December 12, 2011

Heading down the Gulf Coast

There are none of my photos to accompany this story, due to some technical issues the photos I did take were unfortunately lost in some kind of cyber black hole between my computer and the hosting site I use to store them, I’ve tried all kinds of technical wizardry and a lot of shouting at my computer, all to no avail. Hopefully my words will put pictures in your mind. I have managed to put maps up, so you can all see where I’ve been.

To compensate, at the end of the story, I’ve put on a bunch of pictures, they’re a mix match from various trips and there’s a little note describing each picture. Normal service will be resumed next time around, I’ve got a safety net in place to prevent future technical disasters.

It’s time to head down to the Gulf Coast for this trip, I’m a bit backed up and this should have been posted a few weeks ago, but I’ve been a busy boy lately, all the Starbucks in The World wouldn’t have given me enough waking hours to get everything done and still write this blog. I have had plenty of home time, but it seems that I’m a lot more popular than I thought I was and the end of summer was one get together after another. I have been out on the ATV with my friends, been to and hosted cook outs in the back yard (garden for my English friends) and been to weddings, birthdays and anniversaries. I also helped a very good friend clear his yard, we cut down fifteen 50ft trees without incident, it was the 16th that caused all the problems! Still with some Duct Tape and bubblegum we managed to make sure that his house is still waterproof!

The original plan for this load was for me to head out to Alberta to load and run straight down to Texas, Bill and Kerry Brandt had sat down and plotted a whole month’s work for me so that I could visit each coast, but like a lot of things in trucking, plans are sometimes just wishful thinking. In this case the customer had asked for their freight to be delivered a day earlier than originally requested. Unfortunately the appointment to load the freight had already been made and to ensure that the delivery happened on time I would have to miss out on the run to Alberta and dispatch would send another truck who was already in Alberta to collect the load, run it through the night and bring it back to the yard in Morris, ready for me to set off with the following morning.

I timed it just right, I had just finished loading my gear into 361 when the trailer arrived in the yard, dispatch had already made up my Custom’s Paperwork, so I did my pre trip inspection, hooked up to the trailer and started on the long road south. First stop as always was the border with The USA, again it was a breeze and I hit I-29 within minutes of arriving. The CAT Scale at The Gastrak Truckstop had to be navigated before I put a dent in today’s mileage quota. The load I had on was heavy, the previous driver had scaled and moved the axles, but we have different tractor units, so better safe than sorry. CAT Scale is run by the owner of the World’s biggest Truckstop, the Iowa 80, which strangely enough is on I-80 in Iowa, but they have a scale in all the major truckstops, their promise is that if you weigh on a CAT Scale and your weights are legal, they will defend you in any court case for an overweight ticket, if there are any fines levied they will pay them and the scale in question will be recalibrated. It’s a good safety cushion and at $9-50 for the first weigh and a buck for any reweighing if the first one comes up no good, it’s a bargain too.

My weight was all in the right places and I had enough leeway to fill my tanks in Fargo, so I set my mental GPS and hit the road. The sugar beet season has started now and there are old farm trucks running between the fields and the giant stockpiles close to the processing plants, I get to see some real old trucks, some are from as far back in time as the 70s, I got a load of pictures but I had hit a swarm of bugs just after leaving Pembina and they made a real mess of my windshield so the pictures ended up on the cutting room floor.

The Plains now have a new source of wealth, since the dawn of time, or 1776 in the case of America, working the fertile soil in the area has been the main source of income in the local economy, but now Black Gold has taken over. The Bakken Oilfield, which has reserves estimated to be over 500 billion barrels of Petroleum Grade Oil, the Bakken Oilfield also reaches under Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Montana as well as North Dakota and the evidence of New Money is plain to see, it really is a boom town around here now, the Oilfield itself is to the west, but there’s not a lot of civilization out there, so cities like Grand Forks and Fargo are the places to go for the Oil Workers to spend their new found wealth.

