THURSDAY OBSERVATIONS

After our delivery Wednesday, and the nice people at Gibson's Nursery washing out our trailer for us, we headed back to the Company yard in Spokane. Finding parking spaces at a premium, and liking the facilities a little better at the Petro across the street, we headed there to spend the night. We knew it was highly unlikely that we would receive another assignment, and when 5pm rolled around and we heard no beeping, we got ourselves comfortable and called it a day.

Thursday morning we were up and taking showers. We even took a stroll around the perimeter of the truck stop and logged in a little over a mile of walking. The QualComm kept showing no signal where we were parked, so we decided to go back to the yard to await our next assignment. We ended up parking next to a driver who was leaving the profession. That didn't surprise us, but what did, was the amount of "stuff" that was piling up on a pallet beside the truck, and you are only seeing one side of the pallet too. I couldn't believe the amount that finally ended up being wrapped up and stored, for when the driver could come back with a vehicle to take it away. Would you believe the driver actually had about 3 plants in pots inside the truck? It really was fascinating watching it all come out.By 11:30am, we had our new assignment. We were to head to Quincy, WA to Custom Apples and pick up a load headed to Carson, CA for a Saturday morning 4am delivery. There was no way we would even come close to making that delivery, and word was sent to dispatch to inform them. They were already on top of it, knowing that they would have to have us swap with a team, but for us to get as far as we could.

On thing about apple loads, as with french fry loads, they put as much product on as they can within the legal limits. We were just a shy under 80,000 pounds by the time we were loaded and scaled. On our way back out to the Interstate, we came across a semi truck in quite a predicament. We surmised that possibly the patrol unit was pulling over the truck, and the driver made the fatal error of pulling over where there was a pretty drastic drop off from the pavement. Look closely and you can see the back right rear tires are about 3 feet in the air, and his left drive tires are in a nice big rut. Definitely one of those "uh oh" moments!With a beep of the QualComm we were told to meet up with the team drivers in Chemult, OR at the Pilot Truck Stop. Anyone familiar with that place, knows that it fills up quickly, and with us not getting there until well after 11pm, we were wondering if we would find a place to park. But no worries, upon arrival there were still a few spaces open, and we quickly found a home and crawled into bed to await the drivers we were going to swap with in the morning.We are now in possession of a trailer full of bananas that don't have to be delivered until Sunday at 4am in Clackamas, OR at the Fred Meyer DC. We won't know if they have plans for us to drop it and receive another load, or if we will end up doing a 34 hours restart on Craig's driving hours. But what we do know is that we will have the joy of taking a secondary highway from where we are to Interstate 5, and be able to take in the beauty of the landscape of Oregon. All in all ,not a bad way to spend a few hours on a Friday afternoon.