The Midwest

I picked up a load of sausages from Hillshire Farms (now a division of Sara Lee) in New London, Wisconsin (north of Oshkosh, west of Green Bay). The day was gray and rainy and the air heavy with the scent of smoke and pork flesh. It is not easy to tell the difference, on the exterior, between a food processing plant such as this one, and a plant that produces anything else, edible or not. It is all metal siding, pipes and fans and machines and docks to back into and load up.
I took said sausages to Tolleson, Arizona (part of the hideous Phoenix metro) to a Sara lee "Mixing" facility. A place like this takes products from all the various subsidiaries of a parent company and "mix" them and ship them out to warehouses and distribution centers, a sort of warehouse for warehouses, another middle man, more truck movement.
From New London I traveled southwest on US-151 a route that cuts a beautiful diagonal across the state of Wisconsin from Manitowoc on Lake Michigan (home to Manitowoc, makers of such dissimilar products as cranes and ice machines) through the capital at Madison, across the driftless zone, a relatively rugged area untouched by glaciation in the last ice age, and crosses the Mississippi into Iowa at Dubuque.

The Wisconsin state capitol at Madison.


A road cut exposing "prairie stone" in southwest Wisconsin.


Iowa farmland outside of Dubuque.


More Iowa farmland near Brooklyn.


The (possibly most ostentatious) state capitol at Des Moines.

Ontario, not that one

But rather the one in California.
The one in the Inland Empire, that great swath of the eastern LA metro, just over the first set of hills, where the ground gets drier and the air hotter and the people more hispanic. You could call Ontario the "heart" of the Inland Empire, that is, if the Inland Empire could possibly have a heart. It is where the main airport for the area is, and there's a big mall, Ontario Mills. What is the deal with calling malls "mills?" Is it a misspelling? They can't possibly have anything to do with mills which make something, textiles, flour, gunpowder, feed, puppies. Malls don't make anything, except money.
Anyway, Ontario is where i went to orientation for this new job. It is essentially a big plot of land covered in featureless warehouses and factories that crank out shit, or dole out shit. The only feature of these warehouses is their logo and so you see great white boxes with names like MagLight or JensenUSA (a bike parts distributor) or Fender or Louisville Slugger. Like its neighbors, Fontana and Mira Loma and Rancho Cucamonga, it is utterly congested with trucks.

Winter in the Inland Empire




An abandoned vineyard in a single block surrounded by warehouses.




An Elephant Statue in the Safari Business Park, Ontario, California

Superstition Mountains

Before we get to the trucking a few photos from the Superstition Mountains. When I first got into to Tempe I headed with some friends up to the Superstitions Mountain, a range just to the east of the Phoenix metro They are a popular destination for Phoenicians (?) trying to flee the misery of their awful city. I had a pretty low opinion of Arizona (except maybe the whole Grand Canyon thing) but that is because I am thinking of the (completely unacceptable) urban areas and not of the (completely sublime) rural areas. We headed east on US-60, the Superstition Highway (ohhhhhh) out to Apache Junction and then hit the Apache Trail toward the town of Tortilla Flat, the least populated town in Arizona with a zip code. Essentially it appeared to be a false front western sort of place that was a store and a restaurant and a tourist trap. In a dip just beyond Tortilla Flat the pavement ended and the Salt River (or a tributary thereof), full from the recent rains, flowed over the road. A sign warned against crossing in such conditions but we said fuck it and headed over. The road narrowed and became a harrowing single lane track along the side of a mountain with a scrap of a guard rail that was more a visual barrier than any sort of physical one. Not to far up the road we pulled off and hiked up Fish Creek canyon a ways. It was a scrambly sort of hike and a lot of fun. So Pictures...

again, again, againagain

back on the road friendos.
After delivering produce throughout Western Washington for 8 months I have returned to the long haul. The produce gig was interesting and it was fascinating to see another leg in the journey of our food from farm to table. I delivered produce to supermarkets and restaurants throughout the Puget Sound region. My first routes took me to Top Foods locations in the Seattle metro and after I while i "graduated" to deliveries further afield, typically to Bellingham and Blaine (a town north of Bellingham right on the Canadian border) and on the occasional weekend would make the run to the miserable town of Aberdeen (birthplace of Kurt Cobain) and the town of Ocean Shores to the west. All of these routes were at night, usually starting at 6am and getting off sometime between 2 and 5am. I spent most of the time in Seattle being excruciatingly tired and looking back on that time I was constantly in some sort of zombiefied haze. but it was nice.

It is time now to get back to the business of making money to start this other business and that can't be done making the money i was making at the produce job or working a job where paying rent was required. My initial plan was to switch to a long haul job and spend my weekends alternately in Seattle and Maryland (where the bread oven (and my parents) are) but when I called to finalize plans with the long haul company it turns out they had just instituted a hiring freeze in he Pacific Northwest. Turns out they did not have enough freight in that neck of the woods to get their current drivers who lived in Washington and Oregon home and they were not keen on having more. At first I thought, well fine I'll just change my driver's license back to Maryland and that's that but I wanted to make sure I wasn't going to be relegated to the East both for the variety and the miles and so, having some friends in Arizona, I "moved" there. I shipped off most of my stuff via mail (i don't have a lot of stuff) and the rest came with me on a motorcycle down the coast and into the desert. It was a nice ride on which I will elaborate later.
I got my Arizona license and a few days later headed to orientation in Ontario, California via the always delightful Greyhound.
I wasn't sure I would continue blogging but at least one person wants me to and in their request referred to this as a "Photo Blog" which made me think, i can do that, just photos. less writing. so here you go.

San Rafael Swell

First off it is Rafael. I spelled it Raphael in an earlier post and that is just wrong.

The San Rafael Swell is a desolate area of eroded beauty in central Utah. All of Utah could really be called an area of eroded beauty (though certainly not of eroded morals) but the Swell, pretty much smack in the middle of the state is exceptional.

