The Other Shu

For the second Friday in a row, we found ourselves heading north on I-43 into familiar territory. A planned weekend load to Utah cancelled at the last minute so we grabbed an available load to Wausau, WI with a Monday morning delivery.

Settled down in home territory and ran some errands on Saturday and Sunday… important stuff like picking up a variety of local cheeses and meat products at Stodola’s IGA in Luxemburg, getting the tires on the van rotated and visiting family. 😁

Watched the first half of that disaster of a Packer game before moving on to the Wausau area Sunday night. Dropped the freight first thing this morning and nabbed a load to Pennsylvania out of Neillsville a few hours later. Good to be home again but duty calls.

Don’t you just hate it when work interrupts your slacking? We were running way ahead of schedule on our trip from Illinois to El Paso so we decided to make an unplanned visit to White Sands National Monument in New Mexico before heading to our delivery.

We were in nearby Alamogordo on our way when the batphone rang with a load offer to Kentucky from one of our carriers. We bid a little high for the El Paso area so we continued on not expecting to get the load. Just as we were about to pull in at White Sands, he called back and told us we won the load.

Unfortunately, it meant having to move up our delivery in order to make the pickup time for the KY load. So we grabbed a couple quick pics and moved on. Happy to get the load but bummed we didn’t get more time there. For some reason, we don’t usually get to see New Mexico during the daylight so I threw in a few pics from the desert as well.

Sometimes we don’t realize how much we move around each month. Fortunately, Big Brother…I mean Google…is kind enough to put it into perspective. That 4.2 times around the world this year is an eye-opener.

Michelle wraps up the week…

Been a pretty busy week with loads. Left NC on Monday. Went to Montgomery, Alabama to Little Rock, Arkansas to West Memphis, Arkansas to Laredo, Texas. Got to Texas early this morning and dropped off our load. Took a nap and within an hour of being up we landed a load to Maxton, NC! Don’t have to be there till Monday so we are going straight home. Be there tomorrow night then deliver on Monday. Hopefully we can get another load on Monday. If not, at least we are close to home that we can stay there till we do.

A bunch of shorties got the job done this week…and got us some home time. Kansas City to Chicago on Monday. Then Chicago dropping Wednesday morning in Graham, NC. Quickly dropped the van off to get a suspicious check engine light checked out. Got the van back on Thursday and stole a load to Ohio by underbidding another driver by $5. Dropped Friday morning and grabbed another over to Jersey City, New Jersey which we delivered late Friday evening.

Our delivery last night was very near the Statue of Liberty so we were in the middle of trying (unsuccessfully) to get a decent shot of her when the phone rang just before midnight. We ended up placing a bid and eventually winning a load from Jersey to Gordonsville, Virginia picking up early this morning.

Every load this week ended up with higher than usual rates for some unknown reason. Gotta work smarter instead of harder, right? 😁 That was good enough for us for the week so home we go for two nights in our own bed. Yay!

Wrapping up a pretty good week with a leisurely 1200 mile run from the Philadelphia area to northwest Missouri (or as we like to pronounce it…Misery).

We picked up the load Friday afternoon and have until Monday morning to deliver. Going to try to deliver Saturday afternoon if we can, but if not, it will be a hotel room for the weekend.