Squeaky Clean!

While passing through the West Memphis Operating Center this past week I was able to get my tractor washed finally. They had a free tractor wash at the Operating Center. I had been trying to figure out how/when I could get my tractor washed without having to pay for it myself. After all, it is not my truck, it belongs to the company, so they should pay to wash it and keep it clean. I did pay to wash the white Kenworth tractor a while back but could not get reimbursed for it. After that, I vowed never to wash the tractor again unless the company paid for it.

You would think they would want to keep it clean in order to keep their image up, let alone keep the salt and dirt from eating away at the frame, mechanical parts, and body.

The picture above was taken shortly after washing the tractor. In addition to washing it, I cleaned the windows, mirrors, swept all of the dirt out of the cab, and mopped the floor. I slept comfortably that night, knowing that I was in a clean truck for a change, which is the way I would like for it to be all the time!

You will notice there is a white trailer to the left of my tractor in the picture above. This should let you know that not all trailers are orange. They also have different colors of tractors, ranging in as many colors as other vehicles come in, even though the majority of the tractors and trailers are orange.

The picture below was taken at night.

UFOs on Roads

I was driving back from Baltimore on I-76 when I saw a car off the side of the road with a woman sitting in it trying to regain her composure. She was lucky that all that happened was her windshield was shattered but did not break away from its socket. Just a few moments before I heard a trucker advise another that a piece of ice had come off the top of his truck and hit the windshield of the car.

This is an issue that everyone needs to be aware of. Not only does ice form on the top of trucks, but it forms on top of RVs, cars, and pickup trucks. Anything that runs on the road has the potential to have ice build up on top of it. When going down the highway, the ice can be blown loose and into a windshield.

The ice/snow storms that went through the region attributed to the ice build up.

It only takes a few minutes to knock the ice loose and off your vehicle before driving off in it and it would possibly save someones life, not to mention save yourself a law suit if the ice from your vehicle hits someone.

I don't know how many chunks of ice that I saw fly off moving vehicles while traveling across the region. Fortunately, all of the chunks of ice that I saw fly off, hit the road and broke into pieces instead of hitting a windshield. I did see a few vehicles swerve to prevent chunks of ice from hitting them.

Chicago, New York City, Baltimore, Kansas City

Where have I been? Driving of course.

Among my most recent trips was a trip to Chicago when all of the snow fell during the week of Feb 11th. The roads in Chicago were never cleared even though the snow plows went over them again and again. Speeds on the expressways were only at 25 MPH and at the most, 35 MPH in some areas if you were lucky. It took hours to get across the city when it normally would only take part of an hour. My windshield wiper blades iced up and I had a terrible time seeing through my windshield. I finally stopped and bought a pair of winter ice blades which helped a great deal.

There were a lot of jack knives during this bad weather. I probably saw at least a dozen trucks that were left sitting off the side of the road after jack knifing while driving the interstates across the states affected by the snow storm.

New York City was interesting. I drove across the George Washington Bridge into the city through Queens, south of the Bronx. The lanes were really tight and I had to keep watching my mirrors to make sure my trailer tires stayed in my lane. I also managed to get a 13 foot 6 inch truck under a 12 foot 9 inch overpass. Imagine that. The inches in New York must be bigger than the standard inch.

Baltimore was my second trip there. This time I did not get lost. I did follow the Schneider directions into the customer site this time though, and they took me into areas where trucks were not allowed. Strange. When I left though, I took the truck route away from the customer. The next time I go in, I will take the truck route into the customer.

Kansas City, Missouri. Now that was a real interesting trip, especially since it was during the warming trend immediately after our cold snap with all the bad snow/ice that fell in the region the week before. The temperatures were in the near 60 mark when I passed over the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. Kind of gave me spring fever.

Then I passed back into the Ohio Valley, where the warming trend was not as warm, but the warmth created an eerie fog, making it difficult to see while driving. I could see that a lot of the snow had melted, but I still could not see the grass like I could in Missouri.

Well, they are sending me back to Missouri tomorrow and then on to Memphis, Tennessee before my weekend comes up again.

Piss On It!

When you have to go, you have to go. It is not nice to keep Mother Nature waiting. Some truck drivers keep empty water and pop bottles in their cabs to use in emergency situations. It is better than getting out on the side of the road and pretending like you are checking your tires while releiving yourself. Rest areas and exits where you can find a place to go are not always readily available when you are driving a big rig truck. You cannot just park them any where.

Disposing of the filled bottles is somewhat questionable. Some truck drivers just throw them into the trash cans along with the rest of their waste when they stop at rest areas and fuel stops. Some drivers just pour the content of the bottles out and reuse the bottles over and over again. Others just leave the bottles roll around in their cabs to land wherever they may, not worrying about whether or not they step on them and burst them.

One individual that I know actually bought and uses the hospital type urine bottles and puts RV deodorant/treatment into them to keep the smell down. When the bottles get full, they get dumped into the restroom commode or urinal where you are supposed to make that type of deposit. A rest area attendant saw this individual emptying the bottles in the rest room one time and said that he really appreciated the fact this person did this rather than throwing pop bottles full of urine into the trash cans for him to have to deal with.

One of the things that truckers do that annoys me is they are too lazy to go to the rest room in the truck stops at night so they just get outside of their rigs and urinate on the blacktop. Now this makes for some stinchy smells in the summer time on that blacktop.

Cleanup in Aisle 4

In addition to the eighteen wheeler that I noticed lying on its side that I mentioned in a my previous blog entry, while driving across Pennsylvania on I-80 I also noticed cars, a pickup truck, and a van that had rolled off the side of the road and some ran into trees, but were just left there with yellow tape around them.

Is this a way that Pennsylvania encourages the interstate drivers to drive more carefully?

Or is there a lack of wrecker services in Pennsylvania?

Perplexed.

Who Cares?

Driving across I-80 today I saw an eighteen wheeler laying on its side off the side of the road around mile marker 99 in Pennsylvania near Du Bois. I asked the other truckers if they saw it laying there but nobody replied. Either my CB was not getting out or nobody had their radio on that was near me, or I was squelched out to where they could not hear me, I suppose. It appeared the truck had ran off the road through over a guard rail across a ditch and then landed on its right side on a hill. It struck me odd that there were no rescue vehicles nor any activity around the truck. By the time the thought hit me that maybe I should have stopped to check it out, I was already several miles down the road..so I did the next best thing. I called the Pennsylvania state police to see if they were aware of it. They told me that it was an old accident and let it go at that. My thoughts are still wondering how old the accident was and why the truck is still laying there on its side. Who cares?

BRRR, it is cold out here!

Who ordered these cold temperatures anyway? What happened to the mild winter we were having. I am sitting in the cab of my truck just barely keeping warm. The wind chills are at minus 14 and falling. The temperature is currently at 7 degrees. I am in Shelbyville, Illinois, which is southwest of Terre Haute, Indiana.

It was cold when I went to Marshall, Minnesota, but it was snowing, so you know it was not this cold! When it is too cold, it cannot snow. Marshall, Minnesota is only about 60 miles from Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I had went there a couple of weeks ago and had a back haul from Minneapolis, Minnesota.

I am crawling under the covers now to try to stay warm and get some sleep.