Lets begin with geology. Simplistically land is made up of layers of sediment and then sometimes these layers are lifted up, or pushed down or cut through by water and wind. Though this is the case pretty much everywhere it is easiest to see out west since there is less of that pesky vegetation covering everything up.
Utah's layers (the layers of the Colorado plateau) were deposited successively by differing processes over the eons. At points Utah was the floor of a great sea and the sediments are those of shell and other calcium rich substances (limestone) other times it was the edge of the sea and there are layers of sand that has been compressed into cohesive strata (sandstone) and other times it might be hardened lava or volcanic ash. Tectonic forces pushed up the area known as the Colorado Plateau (which consists of parts of the four corners states, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico) in a relatively uniform block (as opposed to being folded or subducted into mountains.) The San Rafael Swell is an uplift upon this uplift. Structurally you could think of it as many blankets layered over a trampoline (the blankets are the successive rock layers). Then forces pushed up on the bottom of the trampoline resulting in a layered dome structure.
Any time land is lifted up water that falls on that land will want to move down to lower elevations and when it does so it will erode the rock along with it. In the southwest the climate is usually very dry and when it does rain it tends to rain a lot and the soils, as dry as they are, cannot absorb any of this water and you end up with catastrophic floods that have even more erosive power. As such you get great gorges and canyons cut through the strata which are very scenic (National Parks on the Colorado Plateau include: Canyonlands, Arches, Capital Reef, Bryce Canyon, Zion and Grand Canyon)(I went on a road trip with my sister a few summers ago that included visits to all of these parks and by the time we were done I decided I was pretty cashed out on erosion and ready to see some volcanoes.)
The San Rafael Swell is so cut through and erratically eroded that it is quite difficult to travel across and, in fact, I-70 is the only paved road to cross it. Even then you have to wonder why since 70's western terminus is Cove Fort, Utah, which isn't much of a town. I suppose the reason would be to provide a link from the southwest (LA and Vegas on I-15) towards Denver, but still traveling 70 through Utah you have to think "this couldn't have been easy."

I-70 E following a canyon off of the swell.

Wrap up Posts

It has been a long time and I apologize. My excuse this time for the long absence will be the infernal Twitter. I have found it so easy to use my phone to snap pictures and quickly tweet them that it leaves me little inspiration for adding to the blog.
@truckermark is the name under which you will find my twittiness.

This will be the first in a series of wrap up posts on the experiences of trucking out west which perhaps has been so captivating that I have wanted only to soak it in and not immediately regurgitate it on these pages. At any rate now I will and that will be that.
Why, you ask? Well I have found myself a local trucking job delivering produce throughout western (and central) Washington state that will allow me to be home every day and that will be nice. I am not sure if it will provide fodder for blogging but if it does I will begin a new blog. In the mean time enjoy the following posts about the great western United States.

The Virgin River Gorge

I had picked up a load of imported Target merchandise from NYK Logistics in the LBC. For those of you not as "West Coast" as my self that's Long Beach, California, I will try and avoid thuggin out too hard henceforth.) This load of trinkets from Japan and China was headed to a Distribution Center in Pueblo, Colorado 1200 miles distant. Often there are multiple routes available to get from one point to another and many truckers just pick the Interstate, that uniform 4+ lane strip of dullness where the mountains are cut through and the valleys filled making travel through them easier, faster, and more unremarkable. Anyone who has driven across the country (or even any state) and found it dull did so on the interstate (or is just a hater, in which case, quit wasting gas.)
The back roads are often shorter, slower and almost invariably more interesting. Besides the towns and villages where you might encounter people smaller roads traverse terrain where building larger roads would be impossible or not cost efficient. i.e. prettier country. My advice, if you have the time, take the back roads.

HOWEVER, there are stretches of interstate with mind bending scenery. You can't avoid beauty that assiduously. Some such stretches are I-90 from Ellensburg to Seattle, Washington over Snoqualmie Pass in the Cascades (the only stretch of Interstate that is designated a national scenic byway), I-5 over the grapevine in Southern California, I-81 along the Blue Ridge in Virginia etc... Most of these roads clearly connect two important areas that need connecting an in so doing must surmount apparent obstacles (typically abrupt changes in elevation, mountains.) Some areas, however make you wonder why they would have ever put a interstate here, two such locations are ones that I had to travel to move this target shit to Colorado. I-15 through the Virgin River Gorge in the far northwestern Arizona and I-70 through the San Raphael Swell in central Utah.
The push to carve a highway in the Virgin River Gorge is more understandable as it connects Las Vegas and Los Angeles to the valley of the Great Salt Lake. There is an enormous elevation obstacle along this route in the name of the Colorado Plateau. I'm not going to get too geologically specific but suffice it to say this region, centered around the 4 corners area, was uplifted in millenia past by whatever it is that uplifts the earth. With all this elevation, and water still wanting, as it does, to flow down hill, gradually canyons were cut through this elevation creating the scenic amazements that are the Grand Canyon and the parks of Utah: Canyonlands, Bryce Canyon, Capital Reef and Zion. The Virgin River, which flows southwest out of Zion eventually tumbles off the plateau and into the Mojave Desert in so doing carving itself a nice canyon in the far northwest corner of Arizona (just to give you an idea of the elevation differential here, Vegas, down in the low hot Mojave, is at 2000 ft and Cedar City, UT is at over 5,800.
Naturally when looking for a way to mount this rise the interstate builders looked for a precut route and the Virgin River Gorge was just such a route. Nonetheless, mile for mile, it was one of the most expensive stretches of interstate. Some pictures:

Entering the Gorge














Curvyness

















Up on the Plateau in Utah



In the next episode: The insanity that is The San Raphael Swell...

