Thursday, May 3, 2018

Was over to load at a landfill in Lyons, Illinois first thing this morning. Loaded a Caterpillar 836 Compactor that is going up to another landfill in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin.  Got the thing on the trailer  and then they took off the wheels.  While loading it, I think I broke my left thumb.

There was another truck there that was bringing the blade, wheels and some other stuff.  They started to load him as I was pulling out.  Illinois sent me on another "tour" of the Chicago suburbs again.  I was just about a half inch short of 14 feet high and they had me go under an overpass that was marked 14 feet 0 inches. I made it without hitting it.  Continued on up to Monomonee Falls, WI and delivered it.  They wanted to block it up and not put the wheels on it.  That was fine with me since the other truck had not arrived yet.  

The other truck arrived as I was about to leave.  Don't have another load yet so I went back down to the Petro truck stop in Racine, Wisconsin for the night.

Wednesday, May 2, 2018

Left this morning a half hour before sunrise.  Had a bunch of bumper to bumper traffic in Indianapolis.  Then up to the stupid route the State of Illinois sent me on through the suburbs of Chicago. Here is a map of the route. I can understand some of the routing because the Chicago area has a lot of very low bridges and I am 14 feet high. But this seems a bit weird.  Even on this route I went under a few bridges that were 14 feet, 3 inches high.

The dumbest portion was where I had to do a "U" turn.

Here is a street view of the intersection.

The photo below is the same as the one above.  I have drawn lines showing how I had to round this intersection.  The purple line shows where I first rounded the corner, unable to make it all the way around.  The red-ish line shows where I had to back up.  The green line shows how I finally rounded the corner.  What the photo does NOT show is that there was a LOT of traffic.  I had things pretty clogged up.  It was a lot of fun backing up, through all that traffic, through those intersections.

I made it and continued up to Elmhurst and delivered the excavator.  Next load is tomorrow morning.  I drove back down to the Petro in Monee, Illinois for the night.

Tuesday, May 1, 2018

Didn't sleep very well last night.  Oh well, that's the way it goes sometimes.  My escort car was right on time this morning and we left at 5 am.  When we got to the Maryland / West Virginia state line she dropped off and I continued on.  Stopped in Wheeling, West Virginia at the TA truck stop for breakfast, fuel, and a very much needed shower.  After that, continued on.  Good day on the road - I needed that after yesterday!!  Stopped a little bit early today at a truck stop in Cambridge City, Indiana.  It is at the start of a long detour in Indiana.  If I continued on from here I would have run out of hours with no place to park.  I hope to deliver tomorrow. Have a weird route in Illinois too.  Hope to make it there by noon.

Monday, April 30, 2018

Was at the Port of Baltimore in Dundalk, Maryland first thing this morning.  Loaded a Caterpillar 336 Excavator That is going to Elmhurst, Illinois.  I was loaded real fast and was ready to go before 9 am BUT someone in Carlisle forgot to order my permits last Friday so I didn't have any.  Had to wait for my Maryland to come in before I could leave the Port.  Also my pilot escort car was not there yet.  

A little after 10 my Maryland permit came in and my escort car arrived at the same time.  I left the Port and went to the TA to scale up.  Unfortunately I was overweight on my trailer axles.  I am just under 130,000 pounds.  I went around back and undid everything and moved the machine.  Chained it back down again and re-scaled.  I moved it too much!!  So I went back around back and did it again.  This time when I re-scaled it was fine.  Because of that we didn't get out of there until almost 1 pm.  We did good getting around Baltimore.  Made it all the way out to I-68 and then the trailer brakes on the front trailer axle started smoking like crazy!  I pulled over to the side of the road and checked them out.  Not being a mechanic, I didn't see anything out of place or broken, just smoke and they were real hot!  Called the shop and they sent out a road service truck from the TA truck stop in Breezewood, Pennsylvania.  They said they would be about an hour and a half to get here. So here we sat.

2 3/4 hours later the service truck arrived.  He got it working on the side of the road.  We then went 4 miles farther to a small convenience store with truck parking.  He dug into it farther and got it all good again.  I stayed there for the night.

Sunday, April 29, 2018

This morning I moved down to the TA truck stop in Baltimore, Maryland.