The problems will come in the next year or so when people in the eastern part of the State leave to get their share of the Black Gold and the towns they leave behind become a shadow of their former self. House prices will also rise as the money no object Oil Companies need places for the crews to stay, it will make it very hard for local people to get on the property ladder in years to come, unless they work in the Oilfields. The rural landscape around here is going to change, that’s for sure.

Fargo looms through the slimy mess the bugs left behind, I pull into the Flying J and take on some motion lotion, whilst pumping the fuel I pop the hood and use the window squeegee that lives at each pump to clean my windows. After fuelling and collecting my receipt I pull into the truck park and make myself some coffee, there’s a severe lack of Seattle’s best export in this part of the World, but I had come prepared. Starbucks also sell coffee beans to make a good cup of Java at home, as I’m a connoisseur of coffee I have bought myself a small Espresso Machine to make the most important part of my Latte, I use my microwave to heat the milk rather than the steam wand, it’s cheating, but it makes a good Latte and as an added bonus it makes the cab of 361 smell of freshly brewed coffee, that’s better than any air freshener scent on the market, so I’m a happy bunny.

Suitably refreshed I hit I-29 again and finish of the first of the Dakotas, apart from a sign marking the occasion there is no outward sign that I’m now in a different state, a Dakota is a Dakota, the only difference for me is that North Dakota is closer to home than South Dakota and usually that’s a good thing, today though the reverse is true, I’m going south so the further I get from home, the quicker I can get back there.

There is also Oil in this Dakota, although not part of The Bakken, it still manages to produce 125000 barrels of crude per month, it would appear that the Farmer is going to remain number one in this area for some time. The State is divided in two by The Missouri River, to the East lie the farmlands, to the West it’s less fertile and rockier, so the Farms there are Ranches and the Cattle roam freely. In this part of the State the economy is led by tourism and The Military, whereas in the East with its bigger population, the service industry leads agriculture in the economy.

I stop in Brookings, South Dakota and stock up with groceries from an important part of the service industry, Walmart, I’ve found a mix for authentic Chinese Curry Sauce, it tastes exactly the same as the stuff they used to pour over my chips (French Fries) on the way home from the pub back in London. I make a curry in the parking lot and use a precooked chicken from the rotisserie for the protein, I use a spoon and a fork to eat it, I may be able to cook like an Asian, but I can’t use chopsticks like one!

From Brookings I only had a little bit of Interstate left until I started heading west for a bit, I could go down through Topeka, Kansas and pick up I-35 all the way to Dallas, but cutting over to Yankton, South Dakota and going down through Nebraska is the shortest, and therefore quickest route, it’s an easy ride with a few towns to liven things up a bit after the vast emptiness of the Plains.

I stop for the night in York, Nebraska, I could go a little further, but a big green sign catches my eye and makes my decision for me, my morning Latte will now be served to me instead of the self service ones I’ve had today. I pop a DVD into my laptop and snuggle up for the night, I’ve got a big day to do tomorrow and need to get on the road as early as I can so that I can make the final run into the customer on the morning of day three, with that in mind I decide against The Godfather Trilogy and settle for a repeat viewing of one of my all time favorite movies, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.

I wake up as the birds are finishing their Snap, Crackle and Pop, I look at the clock and shudder, at least my friendly Starbucks are open, I perform my ablutions in their restroom and scoop up a couple of Lattes before the obligatory pre trip inspection and the first of the days many miles go under the bug splattered bumper.

Nebraska is very similar to the Dakotas, except the fields yield Corn and not Beets. The corn fields do provide a source of fuel though, but not Black Gold, this time it’s Ethanol, which is a Biomass fuel, brewed, or whatever they do to it, from natural plants, it provides a cleaner, cheaper fuel than regular Gasoline (Petrol for you Brits) It is also home to the World’s richest or second richest man, depending on the Stock Exchanges, Warren Buffet, a very modest man who among other things owns most of Coca Cola.

I run south on US81, it’s a good fast road and although it’s boring like the rest of the big roads in this part of the World, it allows me to get the job done, burning the Black Gold is my job and the big CAT/Peterbilt combination are doing that very well today, a nice tail wind helps with fuel consumption. When I say boring, I mean from a taking photographs and admiring the view perspective, for a trucker’s point of view it is Nirvana, flat ground, zero traffic and long straight roads.

