Liverpool Texas

Six Days On The Road.

____ Break-up time of year, when ice on the river starts to flow downstream. The warmth in the sun melts the snow and the frozen ground turns to mud. The Ruby Truck Line yard is about 50/fifty; liquid mire and sheet-ice covered by a film of water. About the same state as the peat moss packers at Vassar; where I go load for Texas. It takes five hours to get 17 sendable pallets out of the frozen puddles of snow-melt that surround every stack of peat moss. Low-quality one-way pallets break-up as soon as the forklift tries to lift them leaving the bottom part frozen in the ice. Then there is a two hour wait for customs clearance before crossing the nearby Roseau border and getting down to Fargo for the night. Eleven hours to get to a truckstop that would be just four hours away if the trailer had been pre-loaded.

____ Two more eleven hour days needed to get to Liverpool, Texas, for a Thursday morning delivery. After a night at Iola in Kansas; I phone the plant nursery to tell them of my arrival and to ask about truck parking availability in Liverpool. "Not if you want any diesel left in the morning," is the answer I half-expect but the manager says I am welcome to park on-site among the glass-houses. An excellent offer as the town is south of Houston and in a very rural area close to the Gulf Coast. A local scouser comes out from his mobile home when I arrive. He lives and works on the property like so many others in the horticulture industry. "Manana," he sighs. Which is Liverpudlian for tomorrow.

____ After unloading; the re-load instructions send me twenty-two miles to Pasadena for a consignment of plastic granules; destined for Winnipeg. En-route, I find myself on the NASA bypass; skirting round the vast space centre. I find it puzzling that the rockets launch from Cape Canaveral and the command centre is a Houston; a thousand miles away. A quick load and up to Thackerville for night-out number four. Number 5 at Cubby Bear's at Norfolk, Nebraska, then home. Only a six day trip but a good mileage per day and in some ways a better earner than some of the longer trips that need careful management of logbook hours.

Lonestar Class 8 Motorhome.

Rescue Helicopter at accident on Interstate 35 in Oklahoma.

North-bound Geese.