I'm back!

Okay, I've been very negligent to this little blog lately.  I think I know why, but it's actually hard to express my thoughts about it.  I still am enjoying this career, but the reasons that I started the blog have all been shot down in one way or another.  If I try to express my feelings about my wife or family it seems that someone will call my wife and tell on me like I've done something wrong.  So I'm feeling a little shackled in my cathartic reasons for doing this in the first place.  Then I'm told about a young lady, who I had no idea was reading this blog (seriously I'm not even sure the people I write it for look at it very often), was so touched by my comments about my wife and family that she sought out my wife to talk to her about raising a family so that it might turn out like ours.  So, there you have it, what a conflict I find myself in over a silly little writing exercise that gives me a chance to open up and share my feelings every now and then.  So, I've decided that I'm just going to write exactly as I please, and if people think I'm going overboard then they don't have to read it!  Hows that?

I recently had the pleasure of taking my oldest daughter Esther with me as a rider.  We had a great time together and I blogged about our experiences together as an exercise in showing new truck driving candidates what life is like when you actually get out on the road.  I do some work on a web site for new truck drivers trying to break into the industry and I blogged my time with Esther riding along with me.  I am going to post our travels here for you to read and hopefully it will help you understand a little about what an American Truck Driver does to keep our economy churning along.

I started this journal about three weeks ago so the time frames don't coincide with the current dates. Also there may be references here and there to the site that this was originally posted in, so hopefully it won't be too distracting to make for a pleasant and informative read concerning what it's like to live and work out on the road.

OK, I started back to work today with the alarm going off at 5 am. I got up and showered and started getting my winter gear gathered up to put in my truck because this time of year we just don't know what we might get ourselves into. I was pretty confident that my very efficient driver manager would be putting a pre-planned load on me by 7 am and I wanted to be ready to roll when it came across the qualcomm.

Oh, by the way, my oldest daughter is riding with me this time around. She is 25, and just recently lost her job. She talked to me the other day about maybe riding with me and we decided to give it a try. It's a great chance for her to do something like this since she really has no other ties right now.

Well, by 8:00 I still hadn't heard anything from my DM so I sent him a message letting him know that I was ready and waiting to make some money for the company. He messaged me back very quickly and said he had been working on trying to find me something since yesterday, but hadn't found anything he liked. He asked me to give him another half hour or so and he thought he might be able to come up with something worthwhile. At 8:30 I get a load assignment that picks up in Vidor, TX, and delivers to Cincinnati, OH. That's an 1100 mile run to start my week off, and I'm happy!

After getting all my daughters stuff packed in the truck, we set off around 9:30 am and got to our pick up at Gerdau Steel mill in Vidor around 1:00 pm, an hour ahead of our pick-up time. We end up sitting for about three hours before security lets us in the gate, and then they quickly get us loaded with 47,000 pounds of Steel slinky coils. My daughter helps me get 12 straps on the load and we're off at 5:45 and head across Louisiana until we turn North on I-55 and we turn in for the night at a truck stop about 35 miles North of New Orleans. We stopped somewhere along the way to eat at a Denny's in a truck stop, but when we settled in at our present location I had 12 minutes left on my 14 hour clock, so I had to stop driving.

We will hopefully make some good time tomorrow so that we can get into Cincinnati early enough on Friday so that we still have time to pick up another load somewhere up there that will carry us through the weekend with our wheels turning.

I know we have a thread on here somewhere that talks about funny signs we've seen along our way. While I was parked in the waiting area before security let us in there was a sign on the fence that said "Warning - Alligators Present"! My daughter got a real kick out of that and posted it on facebook - she is documenting her trip with me so her "friends" can follow along with us.

This was a long day - we woke at 5 am, started rolling around 9:30 am, after packing all our gear for the trip, and finished up at almost midnight. Another American truck driver can rest well tonight knowing he earned another nights repose while keeping the nations goods moving to the places where they are needed.

Good Night - I'll be back in here tomorrow night to fill you in on our day.