Long Haul Trucking

I’m picking up next week in Boston to head to LA. West, finally! Three thousand miles, the first decent trip I’ve had in months.  I feel like finishing in two days, but probably won’t, maybe three, then head home. I’m looking for an audiobook for the long trip. I don’t listen to audiobooks while I sit around, too many distractions and I should be doing something  productive.

I’ve always wanted to read Atlas Shrugged and now the new book I’ve heard a lot about Daemon. One is about the struggle between capitalism and socialism and the other is about computers being used to hack into the power grid. Both a little too close to real life right now and I don’t feel like listening to the news for 62 hours.

I don’t need something happy, but how about something that doesn’t remind me of what a sink-hole the country is in. Bot nets are in the news today, all about ghost nets and other hacker events. Then there’s the threat of socialism or worse. Socialism may sound good in theory, but throughout history, socialism has created a class system of extremely rich and extremely poor with everyone hating the rich. America was built on the principles that there are no classes and anyone can do anything without being enslaved by the government. Every group wants to be the one in charge making the rules, but they don’t want to live by those same rules because they’re special. They’re more important than others around them. If this is the first couple of months, I can’t even to begin to imagine what the next couple of years is going to be like.

After a major tangent like that, maybe a good science fiction to take my mind off of taxes and truck payments or a good pirate story, where the hero comes in and rescues the hostage, killing dozens of pirates with a single bullet. Both equally unbelievable, but I can let things like that pass if it’s a good story, where you can relate to the characters and if the emotions and drama seem real, the rest is just scenery going by.

I’m sure I’ll find something. I’m glad to be working and going home at the same time. I’m starting to lose sight of what our goals are. I was supposed to be making money and saving as much as I could. What’s the point of making what little money I am, only to send it to the government, spend the rest on the truck for stupid stuff like tires and oil changes, to end up with nothing at the end of the day and be away from home. How can a business cost so much, make so little and still owe taxes? It’s a vicious circle.

If I was making money, I’d go along with most anything, but these trips are barely enough to pay for fuel, let alone much else like a truck payment and forget about saving anything and they’re spread so far apart and pay so little it’s really discouraging.

And while I’m off the subject, this stupid load was spread out over the long weekend. If I have a load, there’s no layover or detention. Five days to go 1400 miles, this is stupid, but at least the company doesn’t have to pay layover, smart on their part, but I’m getting really tired of making their money and getting shafted. They may not even be making that much money nowadays, but they have trucks that can take care of their customer and that’s all that matters.

I don’t mind a company making money, but I have to be involved and get my share instead of getting the short end of a short stick every single time. What am I still doing here?

Continued on Life on the Road – http://lifeontheroad.com/2009/04/12/wheres-the-light/2190.html

Last weekend I went to the truck show. I had forgotten all about it until I was driving by and saw the free truck parking, on my way to “give” my trailer back to Kentucky. The Kentucky agent I bought it through may have someone to take over the payments if all the little dents are taken out and the floor is redone. It’s not a household trailer, never has been a household trailer and it’s taken some abuse from idiot forklift drivers and tradeshow crates and cases being pushed and dragged across the floor.

It was kind of a bitter sweet day. I’d rather be selling it because it’s not completely worthless. In better days I could make what I owe plus a lot more. Plus, me and Cindy spent a lot of time in the trailer folding pads, cleaning and getting it ready for the next load. It’s not like a regular trailer where you just stand there and watch stuff go in and out and sweep the floor once in a while, I knew every scratch and every pad. But, it’s part of our bigger plan to move forward, so we move on, one less thing to worry about.

What else have I been doing? I’ve been working on Obscure Mania, I think it’s pretty much done. I have a few ideas, but it’s going to take some digging into HTML in the theme a little more than usual. I also want to make RSS feeds for categories so people can pick and choose what they want to go into their RSS feeds.

Trucker Therapist Buck Black will be writing for Life on the Road soon, should be interesting. We could all use some therapy of some sort out here.

