Boise, ID to Los Angeles to Laredo, TX

We went from Boise, ID to Los Angeles, CA overnite. Had two quick doctor visits, (nothing serious). Dropped our trailer in Fontana, CA for repairs, and picked up another one. Then Wednesday, got a load starting in Visalia, CA (south of Fresno) and headed to Laredo, TX. (1700 miles). We delivered on Friday morning, but there weren't any loads going out.... so we are sitting in Laredo over the weekend.



We drove our personal Team best on this run... 1130 miles in 24 hours.


I know other teams can do more... but with my sleeping issue... this is really good for us. My sleeping while the truck is moving is getting better. I am using fans to drowned out the noises. It seems to be working.... but I still sleep the best when the truck is not moving.


Visalia, CA to Laredo, TX.




When we drove through Amarillo, I took a picture of their bridge. I like the " boots" in the name.




In Laredo, we are resting,... and I get to watch TV at IdleAire. Fun! We are doing good! and the miles seem to better with this dispatcher, Jay.

We are requesting "hometime" next weekend... in Council Grove, KS. Leroy's family has an Annual Family Reunion, every year. After 9 years of marriage... this will be our first time to go back there for the Big reunion. It should be fun! Sept. 26, 27, 28. We'll go back out on the road on Monday the 29th.

See you then...
Happy Trucking!
God Bless!
Laurie

The Load from HELL that got us fired

Where to begin... this load turned out to be the load that got us fired from LCT. It's too bad too, because we really liked working for LCT.

We were at the yard in Okahumpka, FL waiting for our load to become available at 12 midnight. We got all the info from our "daytime" dispatcher and were just waiting for the trailer to arrive at our yard.

Then the "night" dispatcher comes on duty, and asks us to do a "quick" run to Jacksonville. We look at the QualComm message and ask her (the night dispatcher) if she believes we can make it back by 12 mid. (it is now 6pm). She said Yes, no problem. I say again... we will only have enough time to go up to this destination and drop the trailer, will that be OK? She says ok.
So we take the "quick trip".
-- Mistake #1

What is suppose to take only a couple of hours, ends up being a load to Wal-Mart that takes ALL night. We don't get back to the yard until 7am. By the time we get our paperwork for our Flower run, and get hooked up and do a Pre-trip, we are Late leaving by about 8 hours right from the start.

Everything seems to be going along OK. We are routed to go the southern route mostly I-10, then I-40. We make it to Kingman, AZ and Leroy has an "incident". He is driving in a parking lot and turns too sharply around a light pole. The light pole has a wider concrete base. The concrete base pushes the tires off the rims, damages the rims, and bends the axle. (No damage to body of trailer). But Not good. A repair guy comes out and gets us mobile. About 6 hours lost.
-- Mistake #2 -- our fault

After the "incident/accident".... the LCT Shop Supervisor directs us (re-routes us) to go up to Las Vegas, NV where we are to meet another team who is bringing us an empty trailer. We are to meet at a Cold Storage facility in Las Vegas where their workers will transfer the flowers onto the new trailer for us. We arrive in Las Vegas at midnight, the other team arrives at 3am, the facility doesn't open until 6am. --More time lost.--

After they open the trailer doors and discover that all the boxes are loose and are NOT on pallets, they say they cannot do the transfer.... so me and Leroy, along with the other team, Big Mike and Little Mike, go to the nearest truck stop.. back the trucks to each other, and do the transfer of 1800 loose boxes ourselves. 4 people, 4.5 hours.
-- Mistake #3 (re-routing, not our fault)

After the transfer, we head north on I-15 into Salt Lake City to go across the I-80 into Sacramento, CA then north into Portland, OR. --Big Mistake.-- We hit a big snow storm!
Weather - not our fault.

By this time the load is very late and we are being watched very closely. When we message in that we ran into a snow storm with white out conditions, and would have to wait until morning to drive, we are told by the night dispatcher (the same one who sent us on that "quick trip mistake" at the beginning) that we cannot stop and that if we can't keep rolling then another team will come get our load and deliver it for us. At first I tried to argue saying that if we can't SEE in these conditions, no one else will be able to see any better, but in the end I just said... OK, when will they be here..... She said about 2 hours.

After 2 hours, we get a message that says, "plans have changed and to deliver the load as soon as the weather conditions allow." That tells me that the other team ran into the same white out conditions that we did and couldn't get through. A little bit of confirmation for me.
-- Mistake #4 Northern route and hit snow storm.

