A week or so in my life

Following on from Wire’s impressive journal I thought I’d add another of my own

Left the yard in Morris, Manitoba on Saturday afternoon with Davey68 of this TNUK thingy, destination Charlotte, North Carolina, loaded with frozen chips.

It’s a two & a bit day run so no need to do too much on the first day, went down to the border which is only 50kms from the yard, ran over the scale to check my axle weights & all being well set off down through North Dakota.

Stopped for the night in Clearwater, Minnesota where we met up with another Dave who comes on here but I can’t remember his handle, anyway we had a scoff & put the world to rights & bedded down for the night.

586kms, five & a half hours driving

Day 2 was a pleasant cruise through the rest of Minnesota, through the ‘Twin Cities’ of Minneapolis & St Paul & in to Wisconsin, we reached Wis Dells after 4 & a bit hours & stopped for a coffee & to stock up on munchies in the Walmart, believe it or not but we just parked 2 big trucks in the car park with all the rest of the shoppers & nobody says a word, try doing that in Asda! After that another 3 hours saw us hit the outskirts of Chicago, the weather was still holding up, it was well below freezing but no snow although the roads were wet so my nice shiny black motor was, well it wasn’t shiny anymore. A reasonable run through Chicago for a change, it’s the 4th largest city in North America after Mexico City, LA & New York so you really need to time it right to get through in under 3hrs, fortunately Sunday evenings are a good time! We made it through & parked for the night at a Flying J truckstop where we had dinner & performed our ablutions in Lebanon, Indiana which is just north of a little motor racing town, you may have heard of it, they do this silly race there where they drive around in an anti clockwise circle for 500 miles

1003kms, 10hrs 15mins driving time.

Day 3 takes us to the delivery in Charlotte, North Carolina, we left at 10am, no need to rush it’s only just over 600 miles away! We went straight through Indianapolis & headed down I-65 to Louisville just across the Kentucky state line

We went through a nice & sunny Kentucky along I-64 to Lexington then down I-75 towards the Tennessee state line, along the way we passed this place
It’s finger licking good we never bothered though & carried on through Knoxville, Tennesee & stopped & had Chilli in a nice little Mexican resturaunt in Lake City, Tennesee. after that it was a 50mph (restricted) run over the Smokey Mountains to the North Carolina state line & four & a half hours later we were in Charlotte ready to tip in the morning.

1013kms, 10hrs behind the wheel.

Day 4 & 5, Davey68 had the 1st booking so I stayed in bed for a bit, he left to reload in Searcy, Arkansas about 1100kms away & once I finally regained conciousness I tipped 3hrs before my booking & got a nice smile from the girl in the office to boot, just like Morrisons at Wakefield eh! After that I retraced my steps back into Tennessee, I was loading just inside the state line & this is where it went boss eyed, the product I was loading didn’t make the grade so was rejected, unfortunately it takes them a whole week to make a full load of whatever it was (I didn’t ask & they never said) so it was plan B, plan B consited of me sitting on my arse for the rest of the day & the next one too! As Wire said in his post it’s not a problem as you can reset your hours & it was in the mid 20s so I chilled out, read a book, watched House on DVD & did some laundry.

Day 6 turned out to be an interesting one, I had 3 collections, the first was in Aberdeen, Maryland so I set off north up I-81 through the rest of Tennessee & into Virginia

Then into Maryland, around Washington DC & on I-95 up to Aberdeen, I dropped my trailer on a bay & left them to it while I went off for a shower & a late supper.

1108kms, 11hrs in the log book.

Day 7 was a good one, for me but not for this bloke,

Or this poor sod

After all that excitement I headed up I-95 through Delaware & into New Jersey, from there I popped onto Staten Island for a quick photo session (I stayed there when I took my daughter to New York for her 16th so I parked outside the hotel & took a few snaps & emailed them to her) From there it was a short hop up to the George Washington Bridge & into the Bronx.




From there I carried on up I-95 through Connecticut, into Rhode Island & stopped for the night outside my next collection in Boston, Massachusetts.

648kms, 8hrs of fun & games, New York drivers make Londoners look like nuns

T’internet is playing up so I’ll finish off when I get home, I’m on day 12 of that trip at the moment, will be finishing the last leg tomorrow night so watch this space…

Excellent post Mr.Man. v.pro journal .If you squirt some of that jump-start into the UB port on yer laptop it will clear all the tubes on the net.

A excellent read so far and also wonderfull
pictures thanks alot will be waiting for the rest
when you post ,it.

Nice one Mark. Very interesting with added wit. Looking forwards to the rest of it.

nice 1, another cracking diary and pics from over there, keep em coming.

don’t know what made me chuckle more, the colonel sanders museum, or, “ona whim” antiques

Ok boys & girls, here’s the last leg,

Day 8 saw me leaving Boston heading west to upstate New York, they had a really bad ice storm up here recently, though I was luckier than Wire & it had passed through before I got there, it left 2 million people without power for over a week so I call that good timing by my despatcher There were plenty of reminders though.

