STRAYCAT’S DOGGONE BLOG

Life Day 22536: Fontana Flapdoodle

March 25, 2009 on 1:06 pm | In On The Road |

Freight continues to be abysmal. After the Sumner Saga, I was in hopes of an improvement, but no such luck. I have been empty since Monday afternoon. As of this morning, Fontana was only 15% booked (569 trucks and only 84 loads). The story is the same for the entire western region, although not as bad as here. El Paso is 22% booked, Laredo is 22% booked, etc, etc.
Now for the rather short details of my excursion to Fontana.

Friday, March 20th: No load today. I sat around and ‘geeked’ all day. There is nowhere else to hang out anywhere close, so I just stayed at the terminal. I depleted much of my ‘food stash’, so I had to eat a couple of meals off of the lunch wagon. It wasn’t too awfully bad, but I wouldn’t have been my first choice, if I had a choice.

Saturday: I finally received a PrePlan. It picked up in Newberg, OR and delivered in Anaheim, CA. I left Sumner about 1030 and arrived in Newberg at 1400. Along the way, I was stopped at the State Scale in Washington where they performed a Level 3 inspection (credentials check). Since I was empty, and had been sitting for 3 days, I passed with ease. This was a drop/hook load, but naturally I had problems. This was a heavy load (45000 lbs) of rolled newsprint paper. I was overweight on my drive axles by about 600lbs. I went around to the shipping docks so they could re-work the load. I was lucky. Instead of adjusting the load and having me re-weigh, they just pulled one roll off and sent me on my way. That made the weight much more manageable and I was well within limits when I re-weighed. I finally left the shipper about 1630. Since it had been a long day, I stopped at a truck stop 10 miles away and had a sit down dinner. I was finally back on the road about 1830. I drove to a Rest Area about 110 miles south of Medford, OR and went to bed. My 14-hour window was about to expire. I drove 450 miles in 8.5 hours.

Sunday: I left the Rest Area at 0930. I drove to Corning, CA where I stopped for lunch. Then, I drove to Lathrop, CA where I took a short break for fuel and the MMM. I finished my day by driving to Buttonwillow, CA. I drove 559 miles in 11 hours.

Monday: I left Buttonwillow at 0800 and drove directly to the consignee in Anaheim, arriving about 1100. It was a Zoo. I was 5th in line. It was a small lot, and there was little room. I managed to find a place in line out of the way, but I was blocking a driveway until a truck left the dock. There was room for only 1 truck at a time in the docks, so I slowly inched my way forward until it was my turn in the dock. I had to ‘blind side’ back into the dock. It took about 45 minutes to unload me. There is nowhere to park a ‘big truck’ anywhere near Anaheim, so after I was unloaded, I drove to our terminal in Fontana, CA. I drove 189 miles in 3.75 hours. That was it for the day.

Tuesday:  No load today. I ‘geeked’ on the computer all day. It was breezy, if not altogether windy, for most of the day, but the temperature was about 75º, so it wasn’t too bad.

Today, Wednesday, the 25th: More of the same today. I received a PrePlan this morning, but it doesn’t pick up until tomorrow morning in San Bernardino, CA. It delivers in Stockton anytime before midnight tomorrow night. It’s only 388 miles so that shouldn’t be a problem. The weather is beautiful. The breeze/wind is gone and it is 86º as I am typing this post.