There was a meat (frozen) load coming out of Brooks on Saturday and had to deliver in Pittston on Wednesday morning, it was a tight schedule and a "Hot" load. Phil (Montedarlo) was the lucky pilot who got this mission but unfortunatly had problems on take off and had to abort, limping into Lethbridge, coughing, spluttering and farting (and his truck wasnt much better either Haha, sorry Phil).
I was returning from a successfull delivery and backload from Portland Oregon, i'd crossed the border and was cruising north on 2a up towards Edmonton AB. Apparently i was the only one in the area who had hours to go back into the States so i got a message to spin round and make good speed back into Lethbridge. I did a 180 and 2 hours later i dropped my trailer full of whatever in the yard and went to the crew room to see what the news was.
That was where i met Monte and we had a good if not brief chat, apparently his chariot was screwed (and still is, i spoke to him on MSN last night) an he couldnt even shift the trailer axles.
We went out to have a look and between us we moved them and he dropped the trailer.
I parked up as i had done some serious distance that day and went home, next day jumped in the truck and went round to scale off and the brakes just didnt feel right. I went round to the shop and was told the inards were all frozen up and the only solution was to put some airbrake antifreeze in and park up in the warmer shop for a couple of hours. This solve dthe problem but meant i missed the meat inspection.
Now we had a problem, the load was desparatly late and needed a "Team" just to get there on time, meat inspection wouldnt open till the next day at 16:00. That was when i had the idea of running Team myself along with John Penney. A few phone calls later it was all organised so i called H&R to give them the good news.
Next morning i met John at the truck and we made our trip plans.........
Driving "Team" means there are 2 full time highway drivers and 1 truck, the drivers drive full shifts so the truck never stops except for fuel and opening the back doors, it can be very tiring if your not used to it (as we found out) but you can cover some hellish distance, its a great way to get loads over a great distance in a short time.
The shift system we used was a simple 10 on, 10 off and it worked pretty well although its difficult to balance the day and night driving out, on the last night i really struggled thru some pretty horrendous weather but in the end we did it.
Now bear in mind we left on Monday lunchtime to get to Sweetgrass meat inspection for 16:00 and we landed back in Lethbridge last night which was Saturday at about 18:30. Here's the week's itinerary.
Mon 10:00 - Met up at truck.
Mon 16:00 - Meat inspection Sweetgrass.
Wed 12:00 - Delivered Pittston Pensylvania.
Wed 18:00 - Collected Avon New York.
Wed 22:00 - Crossed back into Canada.
Thu 09:00 - Cleared Customs at Fort Erie Ontario.
Thu 12:00 - Arrived Mississauga Ontario.
Thu 20:00 - Scaled off new load for Calgary.
Sat 15:00 - Delivered Calgary Alberta.
Sat 16:00 - Left Calgary with load for Lethbridge.
Sat 18:15 - Dropped loaded trailer at customer in Lethbridge.
Sat 18:30 - Wives picked us up at Lethbridge yard.
Sat 18:35 - Shook hands with John and went our separate ways.
Sat 19:15 - Got home reached into fridge, grabbed a cold one, and chugged it in one.
That was basically it.......................................
No comments:
Post a Comment