Nebraska soon turns into Kansas and again, nothing much changes but it does get noticeably warmer, this is saying something too, we’ve had a fantastic summer up in The Frozen North this year, but Kansas hot is even hotter, not surprising when you think that Kansas was still part of Mexico until 1848, it doesn’t affect the growing of Corn though as the fields are full of the stuff, until I reach the outskirts of Wichita and the Corn is replaced by Cows being fattened up before their final journey to the huge Meat Processors in Cow Town. As I hit the Kansas Turnpike I fire up my I-Pod and blast out Glen Campbell’s classic hit, The Wichita Lineman as I keep heading southbound.

The tailwind continues to push me south, appropriate really as the State of Kansas is named after the Indian Tribe that inhabited it, the Kansa, said to mean ‘People of the wind’ There is also Oil in Kansas, it’s the 8th largest oil producer in The US with a monthly production of 2.8million barrels. It’s also home to one of the World’s largest salt deposits, which is just to the east of Wichita. The main industry in these parts is the aforementioned Meat Packers and the Aviation Industry, more light aircraft are built here than anywhere else in the World.

For me though the most important statistic is the fact that Kansas also has the second largest state highway system in the country after California. This is because of the high number of counties and county seats and the intertwining of them all. I’m only concerned with the one that takes me to Oklahoma and I make good progress to the State Line, where I pull in and raid my groceries for a spot of lunch.

Refreshments are again provided by Starbucks and my in cab Espresso maker, lunch is Sausages, Mashed Potatoes and Baked beans, with two slices of bread and butter, traditional British Fare and very tasty too. Now it’s time to hit the road again.

The name Oklahoma comes from the Choctaw phrase okla humma, literally meaning red people, it is very important in Native American ancestry, there are 25 different American Indian Languages spoken within its boundaries, the most in any state. Like Kansas to the north, aviation is also important to the economy as Oklahoma is home to the largest airline maintenance base in the world, which serves as the global maintenance and engineering headquarters for American Airlines, but where Oklahoma really shines is in energy production.
Oklahoma is the nation’s third-largest producer of natural gas, fifth-largest producer of crude oil, and has the second-greatest number of active drilling rigs and ranks fifth in crude oil reserves. As a whole, the energy industry contributes $35 billion to Oklahoma’s gross domestic product, and employees of Oklahoma oil-related companies earn an average of twice the state’s typical yearly income. In 2009, the state had 83,700 commercial oil wells churning 65.374 million barrels of crude oil.
I had to find out all this information as driving through the state is one of the most uneventful journeys ever, made even worse by the preceding states being exactly the same, save for the color of the dirt at the roadside, In Oklahoma it’s reddish brown, in Kansas, Nebraska and the Dakotas, it’s just brown! A brief respite from the emptiness is provided by the Capitol, Oklahoma City, but it’s short lived and I’m soon back out on the Plains again.
Thankfully I can get a move on, Texas looms, Texas is the second largest U.S. state, behind Alaska, with an area of 268,820 square miles. It is 10% larger than France and almost twice as large as Germany or Japan. If it were a country, Texas would be the 40th largest behind Chile and Zambia. I have to go from one end of it to the other, so no time for messing around.
An hour or so after crossing the State Line, I pass Denton, the spiritual home of 361, I take the right fork in I-35 here and it becomes I-35W, it takes me past Fort Worth rather than Dallas, not that it does anything to the volume of traffic, it is crazy around here, especially after the empty roads I’ve had almost to myself for the last 1000miles.
As anyone who has watched Dallas on the TV will know, or done a Wikipedia search as I have, Texas is Oil Country, it all started on January 10, 1901, the first major oil well in Texas, Spindle top, was found south of Beaumont. Other fields were later discovered nearby in East Texas, West Texas, and under the Gulf of Mexico. The resulting “Oil Boom” transformed Texas. Oil production eventually averaged three million barrels per day at its peak in 1972.

