Saturday, October 13, 2018

A wonderful Saturday watching SEC Football!!!!  I LOVE IT!!!!!!!

Friday, October 12, 2018

Another driver that is here in Jacksonville, and does most of the local moves, had a load waiting for him over at the Port.  It had to load today.  His truck was in the repair shop.  So I helped him out.  Took his trailer over to the Port, he followed in his pick up truck.  I hooked up to his trailer in the yard.  Here it is:

The last two axles on the trailer are steerable. Makes cornering very easy.  Pulled out of the yard and down to the main road, rounded the corner from the stop sign and the last two axles on the trailer did not straighten themselves out like they are supposed to.  Instead they took the trailer straight off the road and into a tree.

Fortunately there was no damage to anything except the tree.  Called our mechanic and he brought the fork lift down and fixed the problem.  I won't get into the details of what caused this to happen, because you wouldn't understand it anyway. I'll just say that it was easily fixable.

Left that mess and went over to the Port.  Didn't have any more problems.  We loaded a Liebherr Material Handler that weighed 110,000 pounds (49,895 kg) using two big cranes.  Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get any photos of that because I was too busy.  Here is an internet photo of one.  The one we loaded did not have the tracks on it and only had half the boom.  They were being shipped separately.

 Once we got it mostly secured to the trailer I dropped the trailer and left it there.  He was going to go back tomorrow and finish.  I went back to the Daily yard.  Now I will be off work for a while for my surgery.  

Wednesday, October 10, 2018

Left LaGrange a half hour after sunrise this morning.  Heavy overcast and occasional light rain.  Breezy, but no big deal.  Drove to the Caterpillar dealer in Macon to deliver the machine.  Had to wait an hour and a half for the tire guy to get there.  When he got there we found out that they shipped the machine without any lug nuts!!  After waiting another hour for them to figure out what to do, they finally decided to take a few lug nuts off another machine and put them on my machine so it could be unloaded.  Got the thing off and the trailer put back together just as the first rain bands started to get to Macon. I left there and started to head home by way of Savannah.  Here is what the radar looked like.

Passed at least a hundred power company trucks that were going toward the storm.  The overhead message boards looked like this.

Just out of Macon drove through a real heavy rain band.  Was windy and could hardly see the road.  It didn't last long.  The rest of the way home was not bad at all.  Traffic on I-16 was light.  It was heavier on I-95, but it always is.  Made it home to Jacksonville without any problems.  I will be here for about three weeks.  Having surgery next week, then a little re-coop time.  Hope to be back as soon as possible.

Tuesday, October 9, 2018

At 3 pm I was back at Caterpillar to load.  Loaded a Caterpillar 563D Feller Buncher that initially was to go to Washington, Georgia.  While in the process of loading found out that it is going to Macon instead.  That is much better for me.  Closer to home.

This is what a Feller Buncher does:

By the time I got finished loading it was too late to go anywhere so I went back to the truck stop a few miles away.  I'll get out of here a half hour after sunrise in the morning.  I should be well ahead of the hurricane that is coming this way.

Monday, October 8, 2018

Left this morning and drove the hour to LaGrange, Georgia.  Checked in then broke down my trailer to load.  Then came the "good" news.  My machine was not ready and won't be ready until tomorrow afternoon.  Also, it was another machine without wheels and was over at the other building.  I packed everything back up and put my trailer back together then went to the truck stop for the night.

Sunday, October 7, 2018

What a wonderful, and totally unexpected victory last night!!!!!!