Apology Post

I'm sorry friendos.
Inspiration/desire to write blog posts and the time to do so do not often overlap with internet access. Especially out here in this lonesome crowded west. I've been in a lot of really amazing places of late. of note: The San Raphael Swell in central Utah, US-50 through Colorado, US-395 in the Owens Valley of Eastern California, all of the desolate polygon that is Nevada, Craters of the Moon and the Salmon River Valley in Idaho, and the Bitteroot mountains and river valley of Western Montana. I will take on each of these places in pictures and words, probably more pictures.

I'm so sad about my lack of blog posts that I have taken to hiding between my truck and trailer where no one can hear me weeping.

getting to know I-5

This blog has been getting so much attention ever since Jaime started the TBTL Meta Blog. And that's awesome. This has occurred concurrently with my birth into the bizarre world of twitter and I have been twittering pictures of my travels so I'm not sure what I'll have to post here. I suppose I will have to get more interesting and less "then i took x from y to z." The extra attention is also a good motivator. thanks people.

I did not stray far, for the whole last 2 weeks, from Interstate 5. In fact, when I made this move (from the east coast) i was told/warned that this is how freight moves in the west. Unlike the east which has a dense coastal population and a good distribution of people throughout the Appalachians and Midwest, the west, aside from the dense coastal cities has almost no population and as such, no manufacturing and no demand for goods (relatively speaking). So I don't so much mind driving up and down the I-5 since I get paid by the mile and if I am sitting in Roswell, New Mexico for a day and a half I don't make anything. (and roswell is not a place i would choose to vacation, especially by myself).

I-5 begins, or ends, at the Mexican border, just south of San Diego and north of Tijuana. Immediately east of here is the area called Otay Mesa which is where the vast majority of the truck traffic from the maquiladoras enters the US. (Maquiladoras are Mexican assembly plants who import parts, tax free, and export finished goods for the US market. They are almost all in border cities like Nuevo Laredo, Juarez, Mexicali, and Tijuana. Does this make them essentially "wage shelters" where US companies can get long hours for low wages free of the tiresome and costly worker's rights laws (like the luxuriant $6.55 min. wage) of the US government? Yes, yes it does, but I'm not really trying to start that conversation.)

From there the freeway heads north through Orange County and into the LA Metro (Large limited access roads are called "Freeways" in California (mostly out east the term "highway" is used.) California gives names to all their freeways and different names to different sections. I-5 or "the 5" is known as "The San Diego Freeway" "The Santa Ana Freeway" and, for the majority of its route through California "The Golden State Freeway.)
North of Los Angeles the freeway passes through the San Fernando valley home of movie studios before climbing up to summit Tejon Pass and tumble into the San Joaquin Valley.
The entirety of southern California is a great low, mostly dry, valley. Through extensive aqueduct projects that move water from rainy northern California and the snowy Sierra Nevada down the length of the valley it has become one of the most productive agricultural regions in the country (25% of the nations production (cash value) (according to wikipedia)). Grapes for one provide much of the less expensive wine (like that sold in 1.5 L bottles or, better yet, boxes.) They also turn grapes into rasins. Almonds are a huge crop, and as i mentioned last week, they are in bloom currently and very much what you notice at this time of year. This area also produces a lot of the early season vegetables for those people in parts of the country that need vegetables at the wrong time.
North of Stockton, where the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers flow together toward the Bay Area estuary, you enter the Northern Central Valley, or Sacramento Valley whose products are similar to that of the southern San Joaquin, but add rice, olives and plums for making 2/3 of the worldwide production of prunes (again wikipedia).

Just before Redding the terrain, which has to this point been relentlessly flat, flatter than most of the midwest (though always with mountains visible in the distance to the east and west) begins to swell and rise a bit before climbing up into the Siskiyou/Klamath/South Cascade mountains. The road passes Shasta Lake, an impoundment of the Sacramento River, which provides much of the water for central valley irrigation projects. It is currently drastically low, a result of a three year drought in California.

I-5 skirts along the edge of Mount Shasta, which, when it is clear, is pretty dramatic. It is sort of the southern bookend to the Cascades (as Mount Baker in Northern Washington is the northern).

At the Oregon border the highway crosses Siskiyou Summit, the highest point on I-5 and the descent northbound is the steepest interstate grade in the US. Add to that frequent precipitation (frequently at temperatures at or below freezing) and you got yourself a pretty treacherous bobsled run.
All of southern Oregon (and northern California) is basically a big clump of mountains that separate the Central Valley of California and the Willamette Valley of Oregon (The Willamette was where you were heading during those hours of caulking wagons, shooting buffalo and repairing axles in Oregon Trail.) So in order to get from nice flat road to nice flat road you must pass a number of summits and traverse the valleys of mountain streams like the Rogue and Umpqua in Southern Oregon.
Finally, at Eugene, you're out of the mountains for good (on I-5 at least.)
The Willamette valley produces a lot of berries and hazlenuts, as well as hops (for all those Oregon microbreweries) and sod/grass seed. Oh yes and wine grapes of course.
Here again, the terrain is flat and lush and mountains are visible to the east and the low coast range to the west.
Portland is where the Willamette flows into the Columbia and where I-5 enters Washington as it follows the Columbia's northward bend to the cities of Kelso and Longview. The land is hilly and densely forested with trees that someone is aching to cut down and make into paper or a soon to be foreclosed on house. Joining the basin of Puget Sound at Olympia you can see the state capital dome prominently (I have heard that it is the second highest masonry dome in the world after the Duomo (designed by Brunelleschi) in Florence. but wikipedia says 4th tallest (damn them))
Between Olympia and Tacoma lies Fort Lewis, a large Army base, and that's all i have to say about that.
Tacoma, as I noted earlier, smells bad.
After Tacoma I-5 passes through the suburbs of Seattle/Tacoma like Fife, Federal Way, Tukwila and the beautifully named "SeaTac" (home of the airport) and all their terrible traffic, terrible probably because it all has to squeeze through the narrow space between the Cascades and Puget Sound.
North of Seattle (an area I have not traveled much by truck) there are the alluvial plains of rivers like the Snohomish and Skagit as they spread into marshy convergence with Puget Sound (The Skagit river delta is known for its tulip production) and then a small range of mountains and the basin of land around Bellingham Bay. North of Bellingham the land is quite flat and essentially in the valley of the Fraser River (the river that flows through Vancouver, BC). The road ends, or begins, at Blaine, about 30 miles south of Vancouver.

