Since Sunday, we have been making our way East, reminiscing every time we passed by a landmark or an area of interest we had previously been to in our past travels hauling boats. It was great being back on some old familiar ground and seeing how the landscape had changed in the past three years. I had forgotten how some states, such as Montana, have some really nice rest areas to stop at and make use of the facilities. I swear the individual rooms they had at this rest stop, were bigger than bathrooms in most homes.
As we drove further East and adjusted to the time zone change, we also had to accommodate Craig's driving hours, which left us leaving earlier and earlier each day. The upside to that, is having the pleasure of watching the sun rise each morning, and arriving at the truck stops early enough to have no problems finding a spot to park. Speaking of that, we passed the truck stop in Hudson, WI where Craig picked me up at to begin our trucking journey together back in 2006. Had to take a photo of that for old times sake.
We made sure to arrive early for our appointment at Fresh Express in Franklin Park, IL mainly to miss the Chicago traffic. We knew there might be issued when Craig checked in and they were a bit confused as there was a TWT truck that had delivered yesterday, another TWT truck parked in the yard to get unloaded, and then us. But, I'm happy to say the unloading of the apples was the least of our worries, except maybe this lovely dock. With limited space to work with, Craig had to jack knife the truck in order to squeeze it into the space. Got to love those challenges.
After the unload, we were sent the dispatch to pick up lettuce bins from the same location. Only problem was, they only have a load of lettuce bins once every three days, and the TWT truck that was there the day before had taken them. So now they had two trucks sitting there with no product. After waiting a few hours, we saw the other TWT truck take off, which we found out later was a scavenger hunt through Chicago to find more lettuce bins at a different location.
The shipping clerk assured Craig that we would have something loaded, sometime that day/evening, so we just kicked back and enjoyed the crisp fall weather that Chicago gave us. By 4pm we were finally called to a dock, and shortly thereafter we had lettuce bins and cardboard pallets loaded into the trailer. We were happy to make use of their ample parking area and call it a day and get some much needed sleep.
This morning finds us making our way out of Chicago and all those toll roads and heading West by way of Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada before finding our way to the Fresh Express in Salinas, CA where we will deliver on Monday afternoon. It will be great having a different route back where we can reminisce some more.
1 comment:
Like seeing the pics from the road
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