As Wire said it causes devastation to trees & power lines & you can see from the pictures it did just that. Passed a few shopping trolleys along the way too,

Can you imagine the damage you could do trying to get round the back of a supermarket with one of them! I carried on through Albany, the capital of New York State & here is, I think, the Capitol Building,

This next sign made me chuckle, remembering the film of the same name.

After that I carried on down I-90 through Syracuse, Rochester & into Buffalo, there was a plane crash here the night before & the interstate passes right by the north end of the runway, the plane didn’t make it that far & hit a house a few hundred yards to the left of the road, sadly all on board perished although 2 people escaped unharmed from the house. I carried on into Pennsylvannia & skirted Lake Erie heading for Cleveland Ohio. A little known fact is that Cleveland is the birthplace of Rock n Roll, a DJ on a local station was the 1st to play it & the rest is history… with this in mind I tuned my satellite radio to the 50s channel & hand-jived my way through Ohio to my stop for the night in a TA (Travelcenters of America) truckstop, it was a late one so I abandoned the truck in a sort of straight line & hit the bunk.

1112kms, 11hrs at the helm.

Day 9 started with a shower in the TA & a Venti Latte from the on-site Starbucks, how civilised I did a couple of hours before I stopped in a Waffle House for breakfast, I got chatting with a local who wouldn’t believe that I was from London, he was absolutely convinced that I was Austrailian, I couldn’t resist telling him that my name was Mick Dundee After that it was a boring 55mph run through the rest of the state, after running at up to 75mph (legally) I couldn’t believe how slow 90kms felt, but the Ohio State Troopers are plain evil & issue more tickets than any other state so 55mph it was. Ohio is also famous as the home of aviation as the Wright Brothers were local boys, the 1st actual flight took place in North Carolina but they are Ohio boys & there are museums & stuff to commemorate them.

I eventually made it in to Indiana & put the hammer down again cruising at 70mph, the limit is 65 but unless you’re being stupid the Police don’t take any notice of trucks, I made it to my last collection in Frankfort & once again dropped the trailer on a bay & set off back down to Lebanon where I stopped on day 2, had a bite to eat & logged on to t’internet to pick up my emails, it was Valentines day so I was quite busy I gave it an hour & went back to collect my now full trailer, it was all done, pulled of the bay, sealed & my paperwork was ready at the gatehouse or guardshack as they call them over here. That done I headed up to Chicago & as it was late evening I had another clear run through, I parked for the night at the Flying J truckstop in South Beloit which is on the Illinois/Wisconsin border.

996kms, 10hrs on paper.

Day 10 was retracing my steps up through Wisconsin, Minnesota & North Dakota, the border with Canada is around 1100kms away so it’s a big day today, I stopped at Black River Falls to fax my paperwork through to the agent so I’m customs cleared by the time I hit the border later that day. I was heading up I-94 & the further north-west I went the colder it got.

An uneventful day saw me park up in the yard having covered 1190kms in just under 11hrs.

Day 11 was a boring run through the prairies of Canada, through Manitoba into Saskatchewan & finally after what felt like a lifetime I made it into Alberta where freezing fog livened things up a bit, it makes a right old mess of the truck,
I know you get it over there but when the ambient temperature is in the -20s it freezes the windscreen over too, I’ve never had that in Europe, even that nasty Italian fog doesn’t freeze the windows up, anyway I made it through to my delivery in Lethbridge & again dropped the trailer on a bay, this time I didn’t have to wait around for it to be unloaded as I had a pre-loaded one with my name on it all ready for me, touch… I hooked up & parked outside the local Peterbilt dealer for the night, today was the biggest one yet, 1267kms in 12hrs, whoosh…

Day 12 started with the after effects of last nights fog, as well as doing weird things to the truck it makes for some really beautiful scenery, even in the prairies



It also saw me hit my hours limit of 70 in 7 days (8 in America) so I only made it back as far as Regina, Saskatchewan before the log book called time out, I stopped for the night in a Husky truckstop where I logged on & started the first part of this literary masterpiece 639kms & 6hrs of steering wheel attendance.

Day 13 was the last day, I got some hours back as it was the 8th day after my reset so I steered the faithful Pete east, dropped the trailer in Winnipeg & bounced back to the yard after 7hrs driving & 656kms, along the way I passed a train with 120 carriages of double stacked containers, I bet Jessica’s Dad would like to be waiting for this baby to hit the Freightliner depot, although it’d take them a month to unload it!

The engine you can see is the pusher at the back, there are two more pulling at the front. I also passed a removal firm doing it’s thing,

When they move house here, they don’t bother packing stuff in boxes they just move the whole bloody lot!

