Semi Travels Part 1

Adventures in Legoland.
For the first time in my professional career I took and entire week paid vacation off. Any other time I've had a week off I was either switching jobs or switching locations for the same company which meant trying to move all my stuff.
I've been planning to go on this trip since last November and I should have gone in mid-April but, the boss asked me to move my plans to be available for a major project. I'm glad I waited.
My partner, Tara, has a CDL (Commercial Driver's License) and has driven a Semi for over 15 years. In that time she has driven flat bed, dump buckets, reefers (refridgerated units) and standard trailers and is amazingly good at her job. I can't be trusted to safetly back up my Ford Escort, she backs up a 53 foot trailer multiple times over the course of a week into some really tight locations.
I've had the opportunity over the past couple years to go out on the truck for a day or overnight but never on a long trip. The short trips were like training for the real event. In those short trips I learned how to dolly up and dolly down the trailer. This means I get out of the truck, put on some work gloves and crank a large handle on the driver's side of the trailer toward the front to bring the trailer legs up or down. I've also learned how a lot of other truck terminology which I'll explain as it comes up. I also learned that a truck driver can see everything in a person's 4 wheeler as it goes past and I mean everything. That can get quite interesting.
This time Tara picked me up on Thursday, May 4 in the evening and we left Northwest Pennsylvania for Conniticut and who knew where else over the next 9 days. She drives a Freightliner Columbia that she calls her two room condo. It has a single bottom bunk, a fold down upper bunk, tv with dvd player, microwave, plugs on a converter for anything else and even a port-a-potty for those desperate situations. There is a lot of storage and being neat is an absolute necessity for sanity.
Our first load, 35,000 lbs of vegetable oil bound for a distribution center that send the oil out to McDonalds. We were carrying the key ingredient to those tasty McD fries. A truck driver relies heavily on a Motocarrier's Atlas to get from point A to point B. We took off Thursday night, slept at a truck stop somewhere in New York and woke up bright and early to deliver in northwestern Connecticut. Information on loads including directions are sent to many truck drivers, including Tara, via an on board computer called a Qualcom. The Qualcom signal tells the truck driving company where exactly the truck is and is a life line between the driver and the dispatcher. The directions on the Qualcom were less than clear and we did our best to figure them out, ended up on the correct road however, we passed the consignee (receiver) and accidentally turned into Lego Headquarters. That was one of the coolest business buildings I've ever seen. There were Lego sculptures everywhere. Unfortunately, we weren't supposed to be there and the drive was not designed to handle 75+ feet of truck and trailer. The picture of the police officer at the pickup - the officer and the hydrant (not shown) were made entirely of Legos, was directly in our way to make the turn. Tara had to be very creative and in the end, the tandems (tires at the back of the trailer) went up over the curb and a little grass by the giant Legos. No real harm done, the grass was flattened but not killed and no one came out and yelled. In the end, we made it out and two blocks down the road to the distribution center, where I watched a lot of McDonald trailers with really good looking food on the side drive back and forth.
The Qualcom is a vital piece of daily truck driving. Every morning Tara checks in with her dispatcher, when a load is picked up or delivered she has to send that information in, calls for directions, where to fuel, and other info all goes through the Qualcom. Tara has a dispatcher named Cheryl who is one of the most wonderful dispatchers on the planet. I've learned to always be good to the dispatcher, she gives you the loads and if you make her angry you don't get miles, no miles, no money. Drivers are paid by the mile so it's good to treat the dispatcher really well.
After the Oil for McDonald's fries we headed for Vermont...more on that later. 9 day, probably 9 entries and lots of photos to follow.