WILL WE EVER GET OUT OF OREGON?

Not that I'm complaining, as Oregon is a beautiful State, but except for Craig having that one run down to LA where the alternator went out, we have not been further south of Salinas in over a month. That is quite rare, and it seems we have been doing alot of swapping and dropping of loads, which surprisingly, has been more profitable than we would have thought. Not too shabby getting $125 for 3 hours worth of worth this morning, but let me go back a few days. After getting another 34 hour restart on Craig's hours Sunday, we started the first of three deliveries Monday morning at the Safeway in Clackamas. we actually had two drops at the same location, one at their meat warehouse, and the other at their frozen warehouse. Had we looked at the invoices a little better, they might have been missing some Sara Lee cheesecakes that we had chilling in our trailer.

From Safeway, we made our last appointment a block away and four hours early at Kool Pak. They were happy to unload us and we were happy to let them. After going empty and not hearing anything right away, we took of to our usual resting place at the Big K-Mart a few miles away. After a couple of hours there, and knowing that if we waited any longer, parking would be a premium at the truck stops in Troutdale, we took off to find us a home.

As luck would have it, the truck stop was completely filled up at 1pm, but as we neared the corner, I spotted an open spot and Craig could even pull through, instead of having to blind side back into it. The trucking Gods were with us for sure! As we were getting comfortable, we were beeped with an assignment to pick up another team load headed to Phoenix at the Fred Meyer DC in Clackamas Tuesday morning and get as far as we could.

As soon as the office was open this morning at 5am, we headed to Fred Meyer and received our trailer assignment. This particular load was only 15,000 pounds and we were hooked up and headed south in no time at all. Having only gone a little over 100 miles, we were told to stage in Coburg, OR at the TA truck stop and await the team that would taking over our load. When they finally arrived we swapped loads and we were now in possession of a banana load destined to be delivered in Puyallup, WA on Thursday morning.With our drop yard in Pacific, just 8 miles from the delivery location, and only 250 miles away, we informed dispatch that we would be there by 4pm today and that if we could drop the trailer and receive another load for Wednesday it would make us very happy. As soon as we arrived, we were told to drop the trailer and await a new dispatch in the morning.Like I mentioned previously, these runs are short, but everything dispatched under 300 miles is a $125 payout. Not too shabby as we have had quite a few of those and sometimes two in one day! So what seemed like a pattern of consistently staying in Oregon and swapping and dropping trailers, we are happy to have finally made it into Washington. The weather is great, a cool 55 degrees, and I know a great little coffee shack right around the corner for in the morning. You'll hear no complaints from us!