Now Two Trips In One Week.

First Trip of the Week.

____ Day 1: I could have gone away on the Sunday but there was nothing for me. So it is a Monday midday departure with an empty trailer. A six hour drive down to Cold Spring, Minnesota, to collect a load of soft drinks. Afternoon tea at Fargo and I arrive at seven for the eight o'clock loading appointment. Loaded by nine and I decide to stay on-site over-night. I have to have a ten hour break some where on the way back and it makes no difference to my arrival time back at the yard.

The elusive new red Volvos: #47, #48, #49.

____Day 2: The load is going to Calgary but my orders are to take it to Niverville. I get back at two in the afternoon. Next job; take an empty trailer to the peat-moss packing plant at Vassar, one and a half hours drive down towards the US border. The place is busy and I'm one of the last to be loaded; too late to get customs clearance for the dirt going to Germantown, near Milwaukee in Wisconsin. Any-way; someone cuts the corner exiting from the plant and nearly tips the whole lot over, saved only by the landing-leg of the trailer. Everybody has to wait until a wrecker comes to drag the trailer wheels out of the ditch. Another night on another company's property.

It doesn't look too bad until....

....you go round the other side and see the drive wheels up in the air.

____Day 3: The necessary customs clearance fax arrives and I am away early. My worries about the peat-moss being too heavy are eased when I get a green light at the Minnesota DoT scale. Understandably, I am deeply upset when the Wisconsin DoT at Superior pull me into their scale house to tell me that I am 1535 lbs overweight on the drive-axles. Fortunately, the whole rig is within the 80,000 lbs legal limit. By sliding the trailer axles forward, I am able to get the drive-axles down to their limit of 34,000 lbs. Because the overweight was less than 2000 lbs and I was able to correct the problem; I escape with just a warning and no fine. Curses on all peat-moss plants with no truck weighing facilities. It turns into a longer day than expected; finishing at the Petro Truckstop at Portage.

Second trip of the week.

____Day 4: The reload after the peat-moss delivery is another load of soft drinks from Cold Spring, Minnesota, again at 8 o'clock in the evening. So if I start too soon, I will be out of hours before I get loaded. It is a fourteen hour maximum day, so I reckon if I start at 7 then I can go on until 9 at night and another sleep at the pop factory. It all works out much as I had planned, out of Germantown by noon and then a non-stop thrash of 671 kilometres, with just the Minneapolis/St. Paul rush-hour to hold me up.

Custom truck loading at soft drinks factory. How does he see out of that thing?

____Day 5: An easy day back to the yard with a load that somebody else was going to take to Richmond, near Vancouver in B.C. I did have enough time to get it there by 07.00 hours on Monday morning but the office had other plans. I think most drivers don't like it when they load trailers and the majority of the miles for that load then go to some one else; I am no different. It is early-days but it seems the new management has a new way of doing things at Flying Eagle. I know I am supposed to be on light duties until June because of my injury but the only thing that seems to be light is my pay-packet.

____Overall Distance: 2391 miles.

Running empty with a tailwind.

Figures for the week: a little faster when loaded.