AFTER THE REST, BUSY AS BEES

We got into the relaxed mode Sunday and Monday and were up and ready at 7am Tuesday morning. Only problem was, evidently, there wasn’t anything for us to do. We were amazed at the number of trucks and trailers that were parked in the yard over the past few days. With seeing that, we knew we would probably have to wait for a dispatch. So, maintaining our relaxed mode, we settled in with our laptops and TV and waited. Just to be on the safe side, we even confirmed they had us available, which they did, so back to our idleness we went.

Finally, at abut 1pm we get a dispatch to go to the Tyson Meat plant in Wallula, WA about 150 miles away. We hook up the assigned trailer and start that way. The exchange at the plant went extremely quick, with us dropping our empty trailer and immediately hooking up to the loaded trailer that was assigned to our load. But now the dilemma of trying to figure out how we could best work out the delivery times.

See, when we received this dispatch, the load time had already passed, but the delivery times did not change. With our stop into the log department, during our 34 hour rest period, to have the split sleeper berth explained to us, we figured this would work best for this dispatch. Off we went to the Flying J to scale and then take a 8 hour break.

Up this morning at 2am, we headed off in the cover of darkness towards our three drops in the Portland, Oregon area. First stop, is at a Fred Meyer distribution center in Clackamas, OR at 7am. We arrive there in plenty of time and get unloaded right on schedule. Then up to Portland to a tiny little meat distributor. Traversing the tiny little car lined streets wasn’t much fun, or trying to back into the only open dock they had with very little room to maneuver. But we persevered and were on our way to our last stop by 10am, well ahead of schedule.

Our last drop, back in Clackamas, was right off the interstate and easy to find, but again, we are finding that except for the distribution centers, there isn’t much room to get around and park at these places. Finally our day was done, and we had to find a place to park before our hours ran out. We headed towards the Flyging J in Troutdale, just east of Portland. As we pulled in we received our next dispatch to head back to Portland in the morning for two pick ups headed to Sandpoint and Coeur d'Alene, ID. Thankfully, we don't have to be at our first shipper tomorrow until 8am and you will find these two busy tired little bees catching up on some well deserved sleep!