Hauling Logs

Okay, it is now Thursday afternoon and I am sitting at the Gulfport, Mississippi terminal waiting (I wish I could say patiently, but I am anxious for them to get me out of here – I have a very nice load that runs up to Farmington, Connecticut waiting on me at the plant in Delhi) for my truck to be serviced. Knight Transportation is very particular about taking care of their equipment – I am glad of this. They want you in a terminal at least every 7,500 miles, for greasing and changing of some filters.  If you are getting the job done like you should be, you are going to be stopping in at a terminal around every third week. It is not unusual for me to run around three thousand miles each week, but when I have to stop in at a terminal I never know how long it will take. They are usually very efficient, but it seems that today they are extra busy. Oh well, it gives me a chance to catch you up on my goings on. I slept at my receiver Tuesday night and around five o'clock the next morning I started hearing some noises outside my truck so I peeked out my curtains to see the welcome sight of a gentleman pulling out of the warehouse door with a forklift to unload me!

That is one of the many benefits of sleeping at the receiver, occasionally you will get lucky and get unloaded quicker than you expected. Since I was in the Atlanta, Georgia area it was a welcome sight because the traffic around there is terrible at just about anytime of day, but at this time of the morning it gave me a chance to get out of there, avoid the morning rush, and move on down the road to my final stop in Northport, Alabama. Here we are getting unloaded under the cover of darkness.

Once I got that done I got a pre-planned load to pick up a load of logs down in the Port of Mobile, Alabama. I bet you never thought I'd be hauling logs. Being from East Texas we see a lot of log trucks on the road, and to be honest, they are a little scary looking. Okay, I've got to come clean here, I'm not talking about these kind of logs:

No, the logs that I've got on my truck are aluminum logs – that's what they call them... logs. I've got 46,000 pounds of them on here. I'm taking these 7” round by 20' long "logs" to the plant in Delhi. This is what goes in one end of the factory and comes out the other end as the extruded shapes that I haul all across the country. They heat these logs up until they are glowing cherry red and pliable, then they are forced through a “die” and come out the other end as a usable shape in various industrial uses.

I've been entertaining myself with these unusually named towns in this area, names like Chickasabogue, Pascagoula, Chubby, and a few others that I can't remember right now. I've seen interesting names of places all across the country. I stayed in Possum Trot Kentucky one night, and I've driven through Hell's Gate (why would you name your town that – who would want to move to that town?) I even passed by a town called Toad Suck! Oh yes, and who could forget the town of "Boring" New Mexico?  I'm not sure why I got distracted on this thing about the town names like this, but I guess I'm just getting bored sitting here on hold when I'd like to be moving down the road.