This oil boom contributed to the Texas economy, Texas has the second highest GSP (Gross State Product) in the U.S. Its GSP is comparable to the GDP of India or Canada, which are the world’s 12th- and 11th-largest economies, respectively. Texas’ economy is the fourth-largest of any country globally, behind England, California, and Tokyo.
Texas has known petroleum deposits of about 5 billion barrels, which makes up approximately one quarter of the known U.S. reserves. The state’s refineries can process 4.6 million barrels of oil a day, The Baytown Refinery in the Houston area is the largest refinery in America. Texas also leads in natural gas production, producing a quarter of the nation’s supply. I make good use of all this oil, as a glance at my fuel gauge reveals that the drive down through the busy Dallas/Ft Worth Metroplex has put a dent in my personal oil reserves and I’m in need of some go go juice, a visit to a Flying J is called for, luckily for me there is one just before I pull off the Interstate at Waco.

From here on I’m off the Interstate and running down the back roads, they’re good, fast roads though and except for slowing for a few towns, I make good time, almost as fast as the Interstates, but with a lot more to see, mostly Longhorn Cattle and Oil Wells, of course there are the obligatory fast food joints too, but my belly and my pantry are full, so I drive past instead of driving through. I do make use of one though, I need a place to lay my hat tonight, the log book is at bursting point, luckily my previous eating habits have given me an encyclopedic knowledge of fast food joints with truck parking.

It’s a hot one tonight, so the big CAT stays purring away, providing me with much needed air conditioning, I’m still in the wide awake club, the day may have covered many miles, but they’ve all come easy, a couple of episodes of The Sopranos is called for before I go to sleep.

Up early again today, I have a couple more hours to do to my destination, I’m on schedule to meet the revised delivery time, so it’s not a mad rush, but there’s no time for dilly dallying. My destination is Seadrift, it’s right on The Gulf of Mexico, this is a strategic point for the Petrochemical Industry, Oil is piped in from the offshore rigs in the Gulf to the refineries, during the process of making the stuff we pump into our vehicles a lot of by-products are produced, these go into almost every man made object in the World, in this case I’m delivering to a Plastics factory, my load is a by-product of Gas production and combined with some other by-products it will make the raw ingredient of many things that touch our everyday lives. People often think that Oil and its use is contributing to destroying the Planet just so that we can all cruise around in big cars and trucks, but Diesel Fuel and Gasoline production are just the tip of the iceberg for the Oil Companies, they sell far more stuff to the Petrochemical Industries so they can make raw materials for other companies to make products that we use every day, take the laptop that I’m tapping away at now, its shell is made from plastic, which comes from Crude Oil.

I arrive for my appointment a little early, I have already gone through the safety induction necessary to go inside the huge plant, so checking in was a formality, I presented my ID card from my induction, my driver’s license and the truck registration and insurance and after my details were recorded, I made my way to the unloading dock. Thirty minutes later I was back at the gate, trailer empty and swept out ready for the next load.

I already had my reloading details, the shipper was located in the town where I parked up last night, so it only took a couple of hours and I was going backwards again, this time I hope there are no Crude Oil by-products in my load, it’s a full load of dips, the yummy kind that you dip your Tortilla Chips into. I’m picking up over 20tons of the stuff and by my calculations it would take ten trailers full of Doritos to scrape every drop from the jars of dip, that would be some party and you would need a rather large bowl!

I’m back on the road again in less than an hour, I’m going to take it easy today, I’m already close to the point of being able to make it back to the yard in two day’s driving, so an easy day won’t hurt. I’m still going to get as far as I can, but I have no destination fixed in my mind, I’m going to see how it goes, ideally I want to get to the Oklahoma Line, but if I do, I do, if I don’t, well it’ll still be there in the morning!

As it happens I do make it back into Okie, just. After a trouble free run back up through Texas I stop a mile north of the State Line in the huge Casino, although I don’t go inside, by the look of it the owner has plenty enough money, no need for a contribution from me. Tony Soprano finishes my day off and I head to the land of nod, with no alarm for the first time this trip, oh yeah….

