Contacted the shipper Thursday to inquire as to what time they wanted me there. Being "stationed" at the Ontario TA, I was literally 6 miles from their front door. The guy is nice and apologetic as he tells me that the load should have been ready first thing in the morning on Friday, but everything that could go wrong for him has and it won't be ready any earlier than noon. Since I am so close and he has limited space at his yard, he asked if I would mind staying at the T/S until he calls me. I said no problem although I really, really didn't want to stay in that $h^t hole any longer than I had to, but what can I do right?

When I didn't hear from him by noon I gave him a call. He said it was almost ready and would call me back as soon as possible, again being very apologetic for the whole situation . Right around 2:30pm local I get the call that the load is ready :clap:

I bounced on over and got it all loaded up, easy to secure, light weight, low profile load.....just the way I like um

By the time I fought my way through traffic and got out on the "open road" all I could think about was a refreshing shower and a hot meal. I only made it as far as the Petro in N. Las Vegas, NV before calling it a night. If all goes well, I'll head over Vail pass and shut down at the TA in Wheat Ridge, CO tomorrow.

 

Looks like the weather is going to work with you this weekend. I drove from Rapid City, SD to Missoula, MT today. It was clear, 75F, and no wind. A real nice day for driving. Of course, about a week ago the Rockies and Northern Plain States were much colder.

Have a safe trip.

 

It was a beautiful day to drive. The weather was perfect coming across 70. The low last night was 48 and the high for today is supposed to be 80!!

 

I left out of N. Las vegas early Saturday morning and before I knew it I had put 700+ mile markers in my back pocket. I am sitting at the TA Denver West (Wheat Ridge) which puts me 6 miles from my customer for a Monday morning delivery.

 

Made my delivery this morning with no issues, in fact the folks at the job site were friendly and courteous. That's a refreshing experience especially on a Monday :lol:

Anyways, I bounced back to the TA in Wheat Ridge and immediately started looking for a reload. Within about an hour or so, I was looking at an LTL that went from Denver, CO to Grand Rapids, MI and from Columbus, OH to Claire, MI. I normally don't like LTL's but all the "moons" were aligned and the pay was going to be sweet. But unfortunately I hesitated too long and the one from Denver got snatched up.

As the day went on there was nothing worth while. Just as I was about to go take a shower I get a call from an agent asking if I would be interested in a load from Castle Rock, CO to Fallon, NV loading on the 21st with the possibility of loading the 20th. My immediate split second thoughts were no way.....that was until he told me what it weighed and was paying......I'm a sucker for money so I booked the load. The bad thing is, Nevada can suck big time when it comes to getting out of there, but since I'm a gambling man, I have to take my chances.

 

DD, If you are a "gambling man", then maybe going to Nevada is not the best place for you. :lol: But other gamblers have paid my way thru the buffet line in the casinos.

I am running up in the Northern Plain States again. The weather is much better than a couple weeks ago. I have a drop in Grand Forks, ND tomorrow then I empty out in Ontario, Canada on Monday.

BTW, I stopped at the Pilot in Bonner, MT I90 Exit 109 Wednesday afternoon. Davis had a truck sitting in the parking lot advertising their L/O program. Funny thing was that truck still had #368T which means it hasn't been used since Dec'07. Remember they renumber their trucks to #9XXT when someone leased one.

 

DD, I am sorry I havn't been following this thread.Did you say somewhere on here that you're leased on with Landstar?
You must have been there a couple of years to have agents call you.The ****ty rates or dead areas that these agents cannot cover are the calls a bco would get from them.
I HAVE NEVER REGRETTED CANCELLING MY LEASE.

 

I feel a lot better hauling for them as a carrier than being a BCO.I even get a load alert(through email with posted rates) just like you BCOs.Their brokerboard have no posted rates but their load alert tells me the rates in my email.They also send emails on agents who have loads all over the country.

 

Yeah I'm leased to Landstar, been here for just under 1yr. I agree to a certain extent about agents calling when they can't get a load covered, however, more often than not, the calls are I get are on good paying loads that never make it to the board. Agent sees that my truck is in the area and calls to offer me what they have. I got a call yesterday afternoon on a light weight military load from NAS Fallon, NV to NAS North Island, CA that picked up on Friday and delivered Monday. The rate was 2.35 mile.

Anyways, for now I am happy here. I run into many drivers that are not and some say they will cancel their lease soon. One has to do what is right for them and their family so to each their own I guess.

 

I got a call late Tuesday (20th) afternoon from the shipper asking if I would like to come pick up the load. I immediately said yes as the weather forecast for the Denver area was calling for the "white stuff". I got loaded and attempted to beat feet out of there. I say attempted because by the time I got rolling down the road I was just in time for rush hour traffic

As I rolled north on I-25 I hit pockets of light rain. I watched the outside temp gage closely and it was gradually dropping. Fortunately not to the freezing level. I get into WY and within a few miles on I-80 there was that "white stuff" . It was blowing hard but not sticking to the roads so all was good. It didn't take long for everything to go from all good to crappy. About 25 miles or so east of Laramie I hit dense fog. With the outside temp down to 28 degrees, it was time to call it a day as I DON'T play in freezing fog or rain. So I shut her down in Laramie.

The next morning I got up and rolling down the road and made it to Battle Mountain, NV before shutting down for the day. This put me a 190 or so miles from my drop and would make for an easy day. On Thursday morning I was up early and rolling. I got to the customer at 7:30am local and got unloaded. Up until now I did not have a re-load lined up so I bounced to the Petro in Sparks, NV to re-group.

I checked the load board for a while and did not see anything that interested me so I decided to take care of a few things I was putting off. One being that I needed to change my inverter. My old one died on me about a week ago and I got a new one, but just never got around to installing it. This has sucked BIG TIME because it forced me to buy my morning coffee from the truck stops instead of brewing my own. Anyways, instead of just disconnecting the old one and re-connecting the new one, I wanted to change the location thus allowing me better access to it and it would shorten the length of cable needed to conned it to the batteries (the shorter the better for performance). What I thought would be a fairly quick install took me about 2hrs because I had to get under the truck and pull the cables out and re-run them to the new location. I got it done and needless to say the first thing I did was brew me a pot of coffee!!! .

As soon as I got done and was relaxing before I went to shower, I get a call from a Reno agent (Landstar) asking if I was interested in a light weight military load out of Fallon, NV going to North Island, CA (San Diego area). It picked up on Friday (23rd) and delivered on Monday and was paying 2.35 mile, I of course said yes. That was a great paying load for this area. She calls me back about 20 minutes later and said that she spoke to the logistics people there at NAS Fallon and the load just got covered. issedoff: All I could think was "oh boy, here we go again" (read previous post to understand).

So anyways, here I am in Sparks, NV. I will be calling agents to "let them know" I'm in the area looking for a load as well as watching the load board like a hawk today in hopes to catch a load out of here before the weekend. Wish me luck!