I'm not sure how this became a route description of I-5 but there you have it in about 1/100 the time it takes to drive it.

I-5, The Golden State Freeway!

I had a few days off after my last sortie, if you will, to spend in Seattle, and Seattle decided to woo me with clear skies and fair temperatures (but I know better.) I spent the mornings biking around my knew environs and the afternoons eating rich foods and drinking ciders and beers of local origin, which, coming from a place where this is less possible (the local part, not the drinking, we drink plenty in maryland), is really great. On the last night we ate salami from Salumi, Made hamburgers topped with thin slices of green apple and sharp cheddar cheese and made this:





Needless to say the next day i felt like shit.








This week has been, thus far, more what I expected from this new Western gig, I picked up a load in Seattle, also from NYK logistics which you may remember from the previous post, and took it down to Woodland, California, where there is a large and delightful Target Distribution Center. Then, it being sunday, I sat all day and then was assigned a load to pick up the next day in Folsom, east of Sacramento (indeed home of the eponymous prison of Johnny Cash fame). The load had nothing to do with prison but more with soy sauce, in big 5 gallon buckets from Kikkoman. This Soy Sauce was headed to Irving, Texas, but I only took it as far as French Camp (near Stockton) and dropped it for another driver to take the rest of the way. I, meanwhile, picked up a trailer load of Robert Mondavi Wine from Lodi and took it to the Vons warehouse in Santa Fe Springs (So.East LA). Vons is a LA area grocery store owned by Safeway.
Central California is alternately duller than dull and bizarrely wondrous. There are the parts that are unending fields or orchards and there are the parts that are surreal steep green hills folding into themselves, hiding other worlds, possibly, and then you're back in Illinois again.

From there i had a short load picking up a load of Target brand bleach cleanser from its manufacturer (also in Santa Fe Springs) and took those up to yet another Target dc north of Bakersfield.
And as of now I am sitting at a flying J in the central valley breathing in the sometimes lovely, sometimes, repulsive smell of almond trees in bloom. Tomorrow I pick up some sears crap to take to Everett, Washington. Oh the life.










Endless almond trees in the central valley, i had no idea we ate so many almonds.






As a side note, I have started a project of taking portraits of truckers and their dogs. here is one of the first, this is Dennis and his dog, Baby:

Front Range to the Wasatch Front (The Back Range?)

And Then! Another load from Denver back into New Mexico! (I was beginning to get exasperated, I-25 along the front range of the Rockies is beautiful but any road after the 3rd time in a row begins to get old.)
This load was Nestle PureLife Bottled Water from a plant in Denver on its way to a Wal*Mart DC in Los Lunas, NM. I asked the shipping clerk what the source of the water was and he said it was from the Denver municipal supply, i.e. tap water. Now, I know that a lot of bottles water is tap water but this movement struck me as ridiculous.
I know New Mexico is a desert but it has plenty of drinking water which, curiously comes from the Rio Grande, a river with its source in where? Colorado. And how does it get to New Mexico? By trucks running at 6mpg? no, by gravity. hmmmm.
Anyway. Then I got a load to pick up in Roswell, New Mexico, the sight (well biggest town near the sight of) of a "UFO" crash and alien autopsy. Look it up on wikipedia.
Roswell is a different part of New Mexico, part that feels more like Texas or Oklahoma with vast (dry brown) grassy plains and the smell of concentrated herds of dairy cattle all around.
New Mexico, surprisingly is a very productive dairy state and Leprino Foods here operates the worlds largest mozzarella cheese plant making IQF shredded cheese, primarily for pizzas, I would guess. I don't drive a reefer (refrigerated trailer) so I was not here to pick up cheese but rather a byproduct of cheese making.
When you make cheese, you must first separate the milk solids (curds, which will become cheese) from the whey, a protein rich translucent liquid (think what rotten milk in your fridge looks like). If you have a huge cheese plant (ie it would be very hard to do this at home) you can dry this whey into a fine powder, whey protein concentrate, which is used as a nutritional supplement and industrial baking additive.
I trucked this stuff up to Salt Lake City and unloaded at a cold storage warehouse on the west side of town, not far from the shores of the city's namesake body of water. When I opened the trailer doors a rich sweet smell reminiscent of milkshakes, wafted from within. I sit now, at a Pilot on the west side, typing away, waiting for some way to get back to the beautiful northwest.

(looking west on NW 116th or 117th St. in Seattle, down into Carkeek Park and across to the Olympic Mountains (click to enlarge and see the snowy peaks))

To the Front Range!