Alarm clocks are unnecessary when you have a black truck, the scorching sun heats things up to unbearable level about 2mins after it raises its head above the horizon, but that doesn’t deter me, I fire up 361 and let the A/C cool things down to a more agreeable level and I’m soon back in dreamland, although I do set an alarm before I go back to sleep, just in case, I’m in no rush, but there’s a fine line between a leisurely start and wasting most of the day in bed.

The day starts off with a pre trip inspection as always, I also make up a couple of Lattes to see me through the morning, I’m planning on using every minute I have today and I can’t do that without a decent coffee or two inside me. This run is taking me back along the roads I came down on, apart from a brief step off route to get my load on; the return trip has been a mirror image of the outward journey, although I stop in different places on the way back. I motor on through OK City and stop for a bit of lunch just before leaving the State, again it’s stuff from my pantry and refrigerator. I decide on Chicken Breast and Rice, my only dilemma is which sauce to cover it with, Jack Daniel’s BBQ sauce is the eventual winner, it turns out to be a good decision. I make another couple of Lattes and make my way back into Kansas.

It’s no more exciting heading north, but again, the open roads are a beautiful sight to see, I’ve got the Motown Channel playing on my Sirius Radio, the soundtrack is perfect for my mood and before I know it, I’m back in Nebraska, I only have to put this place in my mirrors and I’ll be done for the day and have a reasonably easy day tomorrow to get back to the yard and after that, home for a few days.

Taking full advantage of the empty roads I continue on into the night, the country roads are taking me home. The farmers are busy out in the fields and as well as harvesting their Corn, they’re also stirring up the insects, my windshield is becoming opaque, so I stop a couple of times and pop the hood, jump up on top of the big CAT engine and do my best to clean off the carnage they leave behind. I’ve got it down to a fine art now, there are a number of special products designed for this very purpose, but nothing beats a drop of dishwashing liquid and water in a squeeze bottle, some elbow grease and a handful of kitchen towels.

I may not have a lot to look at, but I can see it clearly once again! From the darkness a glow appears in the distance, this means a town and seeing as I’m at the top end of Nebraska, it must be Yankton and the start of South Dakota again, I have a bit of time left to run, but decide to cancel the rest of the day due to a severe lack of motivation, I’m doing really well for time, no point in driving late into the night when I can do it tomorrow, I also have a yearning for a Cheese and Ham Toasty, my in cab Sandwich Toaster will be helping me out with that very soon. I park for the night just east of Yankton and enjoy my late night snack as I watch another episode of The Sopranos. It’s then time to jump in to bed.

No alarm again today, I also parked on the west side of a building so that the Sun didn’t wake me as it heralded the start of the day a few hours ago. Parking a truck is not just a case of abandoning it in the first spot you find, to get a good night’s sleep you have to factor in many things. The Sunrise being one, in the summer you don’t want it streaming in through the windows, in the winter, you do. The same applies to wind, in the winter you need to park facing in the same direction as the wind, at ambient temperatures in the minus forties, the wind can make for a cold night, not just for the driver, but for the truck too, whereas in the Summer, a nice cool breeze flowing through the air vents can make for a comfortable sleep. My foresight the night before had paid off, I awoke feeling refreshed.

The usual in cab Latte, ablutions and pre-trip inspection were my first course of action today, from there on in I just had to point 361 due north and get back to the yard. The construction crews are busy repairing I-29, but the lack of traffic meant that it caused me no hold ups. I just sat back, cranked up the radio and watched the miles roll by, South Dakota became North Dakota, America became Canada and 361 returned home. I uncoupled from the trailer, put the Bills of Lading up on the board for the driver who would be delivering this load to Alberta, put my trip paperwork in the relevant slot, unloaded my gear from the truck into my car and that was another week and a few thousand miles, down and in the books.

The next update will follow shortly, I just need to get tapping away on this here keyboard, but first I need to do some trucking, so I’ll be seeing y’all very soon.