HELENA, AR to MAUMEE, OH: 820 miles + HAZMAT + Detention time (744 loaded + 76 deadhead +$295).
Monday August 3rd, I started my day at 9:45am EST with the pre-trip inspection of the truck and headed out to deliver the load to Memphis, TN. I drove two-and-a-half hours arriving at the consignee at 12:30pm EST. This facility is a drop-and-hook and I tried to do it as fast as possible as I needed to get to the next shipper by 3:00pm EST as that was their cutoff for loading. I was in-and-out in less than an hour and headed out at 1:30pm EST. It was only seventy-six miles away the trip was supposed to take ninety minutes as most was in small country highways. Unfortunately, one of the roads I was travelling on was blocked by police and EMS vehicles due to an accident. I was instructed to steer back for a couple of blocks to take a detour. Big rigs cannot make a U-turn just anywhere and a two-lane small country highway just doesn’t have enough space for the maneuver. After four years driving a truck I’m still trying to figure out the minimum space required. The other day I tried to pace it out and figured that it requires about twenty-five paces, roughly seventy-five feet. U-turns worry me as too tight and the truck could tip over. Regardless, the stop in movement and the small detour slowed me down enough to miss the cut-off as I arrived at the shipper at 3:24pm EST. Since this facility was in the middle of nowhere, literally, and they allowed overnight parking, I decided to spend the night there. The nearest truck stop was a mom-and-pop place thirty-minutes away without an adjacent diner. Best to save the aggravation of the drive and I had the bare necessities in the truck to hold me over. Not that I’m in any risk of starvation with the extra pounds I carry. It was a beautiful sunset and I walked a couple of miles to keep myself active. I was paid $195 for the detention time and another $100 for the hazmat load.
Tuesday August 4th, I started my day at 9:00am EST, when they opened, with the pre-trip inspection of the truck. The loading took two hours and I left the shipper at 11:00am EST. On the route out there was another accident that closed one of the side streets I needed but the detour didn’t set me back too much. Then on the highway I saw a tanker truck that was deep into the side of the road. How he got there I did not want to speculate.
Since I was planning on driving more than eight hours for the day it meant that I needed to comply with DOT Regulations mandating a break of at least thirty continuous minutes along the way. I also needed fuel so I planned to stop back where I had spent Sunday night at the Pilot truck stop in Hurricane Mills, TN. I could scale the truck, fuel, shower and have lunch at the Log Cabin, which is a nice restaurant with delicious Southern cuisine. This load was very heavy, the total came out to 79,120lbs out of the maximum 80,000lbs allowed by DOT Regulations. The axles also have a maximum weight of 34,000lbs each. On the first weigh-in the Trailer Axle was over by 1,360lbs. Something that can be easily corrected by moving its position back a little. However, when I readjusted the position both axles were slightly overweight, one at 34,080lbs and the other at 34,120lbs. Normally, the authorities allow this mishap as the total weight is compliant but it can be fixed by shifting the weight on the Steer Axle. That’s a more laborious endeavor that I did not want to perform it. After lunch I drove another five hours, making the total for the day of ten hours. I shut it down for the night at 11:00pm, just as my fourteen-hour DOT Regulations clock was about to expire for the day.
Wednesday August 5th, I started my day at 10:30am with the pre-trip inspection of the truck and drove a little over an hour to the consignee where I arrived at noon.
BOOK REVIEW: Not Quite Dead Yet by Holly Jackson (2025), THRILLER – RATING (*****)
An amusing thriller with an original and unique premise. The protagonist has seven days to solve her murder in real life.
Margaret “Jet” Mason is brutally attacked inside her home on Halloween night and left for dead. At the hospital she’s told she can have a risky surgery with 10% chance of survival or she’ll die in seven days from an aneurysm in her brain from the blows she received on the head. She chooses the latter and is determined to make use of the precious time she has left to figure out who attacked her. Her dad owns a construction company that her brother hopes to inherit. Her older sister died of a weird accident when she was young. Billy Finney, her childhood friend is helping her solve the mystery.
Overall very entertaining with a surprising ending.