I've been not doing a whole lot of driving of late as freight is "soft" i.e. (brace yourself) the economy is not doing too well.
I drove down to the droptlot and then got a ride with Mylie, a Hawai'ian/Portugese lady who drives a truck based out of Portland. She was coming down from having just picked up a load in Seattle which she would drop in Portland for some home time. I had to get a ride with her because my truck was in Portland but my parking location is in Sumner, a small town with a heavily industrial north end, near Tacoma (about 39 miles south of Seattle.
I found my truck (inexplicably older than my last truck. One side benefit of transfering to the west coast, i thought, would be that I could almost certainly get a newer truck. well HA HA mark, of the 10% of the fleet that could be older than my last truck I won the lottery!) and settled in. The next morning I met with dispatcher, a nice guy from South Dakota who seems to be in the northwest for similar reasons to mine. I think we will get along well, at least as far as drivers and dispatcher typically do. (NB I am not the sort of asshole driver who thinks his dispatcher is trying to ruin his day.)
Then I hopped back in my truck and got a load with two stops, one on the far side of portland, out on the spit of land where the Willamette River empties into the mighty Columbia. The second stop was in Fife, Washington, right outside of beautiful Tacoma. (Tacoma, for those of you not familiar with the area, is seattle's ugly little sister. It is the Camden to Seattle's Philadelphia, the Gary to it's Chicago. Which probably isn't fair and I am sure there are lots of good things about Tacoma (and Gary and Camden) It often reeks of the "tacomaroma" the heady overcooked broccoli stank of paper making.
It's name is the Lushootseed (Puyallup) name for Mt. Rainier (Mother of Waters) whose presence on the southeastern horizon (on a clear day) is incredible). It is a much busier port than Seattle, importing goods from Asia that are then shipped by rail eastward across the country (like the busier port of LA/Long Beach, to the south).)
After making the delivery in Fife I headed over to the dropyard in Sumner and hopped in my car and headed over to Fred Meyer to buy some food for the next few weeks. Fred Meyer is a PNW chain of mega stores similar to Wal*Mart but somehow when you walk in they seem even more immense. When I returned to my truck I found I had gotten a new load assignment. A pick up at NYK logistics (a place that takes imports and sorts them out to be delivered to various locations (such as Target DCs, where this one was going) The place was conveniently, literally, next door (or gate) and so I popped over, picked up the trailer, and came back to the drop yard.
The load was going to Topeka, Kansas, a nice long one (1800 miles) though curiously out of my range (my new job description is Western Regional (meaning I drive the 11 western states (Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico). When I discussed this the next day with my dispatcher we eventually decided to relay it in Denver, still a healthy run (1200 miles).
From there I got a load of baled scrap cardboard from a Safeway DC in Denver on its way down to a paper mill that makes new cardboard out of old cardboard in Prewitt, New Mexico. Apparently when we pull these cardboard loads into Prewitt we often pull loads of new stock out of Prewitt and typically these go to Southern California, putting you on the I-5 and making a return up to the northwest easier. (Not a lot of freight goes up to the Northwest, other than up from southern California or from Mexico (Laredo, Nogales or Otay Mesa (Tijuana))
Inexplicably the load I got was headed back to Denver.

West Coast (my fingers are making a W)

So I have moved out here to the West Coast (coincidentally, did you know that it is also the 'best coast'?! crazy, I know.)
Goal is to see new places, make money, have good times in Seattle and eventually, when I'm ready, return to The B'east coast to make the bread oven happen fo' real.
The drive out, apart from my driving partner's sudden, quickly passing, and violent illness (he was poisoned by a serb) was pretty uneventful. In South Dakota it was even warm enough to eat lunch in Rapid City outside in shirtsleeves.
We slid into Seattle in a dusky fog and only the outlines and presence of the enormous trees of the magical forest.

Yesterday I headed down to Sumner near Tacoma where Schneider has a droplot. It may possibly be the most beautiful droplot in the world.
I waited there most of the day for a driver who was going to give me a ride down to the Portland Operating Center where I would pick up a truck. She was delayed at a shipper in Seattle (picking up crates of broken glass from TVs to be recycled.) Eventually we got down here, I found my truck and moved myself in.

This morning it is snowing in Portland as I am waiting to deliver my first West Coast load which has a stop in Portland and another in Fife, Washington, also near Tacoma.

Standby for more delightful adventures from the left coast.



Here's a view of the Olympics from Carkeek park which is not far from where I am crashing in Seattle:















And some ice on the beach beneath my feet:

Recent Occurences

I always like the way the Blue Beacons (truck washes) look at night because they are so bright and usually billowing with steam. It is all very dramatic. I was south of Atlanta on my way from Florida up to Kentucky with Dollar General schtuff.





I saw this Mexican restaurant in Cambridge, Ohio. I gotta wonder how the locals deal with pronouncing this. The folks back where I comes from have some troubles with the local pizza place 'Procolino's' and that's pretty standard Italian not ancient Nahuatl. I imagine they just say "the mexican place next to Wal*Mart"



After delivering some cereal (mostly honeycombs and fruity and cocoa pebbles) to Hunt's Point Market in the Bronx I had a pick up in Jersey City but I had to wait a while for it and so I took a walk with a friend who was catching a ride down to Maryland for the holidays. Amazingly we found this pleasant little beach (albeit strewn with tires and whatnot) overlooking this tranquil scene of international commerce.


I am currently taking a load of corrugated cardboard from Akron, Ohio to Charlotte, North Carolina. Since it is a short load and I had all weekend to do it I took little roads through Ohio which were pretty but at times tortuous. Here along the Ohio River I saw a tug pushing 15 barges of coal up river.


Looking west across the Ohio towards Ohio, from Ravenswood, West Virginia.

Sunny Florida

Today was a beautiful day, a day that makes you wonder why it was so good, what led up to it, what is it comprised of and what can be done to replicate those parameters so that every day from now on is like this one. And the really weird thing is most of this day happened in Florida.