After we started rolling, they were watching our every move. Even when we stopped to go pee, they would QualComm us and say... what have you stopped for??? Crazy. We even got a call from the President of LCT (Cory) wanting to know what our progress was, I told him everything that had happened.

He said that the client was threatening to pull this account from them because of us being late.
All I can say is.... they must have had other problems with this client in the past for them (the client) to threaten to pull this account because we were late - one time. This was our first time pulling for this client, so I know we were not the SOLE reason for the clients threat.

We finally made it to Portland, OR, with this load - three days late. We were suppose to deliver on Friday, and didn't get there until Monday.

LCT got us a load immediately out that same day. A slow run back to the Yard. When we finally made it back to the yard. We were called into the office and told that LCT would be "severing ties with us". In other words, we were fired. They said it was due to Leroy's "incident" which they made into a big deal. But we know it wasn't that.

So we cleared out our truck 3/24/08, rented a car, shipped our stuff home to California, and flew home the next day. 3/25/08

We found out from other veteran drivers at LCT, that we were really the "scape goats" so that LCT could save face with the client. The company fired us and swapped dispatchers (the solo dispatchers/for the team dispatchers) to show that things had "changed" to the client.

So now we are at home in Lakeside, CA staying with Laurie's parents and looking for work.
Pray that we find something soon.
3/25/08

Starting with Sam Kholi Enterprises

We took our drive tests with Jim, and passed!

Our first load was assigned to us by Jim, on Monday 9/3/07, Labor Day.
Actually, Sam Kholi Enterprises has recently contracted with Schneider National to do some of their "over flow" jobs. So this load is for Schneider.

We are taking a load of general department store stuff from City of Industry, CA (COI) to Casa Grande, AZ (south of Phoenix) to a brand new Target store, ...... and what is nice... we have a lot of time to get there (unlike when we worked for JIT).
We have to pick up the load by 8am on Tuesday, 9/4/07 in COI, and deliver it in Casa Grande at 9am on Thursday 9/6/07. No Problem!

Sam (Kholi) is buying several "new" trucks (2006 Kenworths - nice) and several new trailers (that will be stenciled with "Jesus Christ is Lord -- Not a Swear Word"), but they haven't arrived from Texas yet.... so we will be taking the "training" truck (that we took on the drive test) and an unmarked trailer. It's still OK.... A 2000 Freightliner is still better than anything we drove at TLC. And the A/C works. Yeah!!!

We got a ComData card for fueling, took the truck and trailer home to load all of our stuff into it, then headed up to COI the night before. We stayed at the TA (Travel Centers of America) in Ontario, CA (about 16 miles from where we need to be for the pickup). This was very good for logistics, but we didn't sleep very well.

So we get up on Tuesday, 9/4/7, and get to the pick up point early.... 7:30am for an 8am appointment time.

We get all loaded, and head back to the TA to get some sleep.

We also get Idle-Aire. See yellow tube going into the truck?

Side Note:
Idle-Aire is very cost effective. With Idle-Aire you get...
A/C, 110v outlets (x 4),
TV channels free - if you have a TV, or they will loan you a TV,
Pay-Per-View channels (optional extra),
ethernet connection to the Internet, and several other things.

Idle-Aire costs about $2/hour.
To idle the truck uses about 2 gallons per hour, and fuel costs about $3/gallon.
You do the Math.

Also... Jim said that Sam Kholi Enterprises (SKE) will reimburse us for the Idle-Aire. Yeah!

We sleep all day Tuesday, 9/4/07.

We get up and leave Ontario, CA at Midnight Wednesday, 9/5. Leroy is driving.
We arrive in Casa Grande, AZ on Wednesday, 9/5/07 at 9am, and try to get permission to deliver a day early, but they say No. They only have crews available on assigned days and times to unload the trucks.

So... we find a truck stop about 5 miles away and wait all day. We get showers, do laundry, rest, etc....

On our paperwork is says to be to the delivery point the night before, and we found out that there will be 4 other trucks needing to be unloaded beside us. So.. we decide to go to the construction site (the new Target) and sleep there. We arrive there about 8pm. We are hoping for a "first come-first served" unloading order....
By 7am, it is RAINING due to high humidity and heat. We get soaked checking in.

