BACK TO TRUCKING NEWS

Sometimes it's nice to be both smart and lucky, don't you think? For some unknown reason, freight out of the Northwest is not moving that quickly. After getting the APU fixed in Spokane, Craig and Don ended up sitting all day at the yard. Don was lucky, in that his wife happened to be in town, so they at least were able to get away and spend some time together. It was too late in the day, before Craig realized that they would actually be there until the next day, for me to make the trek into Spokane for a visit with him.

Cue in Friday morning, and still more of the same waiting was done. In fact, they even had some drivers go ahead and take home time due to no freight heading out. Finally, around 2pm, a dispatch was received. Craig and Don would be having a return trip to Wapato, WA to pick up apples headed to LA. Bad news is that this load does not deliver until Wednesday! Talk about a slow boat to China, having 6 days to go 1200 miles, but there would be time to think about that later, for now it's time to scale the apple load.

Heading to the closest scale, it appears that they are a bit heavy on the trailer axle, and even by moving the tandems as far as they could go, they were still 3,500 pounds over the 34,000 pound limit on the axle. Even worse news, is that the shipper had closed down for the weekend after they had left their yard, so there was no turning back. So picture this, it is close to 9pm and Craig crawls up into and onto the loaded apples in the trailer, as Don starts lifting and pushing box, after box back to Craig to reposition them into the front of the trailer. Now picture doing that for 28 boxes of apples. Talk about your daily workout!

After the fourth scaling, and finally being legal, Craig takes off and they get as far as the rest stop in Antelope, OR. Now remember that issue with the 6 days for the 1200 miles to deliver the apples? Craig checked in with the weekend dispatcher, and he agreed that was a bit over kill, and that he would work on something for him. Well bless his heart, because a little bit ago, Craig was informed to drop the trailer of apples in the Bloomington, CA yard Sunday morning, and then pick up a loaded trailer of bananas and deliver it Tuesday morning in Clackamas, OR.

So there you go, back to trucking news, where being a combination of smart and lucky will serve you very well!