Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Cheyenne Frontier Days

What a blast we had! Jason Aldean was fantastic and the fair broke a record that night for the most attended night in history. Found out a bunch of our friends were there as well too through Facebook...who knew? Toby Keith rocked it out the following night was a smaller, older crowd...which was good cause I'm getting too old for these back to back concerts anymore! We were smart this year and booked a room at the Hilton Homewood Suites, what a beautiful hotel. We had a full kitchen and breakfast..a real breakfast, was served every morning, on real plates and coffee cups and glasses for juice...no paper products for this locale. I would definitely stay at one of these locations again. They do take pets, but the pet fee is a bit pricey... $75, it was explained to me the reasoning behind it, most people stay there for weeks at a time...however an over nighter or two doesn't get a different rate.  Most of you that know me have a pretty good idea that I sent a suggestion to corporate on that one...whether it goes any further who knows?
We are back on the road again and since Monday have hit the Wamsutter, WY store Cedar City, UT and Vegas. Ran across the Hoover damn and took highway 93 down to Phoenix to load, beautiful drive. We are now heading to Port Huemene in Cali to load and then drop at the Barstow location....that means some In-N-Out for me tonight for dinner, yum.
For the first time in over a year we have a microwave back in the truck and our built in refrigerator is the bomb. We got our truck all set up over the weekend and it is nice and homey. London is settling in and last night after my shift, which we have settled on 10 am to 10 pm for me, I watched a movie on our built in 22" tv...Casino Royale while traveling down the road is comical, lots of action and shooting.
Its almost time for my shift to begin here in Cali so I need to make my coffee and get ready to roll. This job is working out great.  I love being paid by the day and not by the mile, it makes life so much less stressful.

Thursday, July 18, 2013

Still a Woman in a Man's World

I am standing here in Gila Bend, AZ at the Loves waiting for our 5 th load of the day to finish. This day started out with nothing going right at each store, to our credit, it was none of our doing, however, this job has taught me patience. We get paid by the day, not by the mile or by the load...so why stress out about things that are out of your control? Jeff is now sleeping and he finished helping me load the truck, then I drove to Gila Bend and for the first time, I have completely handled this offload from start to finish. I have to say I am pretty proud of myself. Not only are we the first Team that Loves has hired...I am very proud to say that I am the only woman that works in the southwest region. I am really starting to like this job and London is getting used to the different rhythm from flatbedding.
We spent all last week in California loading from Port Huemene. Got to stop in Oxnard where we used to load strawberries when we ran reefer for USX and load up on avacados, peaches and mangos. This will definetely be a regular stop for us. We are now in AZ and will move on to NM towards the end of the week. We are planning on working our way home for the 3rd week in July for Cheyenne Frontier Days. Jason Aldean on Friday the 24th and Toby Keith on Saturday the 25th...can't wait!
Until next time...looking forward to getting out of 100+ degrees, on the bright side, I have a wicked tan!

Thursday, July 4, 2013

Calamity of Errors but Spoiled Rotten

Forgive me...its been too long. My last post left off with getting ready to start our new adventure with Love's...now I digress. We ended up staying at home a total of six weeks after we left Waggoners...which was AWESOME.  Now the digression. Both Jeff and I had to get our hazmat endorsements before we left Denver which meant we had to renew our CDL's...a comedy of errors after which followed. First, Colorado now outsources all of their drivers licenses to the state of Washington... not sure where this makes any sense whatsoever, but it takes even longer to receive them now. You are issued a temporary paper license as well as your original license back, so you still obtain a picture ID, however they punch holes in your license, which spell out the word VOID. In some insane government way this must make sense, however, most people that need to see your license see the word void on your license and take it literally... as well as they should. We needed our hard copy to start our new job, however our new boss decided to get us started with our temporaries... great gesture, but not so productive. We were offered a flight to Phoenix to start, but with London, decided it was a better idea to rent a car and drive. We left on June 21 and arrived at our hotel in Phoenix on the 22nd to 115 degrees...London was melting. We trained for a few days watching loading at the various DEF racks, but we needed to obtain our TWIC card in order to prove we are not terrorists, and also so we can load at the ports in California. So off to Long Beach we went to the closest enrollment center. Unfortunately, they didn't like our temporary licenses stamped void, imagine that, so we were rejected. Long story short, we bobtailed back to Denver to pick up our new CDLs as well as all of our uniforms which were sent to our house...another thing that makes no sense to me.

 I really cannot complain about any of the disfunction since we have been paid for all of our time since we arrived in Phoenix...including three days of floating in the hotel pool. But the best part of this whole calamity is we left Denver yesterday and I got to experience the best thing ever since we started driving a truck. Bobtailing up I70 from Denver, where we learned how to drive a truck, to Cali. This drive loaded normally takes around 20 hours. At 70 mph and no load, we made it to Long Beach in 16 hours on a beautiful day and Vail pass was never easier! It was such an adrenaline rush. We now have our TWIC cards and I told my new boss that we may never be able to pull a tanker behind our new sexy truck since we have been bobtailing for a week and a half now. We are now in Barstow, CA waiting to load up the Loves. Tomorrow is the 4th and we get to decide where we want to watch fireworks since all 33 stores in southern California don't need any DEF. Since we are guaranteed to be paid for 6 days a week, all I have to say is this is the best company we have ever worked for. No stress, family owned by Mr. Love himself and very well taken care of. Welcome new family, we made the right decision. Happy 4th of July everyone.