This morning I was awakened by a call from the lady at the trucking company up in Northern Florida that was supposed to help me move these machines around to try and get the weights right. Once I explained to her what I needed to do she said their small forklift couldn't possibly do the job. Great.
When the office opened I called dispatch and filled them in. They finally called me back with the name and number of someone in Jacksonville that said he could do the job for fifty bucks. All I needed to do was get to Jacksonville.without crossing any weigh stations.
I filled up the radiator and then I ran up I-95 as far as I could then cut through the woods and up the secondary highways following a carefully planned route that dodged every weigh station between Jacksonville and myself. I had to get there as quickly as possible as he had told me they knock off at 4:00 and wouldn't wait.
About an hour from Jacksonville the warning lights came on telling me that the engine was going into shut down. That meant I had about two minutes to find a safe place to pull off before the engine shut itself off. That meant the radiator was low yet again. I found a spot and pulled off, very happy that I had thought to fill the three water jugs before leaving the truck stop.
I refilled the radiator's holding tank with three gallons of water, replaced the cap and took off again. I made it to the place in Jacksonville at 3:20 local time. We moved the front-most machine on the lower deck back three feet. That was as far as it could go without hitting against the one behind it. I was hoping that it would be enough but had my doubts. The guy said that they just didn't have the time to move the larger machine, but they could do it tomorrow morning. I was really hoping to be in Georgia tomorrow morning.
I went to the truck stop and scaled the load. As I had suspected, it's still too heavy on the drives. Damn and double damn. I am now going to have to waste yet another night sitting in Florida waiting to get this stupid load right. I have never had this much trouble getting a load scaled out in my life.
Ah well, I can't worry about it now. There's always tomorrow. I just topped off the radiator again (another three gallons) and added a gallon of oil to the engine so I feel reasonably certain it won't blow up during the night. There's not much else I can do at this point.