Well that’s my lot, I’m having a couple of days off now & it all starts again for me, as you can see by some of the places I’ve been through it’s never dull, I do big miles, a total of nearly 6500 miles through 3 Canadian & 16 American states since I left the yard, but I sit down & have an unhurried meal at least once a day, parking is never a problem, no matter where I choose to stop, truckstop, shopping mall, supermarket, wherever, the facilities in the truckstops are always very good too, free showers if you fuel up, they all issue loyalty cards & you get 2 showers & 2 coffees per fill up so you never end up paying, the food is not that great in all of them, more quantity than quality but as I said parking isn’t a problem so I vary it a bit between truckstops & Cracker Barrels, Waffle houses, dennys, Tony Romas, Chinese/Mexican resturaunts etc, it’s all reasonably priced & I live very comfortably on $20 a day .

I remember going on holiday to Vegas & going to a truckstop & wishing that I was driving one of the Peterbilts in the parking lot, well now I am & I still have to pinch myself sometimes, for instance when I went past the sign for Manhattan I had the biggest smile on my face, here I was driving through New York City in a blinged up Pete, talk about living the dream, if you google that phrase a picture of me comes up on your screen

Hope you all enjoyed it & I really hope that this uploads or I will need a new computer

Fantastic Mark! I cannot believe how fast you are with that camera to catch all of those things while you are on the road. I like your philosophy too. You sound exactly like me.

GREAT DIARY AND GREAT PICTURES newmercman!!!

Keep it coming!

Really interesting diary and cool pictures

Good stuff Mark, enjoyed both those diarys, seems like you and “uncle Dave” have found your nitch!!

Keep it safe mate.

bullitt.

Absolutely fantasic I wanna move there now
Can I be sad and also ask you put pics up of the inside of your cab to? Only it looks slightly different to Wire’s and being the saddo I am I like to see these things
Had some questions to but cant remember off hand do you mind answering questions for wannabes like me?

The only difference in the interiors of Wire’s & mine is the dash, mine has the old school one with all the chrome, whereas Wire’s is the ‘modern’ version, I like mine better, it’s more in keeping with the rest of the truck, anyway here are the pics,

Here’s one of it in action,

Here’s a few of the sleeper,




The pics don’t really do it justice, I need a fish-eye lense to get it all in, but to give you some perspective the bunk is the same size as a standard single bed & the internal depth of the bunk area is 63", I can stand up straight with about a foot to spare & I’m 6’ 1", there is a wardrobe on both sides with a cupboard above it & various cubby holes around the top bunk & a huge space under the center section of the bottom bunk. As well as that there is are two lockers accesible from outside with a full width section at the back of the cab & the nearside step box is big enough to hold a full set of snow chains, the only downside is that there’s not enough places to put stuff in the cab itself, there are door bins that are big enough for a couple of maps but my log book folder lives on the passenger seat & my ■■■■ & mobile are usually on the floor in front of the passenger seat, they start off on a grippy thing on the dash but as soon as I go around a bend they slide off! I’ve got a cheap plastic 5 drawer chest that I got from a Walmart in the wardrobe behind me where I store my paperwork & the usual junk that you need day to day. As the bunk is seperate from the cab it’s more like a mini caravan than a sleeper cab really.

Well done again Mark.You are living your life your way in Canada,well done.
Matt

Ollienotts,

Ask away mate, I’m more than happy to answer your questions, just don’t make them too complicated

Will have a read tomorrow night, looks interesting. Just had a look at the bit on your cab, do you have a fridge/freezer or microwave in it or anything? If so did the company supply it or is it down to the driver to fit it out with stuff.

Kiowan,

Yes I’ve got a fridge & a microwave but I don’t bother with them, they’re in the boot, sorry trunk of my car, I run mostly the East Coast so there are plenty of places to stop to eat or drink & it’s cheap enough out here that it would make no difference if I did it myself, except for having to do my own dishes

If I was running Canada or even the West Coast then I would take them, it’s a lot less populated there so places to stop are few & far between, I have a 1200 watt inverter that was $100 so a cheap $30 microwave is all I have, the fridge cost me $90 & is good enough to freeze milk in 40c, I paid for it myself, some trucks come with it all fitted & some firms supply it, my lot figure that they pay enough that we don’t need them & we should get out of the cab at least once a day & that suits me just fine

Nice write up there Mark, any jobs going there ? as its been well over a week with no reply from my new employer to be

Finally read it, good write up, do they give you points etc when you fuel up or is it just freebies like showers and coffee? I use a yard pump now so don’t get any but remember even on vans at 70litres a day i was raking in points with BP at the companies expense, 400 or so litres a day you’d never need to pay for anything again.

Is it PB who you work for? Presumably they don’t bring drivers over but only employ resident ones? Seems a decent job and the trucks look great, so much better than the aerodynamic style Freightliners and the like.

Hello there again, do you have to have a day off on trips of 13 days long? Only I wondered if you ever get the chance to go out and explore a city when off or do you just stay in the truck stop and veg out? Same goes for when waiting for back loads to?
Also, is it an advantage of applying to Canada for work being single seeing as I wont have a family to upheave? I may not be single in two years anyway when I can apply but after meeting women with mental issues im off english women for a while
And is there anything I could or should be doing before I go out there or will they teach anything that needs to be??