Stinking Snow

Trip across New York was fairly easy going, actually once got past Buffalo it was sunny to partly cloudy all the way to Albany. Got a parking place just north of Albany on I-87 about 2 hour drive from Plattsburgh, NY. Got an early start next morning and got there with 2 hours to spare then settled in to wait for customer to come to work.

After unloading I was offered a good load to Illinois and after figuring my hours I came up about 1 to 2 hours short having enough hours to make an on time delivery so I lost the load. Got another one going to Harrisburg, PA to deliver Wednesday night at 9pm to a grocery warehouse. Hit snow in Newburgh, NY just north of New Jersey and went ahead and stopped for the night. I was only a 4 hour drive from my destination from there and since it was a late night delivery I could sleep late and leave after lunch. The last 3 mornings I had gotten up at 1 am to make sure I made the delivery appointment on the load in Plattsburgh, so the relaxed morning was welcome.

Wednesday morning the snow had moved off and it was up to 42 degrees so had clear sailing to Harrisburg. Got into the customer at 8pm which was a hour early. Turns out they did not open receiving window until 9pm and it was first come first serve when they did. When I walked in there at 8:30pm to check in there was already 7 drivers standing there. It was 3am before I finally got unloaded, don't like that place much. Now I was out of hours and had to find a parking place, which isn't easy at 3am in a big city. Luckily we had a terminal about 15 miles away and I went there knowing I would be able to park.

They gave me a load going to Michigan for delivery at 6am on Friday morning, but my hours wouldn't allow me enough time to make it so they took me off of that load and gave me one going to London, KY that could deliver anytime on Saturday. Well this load got me into a mess in Maryland. Once I dropped down to I-68 in Maryland, which goes across the Maryland panhandle through the mountains, I hit snow. I was running out of hours for the day and there's only 3 little truck stops on that 80 mile stretch and no rest areas. Every one of the truck stops had trucks piled into them and I made the mistake of going in to one to try and find a spot and took me almost a half hour to get out again it was so crowded. Other 2 stops were the same.

I was running out of hours and headed into West Virginia where they were saying they hadn't worked on the roads at all and they were badly snow covered. It was dark, winds were blowing 30 mph on top of the mountain. At the state line there is a welcome center and rest area so at the last minute I decided to risk running through there to see if I could find a spot. Found one spot I could squeeze into at the very end up against a snow bank. I will have to try and back out in the morning, but I'm at least stopped. The wind is blowing so hard I can sing "Rock a Bye Baby" while going to sleep and see if I can get off this mountain in the morning.