Overnight driving and arriving in Springfield

We are in Springfield tonight, ten hours into a 34 hour break. The kids are with us. Good times. 

Worked Hard & Took a 34 in Findlay

Our dear friend, Bruce, just dropped us off at our truck. We had a great time in Findlay Ohio. Now it is time to sleep and start work early in the morning.

Time at Home & Frustration as We Returned to Work

We spent 34 hours in Springfield Missouri and Nixa. It was a relatively uneventful time, but we enjoyed being with our children. I cooked oatmeal yesterday morning, but ruined it with spoiling milk. We ended up having Dunkin’ Donuts food for breakfast.

   With full intentions of driving overnight, we embarked on our trip at 7 o’clock in the evening. We were scheduled to pick up a loaded trailer in Joplin Missouri. It turned out that the load flopped. The overnight crew at Schneider were friendly, but were not able to give us definitive answers about how flexible our next customer would be since we would have to insert a shipment in place of the ruined one. The next load would’ve taken this all the way to California, with handsome pay. We ended up just spending the night there on customer property, nestled between other orange trailers. 

   The morning crew at Schneider were able to make some phone calls, but sadly reported that we would have to be taken off of the California load since the shipper would not permit enough of a delay to accommodate us. 

  Although Stephanie was frustrated to tears, she still managed to find other freight that will still make for a handsome week of revenue. 

  Moving on, we chose a load that picked up from the Wichita Kansas area. I had to dust off the hazardous materials procedures, as the load required bright placarding on the trailer. We were carrying 38,000 pounds of compressed flammable gases. The destination was a little unusual. We were required to relay it at the Schneider yard in Dallas Texas. Before relinquishing it, I took it to the maintenance shop for a tire replacement. It feels good to have done the right thing. 

Back from Chicago & We Have Our Cat Aagin

We moved as fast as we could into and out of Chicago. The load we are on takes to Oklahoma, but we are spending the night in Springfield Missouri. We took our personal car to Joplin to get our cat. The folks at the Humane Society were very good to us and to our kitten. Springing her from the cat jail cost us $38. 

The Cat Jumped Out & We Didn’t Notice

While I was getting the truck ready to roll this morning, our cat apparently jumped out. She always thinks it is a game. I’m always picking her up and putting her back in the rig. It wasn’t until a fueling stop several hours later, that we noticed that she was missing. Shale has her secluded nap spots in the upper sections of the truck. Since we were driving during the early morning darkness hours, we figured she was just sleeping. She failed to come when we called her name. Nor did she respond to other noises that she usually comes running toward. I was already resuming our trip on interstate 44 when Stephanie began to urgently look for her. We called the truckstop we spent the night at. Sure enough, they found our cat. Stephanie called animal control to come pick her up and take her to the Humane Society until we could get back through Joplin Missouri. Luckily, we have a load zipping us through there on Wednesday. Shale is being properly cared for, so we are enjoying the stress reduction. What a rough morning it was! 

Lots of I-44

The overnight driving schedule has been working well. We are able to get more distance accomplished without having to negotiate with traffic & our customers aren’t busy. We have been traveling through Missouri a lot, servicing customers in Illinois and Oklahoma. We are spending the night in Joplin again, but at a different truck stop. We resume our trip to Chicago at midnight. 

Early Driving to Joplin Missouri

We started work at 1am. My 34-hour break was complete two hours prior to then, but I wanted to be properly rested before driving. Chicago traffic was very sparse at that hour, as you can imagine. Saint Louis morning traffic wasn’t too bad either, even though we drove through there at the busy time. With just a few minutes left on my DOT clock, we stopped at our usual brand of truck stop, in Joplin. We traveled 658 miles today, according to our electronic logbook.