FRESH EXPRESS IN SALINAS

We were on the road by 12:30am and couldn’t believe what good time we made into the bay area. Of course at that time of night, we were just about the only ones on the road, but even as it hit 5am and the commute traffic started, we found it moved along nicely. We made it to Full Bloom Baking Company in Newark, CA a full hour ahead of schedule. Now if only they had coffee and some of their fabulous looking pastries for us to sample while we waited for our 8am dock time.

Within minutes of putting in our empty call we were instructed to drive to Salinas, CA, to a truck stop the company has an account with, to have the trailer washed out. That could mean only one thing…..we were going to get some produce. Our next message told us to head to Fresh Express and drop our trailer.

Now I have seen Fresh Express items at the local grocery store, bought and enjoyed them, but to see where they are processed and the round the clock operation , with trucks coming and going nonstop was a sight to see. There were so many trailers already dropped in their main area, we had to drive around to the rear of the plant to a dirt field and drop our trailer there. We then went back to the main parking lot and found a little corner to park and try and get some sleep. That didn’t last long, as a couple of hours later, we were roused from our sleep to move our truck to make room for even more trailers.

With that we had no choice but to head down the street to a jam packed Pilot Truck Stop, but we managed to find a spot and once again tried to get some sleep, only to be awoken again, this time by the computer telling us the details of our new dispatch. We quickly looked it over, saw that we would be taking fresh produce from Fresh Express to Puyallup, WA to a Fred Meyer Store. Looks like we will stay on our night driving schedule for at least a couple more days. With that we tried to get some more sleep before having to pick up a trailer at 10pm.

Right now we are once again the only ones we have seen for miles on the road, and it reminded us of some of our runs on Interstate 90 in Montana and North Dakota. If there is one nice thing about driving in the middle of the night in California, is that the traffic is very light, just like this load we are hauling, only a bit over 14,000 pounds. No worries with the weigh stations on this trip!