life of a truck driver

I got into CA the 4th and I have just now gotten my load out of here. I can't tell how very happy I am to get out of here (sorry, warman). I like northern CA but southern is another story altogether. Did you know that there are too many people out here? Yep, about 2 or 3 too many million and that is just in one suburb of Los Angeles, we aren't going to talk about the other suburbs or Los Angeles itself.

I unloaded in Sacramento the 4th then deadheaded to City of Industry to pick up a load going to Hillsboro, OR. On the 6th I dropped my load in Hillsboro, picked up a trailer with equipment in it because they didn't have a load for me. We had a hard bargaining session to see how much they were going to pay me for hauling their equipment around. After all this they wanted me to stop in Grants Pass, OR and get all of the equipment out of the trailers and take it all back to City of Industry.

When I got there I started looking through the trailers and wasn't finding any equipment. Then I opened the doors on the last two trailers and had to jump out of the way both of them were loaded front to back halfway up the trailers. I said to myself "self you ain't going to do this and transfer all of this equipment", it was 91 degrees out there and can you imagine how hot it was in the trailers. This old, fat boy just wasn't going to do that for any amount of money. I pulled my trusty cell phone out and called the weekend dispatcher. After some discussion we both decided that it wouldn't be easy to put two and a half trailers of equipment in one trailer. So, I picked out the trailer with the most equipment and hooked onto to it. Then I put the trusty steed in gear, kicked it in the tail pipe and headed south.

I got to Lost Hills, CA and pulled over for the night. The next morning my dispatcher was calling me early. He told me that I had to be in Los Angeles by 0800 to get loaded. Now I am 3 hours out and this is 0645 local time, hmmm. I had 1 and 1/4 hours for a trip that takes 3 hours. Now, people, I can do the impossible real quick but it takes a little while for a miracle. The next problem is I didn't have a phone number to call to get, guess what?, directions. In case you haven't been to Los Angeles lately it is a mighty big place and you really need to know how to get where you are going before you get there not while you are getting there.

I made it by 0930 thereby breaking one of my own rules about driving in CA.. I never drive over 60 mph in CA especially during rush hour. Well, I did get loaded after sitting there most of the day, lucky me. I hit the morning rush hour and I also had to drive through the evening rush hour. How lucky can a person be?

The one thing that really shocked me was the cost of fuel out here. Talk about sticker shock. It ranged from 2.899 to 3.499 and brother that is something else. I really don't think I will be coming back out here any time soon. We get a fuel surcharge but it doesn't come anywhere near covering that. For the life of me I cannot see how they can justify that kind of pricing. When the lifeline of a state or area depends so much on trucking this is impossible to imagine. California definitely has a love-hate relationship with trucks. They love to get the items that trucks bring but other than that they don't want the dirty, nasty, space hogging pieces of junk around them. Why, they can't even get in the lane they want because a stupid truck is daring to take up some of their highway space. You don't want to even think about what they think of us, the truck drivers.

enough for the day, vaya con dios mis amigos

Category: General