I started a new website for a favorite radio show I podcast regularly called The Dark Secret Place about the war on terror and how the media reports it from a guy that was actually in the Guard and stationed in Iraq, the Gulf and Bosnia. Lots of military stuff, history and a reports about conflicts around the world.

It’s been a little more than a month at the new company, which isn’t really very long. It seems like a long time, but honestly, it’s too soon to tell. There are some good things and there are a few things that bug me. I can say that about any company and any job too.

On my way to downtown Chicago to pick up a show. One of the more interesting things is driving a big truck downtown anywhere. It’s actually pretty cool and more of a challenge than just driving down the interstate. Then it’s on to the frozen tundra of Calgary, Alberta. I can’t wait. Rumor has it I’m going to Florida after Calgary, I’m sure I’ll need to thaw out by then and will enjoy the trip south.

I hate winter on a good winter day. Even on a clear cold day, it’s still too cold to walk around much. We (me and Willie) can’t walk around because the parking lots are mostly covered with ice and it’s just too cold to walk around for very long. His leg starts bothering him after a little while so I sit, eat and sit some more can’t wait to go south just to get out of the truck.

My Vista class has started and I didn’t know that as a student in this class, I get a free license for Vista and Windows Server. I don’t know if it’s a temporary license or how it works. I should be able to download my copies soon and find out. I got a cheap copy of Vista from Ebay, I may be reselling back on Ebay, I haven’t decided yet.

I’m downloading the new Windows 7 beta version. When I have time I want to install it in a new partition and really play with it. Just to see it, I may install it in a Virtual Machine just to see it start up. From what I’ve heard, it’s what Vista was supposed to be. It’s a “beta” version, so it’s not officially released and it will stop working in August (because it’s free). Learning Vista won’t be a total loss and it will be awhile before Windows 7 is actually released.

I’m slowly getting Obscure Mania ready for release. I need to clean up the clean red widget posts and add a few more computer posts. And I’ve been writing a series on Life on the Road mainly about Laptop Security, but there are tips in there for all computers as well. I may just keep the theme the way it is. It’s plain, simple and until I have more to put in the sidebars, one sidebar is plenty.

Dilbert is the only comic I read on a regular basis. I usually get flashbacks from my time in the corporate world, but there is more to the strip than just office humor.

It always amazes me how really smart people can be so stupid. I’m not really that smart so it never surprises me when I do something stupid, I expect it.

Maybe it wasn’t really stupidity, it was more like gambling on a game of Old Maid. The last one holding the bad card loses. Except the joke was on us.

I haven’t really quit Bohamian yet, they gave me a short trip from near where I was in PA to Albany, NY. Paid pretty well for general freight, the short hauls usually do. So I’m not too far away and it breaks up the long week and it’s a little extra cash.

I decided to go back to PA and on my way back, my friend that recommended me for the new company was going through PA on his way to Pittsburgh to move a trailer. We had Thanksgiving dinner at the Petro near Scranton, PA and I helped him with his new laptop and we talked about the old company and the new company and things in general.

It always amazes me the ‘real’ people that want to eat in truck stops. Granted, Petro is one of the better truck stop restaurants, but it’s still a truck stop. Their Thanksgiving buffet was packed. We were there early and got most of our food before the long line started. I have never waited in line for a buffet at a truck stop and didn’t plan on starting today. It wasn’t bad and there weren’t any reservations, so it was probably a good choice in a small town. They had just finished carving one bird and had two more turkeys in the rotisserie.

As Russ showed me his paperwork for his trip, it was pretty thorough. They emailed it to him and it had directions and miles on every segment. And I was able to get a copy of a 10 mb file one of the other drivers gave him of directions to every drop yard and customer they have. I’m excited to get started on Tuesday.