At 8am, the Target crew arrive and show us on our paperwork there are numbers as to who will be unloaded first... we are number 4.
They have two docks and start unloading the first two trucks right away.

Oh... I forgot to mention... on the way to this delivery we are assigned another load by the Schneider dispatcher, Wendy.
Pick up in Phoenix (about 45 mins away) at 11:30am on Thursday, 9/6/07.
Now there is a time pressure to get unloaded on time.

God Bless 'Em... they unloaded us pretty quick. We were all done by 10:00am.
Now we head up to Phoenix..... Laurie is driving now. :)

In The Beginning....

This adventure actually started almost a year ago, (Aug. '06).

AUGUST 2006
Leroy had done some construction work in the past, and more recently, some Telemarketing, and HATED both jobs. I had been in office work for some time. I liked the work, but wasn't going anywhere.... so we started looking in the newspaper for jobs.
Low and behold there was an ad to come and listen to a 2-hour seminar about Trucking. We went and got really excited. It was a career that we could be together, see the country and get paid for it. It sounded perfect. So we applied... but Leroy was turned down because of an incident in his background.
We spent some time in prayer, and decided to find a local Trucking School, and get our CDL licenses, then apply to trucking companies..... thus started our "long haul" adventure of getting into the Trucking industry. Little did we know what was to come.....

SEPTEMBER 2006
We were positive, we were excited! and we thought that we should be able to do this transition right away. So we sold one of our cars, our motorcycle, about 90% of our "stuff" (in three consecutive weeks of yard sales) and put our mobilehome up for sale. (After all, we won't need any of these things if we are going to be living out of a truck... right?)
Well... our mobile home wasn't selling because of a hole in the flooring. So we decided to move out of the mobilehome (9/23/06), and in with my parents (who are great, and supportive, and gracious), so we can repair/remodel the mobilehome and sell it to get tuition money for the Trucking school.
We were thinking.... a month, maybe 6 weeks, and we would be all set...... Trucking here we come.

OCTOBER 2006
At first we were going to pay someone else to do the work, but we didn't have enough money for that.... so Leroy volunteers to do the work. We buy the materials and start.
The end of Oct... Remodeling is taking forever! The sub-flooring needs to be torn out and replaced. (Things always take longer than you think.) My brother, Jon, comes and helps for a couple of weekends, but it is still taking time.
One good thing.... we found a really good church in Santee, CA.
Pathways Community Church. The people are great and the services are inspiring.

NOVEMBER 2006
We are painting the whole interior white, and sub-flooring that needs to be replaced - we are getting quite a workout. We go over every day and work. We don't have any other jobs at the moment, so my parents are supporting us.

DECEMBER 2006
The painting is finally finished (with a lot of help from family and friends), and Leroy & Jon finally gets the sub-flooring pulled out and reinstalled. Next comes installing new carpeting throughout, and new linoleum in the kitchen, bathroom, and third bedroom. Pheww.. what a pain.

JANUARY 2007
January 14th, 2007, IT IS DONE! We list it in the PennySaver, and on Craig's List for sale. Hopefully it will sell soon. We have borrowed money from my mom - both for the finishing of the remodeling and for tuition. (She took money out of her 401k account to help get us started. Thanks Mom.)
January 15th, 2007, We start trucking school with United Truck Driving School in San Diego, Ca. Love It!! It has been a long time coming, but worth it. We are excited!

FEBRUARY 2007
We are finishing up our two weeks of driving. It is totally amazing that they had us up-shifting and down-shifting on the second day. Leroy gets some instructors that are not that great, and they end up quiting half way through our driving training time. I get a pretty good instructor, but he leaves to further his own trucking business, again, right in the middle of our training time. Leroy finishes his training and finally gets his license on 2/27/07. I (however) am delayed. I miss the last couple of days of training because my left knee swelled up like a balloon, and the pain is enormous. The emergency doctor says it is just tendonitis because of excessive use, and to stay off it for 7-10 days. I get crutches, and stay off it, with not much improvement, except now my right knee hurts because of all the excess use to that knee.
On 2/23/07, I have hernia surgery (it was scheduled previously) and continue to let my knees heal.

MARCH 2007
My primary doctor has xrays taken of my knees to rule out arthuritis. (Yea, No Arthuritis.) But we discover that my kneecaps are 'out of alignment'. They are both tracking to the outside, but the good news... that can be fixed with physical therapy (Thank God, no surgery). The bad news.... physical therapy is backed up, and won't have an opening until May.... So I wait.

