sat there to rest.
After about an hour I got dispatched to take my empty trailer to El
Paso, Tx, about a 5 hour drive. Made it to El Paso around
8:30 and dropped my trailer at our drop yard and headed over to the
Petro Truck Stop for dinner, shower and spend the night. Its
the same Petro I spent Mother's day at.
May 22, 2003- Start off in El Paso, then head east on I-10 for 250 miles, go south on US285 to US90, head east on US90 to US277, head south on US277 to US83, head south on US83 to I-35 and where do you end up....Laredo. I'm actually taking a load that started in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico and is going to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico...its just shorter to take it through the U.S. so a Mexican driver brings the load across the border in El Paso, I then take the load to a customs border broker in Laredo where a Mexican driver comes across and take its back into Mexico. It was a pretty peaceful day of driving today, spent the night at a picnic area just east of Sanderson, Texas.
May 23, 2003- I take alot of pictures and 99% of them
don't make it on the webpage for one reason or another usually because
it doesnt look as good in a picture as it does in real life or the
camera was crooked when I took it (I cant look through the camera
viewfinder because I'm driving). Anyway this picture
seems harmless enough however just minutes after I took this picture my
day would turn into total HELL. I opened my window
to feel the temperature and immediately heard a loud click against my
side mirror and felt bits and pieces hit my face. I thought
whatever it was broke up on impact. A few minutes after that
I felt something crawl up the inside of my right leg (I'm wearing
shorts) and so I look down and let out a blood-curdling
SCREAM. This thing with a black and orange body the size of a
large marble with legs the spread out even wider was working its way up
my leg. I turned off the cruise control, stayed put in my seat and
continued my screams for an excruciating 30 seconds while I brought the
truck to a safe and controlled stop. After what seemed like
forever, I was stopped along side of the road and got the hell out of
there I spent almost 45 minutes looking for this thing but
never found it....great...where did it go. Well I got back in
my truck and continued on my trip, the whole while imagining things
crawling all over me. I made it to our terminal in Laredo and had to
take the load to a broker near the Mexican border.
A broker handles freight that crosses international
borders. When I got there he said he didn't have enough
people and so I had to take the load back to our terminal. I
dropped that trailer and was assigned another load to
Phoenix. I hooked up that trailer and headed to the truck
stop to get weighed. My scale ticket indicated that my drive
axles (the axles that are on the back end of the tractor that goes
underneath the front of the trailer) were over loaded so I had to move
the back trailer tandems (axles) forward and that would take some
weight off the drive tires. Unfortunately the tandem pins
were stuck and I fought for an hour trying to move the
tandems. The weather was humid and hot and so was
I.
May 28, 2003- The past two days have been pure hell and yesterday I was contemplated if I wanted to continue in trucking. I had a trip out to Los Angeles and on my way out there I stopped at a truck stop and while I was backing I scrapped the bumper of another truck and after i dropped the load off in the LA area (I had to leave the trailer at the business) I got dispatched to another load but my dispatcher thought I had an empty trailer with me but I didn't so I had to spend (waste) 3 hours looking for an empty trailer and by the time I got loaded it was 5:30 pm ( in LA ) so I spent the next 2 hours trying to get the hell out of there. Once I was on the "open road".....it was all good.
May 29, 2003- I'm in the Phoenix terminal and spent the afternoon watching a 2hour movie on backing because of my little backing "mishap" the other day and then got dispatched to take a load to San Diego...Oh no..not another California trip. The thing I hate about California (as with every other trucker) is that the speed limit for trucks on the highway is 55mph and they have certain regulation about how far your trailer tires have to be from your kingpin (the thing that attaches the trailer to the tractor). I got loaded pretty late in Phoenix (damn its hot...I think its about 110 degrees) and made it to the first rest area in California where I spent the night. As I was walking from the restroom back to my truck, someone flashed me their brake lights. Being the naive gay person that I am, it didnt dawn on me that that was probably a cruise.
May 30, 2003- I spent the night in the parking lot of my
first appointment and woke up around 7am. Got backed into
their dock and loaded by 8:30. Then I sat around and waited
for the paperwork. Its funny how sometimes it takes longer to
get the paperwork than the actually loading but the lady in shipping
said she were having printer problems. After receiving the
paperwork, I dropped that trailer off in our San Diego drop yard near
the Mexican border
since
this load was going to Michigan and I was due for hometime so my
dispatcher was hooking me up with a load to Phoenix. After an hour
wait, I got dispatched to Panasonic to pick up a load there.
It was only down the street do it didnt take long to get there but when
I showed up, there were about 12 other trucks there as well.
It was crazy, they werent taking drivers in order by appointment time
or arrival time but rather whoever could back their truck into the dock
first without running over anyone or anything and some tempers were
heating up. One of the drivers decided to take matters into
his own hands and started a list of when drivers showed up and thus
when they could back into the dock and things soon came to order.
May 31, 2003- It's Saturday and I'm home in Phoenix and
it's partytime
.(at
home getting ready to go out)...see you on Tuesday.