Fueled up in Birmingham last night.

$606.23

The blog's been a little slow, it's been a long week. In the game Yahtzee you put 5 dice in a cup, shake it up & dump them out. That's what the inside of my truck looked like when I got to the yard Sunday night.

At first I thought I'd been robbed until I realized all my stuff was still in the truck.

CRST's policy is to open a truck for reassignment if the drivers are off for more than 7 days. The machanics take everything out and 'greensheet' (clean, inspect & repair) the truck so it will be ready for new drivers.

They even trashed the old lower bunk mattress. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a 36 x 80 innerspring mattress in through the door of a truck & into the sleeper?

Apparently they started Friday and either quit when they saw what they were up against, or ran out of time. That was a good thing. If they had uninstalled all my gear and put it in a box, I'd be driving for a different company today.

NOT very happy about this.

I had planned to set up my radios, get a good nights sleep, and be ready to go Monday morning. Instead, I worked all night putting things back together. I'm still not done.

I 'fixed' one of my laptops that caught a major virus a few days before I got home. Now I can't get the two computers to see each other on the network. Big problem, but Im working on it.

Just stopped for fuel & food at the very snowy Cheyenne, Wyoming Sapp Bros truck stop. For some unexplainable reason they used Italian sausage instead of breakfast sausage on their Egg, sausage, green chile & cheese burrito. One can only ask...WHY!!!

The shipper for the load in Modesto that would have gotten us home early this morning rescheduled. CRST forgot to tell us. They gave us a load that picks up in Minden, NV, just south of Reno. CRST didn't send it to us on the Qualcomm. We show up in Modesto when we should be heading up Donner Pass to Reno.

Instead of getting home early this morning, I'll get home late this afternoon.

Good job, CRST!! Thanks for being on the ball. This is so very professional! Good way to keep your "most important resource" (as George says) happy & not looking for employment elswhere!

I can't fault my dispatcher, Jake, for this. It all happened after he went home.

I'll be home sometime this afternoon. I'll be back on the road Wed. Oct 31st.

Dropping a load in South San Francisco. Then Modesto to Rancho Cucamonga. Then home!

Good thing Anthus stopped at a casino in New Mexico last night. Really helps me get home.

One more day with this loser...

...and slowly count to ten...

A few hours ago I woke up to the sight of a State Trooper stopping traffic on the road outside of the State University of New York at Albany. I promised my dispatcher I wouldn't kill Anthus.
Only eight more days...

I'm getting half a load unloaded right now in New York Pity. Home of the worst roads in the country. The second half of this is going up to Albany.

I've got enough hazmat placards to make this trailer look like a Christmas tree!
3990 Lbs of 29% Ammonia Solution,
6021 Lbs of 31% Hydrogen Peroxide,
3274 Lbs of Hydrochloric Acid,
796 Lbs of Isopropyl Alcohol,
535 Lbs of Hydrofluoric Acid,
2801 Lbs of Sulfuric Acid

Wow!

My co-driver Anthus picked up this load. He didn't know there was any hazardous materials on it. He didn't even realize that there were two stops on this load. I guess the placards & florescent orange tags on the BOL (Bill Of Lading) were a little too vague for him. Eight more days and he's gone...

Hangin' out in Columbus, OH. I just counted 8 CRST trucks in this little Pilot truck stop. That's not a good sign when you're looking for a load out. I have a local run in the morning, don't know after that.

I'm kinda afraid to open the doors right now. The yellow jackets are swarming the truck snacking on the dead bugs stuck to the windshield.

Speaking of swarming bugs, I'm still trying to get the gnats out of the truck. Anthus had some fruit buried deep in his pile of garbage that was rotten. 10 more days.

Finally picked up our snow chains last night. That was fun. Truck chains weigh about 70 Lbs a set. I had to dig through a pile of filthy, rusty chains and pull out 8 sets. Then untangle them, check for broken links, then hang them on the truck's chain racks. Once again my co-driver proved to me that when there is work to be done, he can be counted upon...to be in the bathroom. He came back, snacking on a bag of chips, just in time to watch me hang the last 2 sets.

I don't know if he's going to make it driving a truck. It's a good thing he's planning on retiring in 5 years as a millionaire. He has a plan. He sees himself as some kind of big wheeler-dealer who can get anyone anything, at wholesale. That's why he spends thousands of minutes a month on his cell phone. It doesn't matter to him if he should be paying attention to the road or paying attention to his sleep discipline, he's on the phone. His plan is working great so far, he's sold 2 pairs of shoes.

I guess that's how he's planning to pay for his 50th birthday party. He's planning on renting Qualcomm Stadium (where the Chargers play) in San Diego and charging people he doesn't know between $100 - $1000 a head for the privilege of attending. Whatever. (I am not making this up!)

Yesterday we passed a BMW dealership and he got all worked up. I told him 'It's just a car', Anthus replied 'No, it's the ultimate driving machine' (I'm not kidding, he really said that!) Anthus likes to tell people that he owns a 'beemer'. OK, his 'beemer' is sitting on four flat tires in his front yard, it hasn't run in years. He uses it as a storage unit for plastic grocery bags full of garbage. I have a new appreciation for the word 'shallow' now.

He said I need to work on my 'people skills' and learn to have more patience. It's true as far as he's concerned. Between the laziness, lies & incompetence my patience with his is spent. I've put up with his crap long enough. Only 2 weeks to go with this loser.

I guess you could say that Anthus & I are as different as Milli Vanilli & Alan Jackson.

This is what people who study Abnormal Psychology call Compulsive Hoarding.

Old food containers...shoes...month-old newspapers & truckstop mags...shoes...grocery bags full of garbage...shoes...etc...

My Kenwood TM-D700A doesn't transmit right now. It thinks it's transmitting, but nothing. The final amplifier isn't keying up. I haven't opened it up yet to figure out why. I'm hoping that it's just a connector that has vibrated loose. The antenna checks out on my analyzer.

We are sitting in Hinton, OK at a truck stop right now. I woke up and realized we were parked. After about 10 min I went inside to use the bathroom. My co-driver was sitting in a stall talking on his cell phone. I ordered some french fries at the Sonic. They made the fries. I ate the fries. I restarted my computer because it was acting funny. I re-parked the truck because he left it in the fuel aisle. I typed this. Anthus is still inside the truck stop.

I just looked at the receipt for my fries at the Sonic. I ordered them 45 min ago. Anthus is still inside.

I'm going to be on hometime Oct 24th-30th. If my current co-driver doesn't clean up his act by then, I'll be finding a new one.

I didn't know it was possible to have such a profound lack of work ethic. I have absolutly no idea how Anthus has ever held a job in his life. Some how, some way, I'm sure that he will find a way to be late to his own funeral.

I won't even go into his creepy habits, shoe fetish, compulsive hoarding(he's filling the truck with garbage), inabilty to learn, constant cell phone use - driving or not, or "So I lied, what's the big deal?"

If you have a truck driver in your family, never assume they know what's going on back home. If somebody doesn't tell them about an event, like a party, that everybody knows about, they don't know. Even if they are aware of the event, they probably don't know the details, like what day or time it is taking place. Also, it's easy for us to miss things that everybody knows about when we're busy trying to get what little stuff we have time to do done.

CRST doesn't own enough Qualcomm terminals for all of it's trucks. We had to give ours to another truck friday when we went home. We won't be able to get another one till we get to our OKC yard.

I don't know what my co-driver Anthus did last night, but it didn't include very much driving. it took him 14 hours to do 9 hours of driving. 577 miles across Nebraska in the middle of the night with no fuel stops.

We are going to be late because of him, again.

It's time for him to shape up or ship out.