Leroy - with new CDL license in hand, starts applying for jobs everywhere, online, newspaper, school placement list. A lot of places initially say Yes, then run a background check, and say No. It is getting very discouraging, but on 3/29/07, Leroy gets a break.
A company is finally willing to take a chance on him. They know he is a recent graduate, with no experience, but they give him the keys to a truck.

Leroy's Trucking career Starts!!
The load of nursery plants is going from San Diego, CA to Phoenix, Arizona, and they need him to take it quick. (I get to go along as his navigator.) He picks up the loaded truck in San Diego, and drives to El Cajon to get a couple of tires put on (per the owner). (He stalls the truck on the big hill heading into Santee. He remains calm, and restarts it.) Then we head east.
The load needs to be in Phoenix, by 8am Friday. It is now 9pm on Thursday. This means driving through the night. Leroy drives straight through the night, we are given No directions. As we are approaching Phoenix around 5am, we get verbal directions from the owner of the company's wife. (The directions are not that clear.) We see the freeway name and take the exit mentioned, but it comes out at the wrong place. Leroy drives down this surface road a long way.... and we think we might have missed the next turn. So we try to find a BIG place to pull into to get directions. We stop at one place and get further directions from some people at a McDonalds. We just need to continue down this road a little further. We end up turning the wrong way at the next turn, and we need to find a BIG empty parking lot, again, and Leroy pulls in. The turn around is tricky because of all the light poles, but he gets it around. As we are leaving we are approached by a rent-a-cop security guard, who stops us, then very firmly asks us to leave, then holds us up to let other cars pass. Go figure....
We finally make it to the customer's destination. We miss the driveway (it looks very narrow) and make a right turn, ....only it looks like a dead end. I get panicked, but Leroy remains calm. We stop, he sees that there is a road that goes around the block, then we call the customer to make sure there is room - not only to get in, but also a way to get out. They assure us that there is.
Leroy pulls in - around a curved driveway, with cars and plants all around. (Going slow is he key.) There is another truck being unloaded ahead of us,... so we wait. We arrived at 7:30am (for an 8am appointment). Leroy tries to sleep, but it is hard with No A/C in Hot Phoenix, and the unloaders bumping around in the back...... we are finally unloaded and leave at around 12:30pm.
We find out we have a load to pick up in Tucson tomorrow (Sat. 3/31/07) at 9am, so we head that way. We stop in Eloy, AZ at the Flying J. (Our first truck stop!) It is nice.
Since Leroy is new, it takes a little bit of time for him to back into a parking spot. But we finally get in, get a bite to eat and get some sleep.
We arrive in Tucson, AZ at 8:45am for our 9am appointment. We are picking up 'Windows', that are coming back to San Diego, (actually National City), but the Windows are not done and ready yet. The loader says they are making them and loading them as they go. It will be an ALL DAY thing.
We are assigned a loading dock at 10am, and get into position. We try to unhook, but the kingpin won't release. With some help from the warehouse crew and a forklift, we finally get it unhooked. The supervisor suggests we "bobtail" over to a nearby mall and see a movie (so we do) and we stop at Target to pick up some things. The loader says to be back at 3pm.
We get back at 2:30pm, they are still Not Done Loading. So we go next door to Dennys and eat a late lunch.
At 4:30pm, they are putting the final ones on the truck. Leroy signs paperwork, and re-hooks up. We leave toward San Diego at 5:30pm.
With stops for fuel, and a late dinner, we finally arrive back at Base at 2am. The load is still in the truck, and Leroy offers to complete the delivery on Monday, to National City.
Good Experience, and only a few near misses.
It was fun, and scary.

Monday, 4/2/07
The delivery can be made anytime between 8am - 12noon. I go with him again. Leroy drives down to National City, gets it all lined up and backed in and...... he (we) forgot to open the rear doors before backing into position. So Leroy pulls out, opens the doors and re-backs in.
Rookie mistake.
We return the truck to base, and we are done.
Pay $315. Leroy is now a Professional Truck Driver!

APRIL 2007
We did more runs... I'll blog those soon.

MAY 2007
We did more runs... I'll blog those soon.
Laurie starts physical therapy.

JUNE 2007
We did more runs... I'll blog those soon. And Laurie finally gets her license, on her 45th Birthday!