Yesterday I made my first stop on time. A crane was to meet me at the site at 8:00 am local time. I found the place ok and the crane was waiting. They had instructed me to come in gate #2. I saw the large "No trucks this gate" sign as well as the crane sitting there. That drive was built for cars not large trucks. Oh well.

I managed to wiggle my rig into place next to the crane and pulled the chains off the large, 13,000 + lbs generator and the crew set to work rigging it for the lift. Everything went pretty well. As the drive was so narrow I had to wait around until the crane broke down and moved on before I could back out of the drive. It took a while but I managed to wiggle back out and onto the narrow road without putting my truck or trailer in a ditch.

While they were doing the lift I had been trying to call the folks at the second stop but wasn't getting any answer on the phone. After calling dispatch and finding that they didn't have another number for the place, and calling information and getting the same number I already had, I decided to just go ahead in there and trust that my GPS would get me close.

The problem was that the freight bill said they were at an address on Locust Street. My GPS showed there was that address number on both E. Locust and W. Locust. No idea which it was supposed to be.

When I got into that little town I came to Locust. I looked East, it was all residential. West looked more likely so that's the way I turned. I found the address number. It was a lumber mill. Not what I was looking for at all. I set the brakes, turned on the flashers, and walked around the mill looking for someone who just might know where this place would be. No luck.

When I walked back into the street I found a local cop car sitting behind my rig with the bubble gum lights going. Cool, the cop should know the place. The cop started out really rude and obnoxious, asking me "Why the fuck is this truck blocking my street?"

I started to get in his face over his tone, but remembered that I needed information from him, so I just told him I was looking for this place and showed him the paperwork with the name and address on it. He gave me a lot of shit over parking in the street but did finally tell me that the place was I was looking for hadn't been on Locust Street for about 6 years, and gave me directions to where they were now.

I thanked him and took off for the place before he thought about writing me a parking ticket. Sometimes you just have to do what you have to do.

By the time I found the place, got their 7 crates unloaded, and moved on I didn't have time to make it to my last stop before they closed. Damn, I had really hoped to get them all off in one day.

I ran up to the nearest truck stop and called it a day.

This morning I got up early and headed on over to my final stop near Trenton, NJ. It was a small hardware store that was NOT built for trucks in any way, shape, or form. I had a hell of a time getting into their drive. I would have rather backed in to make getting out easier, but traffic was too busy for that.

This last stop was just getting a single trailered generator, the kind designed to be pulled behind a pickup. It only weighed 2,265 lbs and was sitting on the top deck of my trailer. The guy was royally pissed that it was up there. He really didn't have the right equipment to unload it like that and at first refused delivery.

I didn't need this shit. I explained to him that they ship them this way all the time and that it could easily be unloaded with a standard forklift by someone who knows what they're doing. I also explained that I had done this hundreds of times and could talk him through it.

He finally calmed down and agreed to give it a go. Even with me talking him through every step it still took a while, basically because the guy was dumber than a sack of dead badgers. But we finally got the thing off my trailer. I quickly had him sign for it and had him stop traffic so I could back out of his drive and get the hell out of there before I wound up saying something to him that I shouldn't. I was pretty aggravated by that point.

I am now sitting in the truck stop in NJ waiting for them to find me a reload out of here. Not my favorite place to be hanging out, but sometimes you wind up sitting in such places. That's the trucking bidness.