Drove through my first big snow of the season. I stopped at a small truck stop and walked Willie and let him play in the snow, he really is hilarious in the snow. The snow in the grass was up to his chest and he was hopping through it and biting at the falling snow. I think he actually liked skidding around the parking lot. He will chase snowballs, but the instant he tries to pick one up, he backs off and looks for something else. Good thing about winter is that Willie doesn’t shed as much. He holds onto every single hair to keep him warm!

Cindy is in Minnesota and spending her only break from both school and work before she has any vacation time with the State.

Has just started. I’m sitting in PA getting rained on with snow on the way. Too bad I’m between semesters I could have taken three more classes and had them all done this week. The trailer is dropped so I could find something to do, but I’m trying to save money too. A room would be a waste, I can lay down in the bed and be on the internet just as easy in the truck as a hotel room. I’m at the truck stop and I stopped by Wal-Mart the other day and stocked up, so the refrigerator is full. There’s nothing close to the truck stop and no sidewalks so walking Willie too far is almost out of the question.

I can bobtail somewhere, but haven’t really decided where yet. Malls should allow dog walking! Willie would have to be the only dog in the mall. He’s seems to be getting worse about other dogs. He gets so excited and when i let him close enough to another dog to sniff and check each other out, he immediatly start nipping at the other dog. The last time we were at the dog park he got a little upset at a particular big puppy, but it was hard to tell if it was self-defense or if he was the one starting it.

I was thinking of bobtailing to Minnesota, but it’s 1100 miles one way and I have to come back. Plus with snow and weather it’s the worst time of year to be bobtailing around with no weight on the back wheels, the tractor can lose traction a lot easier than if there was even an empty trailer on the back and it’s supposed to snow the next three days.

I knew this was going to happen. I wanted to work over the weekend and make some money, but that’s not working out so good. More on the trucking news soon.

This is great for people that are sitting around with plenty of time on their hands and love to read. Go to Go Read Green and sign up for a free online magazine subscription from a list of 16 mainstream publications. You need a different email for each subscription, but how hard is that? You can download the magazine to take with you or browse online.

The magazine reader is from zinio.com and is an exact replica of the magazine. Waiting time for the magazine to load depends on your connection, but it’s not bad. There’s a zoom option to zoom in on the semi-tough to read print unless you zoom in on it. Zinio has just about every magazine in print you can get a regular online subscription.

The free subscription may be a limited time offer and I don’t know how much other stuff will get sent to your email, but depending on the magazine a real online subscription could cost up to $20 or $30 bucks.

Some of the magazines on the free trial include Men’s Journal, PC Magazine which will no longer be in print, Popular Science, US News and World Reports and several others.

Link: Go Read Green

I took a load from Vegas to Lexington, KY. I don’t know what the next plan is so I sit again. A week after the “big meeting” with the boss and dispatcher, I’m not real sure if anything has changed. I still think it was a good idea to wait till after the holidays and I only need a couple good trips or a lot of bad ones to pay the bills that I have to. More would be good to get the credit cards down to a manageable level, but the bills are paid.

A couple of changes are coming and decisions will have to be made no matter what I do about which company I drive for. Even if I stay, I need to do something with this trailer. It’s become more of a liability because the loads it was designed for are getting extremely rare and it limits me on the kind of freight I can take.

Life on the Road is hopefully getting a better payroll system so that problem will be taken care of and it might attract writers if we say we’re going to pay them and they’re actually paid in a timely matter, instead of the ancient paper check system  they have now.

Adventures in Trucking isn’t about trucking so much anymore. I’ve been thinking of either transferring the entire website, posts and everything to a new domain or I could start from scratch to something a little more generic besides trucking. I may use Obscure Mania after the contest, it’s really general and wouldn’t limit me to any one subject. I could write more about WordPress, SEO, technology, life in general and even a little trucking. It may be a little more technical at times, but there is a lot of good stuff I run across that doesn’t really fit here.

The general rule is a blog should be focused on a particular subject. Oh well. Onemansblog.com is about anything and everything, wikipedia is huge and not specific but is extremely popular. It’s not really an absolute rule and it would be better than trying to keep up with two or three different blogs. I’m not going to cry if everyone doesn’t read absolutely everything I write. People read headlines and there are other ways to only seek out and read only the categories on a blog you’re interested in.

