Team Adventure

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Only Missed a Tornado

Last week at home was great. The weather was beautiful and it was awesome to see family and catch up on our rest....but all good things come to an end and it was time to get back on the road.

We got our load to pick up our load in Aurora at Furniture Row and we were heading to Idaho Falls, ID. We were 200 miles away from delivery when we got a message saying we needed to head to Salt Lake City instead. Another team needed us to take over their load. She stepped off of the top bunk funny and something popped in her foot and she could not drive. So we made a left instead of a right and headed into Salt Lake. We had to wait 3 hours for them to meet us and as we waited the weather started to move in. Our new assignment was to NY, which meant turning right back around and driving back through WY...the only icky weather happening in the entire United States. We ran into snow in WY, hail, rain and thick fog in NE.

I woke up in Princeton, IL and we were having reefer issues. With a truckload full of produce and 70+ degree temps, time was of the essence to get to a place to get it fixed...pronto. we were sent off-route north to Aurora, IL and within an hour of arriving we were fixed and on our way. Unfortunately it meant we had to go through Chicago to get to our next fuel stop. We took I-294, a toll road, which would bring us right back onto the 80 again and on route. We went for 6 miles on the toll road when everything came to a screeching halt. The highway was closed...all 5 lanes of it, everybody exiting on 95th Avenue. WTH?? It took 4 hours of being cut off, honked at and much frustration to finally get back on the highway and be back on our way. What a nightmare. Come to find out, a tanker had been cut-off and jack knifed across all lanes of the highway and spilled acid everywhere
See attached link for photos.
http://chicagoareafire.com/blog/tag/tanker-carrying-hydrocloric-acid-rolls-over-on-the-highway/

Believe it or not we arrived in NY only 1 hour late to our original appointment time. But we ended up having to wait until the next day to deliver. It was 76 degrees yesterday and today it is already 81...crazy. London is warn out from playing and we have made our delivery and are ready for a nap b4 we receive our next load assignment. Until next time...

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Almost Home

Looking forward to some hometime...500 more miles and we will be free.

I am looking forward to making updates on the blog that my phone just won't let me update, and possibly making a Tablet purchase. But I am mostly looking forward to coming home to that baby and a house full of kids. Ready for some quality time.

We will catch up soon...

Friday, March 2, 2012

London Beagle, The Perfect Truck Dog

I look back on the last 2 years of our new career and wonder how we ever did this job without our buddy London. It's been an entire year now that he has always been by our side...through three different companies and seven different trucks. He is the perfect dog. Patient, sweet, loving and always there for you when you need a hug or just somebody to keep you company. Every morning he wakes up in a chipper mood and ready to face another day, even though he is a bed hog. He is always happy to just 'be' with you. If one of us is in the passenger seat, he has to be on your lap, either hanging out the window, or sitting dutifully on your lap giving you kisses and hugs all the while. He makes this job so much more enjoyable. He gets us out of our truck at least twice a day to take a walk and make new friends...whether they are the furry kind or another truck driver who has to stop and say hi. He is our protector. I can honestly say he would never allow anybody in our truck that we would not welcome and when we are away from the truck, game on...its his to protect and he takes his job very seriously.

I'm so thankful that he came into our lives...and he picked us, which makes our job and our lives richer...something money could never buy.

Bad Apple's

For the first time in over a year I need to vent about this load we just took...what a joke. We knew it was going to be an issue when we picked it up from the shipper....too shady. When a shipper will not let you sign next to your signature, NAOD and STC, which stands for, Not Allowed on Dock and Said To Contain, there should b a red flag. I was told I could not sign it that way and on the original Bill of Lading the shipping clerk used white out to mark out my abbreviations next to my signature. If a shipper hands you paperwork and you are supposed to sign for the product loaded on your truck and they won't even back up what the paperwork says and what they loaded on your truck, that's a BIG problem. A Bill of Lading is a contract and anything altered on that contract, makes that agreement null and void.