After delivering a load of Sodium Bicarbonate (baking soda) to a pool supply store in Birmingham, Alabama. I was sent down to International Paper in Prattville where the rich vegetal-chemical wretch of a pulp mill poured from my nostrils down seemingly to the pit of my stomach and recalled, in proper Proustian fashion, other paper milling regions, Maine, Louisiana, Northern Wisconsin and, fondly, the Pacific Northwest.
6 huge rolls of cardstock were on their way to Harrisburg (wait for it) North Carolina (?) to a place that made packaging.
I was then directed to drop my empty trailer at the operating center in Charlotte and bobtail to Jacksonville, Florida to pick up a different empty trailer. I can not make out the logic of this 366 mile jaunt but it does wonders for my mpg average. (a criteria on which a potential bonus is based.)
I picked up the trailer and deadheaded to Alachua passing through the odd mini ranch land land of north central Florida. It seems that everyone here has a house (rancher style) in the middle of a 5-8 acre parcel of treeless land (there are trees at the edges) enclosed by a wooden fence and most people have horses. The trees are either tall scrappy loblolly pines or live oaks draped in Spanish moss the color of oxidized copper.
I picked up a load of merchandise from a Dollar General Distribution Center that is destined for another Dollar General distribution center in Scottsville, Kentucky. Lord knows why they need to move stuff between distribution centers like this.
I headed up the road and just before the Georgia Line stopped and bought some citrus fruits for christmas time. The fact that citrus ripens in the winter is a fact that makes me think that maybe the world or god or whatever is looking out for us.

Nothing exciting today, just a day where I felt excited.

One Day

All of this happened today, I swear:

1.) I woke up in Danville, Kentucky where I was supposed to deliver a load of engines yesterday but I got held up in Dallas as my truck needed some work on its own engine. (I got there last night but they were closed which made me nervous since I had already been assigned another load to pick up in the morning and the pick up was "critical" what they call "line shut down" as in, you don't show up on time you fuck up the works.)

2.) I got unloaded fairly fast with just enough time to get where I needed to go.

3.) I booked it down US-150 part of which is not a legal truck route, but had I took a legal truck route I would not have made it on time (which I did).

4.) The pick up was at a tobacco warehouse in London, Kentucky and the whole "line shut down" thing was because they basically have trucks coming in off farms unloading tobacco all day and that tobacco is then graded and weighed and put in new trucks and sent to North Carolina to made into cigarettes (this kind of tobacco, Burley, is grown almost entirely in Kentucky (70% of national production) and is prized for its mildness and ability to grow in really shitty soil. Almost all cigarettes in the US are made from this varietal.

5.) Last night in the hills and hollers of Eastern Kentucky a sloppy wet snow had fallen and as a result the tobacco was coming in slowly since the farmers were either waiting for it to clear up or were just plain stuck. Consequently trucks were being loaded slowly and there was absolutely no rush since I would not be loaded til later.

6.) When I returned to my truck I realized I had somehow managed to lock myself out. I have never done this before.

7.) I tried to see if i could get in through the wing windows since the hinge on the driver's side one is broken and therefore the whole thing is a bit loose. In my over exuberance I broke the window and in braking the window I managed to cut my wrist. (not too badly, But I was so startled by the way auto glass just sort of 'pops' that I didn't realize I was bleeding until five minutes into cleaning up the glass when I felt some wetness running down my arm.)

8.) I sat around waiting to get into a door at the tobacco warehouse until after noon.

9.) After I got into a door it took til 1:00 til someone came by to inspect the trailer.

10.) The manager found a hole in my trailer that I failed to notice and told me I needed a new trailer or to have that one repaired.

11.) Luckily there was a Walmart DC nearby that Schneider runs a dedicated account out of and so I went over there and the bored mechanics were thrilled to have something to do.

12.) They fixed my broken wing window at the same time.

13.) I went back to the tobacco warehouse.

14.) As I went into the office I heard the manager say "Yeah trailer TA739376,[my trailer] we're gonna have to cancel that load." There wasn't enough tobacco coming in that day.

15.) I drove down to the Pilot in Corbin were I wait still for a load. It's friday night, freight is often bad on the weekends and we are in one of the "softest" freight markets in some time. (i.e. There's a chance I'll be sitting for a while.)

16.) I went to use the bathroom at the Pilot and as I was standing at the urinal a man and his 10-12 year old son come in. The son says, "dad I got to poop again" and goes into a stall. The man takes the urinal next to me. We both stare intently at the wall. From the stall the son says "Dad?" and the Dad says "yeah" and the son says "I love you" and the dad says "I love you too."

Sheila

I was sitting in a truckstop in Effingham, Illinois, a city I have often noted for its humorous name. I can suggest others, Essingham, Beaessville, Washington G.D.
Anyway, I was in the lot of the TA (while we're on the subject of lewd initials). Some TAs are nice, new and shiny and generally well kept. But many are not. The parking lot is full of potholes and the whole place seems to be covered in a patina of diesel soot and hair grease. This TA was one of the later variety. I had just delivered a load of newsprint and was awaiting a new assignment when a woman pulling a small wheeled suitcase approached my door. I rolled down the window.
"Hey there, you wouldn't by any chance be going to Toledo would you?" She was polite but seemed a bit desperate and had the look of an older, more haggard Courtney Love.
"No Sorry." I began to roll the window back up.
"Can I use your CB to see if there's anyone around here headed that way."
I turned on my CB and handed the mic out the window. She pouted a bit and whined, "what i can't sit down?" I let her in the passenger side door. (It is at this point in the telling that most people freak out. She didn't seem harmful (except perhaps to herself) though later in our conversation I contemplated how likely she was to stab me with a short knife and take what little money I had in my wallet.)
I had recently downloaded a new ap for the iPhone that allowed me to make relatively hi-fi recordings and as she settled in I started it up and so what follows (however unethically) is a transcript of that conversation:
S=Sheila, M=me, mark

I started by asking her how she came to be looking for a ride in Effingham...

S:Oh that's a long story

M:Yeah

S:I couldn't cross the Canadian border with my boyfriend cause I didn't have my birth certificate, all i had was my driver's license with me.

[I'd have to go down to] South Carolina to get that but I don't really... (trails off)

M: Your boyfriend a truck driver?

S: Yeah outta Montreal

M: Oh, OK.

CB: WHATS THE FASTEST WAY TO GET TO EVANSVILLE, INDIANA FROM HERE?

