I was paranoid about oversleeping ....so I set about six alarms. A stand-alone and one or two on each of three cell phones PLUS I had my wife call me.
I got woke up alright....and about went crazy.Still half asleep and half blind (without glasses) and I was trying to shut off squawking cellphones like a one armed man swatting mosquitos. ...and no coffee yet. When it was all over I made it stronger just to compensate for the stress. I'm not gonna do that again....NOT.
But I did get rolling by six a.m local, and a good thing to. Here's where Murphy made his next appearance.
Fog. Patchy fog. Fine like this mostly then not so fine.
Dunno how this happened...but notsofine. Murphy on Steroids.
I didn't get a picture of a little car that must have run into the wiggle wagon. It was a bit further to the right out of the picture....and burnt completely up. Right to the ground.
I wonder what happened and how much fog had to do with it?
Besides being foggy.....just about kinda almost TOO Foggy.....It seems that the state of North Carolina neglected to put up a street sign. JUST the streetsign that I was looking for. So I had to park. I'm sitting there on the shoulder of the road...worrying about the fog.... trying to decide what to do. It came down to a coin-toss. Naturally I choose wrong.
That's why I dislike "tiny-wides". If this had been a REAL oversize....I'd have had an escort. I could have sent the escort ahead to scout out the situation. But this was a tiny-wide....an inch to skinny.
Being off route with a permitted load is a high pucker factor situation....and I was highly puckered until I got back on route. I dunno what else I could have done though....we'd definitely planned the move. I just couldn't determine which way to go without that street sign.
Oooooops happens I guess.
I toodled on...and got there about an hour before my appointment. By "there" I mean as close to where I thought the site was gonna be as I could get without making an "irrevocable" choice. One of them coin-toss moments again.
Murphy again.
I'm sitting at a crossroads.....out in the boonies. Wondering . Do I turn right or left? My directions weren't all that clear and the "contact" dude wasn't answering his cell phone. He hadn't since the day BEFORE I'd loaded.
Luckily there was a Biker Bar RIGHT THERE at the intersection. I managed to squeeeeeze into his parking lot....took it ALL up. But I was off the road and outta traffic. One thing I was pretty sure of was that biker's didn't generally get up before about noon. Hopefully I'd be long gone by then.
Whatever.....the site was supposed to be close. Real close. Close enough to see it if I was in west texas but cant here cause of the damntrees. So I got out and walked around a bit....first one way from the crossroads then the other.....nadda.
I apparently didn't walk far enough cause eventually....just about ten a.m., which was when I was supposed to be there.....a guy in a "company" pickup drove up...got out....and walked over.
Yup...it was him....and he had bad news. The crane was having D.O.T. problems. It'd be late...sit and wait he said....and he disappeared.
I sat there till noon....and sure enough the bar opened.
Murphy again......Moderately high pucker factor.
Ooops.
I didn't wanna be there when the hung over bikers started showing up. I know how Bikers are....my sister are one. Two actually....I got two sisters. ...both bikers. The Iron Butt sisters theyre called. (don't ask)
Still... I really didn't need to be taking up their whole parking lot when customer's started showing up.
Luckily about that time the Crane arrived....and kept on going. I followed it to the Job Site.
Murphy again.
Oooooops.
Bad Site. Hard turns....skinny dirt roads....steep hills....plowed field.
Trees.
To make a long story not so long. I got it unloaded but it was tuff. Instead of being empty by eleven or so...it was more like four pm.
Getting back to Atlanta that day was a No-Go.
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I got back the next day .
Had a nice chat with folks.
It was kinda hectic though. Chaos central ....Lotsa "grass fires"to be put out. One driver going into North Carolina hadn't looked closely at his permit and didn't realized it required that he have two escorts...a front and a rear. He only had one. They nailed him......fined him for "violation of permit" Big fine.
BIIIIIIIIIG fine. 19,000 dollars. Nope... I didn't stutter. Nineteen THOUSAND dollars.
Violation of permit.....being out of route is a violation of permit. In North Carolina.
Like I said....high pucker-factor.
Another driver pulling a super load was stuck on the shoulder of the interstate going into Maryland. It seems the customer changed the delivery location at the last moment. Bad idea. Superload permits take weeks to acquire and cost umptyungodlylotsadolla. Eventually I think they managed to get him into a truckstop...called the Maryland Hiway patrol for permission and help.....but it's still gonna be a many-day (couple of weeks?) wait for the new permit....charging the customer like a thousand a day , or more, detention all the while...I would imagine. Like I said, changing the delivery location of an enroute superload is a bad idea.
Waaay expensive....thousands of dollars.....more.
They, the office group, were still recovering from the wind farm project. They had this posted to the wall.
Noel was the Mitshibitshi contact. And I got a new(old) trailer.
I took it to a truck stop and weighed it......26,000 lbs....heavier than I'd hoped but not as heavy as I'd feared.
Took axle measurements..and overall length ...trailer length....oops. 54 foot long......stacked. That's gonna cause problems. 64 foot put together...which WON'T cause problems. Why you ask? Well,....it's like this. Loaded the trailer will be put together. Being it's sixty four foot long that'll make me 86 foot long overall...plus I might be wide or tall and certainly heavy. I'll be permitted in other words.
When I'm empty the "stinger" is disconnected and loaded on the trailer....stacked as we say. An empty trailer isn't getting paid. But a 54 foot trailer isn't legal some places. So it's gonna cost for an "unladen" permit anyway.
Like I said...ooops. (Murphy)
Tomorrow me and a trailer mechanic are gonna go over it and I'm gonna pester him with questions. I have a list.
We'll see what happens.
It's midnight and I'm not sleepy.
Tuff....I'm NOT gonna set all those alarms.
EvMick
3 comments:
Hey, bro - IBS #1 here.......L~O~V~E reading your blogs.......'PRICELESS'!!!
Be safe, always.......love ya!
J
Iron Butt sisters.
That had me laughing.
19,000 dollars.. That is terrifying.
I'm not trying to sell you on Microsoft but Microsoft Streets and trips (with GPS) is very useful. It has a small USB antenna that plugs into the laptop. Delorme.com has one to but i haven't used their GPS unit. I know your in a different category hauling that wide stuff but a gps unit is unbelievable reliable and useful.
The GPS has saved my butt a couple times. And its fun to tinker around with.
~Aaron
Wow. $19,000! Definitely a pucker factor. I've gone off route a few times, luckily never been caught.
Did you hear about westbound I70 by Deer Trail CO being shut down two weeks ago? A truck was running about 90mph in fog, 2 or 3am, and hit another truck. Burned to the ground, and the road was closed til about noon.
Then last week a drilling mud tanker lost it eastbound on Floyd Hill just before the emergency truck ramp - hit the median on the left and went over the edge to the right, burned to a crisp. I70 was shut down for quite a while there as well. The authorities didn't know what caused his crash, and he isn't around to tell why.
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