This morning finds me sitting in Houston. Yesterday I arrived at the jobsite with the large generator at precisely 9:30 am, as promised. My part of the job was over at that point. It went downhill from there. It only took a couple of minutes for me to figure out that the crane operator and his rigger didn't have the slightest idea of how to rig the straps to this big generator to lift it off my trailer. I stood and watched them for a few minutes as they discussed their various options....

This afternoon finds me just outside of Houston, Texas. I hauled a very large generator down here from Wisconsin. The load is 10' 7" wide, 13' 11" tall, and has my rig weighing in at 90,000 lbs. When I went to bed last night in Little Rock the temperature was pleasant so I didn't bother running my APU. I have caught a cold and wanted some nice, quiet sleep time between coughing and blowing my nose. When I woke this morning and tossed back the blanket it was downright frigid...

I am spending the holiday weekend in a small motel in Wisconsin. Could be worse, I suppose. There was some snow last night, just enough to cover the ground a bit but not enough to be a real traffic hazard. The folks around here seem happy to have the snow for the holiday. I'll be hitting the Piggly Wiggly later this morning to stock up on some food as I am sure nothing will be open tomorrow. The room has a fridge and microwave. My weekend layover is more or less forced. I had hoped ...

This morning finds me in Corpus Christi, Texas. Yesterday I delivered two stops in Houston and then made my way here so I could put off my final stop first thing this morning. The weather here is pretty comfortable right now. Not too hot, not too cold. I spent the night at the Corpus Christi Truckstop. The place is very old and looks like a dump, but the waitresses are friendly and the food is quite good. After delivering three trailer mounted generators this morning I returned to the t...

After a great deal of driving and trying to work my way through some terrible traffic, a couple of accident delays, and road construction, and delivering two stops, I finally pulled into a truckstop in Seymour, Indiana. There just happens to be a bar and grill called Brewskies about a block down the service road from the truckstop. I accidentally walked in to Brewskies. Since I was there anyway I decided to have a seat at the bar. I ordered a beer, lit up a pipe, and relaxed for a bit. Dur...

I am spending a couple of days laid over in North Carolina, in the Greensboro/Winston Salem area. The final stop on this last load was a small excavator. I delivered it on Tuesday and now have to wait around until Thursday to pick it up again and take it back to the factory in Wisconsin. As I have had a terrible backache for the past week this layover is a welcome chance to rest and try and get my back to ease up a bit before I have to hit the road again. I have had to use my cane the past co...

I am spending today, my birthday, in a motel room in Conroe, Texas. No special plans for the 50th anniversary of my arrival on this little speck of dust in a huge universe. Well, I'll go and get a haircut at some point, but no real plans otherwise. Just a nice, quiet day of relaxing. I had considered taking a cab to one of the local taverns this evening but Conroe has a city smoking ban and I don't feel like having to go outside to enjoy a pipe, and certainly can't afford to pay c...

For a good while now I have been considering starting an everyday stupidity thread. Just the obviously stupid shit one runs across every day. I'll start it with this one: Moist towelettes: I ate some very good chicken wings at Coaches Corner in Fond Du Lac, WI tonight. They provide a few packets of moist towelettes with the wings. I was reading the back of the towelette package and saw they actually have directions for how to use them. After reading the directions I just had to ...

Thursday morning I delivered a military truck to the Marine Corps Logistics Base in Albany, GA. That all went without any hitches, as expected. Those loads are rarely any sort of problem. After unloading I was told that the driver, a new guy, who was supposed to pick up in Knoxville, TN had quit and left us hanging. I had to dead-head almost 400 miles to get the load picked up on Friday. It was at a closed down grocery store and was the coolers and freezers from the store. They had already be...

This is the sort of conversation one can have when spending a lot of time behind the wheel. I was on my way from New York state to Wisconsin. Me: I can probably make it to Roseland by five or six o'clock. I can get a room and then bobtail over to Tinder Box to look at pipes. Me too: No. Me: No? Why not? Me too: No more pipes. Me: Huh? Why not? Me too: What is that in your hand? Me: The steering wheel. Me too: No dummy, the other hand. Me: Ummm, a ...

This morning finds me sitting at Rhode Island's only 24 hour truckstop located in West Greenwich, R.I. I had delivered my load in Maine on Friday and, as I had expected, there wasn't any reload available up that way. The best she could do was a partial, a skid steer, coming out of Greenland, R.I. Monday morning. Ok, no problem. I went down as far as Portland, ME and got myself a room for Friday and Saturday nights. I needed a 34 hour restart anyway. The hotel was pretty decent and the...

Tonight finds me in Roseland, Indiana. Yesterday I picked up a snow removal truck headed for a small town in Maine. This morning I made my way down from Wisconsin to western Illinois to pick up a pavement roller going to a town a little north of Boston. The roller was supposed to be ready to load first thing this morning but when I got to the factory they weren't quite finished building it yet. It was after lunch before they finally had it done and ready to load. Such is truck...

As my physical health declines on an almost daily basis I am dreaming of retiring on a sailboat. I spend some of my off time reading sailing magazines and checking out sailboats on the web. Given my financial situation it's just dreaming, but it's a pleasant way to pass the time. I spent a good bit of my youth sailing the Gulf of Mexico, The Caribbean, and the Atlantic Seaboard, so I am not unfamiliar with boats. I know what sort of boat I would like to spend my remaining years sailin...

I had an exhausting day, today. I picked up an over-sized load, a very large crate containing some sort of laser, at the port in Baltimore. The thing is huge and needed to be tarped. The biggest problem was that the top of the crate was basically sheet metal and so I couldn't climb on or walk on it. That presented a real challenge as to exactly how I was to get the tarps over the thing. After thinking about it for a while I rigged a couple of load straps together, end to end, and tosse...

Today finds me in Jackson, GA. I delivered a military trailer to a base in Kentucky on Thursday, and then a military vehicle to Ft Benning, GA yesterday. The entire trip I was juggling my on duty hours to make sure I could get the Ft Benning vehicle delivered by the Friday deadline. It is going to be used for some urban warfare training next week. Regulations require that we not exceed 11 hours of driving in a day, 14 consecutive hours of work time, or 70 hours of work time in an 8 day...