Still Working, The Cadillac Ranch, and Devil's Slide

Two of these photos were taken at the Cadillac Ranch on the Western edge of Amarillo, Texas. If you have never seen the Cadillac Ranch, you probably thought is was only a Tall Texas Tale, and did not really exist! I don't know how long they have been there, but I know for sure at least thirty years! Thirty years ago, the Cadillacs were all pink, before it became acceptable for regular people to put graffiti on everything. I think it became acceptable for people to drive like everyone else on the road was their worst enemy at about the same time as it became acceptable to "tag" everything in sight.

The photo in the right corner is of Devil's Slide here in Utah, almost directly east of Salt Lake City on Interstate 84.

I hauled a load of dead pigs from SeaBoard Packing in Guymon, Oklahoma to down near New Orleans. The load was supposed to be ready by 4pm on Tuesday, with a "Drop Dead Time" of 10pm Tuesday nite. They woke me up at 3am Wednesday morning to let me know it was finally ready. The "Drop Dead Time" is the latest time the load can be ready and still be delivered on time. I went thru Altus, hoping I would be able to hand it off to another driver, who would be able to run from Altus to the delivery points within the allotted time frame, and do it legally. The distance from Altus to the delivery points was such that it could be done within the parameters of the rules, and still be legal. The distance from Guymon to the delivery points was far enough that a ten hour break would be needed somewhere in between to do it legally. There wasn't enough time from when the load was ready and when the first stop delivering it to be able to take a full ten hour break, even after changing the appointment times to the latest available for the first stop. They didn't have anyone available to hand it off to, and my new dispatcher had the nerve to tell me: "It has to be there." I have zero respect for her now. By the time I was East of Dallas, I was so steamed, I decided I would bail when I got back to Altus, and asked for a load of chicken going back to Altus so I could clean the truck out after I unloaded in Louisiana. When I got to Lawton to unload the chicken, they sent load information on a load going to Utah, so I called Linda and talked to her. She convinced me to go ahead and take it, then while I was home, I could look for a local job that would pay somewhere as close to as much money as I was making now, rather than be unemployed while looking for work.

Deals like this one put a driver in a bad spot. If you don't go ahead and do it, they can say you didn't make your deliveries on time. If you screw up and don't fake your logbook properly, they can reprimand you for falsification of your logbooks. If the scales are spot checking logbooks, and you don't have everything where it looks legal and believable, you can get an expensive fine. This is/was the last time I will do one of these deals, as I can't stand the stress of worrying about getting caught. If you end up in an accident, the ambulance chasers will hang you out to dry, even if you weren't at fault. They can claim that if you had been going by the rules, you wouldn't have been there, and the wreck wouldn't have happened.

The topper on the whole deal is: the people at the first stop didn't unload all their freight, and I had to go back there to let them unload the last of it. Since I hadn't been present to watch while it was being loaded, I had no clue what was supposed to come off there, and what was supposed to go to the next stop. They had scales there and I rolled across the scales to try and get a feel to be sure whether or night they had taken more than they should have. The numbers looked like they hadn't taken too much, so I wasn't overly concerned about them screwing up and not taking enough. I did get to unload it without having to have an appointment, and have the satisfaction of unloading something at a Wal Mart distribution center at a time other than when they normally receive products. I think the people at my company knew I was at the point of hauling it back to Altus, and let them deal with it if things didn't happen in a reasonable manner. I'm really getting tired of trucking.