Just when we were starting to enjoy the cooler, almost fall-like weather up north, we find ourselves back in Texas this week. We move around so much that sometimes I have to look at my calendar to see where we've been in the past week. The scene from our 'office window' changes often.
We did a quick overnight run from Pennsylvania to Iowa with a load of steel rods. From the looks of it, they were soon going to be turned into nuts and bolts at the point of delivery. We welcomed the Iowa sunshine after a rainy Labor Day weekend in PA.
Our next load had us picking up at the John Deere plants in both Dubuque and Waterloo, Iowa. After having sworn off those really extra-wide loads just last week, this week we transported a big, extra-TALL tractor from the manufacturer to the dealership. The normal height of a tractor-trailer is 13' 6". This farm tractor was 14' 4" tall. What that meant for us was very careful attention to those signs on the interstate that come before every bridge. Before I was a truck driver, I would pay those no attention. I probably didn't even know what they meant if I did see them. All the way to Kansas City, Jorge and I looked at each and every one of them, having to get off the interstate, up the exit ramp, and back down the other side only once when we saw the upcoming bridge was 14' 3".
The next load we picked up right there in Kansas City. Sometimes we have a long drive on our own dime to get the next load - known as deadhead miles in the trucking world - and we always love it when we can pick up in the same place we delivered. That load of all kinds of conveyor equipment had us delivering at a huge landfill in San Antonio, Texas a couple days later. When we pick up these loads, we usually have no idea where they are going until we get there. This one was very unpleasant and don't you know they took their sweet time unloading us. I mean, sitting in a landfill on a Monday morning... it doesn't get any better than that!
Next stop -Beaumont, Texas - to pick up an army vehicle that had to get over to Fort Bliss in El Paso. So that's how we ended up here. As it turns out, there are many other Mercer drivers here too and we're all waiting for our next load. Now the wheels have kind of come to stop. We accepted a load of ATVs that won't be moving until TUESDAY! We didn't really plan on taking this time off but we're going to make the best of it. Yesterday was errand day. We found a laundromat, a hair salon, and the usual trip to Walmart for supplies. Today we finally bit the bullet and took the truck to the shop for new tires. Eight tires came to over $4000!! The old tires were the originals and had over 700,000 miles on them! Next on our 'to-do list' is the generator shop. It's been giving us a few problems for the past month so we're taking advantage of the time off to get it fixed. Meanwhile, we'll see what else we can find to keep us busy here over the weekend. El Paso has always been a city we've zoomed thru and we've never spent any time here at all. We should be pretty familiar with it over the next couple days. Then we'll be off to Washington state and finally... out of dusty El Paso to bountiful green grass.
We did a quick overnight run from Pennsylvania to Iowa with a load of steel rods. From the looks of it, they were soon going to be turned into nuts and bolts at the point of delivery. We welcomed the Iowa sunshine after a rainy Labor Day weekend in PA.
Our next load had us picking up at the John Deere plants in both Dubuque and Waterloo, Iowa. After having sworn off those really extra-wide loads just last week, this week we transported a big, extra-TALL tractor from the manufacturer to the dealership. The normal height of a tractor-trailer is 13' 6". This farm tractor was 14' 4" tall. What that meant for us was very careful attention to those signs on the interstate that come before every bridge. Before I was a truck driver, I would pay those no attention. I probably didn't even know what they meant if I did see them. All the way to Kansas City, Jorge and I looked at each and every one of them, having to get off the interstate, up the exit ramp, and back down the other side only once when we saw the upcoming bridge was 14' 3".
The next load we picked up right there in Kansas City. Sometimes we have a long drive on our own dime to get the next load - known as deadhead miles in the trucking world - and we always love it when we can pick up in the same place we delivered. That load of all kinds of conveyor equipment had us delivering at a huge landfill in San Antonio, Texas a couple days later. When we pick up these loads, we usually have no idea where they are going until we get there. This one was very unpleasant and don't you know they took their sweet time unloading us. I mean, sitting in a landfill on a Monday morning... it doesn't get any better than that!
Next stop -Beaumont, Texas - to pick up an army vehicle that had to get over to Fort Bliss in El Paso. So that's how we ended up here. As it turns out, there are many other Mercer drivers here too and we're all waiting for our next load. Now the wheels have kind of come to stop. We accepted a load of ATVs that won't be moving until TUESDAY! We didn't really plan on taking this time off but we're going to make the best of it. Yesterday was errand day. We found a laundromat, a hair salon, and the usual trip to Walmart for supplies. Today we finally bit the bullet and took the truck to the shop for new tires. Eight tires came to over $4000!! The old tires were the originals and had over 700,000 miles on them! Next on our 'to-do list' is the generator shop. It's been giving us a few problems for the past month so we're taking advantage of the time off to get it fixed. Meanwhile, we'll see what else we can find to keep us busy here over the weekend. El Paso has always been a city we've zoomed thru and we've never spent any time here at all. We should be pretty familiar with it over the next couple days. Then we'll be off to Washington state and finally... out of dusty El Paso to bountiful green grass.