This morning I delivered the two big generators to a water treatment plant in a small GA town. The road leading to it was a narrow two lane road and the driveway was short with an electric gate. There was a deep ditch on each side of the narrow drive. There was no way possible for me to turn into this drive without running my trailer wheels into the ditch.
I hooked the turn as wide as I could so that only the wheels on the left side would go into the ditch while the right ones remained on more or less level ground. I was hoping that would be enough to keep the lowboy trailer from burying itself and getting stuck, or from leaning the big generators over to the point that the entire rig rolled over. It was tricky.
I also had to do it in such a way as to avoid clipping the posts on either side of the gate as well as not running over the post holding the security keypad used to operate the gate. The trailer did bottom out as I expected it would but I maintained enough momentum to keep moving forward and dragged it back up out of the ditch, plowing a nice deep furrow in the grass in the process. The rear of the trailer barely grazed the keypad post. It wasn't enough to knock it over but it did take off some of the paint. The guy said to not worry about the paint on the post, he'd take care of it, and that he was just impressed as hell I managed to get in without getting stuck in the ditch. I told him someone should have thought about that before I got there. I wasn't really happy with the whole situation.
Once the crane lifted off the two generators I had to do a lot of jacking things around to get myself turned around again and lined up in such a way as to get back out again without taking down the gate posts or getting stuck in the same ditch. I managed it, plowing another furrow on my way out. I really hate dragging a lowboy like that.
From there on south it was all country roads, US 27, which actually made for a nice ride if not exactly fast going. 27 winds through a forested area of SW GA which is some really pretty scenery. I just kicked back and enjoyed the view as I meandered through the woods and the small towns and villages along the way.
I crossed into FL and hopped onto I-10 and put it in the wind for a short time until I got to this truckstop. Not exactly a high class place, but the food won't kill you. Usually.
I'm only about 30 minutes from the final delivery so I don't have to worry about getting up too early in the morning. From there it's about 4 hours to my house, which is where I'll be heading once I put off this piece in the morning. I hope to be sitting in my recliner sipping a cold one tomorrow afternoon. I'll take a week off to rest up and do my laundry, and then it'll be back on the road once again.
I need to remember to load some of my cool weather gear into the rig this time home. It's been kinda chilly some places lately. Luckily I normally keep a few cool weather clothes in the truck year round as you can just never tell what you might run into out here. Time to take the shorts out of the truck and replace them with flannel shirts and a good jacket.
I'll be glad to get home this time. I'm tired. It's been over a month on the road this time around and I'm feeling it.