wow what a week

I have not been able to write much this week. It's been a crazy week with lots of short runs, down time for unscheduled maintenance, lack of good wifi signals, short sleepless nights, and looooong days without the benefit of working all that hard.  Let me explain that last one. There is no such thing as a typical day on the road, but this was a scenerio that took place one day this week.

Got up at 6am, departed at 630 to drive and make delivery at 8am as scheduled. Picked up new load on a preloaded trailer. Drove 1.5 hours to make delivery in des moines, ia. Had to wait 45 minutes for dock to open up and them to start unloading. Unloading took 2 hours. This brings us up to 1230. Drove 15 minutes to pick up a new trailer. Spent 2 hours inspecting this trailer and getting maintenance done on it. Dispatch calling me several times for updates since I was supposed to be in Guthrie Center, 1 hour west of des moines, before 3pm. Maintenance completed at 215 and arrived in gc around 330. Departed GC at 430 with 400 miles to drive. At 9pm rolled into davenport ia for an unexpected maintenance stop. The refer unit had stopped working on the 40lbs of eggs I was carrying.  An hour later problem fixed. However, I was to tired to continue on so I stayed in Davenport that night, which left me a 3 hour ride into Chicago the next morning. With a 10 am appointment scheduled that meant I would have to leave Davenport by 6am (giving me an hour cushion). In order to leave by 6am, I would have to get up not later then 515am. By the time maintenance was completed on my trailer, and I had grabbed a bite to eat, it was midnight before I laid down to sleep.
That was all yesterday and 515 came really early this morning. Thankfully today was not as eventful as yesterday.

Happy motoring
Tom

blindsided backing

blind sided backing

blindsided backing is one of the most challenging parts of backing up.  As noted in my previous blogs semi's have many blind spots. This is very evident when blind side backing.  Blind side backing means the driver is predominately looking down the right side of the truck while going in reverse. They can only see what is in the mirrors. One cannot look out the back or side windows because there are none in a semi.  To get an idea of what this could be like, get into your car and block the back windows along with all the windows on the right side, except for the one in front.

If you were backing to the left side, the driver can open up their window and hang their head out and look down the side of the trailer.  This allows for a much better visual of what is going on.

Anatomy of a Cereal Box

Often when people buy a product at a store, they don’t think about how the product came to be there and how the trucking industry assisted in getting the product to the store.  So I thought I would take this opportunity to share a little bit of what I know on this.

Next time you are in the grocery store, take a look at a box of cereal.

The box is made of cardboard, often at places like Omaha box in Omaha Nebraska. They are then loaded on trucks and shipped to a print shop, like Nordenia in Jackson Missouri.

Print shops like Nordenia do not make the ink that they use to print. The ink is made a places like Seigwert in Des Moines Iowa. The ink is then loaded into tankers, bulk containers or 55 gallon drums and shipped via trucks to various print shops.

At the print shop, the pictures are made and printed onto the boxes. The empty cereal boxes are then loaded on trucks and shipped to places like Kellogs in Battle Creek Mi. 

In Battle Creek Mi the boxes are then loaded with cereal and shipped via truck to various distribution centers around the united states like Hyvee distribution center in Chariton Iowa or the Walmart distribution centers in Mount Pleasant Iowa and Sterling Il. From the distribution centers, the cereal is the loaded on trucks and delivered to various stores, like the ones your moms and dads shop at.

With the exception of Kellogs  in Battle Creek, I have picked up from or delivered to all of the places listed above.

a story

Im working on a story for my class.  It will be called "the anatomy a cereal box". Its the story of how a cereal box comes into being and eventually ends up in your house.