Bottom line...we had product refused, and I don't think this is a US Xpress or driver issue. We, as drivers, did everything possible to protect our product on our truck, and US Xpress. We deliver the product in the exact way it was loaded on our truck. If you look at the pics below you can see that the vendor that received the product opened up cartons and moved product from said cartons AFTER the load was received. Are you now going to tell me that we are responsible for every piece of produce that is loaded on our truck in cartons? Insane. I am beginning to think that this produce hauling is a open invitation to liability to the carrier...if we had damaged any freight during transporting, we would have gladly admitted fault. But with 30 pallets and three load bars on this load (one even being a double load bar) I can guarantee you that NOTHING moved or fell while in transit. The product was loaded that way from the shipper.

The next Apple I eat will sure make me think twice about what it went through to get to my mouth.

Monday, February 27, 2012

Weathered the Storm

So...we were worried about being stuck on the wrong side of Snoqualmie Pass with a storm coming and planning on dumping a foot of snow. We kept calling the 511 line...chains required...YUCK...then avalanche control...traffic stopped. Fine, ill just get my laundry done then. My clothes were just about out of the drier when Jeff came in and said...no chains and avalanche control is complete. Time to cruise. The snow was higher than our truck on the summit. We made it over the pass and are now getting loaded in Peshastin, WA and heading to Pageland, SC. Some nice southern sun sure wouldn't hurt mt feelings right now!

Saturday, February 25, 2012

Old Man Winter

Well....our run from Swanton, OH to Kent, WA went great. Ran into quite a bit of weather, but still made our delivery on time.
We are now sitting at the TA Truckstop at the bottom of Snoqualmie pass in WA. Our load doesn't pick up until Monday and we woke up this morning to rain/ snow mix. Unfortunately, they are expecting a foot of snow by tomorrow and the chain law is already in effect for the pass. We will be heading to SC, but I'm thinking its probably going to take the majority of the week on this run.
I'm ready for spring....

Saturday, February 11, 2012

It's Official....

We have now covered every state in the USA with our truck. We were missing MN and ND. From OH, we got a load going to Kent, WA. We took the 90 all the way to the west coast. Arriving in Washington state, no rain for the next 3 days. We have spent a lot of time in OR and WA and it is so beautiful. I have never been able to see Mt. Ranier, Mt. Hood and Mt. st. Helens all in one day and clear as a bell. We spent Jeff's 50 th bday at Jubitz in Portland. There is a really cool nature trail we like to take out of there and London loves it.
Next load from Portland to Conley, GA. Got to explore the Ellenwood terminal and then fueled at Tunnel Hill and took a load up to Swanton, OH...pretty much right off of Lake Erie. We then picked up a reefer trailer from Shippenburg, PA and headed to Peabody, MA where we picked up last night and are heading to Anaheim, CA...a sweet 3500 mile run! The weather was horrible last night with the storm coming in and PA and OH were pretty much blizzard conditions, but we pushed through and are on schedule to deliver on Monday afternoon in Cali. The weather from here looks like pretty smooth sailing. Sometimes you have to push through, weather wise, when you know the rest of the trip won't be as bad. Once again, running miles and lovin life.

ABOUT TEAM LINN and OUR ADVENTURE

We started our adventure 4 years ago. Our first trucking job was with Watkins Shepard out of Missoula, MT. Great company to start with. Gave us fantastic training in their 10-day orientation on top of our CDL training we already had. We stayed with them for a year and half and decided we wanted a change.

We went to work for Diversified Transfer and Storage out of Billings, MT. This was no longer a truckload, it was LTL, less than a truckload. We ran reefer and had a terminal in Denver, so we ran 4 weeks and had a week off. That part was great, but the company was not a good fit for us. Loved the LTL, couldn't deal with working for an owner who was a piece of crap. I wont even go into further detail....

