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Friday, February 29, 2008

Take Me To Tacoma




Got to 3045 Monday morning and plans had changed again, no more taking poop to California, now I was to take meat to Phoenix Arizona. Trouble was the trailer was still being loaded round the corner and they wanted it there in 35 hours and by my reckoning, the earliest possible would be 44 hours and that’s driving max, resting min, 2 fuel stops and no holdups on the border.

I double checked and even triple checked the figures but there was no way a single driver could do it, his was a job for a super single or a team. I phoned in to explain and the inevitable happened, I was took off the job, shame really coz I fancied that one.

Anyway, I popped in to have a quick chat with Steve Whitaker then toddled off back to the truck to await my next load assignment. I didn’t have to wait long, there was a trl waiting in Calgary to be tipped in Tacoma in Washington, not the best job in the world but at least it got me on the move.

So………………………………….

My first job was to take a trl that Pete Titmus (see a previous article a few months ago) had just dropped in the yard and take that to the Calgary yard, trl swap and take the other one into Tacoma, so far so good I hear you say.

Screamed into the Calgary yard at 5 mph, trailer swapped then headed for the border at Eastport in Idaho. Got to the border at about 22:00 and the paperwork wouldn’t clear, and to top it all, UPS who was the broker didn’t have 24 hr service there. Well after a bit of wrangling with H&R which got us no-where, I go spun round and sent back to Canada to spend the night parked up with the cattle trucks, the smell wasn’t very nice…………………………..

But the cows never complained LOL………………………………………

Next morning I tried again and once again got fired back into Canada, third time was okay and I was good to go. I have t say at this point that even though the CBP kept kicking me out of the country they were very friendly, polite and professional, and helped as much as they could although they wouldn't let me use the government fax machine even though it was a freefone number.

Eventually I got through, 1 digit on the manifest was wrong and screwed the whole thing up, and I headed south towards Bonners Ferry. I pulled
over at an Elk Ranch, just had to show you the pics, what a fantastic animal, and to think they are bred to eat, such a travesty.

All went well again till got to the Washington border, got called in at the scale for a level 3 paperwork and manifest check, it took about 15 minutes and he checked, my licence, truck & trailer licensing, manifest, then the biggy, my logbooks. Well he was happy with everything so I packed everything away and got down here at about 21:00 last night, trouble is the load doesn’t deliver for 36 hours. I tried to park in the Flying J but there was no chance, it was packed solid. There was a scale about a mile away with quite a bit of parking so I parked up in there.

I'm sat in the receivers yard at the moment trying to persuade them to take the load this morning instead of tomorrow morning. I went in about an hour ago, they are not too happy about it but they said come back in 2 hours, I've been here for an hour and a half so will go back in again shortly and see if they will give me a break.

We will have to wait and see……………………………………...

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