S: (to herself) close to Coryden (into the CB) Is that close to Coryden, driver?

CB: (response to driver's question inaudible)

CB: TAKE IT, TAKE IT, GO DOWN TO MOUNT VERNON AND GET 64?

CB: (another inaudible response)

CB: OK, 10-4 THANKYA MAN. IT AINT BETTER TO GO DOWN 33 TO 130 AND ALL THAT CRAP, OR JUST GET ON THE INTERSTATE, I GOT TWO HOURS TO BE THERE.

M: Well he better hustle then.

Me and Sheila: (chuckle)

CB: IF YOU GOT TWO HOURS YOU BETTER HAMMER ON IT

Me and Sheila: (Heartier chuckle)

CB: I WILL TRY

S: Maybe I should go on, to, Toledo,

CB: THANKS A LOT THERE, SAYS ITS ONLY 100 MILES BUT, I DON'T KNOW...

I hate going all the way out to Tucson I mean, I been livin there but I hate fuckin Texas, all that, It's hot down there,

M: That's a long way

S: mm hmm.

S: (on the CB) Anybody goin towards Toledo?

S: Is anybody goin towards Toledo?

(nonsense CB noise)

S: oh, no...

(long pause)

M: What's in Toledo?

S: I've been there and I, I know the town.

M: Oh, OK

S: I know the city...

M: How about Coryden?

S: (emphatically) Coryden is a GOOD place in Indiana.

M: Yeah?

S: Yeah. A really good place...

M: It near Louisville?

S: (somewhat surprised) Yeah. (long pause) but there's not one truck stop in Coryden.

M: No, It's all hilly down there, not much flat space.

S: (almost emotional) That's a good little town, (mumbles) I gotta make my mind up,
(mumbles) really go to Tucson.

M: Tucsons an option too?

S: Yeah

M: What's in Tucson?

S: Well I been livin there the better part of a year so I know people there.

M: Oh, OK. That's a whole different place isn't it?

S: Mmmm Hmmm. I mean it gets cold in the desert but ...

(CB cuts in somebody selling something, we exchange a few unintelligible lines)

S: Lot a truck stops there in Toledo (to the CB) Anybody goin to Toledo, Tucson or Little Rock?

(long pause)

S: Anybody over there at the Flying J can y'all hear me drivers? Sometimes it takes a little bit. Are you in a hurry?

M: No I was about to go inside but, I'm just waitin on a load.

(long pause)

S: (on the CB) How bout it at the uh Flying J anybody goin to Toledo or Tucson?

CB: (a female voice) Break 1-9. Hi Speedco Customers if you're planning on stopping at Speedco truck lube and tire service at exit 160 we currently have 3 open oil bays 2 open tire bays.

(pause)

M: Lemme, I'm going, Lemme check and see if it's calibrated right, sometimes it falls outta calibration. (pause) yeah it should be doing pretty well

S: It doin alright?

M: yeah

S: Drivers at the TA or Flyin' J anybody going to Toledo or Tucson?

(pause)

S: Sometimes you have real good luck sometimes it takes a little bit.

M: Yeah.

S: Well while you're sittin here.. My name's Sheila (she offers me her hand)

M: Hey

S: Hi, What's your name?

M: Mark

S: Mark, do you care if I drink a beer while we're sittin here?

M: I'd prefer if you didn't drink it in my truck just caus...

S: Oh, Ok.

M: It's a company thing, you know.

S: Even when you're sittin still you can't do it can you?

M: Yeah, I can't ever have alcohol in the truck.

S: Oh. Yeah?

M: Yeah, I wouldn't mind usually but it's just...

S: (sincerely) Yeah I understand.

M: You never know if you know, another driver's gonna drive by..

S: Yeah everybody tells on everybody so much! I didn't know drivers were like that but they, do, they can be (CB crackles) They're nosy.

M: Yeah they think if they get somebody else fired they'll get more freight or, I don't know its stupid, the companies enormous, they got like 13,000 drivers.

S: Yeah?

M: One person's not gonna affect that, you know. But... Yeah I'm not gonna say I've never had a beer in the truck you know but I'm just trying...

S: Yeah... I understand

M: try not to.

(CB crackles)

S: I just don't wanna go down south

M: How come?

S: Hot. Can't stand the sun and the heat.

M: You prefer it like it was last night?

S: mm hmm.

M: In the 20s?

S: Oh, yeah.

M: That why you wanna head up to Canada?

S: Yeah, Well my boyfriend's from Montreal. I love that weather. And the Snow.

M: Mmmhmm. snow much in Little Rock?

S: No, Very seldom. (pause) If they try and give me some problems about knockin on doors, askin to use radios, The police brought me here.

M: Oh they did?

S: I needed them to, Yeah (defensively) so they know exactly what I'm doin so, you know.

M: How did the, uh...

S: Oh...

M: the uh police...if you don't mind my asking?

S: I went to the hospital last night to get detox.

M: Oh really?

S: And they don't medically detox you in Effingham. So I asked them, they said the police'll pick you up and take you, so the police pick me up and I, I told em I need to get a ride and he brought me right here. So... They can't say shit to me.

M: I guess not.

S: And I am gettin (interrupts herself, on the CB) Break 1-9 for a radio check.

(unrelated CB chatter)

S: Break 1-9 for a radio check...
Break 1-9 for a radio check...
Break 1-9 for a radio check...

CB: (Indian accent) Yar radio ees workin.

S: Thank You.

CB: Yar welcoom.

S: Driver is anybody goin toward Toledo or Tucson?

(long pause)

S: (sigh) I guess they're not goin right now

M: Na...

S: I'm gonna go in and use the bathroom, and fool around in there, maybe I'll get somebody.

M: I as just about to head in, go to the bathroom myself. Good luck.

S: Thank you.

M" Sorry about your... your uh, luck out here. You know it's a slow time, slow time.

S: I know!

