NAPA VALLEY

Well the commute traffic kicked our butts yesterday. We had, what we thought, would be plenty of time to get to our first shipper in Santa Rosa, CA. All went extremely well, going through Pleasanton, then Oakland and Berkeley, but by the time we crossed the Richmond Bridge, traffic started slowing down as we merged onto Highway 101. It didn't get any better the further we drove, and as we inched our way along, we watched as our window of extra time slowly started closing in on us. We finally rolled into the shipper two minutes past our appointment time. Good enough in our eyes, considering what we just drove through.Four pallets were loaded onto the trailer in Santa Rosa, after backing into one of the strangest angled docks we have ever come across. Craig had to jackknife the truck in order to get the trailer angled just right. From there we headed to Napa, CA with thankfully, a bit less traffic than what we encountered earlier. We were about an hour ahead of our scheduled appointment time when we arrived at 5pm, but would end up waiting almost 3 hours before they even began loading us. Of course, by this time, Craig's driving hours had expired, and after finally getting loaded, we parked around the corner on a little deserted dead end street and called it a day and got some sleep. We did an eight hour split sleeper berth break, and were up at 5am this morning, and headed to the only scale we could find within a 30 mile radius in Martinez, CA. Finding the weights within our limits, we headed to the company yard in French Camp to drop the trailer. Enroute, we were beeped with our next assignment, to bob tail to Fresh Express in Salinas for a load later this evening. We completed our required two hour break to meet the requirements for the split sleeper berth option, while enjoying a Starbucks down the street from the yard. It was still cool enough to sit outside and do some holiday weekend people watching. With our coffee and pastry finished, we jumped in the truck and took off for Salinas. We have two deliveries in the Portland, OR area on Monday morning. Depending on when this load will be ready at Fresh Express, will dictate how this run will go. Day driving or night driving??? Guess we'll just have to wait and see.