Besides, my trucking career may be coming to an end this time next year. If we can get our expenses down and the truck and trailer are major expenses, they mostly pay for themselves, but at what cost? Truckers know what I’m talking about. It’s not always about money.

Laurie of Laurie and Leroy fame, asked a question about why I mentioned clean red widgets in my last post. While I’m waiting for my turn to register early for more classes in January I thought I might let you in on the secret.

When I started working on Life on the Road, I learned everything I could about WordPress, hosting, domains and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I’ve had Adventures in Trucking and Truckingblog.net since 2004 and they rank pretty well because they’ve been around for a long time and they have a ton of content. Since I wanted Life on the Road to be successful enough so at least they would keep paying me, I started to learn about how drive traffic to Lotr.

The rest of this may or may not make sense to some, just go with the flow. After hitting all the A-list bloggers I ran across a small group of people that were actually honest and weren’t trying to sell me a bunch of ebooks that didn’t really say anything. Now there’s a private forum with classes about internet marketing, building websites and search engine stuff. Right now there’s a contest going on to see who can rank the highest in Google for the term Clean Red Widgets and another group is going for Dirty Blue Widgets.

There’s real money involved and some strict rules. Everyone is on a level playing field. We all know what to do, it’s just a matter of finding the time to do the work for it.

As of this writing I dropped down to the number two slot, but it’s really early and anything can happen.  The current number one position isn’t part of the group, but someone’s page is showing up in a different service at number one. Don’t think that counts. It’s mainly for fun and a learning experience to see what others are doing, plus there’s the money.

Want to help out? Give me a link with an Anchor of “Clean Red Widgets” (an anchor is the text you click for that link) Instead of “click here” use “Clean Red Widgets” to ObscureMania.com.

So it looks like this: Clean Red Widgets

In the sidebar is good, in a post is better and if you see it in a comment, don’t delete it. Unless it’s someone else.

A lot of these people have Internet Marketing blogs and there are a few that do this full time (they’re in the advanced contest). For not doing this for very long and only part time, I’m not doing too bad. If you actually go to ObscureMania.com it’s an ugly theme, but it’s optimized for search engines, not people.

So, I know a few of my fellow truckers are into this, if you think you can do this or if you want to learn how to do this, let me know and I’ll give you the link with all the details.

All the election and economy news got you down? Have you turned off all the news channels or ripped out your satellite dish, but you still want news?

How about pirates, Iran and Moussad spy stuff for a change of pace?

One of the podcasts I download on a regular basis is a talk show from KFI in Los Angeles. Bryan Suits is an Iraq War Veteran. He has a regular talkshow during the week, but on Sundays he goes into his “dark secret place” and talks about the war, foreign policy, the war on terrorism and the military. plus a lot of what the headlines aren’t saying.  He has not only been in Iraq, but the first Gulf War and Bosnia as an NCO in the Army National Guard and later commissioned before going to Iraq. He jokes a little about a head wound he got in Iraq, so he might be home on disability.

Here’s the show from two Sundays ago about the Somali pirate situation that’s going on. Plus, what’s going on in Israel and a little history of what the Moussed has done. The Chinese are in the Sudan getting their oil and we’re trying to make the Sudan a safe place. If the Chinese lose people in the Sudan, they just send more and we’re always portrayed as the evil ones?

Go to the KFIAm640 download section and look under Sunday for Bryan Suits, get the feed or search in iTunes for KFI. Previous shows are worth the download. It’s a two hour radio show, which translates to about an hour with all the commercials and news breaks taken out. In iTunes or the RSS feed you have to subscribe to all the Sunday shows, but you can just download this one. Since you’re downloading and have the Sunday lineup in front of you, check out the Jesus Christ show for something really different.

 

 Bryan Suits Dark Secret Place [76:54m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download