Next...we wanted to go back to full truckload reefer so we decided to go with US Xpress. We were very happy with them for the first 5 months. We ran consistent miles from the east to west coast and loved it. Our Fleet Manager Mike Gibbs was the best Fleet Manager we have ever encountered in this business. We became one of the top Teams on the reefer board with US Xpress. We were called by the Fleet Owner, the VP of the Reefer division and the COO of US Xpress to tell us what a great job we were doing and how much they appreciated our service. But then it all fell apart and our miles started to drop and our awesome FM was thinking about transferring out of the division. Jeff and I saw the writing on the wall and we decided we wanted out of this company before things got even worse. I still speak with many Teams that run with US Xpress and they are having horrible issues. This was a driver friendly company, but since Pat Quinan passed away in January of 2012, things changed dramatically. Pat was the compassionate one that knew the company was about the Driver. Unfortunately after his passing things quickly changed to being about numbers on a spreadsheet, our FM moved on and we turned our truck in at the Irving Terminal and never looked back at our decision.

We then wet to The Waggoner's Trucking out of Billings, MT. Yep, can't seem to get away from Montana based companies. We now ran a dedicated run from Denver to Oklahoma City three times a week. We ran a flatbed, split axle trailer...which is only 48' now, instead of the 53" we were used to. We were met in Oklahoma City by the owner of the company David Waggoner to give us our new truck. We were no longer a number, but we were The Linn's again. We pulled into the OKC terminal and everybody knew our name and we knew theirs. We were part of a family again and it was so nice to be back in the surroundings we have missed from working at Watkins Shepard. We were in a Kenworth W900 Long Nose truck. We were home every other day in Denver and have Sunday and Monday off every week to enjoy our house in Denver again. We really debated on a dedicated run, since we love traveling the 48 states, but after almost 3 years, we have been to every state and it was time to get back to some connection to our kids, grandchild and our awesome house in Denver. It was so nice to be home more often. But on the flip side:

We ran this route for a year, yes dedicated was great, home time seemed to turn into one of us sleeping...even though it was in our own bed....however, we both got tired of running the same route and we only ran our route at night. Although the company was great, working 7 days a week was tiring and we decided we wanted to go back to enjoying why we started doing this in the first place...to see the country and meet awesome people so...this brings us to our next job change.

We now are working for Gemini Motor Transport, which is the trucking company that Loves Travel Stops owns and services their truck stops. We are working in the SW Region, which includes, CA, AZ, NM. Plus CO and WY when we come back home. We are hauling a tanker truck now, which is only 42' long...getting shorter, I'm liking that, and we haul DEF (Deisel Exhaust Fluid) only. We are the first husband and wife Team that Love's has ever hired. I am also proud to say that I am the only woman that works in the SW region that drives a truck. We are responsible for 33 stores and growing, along with one other solo driver in the region. Our job is to make sure that no stores ever run out of product in our region. Since teaming is new for Love's we will be sent to other regions as well, as needed, possibly the NW too. Our first week we serviced 11 stores in Southern California (all the way up to Corning), plus New Mexico and Arizona. It has been a big change, but once again, we are up for the challenge. I know I have never been so glad to run on a different road and see new things. There are good things about running a dedicated run, but I am so glad we made this transition and I think we picked a great company. We get a reset every week and we only work 6 day a week now. Plus we are paid by the day, not by the mile. We will also be home for every holiday...paid. This company is hard to get into and I am so glad they picked us. The Vice President of the SW region flew in to DIA twice to meet with us before we decided to take the position. He is our direct boss and an awesome one at that. We could not have made a better decision making the move when we did. The dedicated account would have been much more difficult to do with the new Hours of Service that changed in July 2013. So once again, we made the jump before it took anything away from our adventure.

We are happy to answer any questions you may have about trucking in general, teaming or any of the above companies we have worked for. We had to start out just like you and had so many questions, but not a lot of people to answer them. Shoot us an email @ hobotruckers@gmail.com we would love to hear your questions or comments. Thanks for following along in our adventures.