M: Everybody's...

S: It'll come around.

M: Yeah.

S: I just don't like waitin, waitin for it. You know, just like anybody else, impatient.

M: I hear ya. Good Luck.

S: Thank you.

(climbs out of the cab and heads towards the TA, suitcase in tow.)

-fin-

Run Down

I don’t know why I haven’t been writing. Haven’t wanted to. Haven’t thought of it. Don’t have the time. That last reason is certainly the most full of shit for I do indeed have the time. Here’s some things that have happened in the last few weeks:

I hauled Eucalyptus Pulp from the port of Baltimore to Central Illinois. It was harvested from mono-culture groves in Brazil and would be made into automotive filters. It is good to know that in addition to hauling freight for Wal*Mart, consuming a gallon of fuel every 7 miles, and generally contributing to an economy that I think is fundamentally at odds with the way in which humans should live on the earth I am also helping to destroy the rain forest. Perhaps next week I will get to haul the clubs that are used to beat baby seals.

(The way that started off it sounds like I am going to rant but, I assure you, that is not my intention.)

I hauled bicycles from Illinois to a Wal*Mart DC (distribution center) in southern Virginia. The company, Pacific Cycles, is a big conglomerate that you probably haven’t heard of but they have bought up a number of brands you probably have heard of (Schwinn, Mongoose, etc…) and made them cheap and crappy, almost assuredly at the behest of their great satanic overlords, The Walton family. In the run down warehouse I asked the shipping clerk if they made the bikes there.
“We used to…Now we just distribute ‘em.”
Unbelievably it is cheaper to manufacture these things in China, put them in a container, truck that container to a port, put the container on a boat, float that boat 6000+ miles to Los Angeles, put those containers on a train, roll the train 2000+ miles to Chicago or Saint Louis, put that container on a truck chassis, drive the truck to Olney, Illinois, unload the container only to load it onto another truck which takes it 700+ miles to Virginia where it is unloaded only to be put in yet another truck which unloads it at a store so you can go pick up at Wal*Mart, your “green” means of transportation/exercise or whatever it is people ride bikes for. It’s cheaper to do that than to make the goddamn things in the United States where we could, I don’t know, pay people a living wage to do skilled work that, at the end of the day, they could be proud of. Then they (we) would have money to buy other things made by Americans and we could get this effing economy out of the shitter. But it’s just an idea.

(I’m not doing a good job of not ranting, but it is what seems to be coming, so I’ll let it come)

I hauled potato chips to Canada. (The kind with interesting flavors like “All Seasoned” or “Ketchup” that they (apparently) make here but only sell there. I brought back from Canada a bunch of John Deer “Gators” Those sort of all terrain golf carts that landscaping folks often ride around on. (I don’t have a problem with buying Canadian goods because they have more or less parity when it comes to wages. Besides vast oceans do not separate us from Canada, only vast stereotypes.) It is interesting to me that going through customs with a truck load of goods is much easier going into Canada than it is coming out, though perhaps not surprising. While I was waiting for my paperwork to be processed I sat in a truck stop in Fort Erie, Ontario and a friend who lives in Buffalo joined me for dinner. It was good to see you Jamie.

I hauled Corn Oil from Archer Daniels Midland (Supermarket to the World™) In Decatur Illinois, a town that calls itself The Soy Capital (in institutions such as Soy Capital Credit Union) in deference to ADM’s main business, the processing of Soybeans. Just doing the lord’s work. (That oil was going to a Mexican food company in Atlanta that makes, among other things, tortillas.)

I was given a short load from the operating center in Atlanta to downtown Atlanta. I had to drive underneath a building and back into a dock through an obstacle course of concrete support pillars. It was a delivery of furniture and other various home décor to a “Merchandise Mart” type place. A place that functions as a show room for hundreds of décor manufacturers (?) I don’t know who goes here and buys stuff. It is one of those situations that is so hopelessly “businessy” that I do not intend to comprehend it.
Once I was docked many of the small strait-truck drivers (or just strait truck drivers?) came up to me and were amazed at my ability to dock this behemoth truck in this little dock.

On my way to Texas, however, I stopped in Lafayette, Louisiana to have lunch with a friend who always knows where to have lunch. We went to the Creole Lunch House which, true to its name, is a house in which a creole lunch is served. I had stuffed bread, a sort of cross between a calzone and a maid-rite loose meat sandwich if the meat in a maid rite was delicious. The ady behind the counter insisted that i have more food than i was eating. It was delicious, Thanks Rachel.

I took a that load to Sealy, in east Texas where I sat for over two days before getting another load. Only to head 400 miles up the road into Arkansas and sit again for a day. Freight in the mid south is slow my friends, avoid it.


After delivering a load of Sears crap to Wilmington, North Carolina and getting entirely too drunk with an old friend who works at UNCW I was sent up to Henderson, North Carolina (entirely sober) to run Wal*Mart frozen food runs for three days. My day would start at about 1pm when I would pick up a reefer (refrigerated trailer you single minded drug addicts) loaded with deliveries for 2 or 3 Wal*Mart or Sam’s Clubs in Eastern North Carolina and Southern Virginia, I’d make these deliveries and return to the Distribution Center. This would be a pretty sweet gig if I lived near the dc since I would be home every night and still making a decent amount of money. Seeing the backroom of a Wal*Mart is an enlightening experience. A complete mess, total disorganization, in stark contrast to the militant organization of the supply chain up to this point. I wish I had taken a picture, but they probably wouldn’t have let me.


I took Dog Food to New Jersey and Imported Beer (Heineken) from Elizabeth (NJ) to a distributor (Blue Ridge) in Waynesboro (Virginia).
Tomorrow I will take domestic beer (Miller) through the house (meaning I will keep the load while I go home) for thanksgiving.
And I’ll give thanks cause, I hope by now you see, I have a lot to be thankful for.